Strauss in Sneakers: “Aschenbrödel” Steps Into the 21st Century

It seems there is Aschenbrödel everywhere these days. The Landestheater Coburg is offering the 1901 “completed new version by Josef Bayer” of the posthumous Johann Strauss ballet. The Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich is trying its hand at a “ballet fairy tale” by Karl Alfred Schreiner, with music by Strauss. And now Volksoper Vienna presents Aschenbrödels Traum as a “fairy-tale operetta inspired by Johann Strauss.”

This new Viennese piece was conceived by Martina Eisenreich and Axel Ranisch, the latter having gained operetta experience with Messeschlager Gisela at Komische Oper Berlin recently. Together, Eisenreich and Ranisch created an entirely new story for the musical fragments Strauss left behind at his death. They move the plot to the present day – and then journey backwards to the time of origin.

Vienna, 2025:
The young Aschenbrödel (Oliver Liebl) moves into a house at Wiener Glasergasse 7 with his stepmother Alice (Ruth Brauer-Kvam) and his stepsisters Dorothee (Julia Koci) and BirdyLove (Johanna Arrouas). Alice wants to recruit the talented young football player Danny (Lionel von Lawrence) for her football club FC Wien, and in doing so she not only upsets Aschenbrödel’s emotional world.

While exploring the house, Aschenbrödel discovers in the attic the libretto for a ballet intended for Johann Strauss, written by a certain Ida Grünwald — and sets off a chain reaction that throws time itself into disarray …

Vienna, 1899:
Johann Strauss (Daniel Schmutzhard) longs to write a ballet late in his life. A competition is held to find a suitable libretto, and one entry indeed succeeds in sparking the composer’s imagination. But it does not come from the official submissions — it was written by the typing clerk Ida Grünwald (Juliette Khalil). She was supposed to only transcribe the entries, but secretly slipped in her own Aschenbrödel.

The Aschenbrödel Ballet:
The talented seamstress Grete (Mila Schmidt) works in her stepmother’s fashion salon. Grete wants to design fashion herself, but her stepsisters Yvette (Koci) and Fanchon (Arrouas) make fun of her. When the painter Leon (Aleksandar Orlić) enters the salon, everything changes.

That’s the official plot summery so far. We’ll have to wait and see how it ends.

Who was Ida G.?

Ida Grünwald is based on a historical figure: according to the production, she was a typist working in Vienna around 1900, and her name appears on the original title page of the Aschenbrödel libretto. Beyond this, little is known about her life. There is no independent archival evidence confirming her role as the actual librettist of the ballet, so her authorship remains speculative.

The creators of Aschenbrödels Traum have reimagined her as a hidden creative force, transforming Grünwald from a clerical worker into a symbolic “author” who contributes to the story in a meaningful way. This interpretation highlights a modern feminist perspective, reminiscent of how women often worked as invisible collaborators in historical artistic projects (think of Brecht and his co-authors). Her role in the new production embodies both historical reference and creative imagination, giving her a prominent position in the narrative that plays with time, authorship, and recognition.

The Modern-Day Authors

Martina Eisenreich has written new music for Aschenbrödels Traum. Eisenreich is well-known and highly successful as a film music composer. One of her most recent social-media posts came from New York — from the International Emmy Awards. The German four-part TV series Herrhausen, for which she composed the music, had made it into the list of nominees. For the music in Herrhausen — an extraordinary combination of retro-synthesizer and Baroque sonorities together with countertenor vocals — she had already received one of Germany’s most important media prizes this year, the German Television Award. Back in 2020, for her early film scores, Martina Eisenreich received both the prize of the German Television Academy and a double nomination for the German Television Award. Prior to that, she became the first woman to receive the German Film Music Prize, for her “symphony” in Axel Ranisch’s Tatort episode “Waldlust.”

After her trip down the red carpet in New York, the Strauss project awaited her in Vienna: on November 29, Aschenbrödels Traum premieres as Eisenreich’s first operetta at the Volksoper.

Why Operetta and Not a Musical?

Operetta’s greatest era is probably long past, Eisenreich admits in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. But that was precisely what attracted her. When the Volksoper Vienna announced an operetta competition for 2025 in honor of the 200th birthday of the Waltz King, Eisenreich (44) and Ranisch (42) set to work together — with success.

The fairy tale of Aschenbrödel is very well known, writes the SZ. Less well known is that Strauss, at the end of his life, was working on a ballet based on this tale. Only a fragment of it survives. (There were scandalous headlines when it turned out that valuable single pages from that fragment had been illegally sold by someone at the Wien-Bibliothek, even if the authorities tried to hush up the embarrassing case).

It was this unfinished work that inspired Eisenreich and Ranisch — especially because, as Eisenreich says, “there was something mysterious about it.”

What has emerged is a modern queer version of the Aschenbrödel fairy tale, with a dancing football team à la Roxy und ihr Wunderteam, and with a male Aschenbrödel in a hoodie and jeans.

There are, of course, echoes of Strauss’s music; Eisenreich emphasizes that she took inspiration from the original. The stage does not lack the words “Alles Walzer” blazing in giant neon letters. The audience at the Volksoper Vienna will also hear the unusual sound of a singing saw.

This new version will be published by Ries & Erler in Berlin as an individual version by Eisenreich/Ranisch. It remains to be seen who will perform it in the future. For now, there are performances scheduled in Vienna till early February 2026. It’s a new LGBT operetta that will hopefully give the otherwise rather lackluster Strauss anniversary in Vienna a kick – before the year of celebrations is over.

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