Villa Lehár

Villa Lehár Review

A steady stream of composers followed the aristocracy and the court to Bad Ischl. Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms (who composed his famous Lullaby here as well as many of his late works, and whom Gustav Mahler visited here), Johann Strauss the Younger, Carl Michael Ziehrer, Oscar Straus, and Anton Webern all spent summers here, but it was the Hungarian born Franz Lehár, composer of The Merry Widow, who left the most lasting musical impression—today, Bad Ischl's summer operetta festival always includes one Lehár work. With the royalties he received from his operettas, he was able to settle into the sumptuous Villa Lehár, in which he lived from 1912 to his death in 1948. Now a museum, it contains a number of the composer's fin-de-siècle period salons, which can be viewed only on guided tours.