When the curtain rose on a new production of Emmerich Kálmán's Die
Csárdásfürstin on 29 December 1999 at the State Opera of Saxony,
Dresden, nobody could have foreseen that the evening would produce one of the
biggest scandals in recent history of German opera.
The acclaimed director, Peter Konwitschny, had directed six operas at the house, each of them an unusual, unexpected, sometimes radical re-reading of the work and always controversial. But the opening scene of Kálmán's beloved 1915 operetta was just what the audience expected: a plush early-19th-century vaudeville theater with marble stairs, tables full of champagne bottles, red velvet sofas, palm trees, gold leaf and stucco work on the richly decorated walls.
By the end of Act I, however, bombshells exploded with ear-deafening noise, window panes shattered and hand grenades tore huge holes into the walls of the Old World idyll. The characters armed themselves, put on steel helmets and military coats over their tuxedos and glamorous evening gowns — and dug trenches into the ground to protect themselves from further attacks, provoking a first storm of boos from a stunned audience.
With each scene, more and more of the initial set got destroyed until nothing but a field of gray rubble was left, body parts flew through the air, dead soldiers were carried away, a seemingly harmless servant transformed into Hitler, and Sylva Varescu, the Csárdás Princess, waltzed with a headless soldier. At this point the singers could hardly be heard anymore: they were drowned out by the audience's violent booing and screaming insults to the director.
After opening night, with hundreds of operagoers threatening to cancel their subscriptions, Christoph Albrecht, the company's Intendant, eliminated all of the provocative scenes. "I owed it to those members of the audience who experienced war themselves," Albrecht says. Konwitschny, who had not been consulted, sued the opera house.
A court order forbid further performances while the lawsuit — closely monitored by the German press — unfolded over a period of several months. In the end, the director won. The court decided that Konwitschny's production was a work of art unto itself and that the opera company didn't have the right to alter it. The company and the director then agreed they would present both versions, the original and the cut one, and the production ran for 21 additional sold-out productions over three seasons.
But the production has now been unceremoniously removed from the repertoire. Konwitschny suggests that Albrecht wanted to excise all reminders of the whole affair. "I think Mr. Albrecht wanted to rid himself of a production that justly got him the reputation of preventing art to please the expectations of an audience that demands nothing but shallow entertainment," he says, not without a trace of bitterness. "I believe with a work like Tannhäuser people are more open to new interpretations. But when it comes to operetta, they are not that tolerant. They want to lean back, they certainly don't want to think, and they want to see gorgeous sets, lavish costumes, all that stuff."
Konwitschny believes that the production was abandoned for political reasons. "Dresden has a very influential, powerful reactionary lobby that clings tightly to the [East German] past, hates changes and wants everything back the way it once was," he says. "I received loads of anonymous hate-letters saying 'they' were out to get me, I would be shot, etc. It's scary."
Albrecht denies any political motivation. "That's nonsense," he says. "I admire Konwitschny; without a doubt he is one of Germany's most talented and most profound directors. But this production is very demanding from a technical point of view. We simply didn't have the means to put it on again."
Albrecht's successor Gerd Uecker, who takes over the company in
2003–04 has already declared he doesn't want the production. A letter
from Konwitschny to the future Intendant, inquiring about the possibility
of reviving the staging, has remained unanswered. Meanwhile, however, a couple
of major German opera companies have told Konwitschny that they were interested
in buying his production: "We are negotiating," says Konwitschny, who declines
to discuss the details before they are set. "I'm pretty optimistic!"
