Golden Days in Old Heidelberg: The First-act Finale of Sigmund Romberg's The Student Prince

Abstract

Fifteen minutes before the end of the first act of The Prince, the members of a Heidelberg student society, the Saxon Corps, gather at the Inn of the Three Apples to find out if Karl Franz, the Crown of Karlsberg, a recently enrolled student at the University of Heidelberg, will join their ranks. The music is continuous, from their entrance to the end of the act, except for one brief speech (and, perhaps, for the prolonged applause after the two major musical numbers in the scene). By the end of the act, we have seen the accept and be accepted by the students (against the wishes of his valet, Lutz) and we have seen his love for Kathie, a waitress at the inn, begin to flower. Karl Franz, in fact, fully becomes the Student Prince of the operetta and the audience sees on stage what he will remember in the later acts as the Golden Days of youth and love.' The musical-dramatic scene in which this action unfolds is technically the finale of act 1. Though the scene seems somewhat casually constructed, it actually underwent considerable revision during the creation of the show.2 This finale is undeniably a powerful musical number that gives us our primary image of The Prince, and it elucidates the yearning of the and Kathie in the bittersweet acts that follow for this Eden of love and camaraderie.