Since you have resorted to with the local gladness, but pretty deep in the pun box: “Yes, We Can Can” – the Slogan of the Cologne 2019 the 200. Birthday of Jacques Offenbach celebrate. Is there up to his 14. The age of growing up, but was then in Paris, the Star of the Belle Époque had with the German Cathedral city of a lot of hat. However, as a special anniversary can be the city marketing people, of course, not to slip through the fingers. Especially since this composer has a fully positive Image. He is regarded not only as the inventor of the musical social satire, but has led the laughed at the entertainment genre of the operetta on its peak point because he was witty, cheeky, spontaneous, and elegant casual than its later competitors by Johann Strauss and Franz Lehar.
The funny Cologne slogan has only a small error: It works only in written Form. Any attempt to pronounce, must end in a Franco-English gibberish. Because hard to decide is whether you should now pronounce the whirling erotic dance, Cancan correctly or not, then Yes, because the Obama-quote is broken.
After all, the Slogan is on a par with the word game level of Offenbach’s operettas. In contrast to the Motto for the Beethoven celebrations in 2020. BTHVN, the organizer of the advertising Agency Jung von Matt as a Signet, blatant. Something like that may invent people who think with the eyes, or so deaf as the composer at the end of his life. For anyone who has open ears, this Logo without a vowel not bald, but totally soundless. And therefore just as attractive, such as written notes, no one brings Music to life.
The slogan Yes We Can Can “or BTHVN
A full-flop”. And that’s where the Federal government Louis 250. Birthday to the national task declared and even in the coalition agreement between the SPD, the CDU and the CSU, a passage. Because the event offers “outstanding opportunities” for the presentation of the “cultural nation of Germany at home and abroad”. Frd, schnr Gttrfnkn, you want to stutter with Schiller.
Now operates the Beethoven anniversary of the Gesellschaft mbH, damage limitation, and proposes to translate the consonant Cluster: B as citizens, as musicians, as a Humanist and V as a Visionary. Super creative to be the “Pastoral Project”, in the around the world artists Beethoven 6. Symphony “with the protection of the natural link”. On world environment day the United Nations 2020 they will make their arguments with the piece of “tangible”. Sponsored by the music project platform Forum Esslingen, the addition of twelve Fellows under the Hashtag #bebeethoven, to Birthday-Party as revolutionary as their large model.
Even if you should celebrate the festivals as they come: Ludwig van Beethoven, it is not truly necessary to be in the focus of public attention. Because as it stands anyway. All of his relevant works and there are plenty of those – are continuously in the music business present. In the case of Jacques Offenbach, the picture is quite different. His stage plays are to be found only rarely in the programmes of the Opera houses. Because your once-explosive content now no longer ignites.
Beethoven’s art is timeless, of Offenbach, however, time is art
In Berlin, have been making efforts in recent years, renowned Directors, the “little Mozart of the Champs-Élysées” as Gioacchino Rossini called. With very moderate success. Someone remembers Nicolas Stemanns moral acid “Périchole” at the Komische Opera of 2010? In the same house Barrie Kosky’s “Beautiful Helena” 2014 was a matter of frantic joy, the verkopfte production of “blue beard”, with the help of Stefan Herheim’s work in the last year of the legendary Felsenstein production, was disposed of in the meantime in silence.
“laughed Two and a half Times this evening, with a lot of good will,” commented Christine Lemke-Matwey, 2011 in the daily mirror Philip Stölzls “Orpheus in the underworld” at the Staatsoper. The Deutsche Oper, in turn, has dared to do since the Götz Friedrich’s 1983 “Orpheus” to Offenbach. Really good in 2012, did not work, the laying of the “Parisian life” to present-day Berlin, the neukölln Opera, the Novoflot Version of the same piece the year before.
During Beethoven’s Oeuvre of timeless beauty and relevance, the Offenbachiaden increasingly difficult to bring to life. The militarism, the composer moved to the Ridiculous, there is no more in this Form. The aristocracy has lost its social dominance, and the allusions in the ancient parodies can hardly still someone to decrypt it. The easily identifiable enemy to defeat it with the weapons of the spirit is missing.
120 works for the stage has left Offenbach
Offenbach himself, it was similar: as Long as Napoleon III. was in the office, fired most of the observation of the decadent hustle and bustle at the court and in Parisian High Society, the imagination of the composer and his librettist. Their pieces, in which the Powerful amused themselves splendidly, had a similar system, corrosive effect, such as the work of Love of the courtesans, which led to a series of nobles and money, noblemen drove in Ruin. But as soon as the Emperor had abdicated, was also the heyday of the purchasable women as the frivolous social satires. The bourgeois circles that the tone of statements made strictly on decency and morality.
Offenbach fled into the Genre of the fairy tale pieces, the “Féerien”, which impressed by their facilities pomp. For example, with “Le roi Carotte”. As the Opus 2016, was excavated at the Opéra de Lyon, was a small Bustle of a king crowned carrot – but unfortunately also a little bit inspired, according to scheme F, composed music.
120 works for the stage has left Offenbach, Germany, since 1999, of the publisher Boosey & Hawkes takes care of the Edition Keck is that the Theater can rent a reliable score expenditure. Just Barkouf “had its Premiere” in Lyon there is a dog that may suddenly ascend the throne. The theatre for lower Saxony in Hildesheim, the “Princesse de Trébizonde took”, “Maitre Péronilla” will come in the summer, in the Paris Theatre des Champs-Élysées, “Vert-Vert” and “Le Chateau à Toto” are available on CD.
In Berlin are currently no plans for new productions
Maybe, but now it is more fruitful to shed light on the other, the more serious side of the composer. “The tales of Hoffmann”, to be a large pain child, he wanted to finally also in the field of serious music to succeed, it has lost as a Psychodrama until today, nothing of its fascination, as now again in the German Opera. In this romantic direction “Les Fées du Rhin”, Offenbach’s goals aesthetically only through-composed Opera in 1864, as well as “Fantasio”, is about a student who slips into the costume of the court jester in order to rescue a Princess from a politically-threaded marriage. “Fantasio” of a music that is so intimate and sensitive that the audience of 2014 came out at the Berlin premiere in the Comic Opera of the Marvel.
“Fantasio” is exactly the 200. Birthday in June, also in the framework of the Cologne-based “Yes, We Can Can”program listed. Berlin Offenbach-new productions are scheduled up to the end of the 2018/19 season, but in the case of the music festival Potsdam Sanssouci, it is on 9. 6. 2019 is an Open-Air Offenbachiade in front of the New Palace with the great mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova.
More about
“the tales of Hoffmann” at the Deutsche Oper magic Trick
Frederik Hanssen
info for Offenbach-year www.yeswecancan.koeln for the Beethoven anniversary www.bthvn2020.de. The German Opera is playing at the 5., 9. and 12. January “Les Contes d’Hoffmann”.
