| Bruder Straubinger | |
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| Operetta by Edmund Eysler | |
 Sheet music for four of the operetta's arias depicting Alexander Girardi in the title role | |
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| Language | German |
| Premiere | |
Bruder Straubinger (Brother Straubinger) is an operetta in three acts composed by Edmund Eysler to a German-language libretto by Moritz West and Ignaz Schnitzer. It premiered at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 20 February 1903 with Alexander Girardi in the title role. [1]
Eysler's operetta takes its name and the personality of its protagonist from the popular fictional figure "Bruder Straubinger", a travelling craftsman from Straubing who first appeared in an early 19th century student drinking song by Carl Theodor Müller, a medical student in Straubing. The character became the archetype of an industrious but carefree and cheerful wanderer. [2]
Bruder Straubinger was the second of Eysler's operettas to be staged. He had composed a previous opera to a libretto by Ignaz Schnitzer with the title Der Hexenspiel (The Magic Mirror). The music publisher Josef Weinberger was impressed with it and tried unsuccessfully to get it staged. He then suggested that Eysler incorporate some of the lighter pieces from the work into a new operetta. The result was Bruder Straubinger which was an immediate success at its premiere, owing in part to its star tenor, Alexander Girardi, in the title role. However, Richard Traubner attributes a larger part of its success to Girardi's second-act waltz aria "Küssen ist keine Sünd" ("Kissing Is No sin"). The song was published separately by Weinberger and in a short time sold more than 100,000 copies. [1] It later inspired the title of the 1950 German film Kissing Is No Sin and is featured in its soundtrack. [3]
A full-length recording of Bruder Straubinger was released on CD by Cantus Classics in 2017. Recorded live in 1951 by the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Mareczek, it features Willy Reichert in the title role and Olga Noll as Oculi. (Catalog number: LC 502014)
Its most famous aria, "Küssen ist keine Sünd", has been recorded by Richard Tauber and Hermann Prey, amongst others. [4]
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée, which premiered in 1874.
Maximilian Steiner was an Austrian actor and theater director and manager. He is known particularly for his leadership of Vienna's Theater an der Wien from 1869 to 1880, a period during which the theater reduced the importance of folk plays and was prominent in developing and promoting the fashion of a Viennese style of operetta.
Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed the solo cantata for alto in Weimar between 1711 and 1714, and probably performed it on the seventh Sunday after Trinity, 15 July 1714. It is Bach's first extant church cantata for a solo voice.
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Kissing Is No Sin is a 1950 Austrian-German comedy film directed by Hubert Marischka and starring Curd Jürgens, Hans Olden and Hans Moser. The film takes its title from the waltz "Küssen ist keine Sünd" in Edmund Eysler's 1903 operetta Bruder Straubinger and features the song in its soundtrack.
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