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. Benatzky Revival in Europe Author: Richard Traubner, 04 February 2008    (Source: Opera News, with permission of the author)  . The works of operetta composer Ralph Benatzky are currently, and deservedly, enjoying a mini-renaissance. His small-scale musical plays, like Meine Schwester und ich and Bezauberndes Fräulein, have been revived, as have his colossal spectacles written in the dwindling years of the Weimar Republic for Berlin's mammoth Grosses Schauspielhaus. Last and foremost of these revue-operettas was White Horse Inn (1930), which has swept Germany and Austria again in the past decade, and has even been presented in a new English version (Ohio Light Opera, 2005). Before that came, in receding order, Drei Musketiere (1929, revived last season in Nordhausen), and Casanova (1928), which has now been revived in Baden bei Wien, Austria. Casanova, unlike the other works, is a pasticcio, revamping Johann Strauss II melodies written for forgotten operettas and other dance music. This sort of tampering was quite popular in the twenties: Erich Wolfgang Korngold had had a huge hit with a rearranged version of Strauss's Eine Nacht in Venedig. The team of Schanzer and Welisch, who had enjoyed success with their saucy book for Leo Fall's Madame Pompadour, concocted a similarly risqué libretto, this time involving Casanova's dalliances in several European courts. The merry score was written with the opera bass-baritone Michael Bohnen in mind – he was a Met attraction a few years later – and the comic numbers were in the hands of such well-known Berlin comedians as Siegfried Arno and Paul Morgan. During each scene shift to another royal venue, the popular male vocal group the Comedian Harmonists would do a take-off on the music that had just been heard, or was to follow. The new production wisely retained this gimmick, to amusing, and very period effect. The  winter home of the Baden Stadttheater – a delectable Fellner and Helmer-designed creation – does not have the budget or space of the now-vanished Grosses Schauspielhaus, which sat 4,000. It settled instead for a clever open-book of slide images, crafted by the Vienna Volksoper designer Pantelis Dessyllas. Another Volksoper veteran, Robert Herzl, staged the work crisply and swiftly, without longueurs. One miscalculation, so dear to Austrian audiences, was the insertion of a ballet using regulation Strauss waltzes, which had little to do with Benatzky's '20s reinterpretation, and reminded me uncomfortably of those ludicrous choreographic vignettes in the annual New Year's Day telecasts from Vienna. Moritz Gogg was an appealing, ringing Casanova, reaching high points in a seductive tango-duet, or in an amazing march, leading a chorus of amazons ("Kein Weg ist zu weit"), and in the final joyous tribute to love and life. Aris Sas was an ardent young lieutenant, and Gernot Kranner an properly irritating morals commissioner. Best of the comedians was the fruity, seasoned Rollie Braun as a lecherous count. A Baden favorite, he is precisely the kind of character actor operetta is currently experiencing a shortage of. Among the ladies, Frauke Schäfer had an easy time pleasing us with the solo line of the famous, and irresistible, Nuns' Chorus; Franziska Stanner was a spirited Spanish maiden; and Ulrike Steinsky had the most telling dramatic and vocal effect as Empress Maria Theresia. Franz Josef Breznik conducted with great éclat and '20s flair, in addition to accompanying the Comedians with a sprightly piano. Casanova is a marvelous tribute to Strauss's long operetta career – the principal waltz was heard in Indigo, his first produced operetta, it was the hit song in 1001 Nacht, a 1907 revision, and reappears, joyously, as the waltz-quintet "Im Rausch der Genüsse" in Casanova. Incidentally, Baden advertised this as the Austrian première of this work; it wasn't – the Volksoper did it in the mid-1930s.

Benatzky Revival in Europe

Operetta Research Center Amsterdam