Kulturclash im Weißen Rössl: Lachen and tensions in the Salzkammergut!

Kulturclash im Weißen Rössl: Lachen and tensions in the Salzkammergut!

Währinger Straße 78, 1090 Wien, Österreich - On December 7, 2024, the Volksoper in Vienna celebrated the premiere of Ralph Benatzky's most famous operetta "Im Weißen Rössl". The staging of the designated director Jan Philipp Gloger caused mixed impressions, with the audience reviving the atmosphere with his enthusiasm. As vienna.at , the stage design was deliberately antiquated, which brought the charm of the Wolfgangsee to the Volksoper. There is a complex love for love around the number waiter Leopold and the landlady Josepha Vogelhuber, with prominent casts, including from Götz Schubert and Annette Dasch.

a game between clichés and modern accents

The performance illuminates traditional clichés about German-Austrian relationships and uses a mixture of dialects used by Gloger Clever. Particularly noteworthy is the influence of the dialects and the selection of actors, the stereotypical ideas both operate and question. In a funny-solved moment, the topic of over-tourism is addressed, which Gloger focuses on in the last third of the performance, which raises the piece to a new level and raises relevant social issues, such as Volksoper.at point out.

The performance not only convinces with its musical selection, which is based on a more jazz -more original version, but also through the remarkable achievements of the opera singers. While the first two hours are lost in classic operetta structures, the deconstruction and breaking of the genre boundaries in the last third come into their own. Nevertheless, the charming and relaxed access to the operetta remains noticeable, which the audience takes into the nostalgia of the Salzkammergut, although some critical accents are not long in coming.