For Benatzky’s operetta excavation “The richest man in the world”: Annaberger theater ensemble brings operetta prize to the Ore Mountains | free press

musical theater

The Eduard-von-Winterstein-Theater in Annaberg-Buchholz received the operetta frog of the Bayerischer Rundfunk for the season 2021/22. An award given by the local radio station BR Klassik for “particularly well-done, original and contemporary operetta productions”. In April, the ensemble of the Eduard von Winterstein Theater in Annaberg-Buchholz surprisingly got one of the six operetta frogs awarded every month for the production “The Richest Man in the World”. Now that they’ve also been awarded the Season Prize, the sensation is complete.
The joy about it is still great on Monday: “I’m so happy,” says a visibly scratched managing director Moritz Gogg. “It’s an artistic renown that the region has never had before,” says the 48-year-old. In addition to appreciation, he also sees an obligation in this. Because: “It strengthens my claim that small theaters should show the same artistic standards as the big houses.”
Excavations and rediscoveries have a long tradition in Annaberg. One like Ralph Benatzky’s The Richest Man in the World from 1936. Because of the Jewish librettist Hans Müller, the work was no longer performed under the Nazis and was then forgotten. Moritz Gogg brought the work back onto the repertoire after having previously opened his artistic directorship with the German premiere of the opera “Leonce und Lena” by Erich Zeisl (1905 – 1959). Zeisl’s last opera to be premiered in Austria before the composer, who was Jewish, emigrated to the USA via Paris in 1938.
Christian von Götz was the director responsible for staging the Benatzky operetta in Annaberg as the German premiere. Born in Lübeck and trained in Vienna and Berlin, he is regarded as a specialist in unconventional operettas. He has already been nominated several times in surveys by the trade journal “Opernwelt” in the “Best Production” category.
The critics from Bavaria find it amazing “how operetta is made at a high level in Annaberg”: “With young singers, a seasoned ensemble and a small orchestra, which shows its solo skills in the specially newly orchestrated version by Wolfgang Böhmer and by Jens Georg Bachmann is conducted with a sense of style and in close contact with what is happening on stage,” they wrote, among other things, in the justification for the award ceremony in spring. Not only was the selection of this long-forgotten piece from 1936 courageous, but also its contextualization, when at the end it is remembered how most operetta artists fared in the “Third Reich”. “And yet the vitality of the operetta finally triumphs as a utopia of a happy ending that can still be redeemed,” says theater scholar and jury member Dr. Stephen Frey.
The Annabergers had to assert themselves in the final against quite high-calibre competition, which included the State Operetta in Dresden and the Volksoper in Vienna. A total of six theaters were nominated for the season frog. The management team of the Annaberger Haus chose the Philharmonic Ball in the Kulturhaus in Aue on January 28th as the festive backdrop for the awards ceremony. A day later, Moritz Gogg will be a guest in the program “Operetten-Boulevard” on Bayerischer Rundfunk. At the same time, the revival of the successful piece is already being prepared – and the DVD for it is to be released in March.