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Masel Tov! Congratulations!

Quick Info

Mieczysław Weinberg

The beating heart of every great household lies below stairs. Whether it is in the novel ‘The Remains of the Day’ by British Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, the feature film ‘Gosford Park’ or the cult series ‘Downton Abbey’: the servants are the real stars. The same is also most emphatically true of this quirkily humorous and charming opera based on the play ‘Masel Tov!’ by Sholem Aleichem, who created the story of ‘Anatevka’.

In 1899 the high-born household of a Jewish lady in Odessa awaits her daughter’s engagement while down in the basement the servants are yearning, flirting and gossiping as they prepare the celebratory feast. As the banter and alcohol levels increase, a publisher ultimately wins the heart of the lonely cook with socialist literature, charm and the suggestion of pooling their capital. And Chaim, a servant from the neighbouring household, whose attempts to become more familiar with the maid Fradl are initially met with instructions to “Get lost!”, succeeds in proposing marriage to her. Because happiness is for everyone, no matter how much the bride’s mother grumbles upstairs. Masel Tov!

In this opera the Jewish-Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg (‘The Passenger’), whose life story reads like a biography of the 20th century and its totalitarian regimes, presents a more humorous side of himself: between vaudeville and tragi-comic moments of longing he plays in bitingly humorous fashion on his musical roots, evoking klezmer melodies along with waltzes, polkas and galops suffused with Jewish musical traditions. Meanwhile, the score is dedicated to his teacher and friend Dmitri Shostakovich, whose love of severity he has transposed into his own unmistakable, richly-coloured tonal language.

Language
In deutscher Sprache mit Übertiteln
Duration
Dauer: ca. 1 ¼ Stunden, keine Pause
to the schedule

Cast

Ralf Lange
Philipp Westerbarkei
Heike Scheele
Heili Schwarz-Schütte
Lavinia Dames
Kimberley Boettger-Soller
Sylvia Hamvasi
Jorge Espino
Norbert Ernst
Düsseldorfer Symphoniker

Work info

Comic opera in two acts (1975)
in the orchestral version by Henry Koch (2012)
Libretto by the composer after Sholem Aleichem’s stage play ‘Masel Tov’ in the German adaptation by Ulrike Patow

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