Chicago Folks Operetta has carved a niche over the past decade by specializing in long-forgotten hits from the “Silver Age” of European operetta in Vienna and Berlin in the 1910s and ’20s—schmaltzy, tuneful romantic comedies that evoke nostalgia for a simpler age before the First World War shattered the established order of European imperial politics and culture. But now—marking the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into World War I—CFO has taken a bold gamble on the long-overdue Chicago premiere of Kurt Weill and Paul Green’s 1936 operetta Johnny Johnson. Though not a success in its time, Johnny Johnson is a work of landmark historical significance. And despite some flaws, this production packs a real emotional impact with its quirky yet lyrical music, expressionistic visual design, and timeless theme of a common man caught up in the madness of war…
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In his definitive history of operetta, the late author Richard Traubner dismissed the plot of “The Cousin from Nowhere” as “numbingly dumb.” He had a point. Even by the standards of 1920s operetta, German composer Eduard Kunneke’s romantic confection, about a naive young girl, her childhood sweetheart, two mysterious strangers and various mistaken identities, is piffle…
1908 Leo Fall (1873 – 1925) was a forgotten yet extremely celebrated composer of operettas whose works are now being produced this season by the creatives from the Chicago Folks Operetta. Following up their major hit Madame Pompadour from this past July, we are enchanted and impressed with everything about Leo Fall’s The Girl in the Train. This operetta is in English, it is one of the most uniquely staged operettas I’ve seen yet by the creatives from Chicago Folks Operetta…
Once again Chicago Folks Operetta has taken a Fall – that’s Leo Fall – on behalf of an unjustly neglected Viennese operetta from the early years of the 20th century.
With their currently running production of the Austrian composer’s “Madame Pompadour” at the Vittum Theater on Chicago’s Near North Side, the company’s husband-and-wife directors, Gerald Frantzen and Alison Kelly, continue their winning streak of Fall operettas…
When you occupy as specialized a niche in the area’s classical scene as Chicago Folks Operetta, you just naturally try harder.
Indeed, trying harder has been a kind of mantra for the Oak Park-based music theater troupe, whose speciality is resurrecting rare and forgotten gems of silver-age Viennese and German operettas – many of them unheard in the U.S. since the early 20th century, if at all – and presenting them in fully staged productions with orchestra and new English translations…
This jazz-inflected comic operetta was a big hit for composer Paul Abráhám when it opened in Berlin in December 1932 (a month before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, which prompted Abráhám, a Jew, to leave the country). This long-overdue American premiere by Chicago Folks Operetta—directed by Kristen Barrett and conducted by Anthony Barrese, well-regarded pros on the regional opera circuit—reveals Ball at the Savoy as a musically inventive work that fuses lyrical waltzes with bouncy jazz, sensuous tangos, and even a few hints of Hindemith-style dissonant counterpoint…
Ravinia music director James Conlon’s “Breaking the Silence” crusade to rescue musical works by Jewish composers suppressed by the Nazis and forgotten in the postwar era has found its light-opera counterpart at Chicago Folks Operetta.The troupe has restored another stage work long lost to the mists of time, a once wildly successful jazz operetta from 1932 Berlin, Paul Abraham’s “Ball at the Savoy” (or “Ball im Savoy,” to revert to the original German title)…
Almost unknown in America, Paul Abraham was the toast of Berlin in the late 1920’s – 30’s with his jazz-infused, sexy dancing operettas. He combined the classical German-styled operettas in the tradition of Franz Lehar with the contemporary jazz style popular in Weimar Germany. His whimsical musical style included rich ballads, tantalizing ‘show-stoppers,’ snappy dance numbers, tangos, as well as haunting lover songs such as the haunting love song: “Toujours l’amour.” These ingredients, especially with the peppy jazz syncopations, instantly became popular until…
Among the leading composers of the wondrous “Silver Age” of Viennese operetta, Leo Fall sits a notch or two below true stars such as Lehár, Stolz, and Straus. His music has not proved as durable, perhaps…
As the young daughter of an internationally celebrated composer, Yvonne Kalman delighted in eavesdropping on conversations her father, Emmerich Kalman, had with other famed European emigres as they gathered around plates of freshly prepared Hungarian delicacies in the kitchen of the Kalmans’ New York home, before the platters of food were brought out to the other party guests…
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