Lisa is a Berlin student and has one passion above all: Lehár's operetta “Land of Smiles”. Just as others celebrate Berlin techno, she listens to the operetta over and over again. On a dating app she meets Sou-Chong, who has the same whimsy as her and can also sing: Yours is my whole heart, where you are not, I cannot be. Sounds like the beginning of a great love story. But in real life, beyond the Internet and operetta, everything is a little different and sometimes more complicated.
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Karl-Marx-Straße mit Passage, Heimathafen, Neuköllner Oper
The young composition and author duo Abigél Varga (music) and Elisabeth Pape (text) bring Lehár's world-famous operetta about the encounter between two cultures from two worlds to today's polyglot Berlin, lovingly and stringently slimming down the original to a quartet of young people who love and look for an idea of yourself. Lehár's music also raises the question: can people today, in this generation, still meet each other with these melodies and truly express their feelings?
The Hungarian composer Abigél Varga undertakes a special work: she presents Lehár's operetta with its arias, duets and orchestral compositions, arranged for a seven-part, colorful and farce-rich ensemble of European and Chinese instruments such as the guzheng. And she continues to write where Lehár was standing in 1927 and inserts her own compositions.
Premieres January 19, 2024
Additional information
MUSIC Abigél Varga TEXT Elisabeth Pape DESIGN Ansgar Stephan Weigner DESIGN Christian Müller IDEA AND DRAMATURGY Bernhard Glocksin
