The Chocolate Soldier

The Chocolate Soldier (German title: Der tapfere Soldat or Der Praliné-Soldat) is an operetta composed in 1908 by Oscar Straus (1870–1954) based on George Bernard Shaw's 1894 play, Arms and the Man. The German language libretto is by Rudolf Bernauer and Leopold Jacobson. It premiered on 14 November 1908 at the Theater an der Wien.

English versions were successful on Broadway and in London, beginning in 1909. The first film adaptation was in 1915. The 1941 film of the same name enlists much of Straus's music but is otherwise unrelated, using a plot based on Ferenc Molnár's play Testőr .

When Shaw gave Leopold Jacobson the rights to adapt the play, he provided three conditions: none of Shaw's dialogue, nor any of the character's names, could be used; the libretto must be advertised as a parody; and Shaw would accept no monetary compensation. In spite of this, Shaw's original plot, and with it the central message of the play, remain more or less untouched. The main love aria, for instance, is sung by the heroine just before she meets the "other man", and the "brave" soldier turns out to be a worse coward than his unmilitaristic rival. Shaw despised the result, however, calling it "a putrid opera bouffe in the worst taste of 1860", but grew to regret not accepting payment when, despite his opinion of the work, it became an international success.

When Shaw heard, in 1921, that Franz Lehár wanted to set his play Pygmalion to music, he sent word to Vienna that Lehár be instructed that he could not touch Pygmalion without infringing Shaw's copyright and that Shaw had "no intention of allowing the history of The Chocolate Soldier to be repeated."Pygmalion was eventually adapted by Lerner and Loewe as My Fair Lady, made possible because they were, at least in theory, adapting a screenplay co-authored by Shaw, with rights controlled by the film company.

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