Operetta: Komische Oper Berlin: Honorable robbers for a good cause

The robbers are starving. There haven’t been any lucrative coups for a long time, boredom is spreading in the camp, and the robber captain Falsacappa can no longer be sure of his position. Especially since his daughter Fiorella quickly falls for every attractive man and regularly helps them escape during attacks. Things are threatening to slip away, a plan is needed. And Falsacappa, who has fallen into a kind of melancholy about his craft, claims to have opened one of these: The upcoming wedding of the Duke of Mantua to the Princess of Granada is intended to rehabilitate not only the Spanish budget, but also the bandits’ treasury: the five million , which the Italian prince owes Granada, is to be handed over to the princess in cash minus two million in dowry – but the bandits want to steal exactly this chunk.

We are in the Komische Oper in the Schiller Theater, in the middle of Jacques Offenbach’s “Opéra bouffe,” as the composer called his series of demanding, multi-act operettas that he composed between 1858 and 1869, at the height of his fame, from “Orpheus in the Underworld.” « to »The Beautiful Helena« and »The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein« to »The Brigands – Les Brigands«, as this play is called in the original French, now known as »The Bandits«; The literal translation “The Robbers” seems to be too close to Schiller’s play in this country. A robber’s pistol, a wild travesty comedy, one of the best “Offenbachiads” with enchanting and at the same time ambiguous and enigmatic music, the essential element of which is parody.

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Jacques Offenbach, the seventh child of an impoverished Jewish tavern musician and synagogue singer from Cologne, a student of Luigi Cherubini in Paris at the age of fourteen, later a successful, sometimes bankrupt opera director and supporter of Georges Bizet, is a monster of brilliant and fascinating musical ideas, which precisely illustrate the character of its actors. His music is likely to be rooted in the Cologne carnival tradition with correspondingly light music and role-playing games, as well as in elements of Jewish music.

Offenbach was not a “leftist” (even though in 1848 he wrote songs for the revolutionary movement that had even swept Germany), but rather an incorruptible and sharp-tongued chronicler who, with his compositional means, gave the audience the opportunity to acknowledge the questionability of bourgeois society see through. Karl Kraus even considered Offenbach to be the “greatest satirist of all times and cultures.” Like the great US singer/songwriters – Merle Haggard or Waylon Jennnings – Offenbach always stands on the side of the poor, the so-called “common people”, while he stands for all the bourgeois and aristocratic useless people, soldiers, courtiers, despots and do-it-alls developed a “stupid, inhumane, rigid tone” (Georg Knepler) that perfectly represents the inner hollowness of these bourgeois thugs – for example, when he derails the supposedly triumphant march of state power in the overture, “out of rhythm”, in that the drum stubbornly emphasizes the easy beats instead of the heavy beats. This turns the militant march into a piece of cheerful dance music. On the other hand, what musical grace and grace he bestowed on his positive characters – all of whom come from the “lower spheres of capitalist society” – that was almost unique during his lifetime! And what pleasure Offenbach takes in turning the structure of social roles between top and bottom on its head!

In Offenbach’s “Bandits,” the “honest” robbers are a kind of “social bandits,” as Eric Hobsbawn described those robbers who are persecuted by the state as criminals, but who are viewed by the people as “heroes, saviors, avengers and fighters for justice.” . The real robbers, on the other hand, are the corrupt politicians, the police chief and senior officials such as the treasurer, who made generous use of the state treasury to give gifts to his loved ones. Here Offenbach caricatures the dictatorship of Napoleon III. including its dignitaries, about whom Marx made a devastating judgment: “A bunch of guys are crowding into the court, into the ministries, into the top of the administration and the army (…), a noisy, disreputable, plunder-loving bohemian, who with (…) Grotesque dignity crawls into galloned skirts.” Siegfried Kracauer says in his Offenbach book that his stage works “held up a mirror to the regime, the Second Empire, and helped to blow it up at the same time.” This judgment is probably too much of a good thing – how nice it would be if music, if the arts actually had a political impact.

It seems almost schizophrenic that Napoleon III. loved Offenbach’s operettas, in which he and his regime were so mercilessly skewered, and even personally ensured the composer’s naturalization and his induction into the Legion of Honor. Offenbach, the alleged system buster, went in and out of the imperial palace. He probably rightly described himself as a “music-dealing businessman.” But if all businessmen, then and now, showed even a small part of this composer’s ethical attitude, the world would probably be a better place. In any case, Offenbach’s music is “successful proof that even in capitalism light music with an ethical attitude is possible«, as Georg Knepler, the doyen of GDR musicology, once stated.

A core sentence of the “Bandits” is the conclusion of the robber captain when he is unexpectedly appointed the new police chief of the Principality of Mantua (because the prince has recognized that Falsacappa is always one step ahead of him and the police…): “You have to go after the position steal what you have in society.” How true. And today it is also a lesson for those in power in a state in which dubious mask deals or CumEx transactions are possible.

But is it really necessary to explicitly point out such parallels to the audience, i.e. to subject Offenbach’s work to questionable updates? The audience also understands analogies without being poked at – apart from the fact that history (and stories…) repeat themselves at best as a farce, so copying a historical situation is pointless. Unfortunately, it must be stated that Max Hopp’s “scenic design” for “Bandits” was a complete failure. He has shortened this opéra bouffe by a good hour (or rather, trimmed it down) and therefore needs wooden “tricks” to make the action unfold with any degree of stringency. For example, Hopp invents a speech by the robber captain in which he has him joke and banter like in a school theater.

In general, the first act in particular is simply boring and is only saved by Offenbach’s igniting music – especially in the wonderful finale with the patter of the gendarmes’ boots and the hilarious police captain couplet: “Respect, because here come the police!” / Where there are robbers we rush to them. / But, oh, how bad things are for us: / If something is really being filmed, / Then we’ll definitely be late. It’s delicious how Christoph Späth hobbles through the hall as a police officer who is always late – and it’s puzzling why Hopp him about the “military” instead of the police, when the French original already speaks of the “chief of carabiniers”, i.e. the police chief – and this is the only way the French phrase “arriver comme les carabiniers d’Offenbach”, which still exists today, does « Meaning, »like Offenbach’s police officers always come late«, that is, after everything is long over.

Alexander Kaimbacher’s Falsacappa turns out to be a bit pale, even in terms of singing, and Nadja Mchantaf’s Fiorella is perhaps a bit too operatic despite her great vocal power in the high notes; In any case, great Johannes Dunz as Fragoletto, who pleasantly makes you forget Offenbach’s statement that “the tenors only roar.” Tom Erik Lie is a wonderfully ridiculous Chancellor of the Exchequer who commiserates about his weak character in a rip-roaring falsetto. And the hilarious tableau of the Spanish courtiers will also be remembered. Exactly: A lot of the evening was very enjoyable, in which the choir provided by the great Vocalconsort Berlin as well as the very good orchestra of the Komische Oper under the inspired direction of Adrien Perruchon played a huge part. This also makes it possible to ignore the often overcharging ensemble and the simple jokes added by Hopp (e.g. about gender or that begging is strictly forbidden in the Schiller Theater).

The shoes of Harry Kupfer, who in 1989 brought out a sensational production of Bandits at the Komische Oper in the Wende Berlin, which had a total of 67 performances up to 1995, were probably simply a lot too big (you can see a WDR television recording of Kupfers “Bandits” admire on YouTube).

But all in all, despite the poor production, the audience didn’t have a bad evening – Offenbach’s music is indestructible. And on the way home you think about how it is that operettas are “in” again these days. It is probably actually the case, as Kracauer mused: “The operetta was able to emerge because the society in which it emerged was operetta-like.”

Today we live in an operetta state again…

Next performance on December 30th.

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