Kalman: Die Faschingsfee

Brandstätter, Michael, Chor & Orchester des Staatstheaters am Gärtnerplatz

CPO 555147

In 1915 the Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán celebrated what certainly qualifies as his greatest pubic success in the operetta metropolis of Vienna with Die Csárdásfürstin. For his next operetta, which beheld the light of the stage world at the Johann Strauß Theater in Vienna on 21 September 1917, Kálmán and his librettists Alfred Maria Willner and Rudolf Österreicher drew on a work that had already been presented with success in Budapest and had even conquered New York’s Broadway: it was thus that Zsuzsi kisasszony (Miss Susi) or Miss Springtime (Fräulein Frühling) became Die Faschingsfee (The Carnival Fairy) for the Viennese public of the war years. For it the three authors came up with a plot that is set in Munich during the Carnival season and in the twilight years of the monarchies in Bavaria and Austria-Hungary issued its appeal for the elimination of social strictures and the guarantee of the right to follow one’s own heart. While Die Faschingsfee was redesigned as a most highly successful star vehicle for Fritzi Massary in Berlin, the same work – with hits like »Heut’ flieg ich aus,« »Liebling, du mein Liebling,« and »Lieber Himmelvater, sei nicht bös« on the same high musical level as Die Csárdásfürstin – celebrated its Munich premiere in 1918 at the Gärtnerplatztheater and during subsequent years scored triumphs around the world. On the occasion of its hundredth anniversary, the theater director Josef E. Köpplinger and his team rescued this fun Carnival work from decades of neglect and revived it right on time for the Munich Carnival in 2017!

CD x 1

CPO

2019-02-04

761203514724