I saw last night a very entertaining version of Franz Lehar’s Die Lustige Witwe at my Temple of Geneva attraction: Le Grand Théâtre de Genève. What struck me is how plurilingual and multicultural this Opera is, or is it an opérette or a Comédie Musicale avant la lettre!
I’m certainly glad I saw Jennifer Larmore and José Van Dam’s recitals beforehand as their singing part, especially José Van Dam who was making his Adieux to the Geneva stage, was really limited not to say inexistent. And the poor thing seems to have hurt his knee, which gave him a further human charm.
Shown on Geneva stage, this rather obsolete 1905 story of bourgeois husband and wife relations and the opposition of genders actually took a whole new dimension and this decision to make this opera a multilingual one by having a constant code swiching between French, English, German and at times Croatian makes it all the tastier to our Cosmo mood and taste.
Just for pleasure, here are a couple of links to some of the most famous pieces which belong to the world culture:
Lippen schweigen or in French L’heure exquise . I couldn’t find a good version of Weiber, Weiber, Weiber but I trust you will. I believe I saw last night one of the best renditions of this masterpiece anyhow!!!
COSMO POLITIQUE 