Franz Lehár’s Freiderike, set in 1770, tells the true story of the “Sesenheim Idyll,” a brief, but intense love affair between young poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and a seventeen-year-old Alsatian girl, Freiderike Brion. After less than a year together, von Goethe bids Freiderike a cold farewell to further his literary career. Some elements of the plot are historically accurate, while others were added by Lehár for theatrical purposes.
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Sources: Text 1 & 2, Image: An oil painting of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, titled Goethe in the Roman Campagna by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein.