Johannes Erath's Die Csárdásfürstin at the Volksoper Vienna has an ambitious approach, but quickly gets too pretentious for its own good
Date of visit: 11 April 2025 (5th show).
*Ursula Pfitzner sang (and debuted as) Sylva Varescu on the day of my visit.
“A frankly melancholic operetta is a rare thing, but Emmerich Kálmán was determined to make his masterpiece a farewell operette, as the libretto suggests right from the start: “When the curtain rises, the show has just ended.” This verse becomes the starting point for Johannes Erath's staging, which situates the operetta in a symbolic, atemporal space, where events manifest themselves in an absurd, fragmentary way, observed with a voyeuristic gaze, like a succession of images. Bernhard Hammer's black-and-white set - enhanced by Nicol Hungsberg's lighting and Bibi Abel's videos - supports this vision of fluidity, while Gesine Völlm's brightly colored costumes lend warmth and joviality to the abstract spaces.
The blurring of time and the shift towards the symbolic are further accentuated by Martin Lukesch's sound design, which alternates sensations of closeness and alienation according to the tensions between interiority and the world of appearances. The staging is undoubtedly ambitious, driven by a clear desire to reinscribe the work in a contemporary perspective. However, the execution too often lapses into excessive symbolism and visual extravagance devoid of real dramatic substance, to the extent that the director's vision of setting a farewell drama to the monarchical past in the anxiety of a war-haunted present remains largely unfulfilled.
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