So that was the beginning of the end. Barrie Kosky will not hand over the management of the Komische Oper to Susanne Moser and Philip Bröking until the summer of 2022, but on the fourth Advent he celebrated his last operetta premiere as director of the house with “The Flower of Hawaii”. Twenty works by the light muse went on stage during his tenure, mainly pieces from the Weimar Republic.
The rediscovery of Paul Abraham’s “Ball in the Savoy” had the most lasting effect: shortly before the National Socialists came to power, the play was released in the hall in which the Komische Oper is set today. Because the composer was Jewish, the new government discontinued the piece immediately, Abraham himself was driven into exile, first fled to his native Hungary, and finally to the USA.
“The picture of the mentally broken Paul Abraham, who in 1946 stands in confusion in the middle of Madison Avenue in New York and directs the traffic as his imaginary Berlin orchestra that he longs for, is one of the most terrible pictures of this time for me,” says Barrie Kosky in Klaus Waller’s new biography of Abraham.
Kosky started a renaissance
With his commitment to the Berlin operetta of the 1920s, Kosky has actually achieved a renaissance of this variety of the genre since 2021. His role model was the “early music” movement. Because they were dissatisfied with the routine, falsifying way in which baroque scores were presented, pioneers such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and René Jacobs set about performing the scores they valued as they were originally intended from the 1960s onwards.
The director of the Komische Oper made these principles of “historical performance practice” his own, scrubbing the layers of dust off the operettas together with his chief dramaturge Ulrich Lenz, having the original sound of the scores reconstructed by the arrangers Hennig Hagedorn and Matthias Grimminger, and conducting musicals -Specialists like Adam Benzwi and Kofen Schoots at his house on Behrenstrasse.
Sequin glittering productions
Exuberant zest for life and hot jazz rhythms, cheeky dialogues, quick-witted gags, hit lyrics full of puns, these are the hallmarks of the successful pieces of the time – all of which can also be read as a plea for tolerance towards those who (want to) live outside the norm. There were entrancingly funny, sequin-glittering, self-deprecating productions to experience, Dostal’s “Clivia” with the Pfister siblings, “The Pearls of Cleopatra” by Oscar Straus, Dagmar Manzel and Max Hopp as a virtuoso duo in all roles of “A woman who knows, what she wants”.
In order to be able to acquaint the audience with even more forgotten treasures, the semi-staged “Christmas operetta” was invented, in which the pieces were presented in compact form by an emcee or a presenter. The first five years it was about the oeuvre of the composer Emmerich Kalman – where you could get to know bizarre things like the cowboy operetta “Arizona Lady” – the last five years then about his competitor Paul Abraham.
The libretto is a treasure trove for crazy lines of verse
On Sunday, at the “Flower of Hawaii”, Abraham’s biggest hit, Andreja Schneider leads through the evening as a substitute for the sick Katharina Thalbach. The story about Princess Laya, which was premiered in 1931 and vacillates melodramatically between two potential husbands, is so absurdly constructed that she can use a narrator with an overview. The libretto by Alfred Grünwald, Fritz Löhner-Beda and Emmerich Földes is bursting with crazy rhymes: “You don’t have to whine for love on the South Sea islands” is sung, or “My only passion is fine silk stockings – but stockings have to be worn too to be something inside “.
And the commodity character of love in times of unleashed capitalism is recognized when John Buffy compares his adored Bessie Worthington with a “divan doll”: “It has such pretty white teeth and the wrong tear in its eyes and sawdust in its heart – just like you ! “
With the song “Bin nur ein Jonny”, however, Barrie Kosky had to intervene: It was intended as a parody of the then world-famous jazz singer Al Jolson, who always appeared with his face painted black. Not only the N-word was deleted from the text, the director reinterpreted the number completely, now creates a reference to the Jewish refugees when he lets Joker Jim sing: “Mommy, when will I see you again ? “
Alma Sadé shines in the role of the Laya as soup diva, Tansel Akzeybek woos her as the Hawaiian prince Lilo-Taro with lyrical tenor melting, while his competitor Johannes Dunz, who embodies the captain Reginald Stone, relies on heroic tones. Mirka Wagner and Julian Habermann tease each other as a funny couple, musical professional Jörn-Felix Alt impresses with elegant dance interludes.
Highly stylistically competent: the orchestra of the Komische Oper
The fact that the head of costume design, Katrin Kath-Bösel, lets him wear a tuxedo clearly shows that he is an American. Only they voted back then – shocking for conservative high society! – No tailcoat as evening wear.
The Komische Oper orchestra also acquired the highest level of expertise in questions of style during the Kosky era. And, under the direction of Koen Schoots, is able to make the whole variety of Abraham’s musical language shimmer wonderfully, from the casual swing to the sensual gliding through the harmonies in the sentimental numbers.
It was beautiful, the great operetta tour through the Weimar Republic with Barrie Kosky as a passionate, knowledgeable tour guide. The Berlin audience has now been able to rediscover the best pieces of the time, he said in his speech on Sunday after the final applause. Not an easy task for the new directorship, as developing an adequate new program line in terms of entertainment.
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