THE WHITE HORSE INN
The White Horse Inn
Revue-operetta by Ralph Benatzky
Who hasn’t heard it before, the old story of head waiter Leopold who is lovesick for the inn’s owner, Josepha Vogelhuber, and manages to win her love in the end despite his seemingly invincible rival? And yet who actually knows the original version of this enchantingly ironic revue-operetta, which premiered in 1930 at the Metropoltheater in Berlin? Virtually no one, since the original score from the premiere performance went missing and never resurfaced. Later performances were based on a version written in the 1950’s that tells the story through the idealistic lens of the Germen economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder, sacrificing much of its wit to a mawkish sense of hominess. In recent years a number of musical theatres have attempted to rediscover the satire and sauciness of the original version. A variety of new arrangements has tried to approach the jazzy sound of the original, described in contemporary reviews of the première performance and preserved in part by a number of original recordings from the 1930’s.
The culmination of these efforts to restore the original “White Horse Inn” came in December of 2008 when the original score of the musical comedy, first performed in 1930 at the Altes Schauspielhaus in Berlin, was found unexpectedly in Zagreb. The Dresden State Operetta is the first musical theatre in the world to bring the recovered original back on stage. The company is restaging it in all of its freshness, with jazzy and sassy music and ironic digs at ordinary life, but most of all as a big-time show with infectious dance routines. The production is a new chapter in the performance history of this unique work − a familiar favourite in a different guise.
Revue-operetta by Ralph Benatzky
Who hasn’t heard it before, the old story of head waiter Leopold who is lovesick for the inn’s owner, Josepha Vogelhuber, and manages to win her love in the end despite his seemingly invincible rival? And yet who actually knows the original version of this enchantingly ironic revue-operetta, which premiered in 1930 at the Metropoltheater in Berlin? Virtually no one, since the original score from the premiere performance went missing and never resurfaced. Later performances were based on a version written in the 1950’s that tells the story through the idealistic lens of the Germen economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder, sacrificing much of its wit to a mawkish sense of hominess. In recent years a number of musical theatres have attempted to rediscover the satire and sauciness of the original version. A variety of new arrangements has tried to approach the jazzy sound of the original, described in contemporary reviews of the première performance and preserved in part by a number of original recordings from the 1930’s.
The culmination of these efforts to restore the original “White Horse Inn” came in December of 2008 when the original score of the musical comedy, first performed in 1930 at the Altes Schauspielhaus in Berlin, was found unexpectedly in Zagreb. The Dresden State Operetta is the first musical theatre in the world to bring the recovered original back on stage. The company is restaging it in all of its freshness, with jazzy and sassy music and ironic digs at ordinary life, but most of all as a big-time show with infectious dance routines. The production is a new chapter in the performance history of this unique work − a familiar favourite in a different guise.
Cast
Production: Winfried Schneider
Choir production: Thomas Runge
Dramaturgy: André Meyer
Technical director: Mario Radicke
Choreography: Winfried Schneider
Stage design: Daniel Gantz
Costumes: Nina Reichmann
Kaiser: Jochen Kretzschmer
Piccolo: Henryk Wolf
Oberförster: Andreas Schwarze
Reiseleiterin: Silke Fröde
Shows
24.05.14 19:30
Appraissals