Viktor Léon

Victor Léon, also Viktor Léon (born Victor Hirschfeld; 4 January 1858, Szenitz (today Senica), near Pressburg (today Bratislava) – 3 February 1940, Vienna) was a well-known Jewish Austrian-Hungarian librettist. He collaborated with Leo Stein to produce the libretto of Franz Lehár's romantic operetta The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe).

Hirschfeld began a career as a journalist, and then branched out in the theatre under the pseudonym that was to become familiar - Viktor Léon. Between 1880 and 1884 he wrote one-act libretti for Vienna's Ronacher () variety theatre, the Carl-Schultze-Theater in Hamburg, and the German Theatre in Pest, collaborating with composers such as Max von Weinzierl, Rudolf Raimann and Alfred Zamara. Then came a three-act collaboration with Zamara, Der Doppelgänger, produced at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich in September 1886.

He then wrote a libretto for Johann Strauss. Alas, Simplicius, a story of the Thirty Years' War, produced at the Theater an der Wien on 17 December 1887, was scarcely a success, even after being revised twice. There followed a string of further creations with composers such as Zamara, Joseph Hellmesberger, Jr., Alphons Czibulka, Rudolf Dellinger, and even Franz von Suppé (his last work, Das Modell), as well as German adaptations of foreign works that included Arthur Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard and Edward Jakobowski's Erminie.

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