Treading the boards

The new season has begun! Theatre director Striese and his chaotic touring troupe are back on the road in the German backwaters. Their next guest performance takes them to the Brandenburg town of Neustadt an der Dosse, where he stumbles upon an unknown opera manuscript: a lavish musical setting of a Roman tragedy, penned by the local headmaster Gollwitz, who keeps it locked away out of fear of his strait-laced wife. Fortunately, Gollwitz is swayed by the seductive diva Bella della Donna (actually a butcher’s daughter from the rural town of Teltow), so nothing more stands in the way of a world premiere down at the local rifle club…

With Bretter, die die Welt bedeuten (‘boards that mean the world’), the Komische Oper Berlin brings another hit from East Germany’s Heiteres Musiktheater (‘light-hearted music theatre’) back to the boards in semi-concert form. Gerhard Kneifel’s lively musical version of Der Raub der Sabinerinnen brims with snappy ragtime, slow rock, and plenty of hijinks. In its travels, Striese’s troupe brings country pop to the Baltic seaside, bossa nova to Brandenburg, and best of all: high culture to the tiniest backwater!