“Ball im Savoy” is an operetta in three acts and a prelude by Paul Abraham. The libretto was written by Alfred Grünwald and Fritz Löhner-Beda. The Theater Lübeck will perform “Ball im Savoy” for the first time during the 2018/2019 season. Star guest Angelika Milster will be playing the role of Tangolita, an Argentinean dancer, on the following performance days: 1st Sept. 2018, 15th Sept. 2018, 9th Nov. 2018, 31st Dec. 2018, 13th Mar. 2019 and 6th Apr. 2019.
“A hundred thousand bottles of champagne and so many beautiful women. You need to know how the others kiss to know what your own is doing”.
The operetta “Ball im Savoy” is among the great Berlin review operettas from the so-called “Silver operetta era”. The musical is just a step away, for Paul Abraham offers everything in terms of music that was popular in the entertainment capital Berlin during the 1930s. Jazz and blues, tango, foxtrot and paso doble as well as catchy hits and impressive showpieces.
Just back from honeymoon, they are already short of domestic bliss! The young wife thinks her husband is being unfaithful and is doing her utmost to arouse his jealousy. Turmoil already reigns – and the game of confusion about love, deception and escapades is taking its turbulent course. The main actors, along with the newlyweds Aristide (Philippe Hall) and Madeleine de Faublas (Emma McNairy), are an Argentinean dancer by the name of Tangolita (Angelika Milster and Wioletta Hebrowska), Mustafa Bei (Steffen Kubach), Turkish envoy and Aristide’s best friend as well as the mysterious jazz composer José Pasodoble, who is really Daisy Darlington (Sara Wortmann) and Madeleine’s cousin. The scene of the action is Aristide’s luxurious villa in Nice and of course the magnificent ballroom in the Savoy, where the party animals of champagne-sipping high society gather every evening.
There is dancing too, of course, for which the composer Paul Abraham has delivered a series of rousing pieces that combine everything that was popular in the entertainment capital Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s: Jazz and blues, tango, foxtrot and paso doble and even a crazy vogue dance called “Kangaroo”. The revue operetta “Ball im Savoy” premiered in Berlin in 1932. The laid-back lifestyle, the acid humour and the exhilarating eroticism arrived – despite of or precisely because of the apocalyptic political mood shortly before the Nazis seized power. Paul Abraham, a Hungarian composer of Jewish descent, had previously achieved two world successes with “Viktoria und ihr Husar” and “Blume von Hawaii”, but “Ball im Savoy” was to be his last great triumph. He emigrated to the USA, and his works disappeared from the repertoire for many years.
Picture: Kerstin Schomburg, Theater Lübeck
Tickets for “Ball im Savoy” are available here!
