Fodor's Expert Review Villa Lehár

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), 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, the Lehár Festival. Named in his honor, it is Bad Ischl's summer operetta festival, which always includes at least one Lehár work. With the royalties he received from his operettas, he was able to settle into the sumptuous Villa Lehár, where he lived from 1912 until 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.