Two chances to catch 'Merry Widow' opera this weekend

“The Merry Widow” is just as merry - and conflicted - as she was when Austrian audiences first embraced her in 1905.

Her look will be Victorian but her themes will resonate with Eastern Iowa audiences when she springs to the Theatre Cedar Rapids stage this week via the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre.

It's all about love, money and love for money at the turn of the 20th century. The richest woman in the pretend principality of Pontevedro is off to see Paris, where her countrymen fear she will be seduced by the merry lifestyle and merry men, marry one and move her merry money with her. Thus begins a plot to have her marry someone from her homeland, keeping her fortune where it just might pull the tiny country back from the brink of economic collapse.

http://hooplanow.com/2012/01/09/victorian-themes-ring-familiar-as-c-r-opera-theatre-waltzes-through-merry-widow/