Author : Jos Hermans
It seems that Johann Strauss was composing at all times, day and night, at least when he didn't happen to be eating, sleeping, playing billiards or cards. Sketchbooks, scraps of paper, shirt cuffs, sleeves of nightgowns, tablecloths were never safe from his music pen. Hundreds of never-used motifs finally found a place in the melodies chest that Adèle, his third wife, guarded like a precious treasure! The best inspirations found their way into 174 polkas and 159 waltzes. Since they are composed of an average of 9 themes, Johann Strauss had to find more than 1400 different melodies for his waltzes alone!
Both Berlioz and Wagner were fans of Johann Strauss Sr. His widespread popularity was not seen by them as detrimental with regard to his artistic achievements. In "Mein Leben," Wagner recounts how Johann Strauss Sr. was able to enrapture his audience like a master magician. As is well known, Wagner was a big fan of "Wein, Weib und Gesang" but also of Strauss Jr.'s waltz of the same name. In Wahnfried, Strauss' waltzes, father and son, were regularly on the evening's musical program. And the respect was mutual: Strauss Jr. would conduct the Austrian premiere of Tristan und Isolde in 1861!
Der Zigeunerbaron became the work with which Johann Strauss leaned closest to opera, and from 1885 it toured almost all of Europe, with the exception of London. Barely four months after its premiere, it was already on the bill in New York. The libretto was translated some twenty times. At the Theater an der Wien the operetta was initially performed almost 90 times en suite; in 1903 it celebrated its 300th and in 1909 already its 1000th performance.
Just as Offenbach's operettas embodied the spirit of the French Second Empire in its final phase, Johann Strauss's dance music embodied the riotous twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Biographer Ernst Decsey declared that Der Zigeunerbaron accomplished what ministers and delegations were incapable of doing, notably fusing the two halves of the monarchy, embroiled in perpetual compromise struggles. Hungary had been recognized as its own kingdom within the Habsburg monarchy since the Ausgleich of 1867, the political and economic compromise between the two halves of the empire.
No press commentary ignores the fact that Tobias Kratzer placed the word Gypsy in quotation marks. You guessed it: the thought police of the woke community have now reached the operetta! Der Zigeunerbaron is the first Viennese operetta set in Hungary in which Hungarians and Gypsies play the leading roles. Within the operetta repertoire, Hungarians usually appear as exotic "others," often alongside gypsies, creating an amusing contrast between Viennese elegance and Hungarian fire. That Viennese operetta is full of frivolous aristocrats and sexually suggestive humor is part of its charm and entertainment value. Woke activists like Austrian author Marlene Streeruwitz find the operetta racist, sexist and advocate the cancellation of works like Der Zigeunerbaron. Just as Knorr cancelled its gypsy sauce and renamed it "paprika sauce Hungarian style."
Those quotation marks are unnecessary, says Kevin Clarke of the Operetta Research Center : "For those unfamiliar with the debate, because the peoples labeled as "Gypsy" were persecuted and killed by the Nazis for racist reasons, many social justice warriors today demand that the Z-word no longer be used, similar to banning the N-word in English. According to this logic, any use of the term "Gypsy" is demeaning and stigmatizing. Strangely, the same logic is not applied to other groups that were stigmatized and murdered by the Nazis, such as the Jews or the homosexuals. The naming of these groups has never been questioned; and the fact that various members of the Sinti and Roma community want to continue using the Z-word does not make the discussion any easier"
The Sinti Allianz Deutschland has spoken out against the cancellation of the word gypsy and they themselves say that they want to continue using the word. If the term Gypsy is used in a way that is not demeaning or negative, then it would be rather illogical to dump this one and a half thousand year old historical, unifying, identity-building denomination that has given gypsies a place in cultural history. The only item the gypsies steal in Der Zigeunerbaron is Sandor Barinkay's heart. Even the treasure Barinkay finds in his father's ruined castle they leave untouched, they do not even protest when he donates the treasure to the state (a passage deleted here), and they return from the war with Spain as the greatest patriots and as the bravest soldiers. The emblematic gypsy song ("O habet Acht") seems threatening but it is a listing of the prejudices that gypsies encounter. By the way, we know from Albert Speer that Hitler considered works like Der Zigeunerbaron to be essential parts of the German cultural heritage, equivalent to Wagner.
Count Homonay, who has also absorbed the party of vice commissioner Conte Carnero, sits on the stage floor decked out in a hussar uniform. He polishes his sword, scrutinizes the incoming audience and finally puts a record on his old His Masters Voice gramophone. Fortunately, we don't have to listen to the old gramophone as there is an orchestra on stage. The orchestra is not exactly small but it is set up in the depths of the stage, behind a copy of old arcade arches from the Komische Oper's past. This leaves the entire playing surface free, a stage-wide staircase allows further contact with the audience. The choir, for which the two first parterre windows were reserved and with which the fourth wall had to be broken through even further, had to move to the wings in coronation times (the premiere fell in January 2021). Unfortunately, the chorus remains invisible today.
The overture goes off with the hall lights on. A gypsy schnitzel with fries puts Count Homonay in high spirits during the polka. "And now they want to take away my gypsy schnitzel too," he grumbles. Homonay is dismissed as a reactionary, unworldly patriot who has lost all touch with the progressive world. Thus he echoes what the long-haired globetrotter and daredevil Sandor Barinkay will later say when he first enters his estate : "In die Heimat und doch in der Fremde," after listing the ethnies that have come to disturb his worldview.
Writing and reading Kálmán Zsupán never learned. Yet he proudly presents his achievements as a meat producer and sausage turner on video. But why did his voice also have to come out of the speakers? At the same time, the German is also caricatured in his fanatical adoration of King Sausage. His bespectacled daughter Arsena, with the looks of a nerd, is not much of a match for the not-too-savvy Ottokar. The chorus sings the arrival of the gypsies too nicely, too little expressively, while some extras take their places on the stage. Both the finale of the first and the second acts show where the weakness of this performance lies : each time the choir sings at full strength and threatens to fill the hall with operetta bliss, frustration arises when the music falls back on the too sparse sounding orchestra.
Homonay's patriotism is further deconstructed by having the recruiting song played through the gramophone. The frivolousness with which people are sent into war and the euphoric feeling with which they return from war is typical to Viennese operetta and needs no moral judgment from the director. It is the same kind of frivolousness with which Eurocrats today fuel the Nato/Russia conflict with weapons and economic sanctions. It is no coincidence that the interventions in the parliamentary hemisphere in Strasbourg are compared to an operetta.
Conductor Stefan Soltesz is offered recruiting wine, the entire orchestra puts on the hussar uniform and leaves the stage. The orchestra, now reduced to a trio (piano, violin and trumpet), accompanies the women left behind singing "Ein Mädchen hat es gar nicht gut". And smoke a cigarette together. Beautiful scene. The chorus returning from the war ("Hurrah, die Schlacht mitgemacht") is a bit messy, the orchestra even playing a bit false at first. Traumatized soldiers stumble across the stage. This is a pity because this is indeed the musical highlight of the piece. Better said: the highlight among the highlights! Just try to get this earworm out of your head once it's under your skull. Zsupán shows his shoulder wound. How he robbed the dead soldiers is less discussed. The happy ending gets another brief epilogue: frustrated and realizing that nothing will apparently come of his old world order, Count Homonay smashes the old record. Curtain!
Dominik Köninger as Homonay is a great actor. He possesses a beautiful baritone but gets relatively little to sing. The latter is also true of Philipp Meierhöfer as Kalman Zsupan. Thomas Blondelle is Sandor Barinkay. His German is excellent. The lightning-fast text of his parade aria "Als flotter Geist" goes down well with him before going full throttle in tempo di valse with his wide-flowing Wagnerian tenor in "Ja, das alles auf Ehr". Taking the voice all the way back in the love duet does not go so well for him and the vibrato is sometimes a bit too exaggerated.
Alma Sadé as Arsena handled Arsena's coloraturas well. The very lovable Nadja Mchantaf showed a darkish coloured soprano, suitable for the archetypal gypsy woman Saffi. Jasmin Etezadzadeh sang a surprisingly good Czipra with cool frazing and stunning dramatic outbursts. The smaller roles were well cast with Alexander Fedorov as Ottokar and Helene Schneidermann as Mirabella.