Tatjana (opera)

Kukuschka (1896), better known in a revised version as Tatjana (1906), is the earliest opera of Franz Lehár. The plot for the opera was drawn by librettist Felix Falzari from American journalist and explorer George Kennan's writings about his six years in Siberia, including Siberia and the Exile System (1891).^[1] Kukuška is the Russian word for cuckoo.

Kukuška, an opera in 3 acts, was first performed 27 November 1896 at the Leipzig Stadttheater. The revised work, Tatjana, with changes to the libretto by Max Kalbeck was premiered 10 February 1905 in Brno, at the German Brünn Stadttheater.

References

1. Bernard Grun Gold and silver: the life and times of Franz Lehár 1970 - Page 48 "Kukuschka - On a steamer trip round the Dalmatian islands Falzari talked to Lehar for the first time about George Kennan and his Siberia book. Kennan was an American journalist who had been sent by the Western Union Telegraph Company to the eastern provinces of the Tsarist Empire, to supervise the building of a new telegraph line. He stayed there six years, and described the bleakness of the landscape, the pitiless weather, the creeping apathy among the people — from the first rays of the spring sun and the first cry of the cuckoo : the signal for these wretched folk to run ..."