''Kukuschka'' (1896), better known in a revised version as ''Tatjana'' (1905), is the earliest opera of

Franz Lehár Franz Lehár ( ; hu, Lehár Ferenc ; 30 April 1870 – 24 October 1948) was an Austro-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas, of which the most successful and best known is ''The Merry Widow'' (''Die lustige Witwe''). Life ...

. The plot for the opera was drawn by librettist Felix Falzari from American journalist and explorer

George Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histo ...

's writings about his six years in Siberia, including ''Siberia and the Exile System'' (1891).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 ..." Kukuška is the Russian word for cuckoo. ''Kukuška'', an opera in 3 acts, was first performed 27 November 1896 at the

Leipzig Stadttheater Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

. The revised work, ''Tatjana'', with changes to the libretto by Max Kalbeck was premiered 21 February 1905 in

Brno Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...

, at the German Brünn Stadttheater.

References

1896 operas 1906 operas Operas by Franz Lehár {{Opera-stub