Hahn Meets “Hairspray,” Or: Some Very Queer Operetta Offerings

Just as the season in Germany is about to close, two new operetta productions hit the stage that give cause to reflect on the state of things. One premiered in Hamburg at the opera house, the other in Munich at Gärtnerplatztheater. Both want to be decidedly: queer. As does a third new operetta in New York City.

In Hamburg the so-called Opera stabile – a studio space of the bigger State Opera – is currently showing a new production of Reynaldo Hahn’s Ciboulette. The nostalgic 1923 piece, a “prettily pastel-coloured romance, with some gentle humour and a certain charm”, as Kurt Gänzl writes it in his Encyclopdia of the Musical Theatre, is relocated by stage director Sascha-Alexander Todtner from Les Halles in “days gone by” Paris to the 1980s ball room scene in New York City, which is currently also experiencing a nostalgic revival with tv shows such as Pose or the new staging of Andre Lloyd Webber’s Cats as Cats: The Jellicle Ball, reimagined by directors Bill Rauch and Zhaulon Levingston (plus choreographers Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles) at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, as a voguing spectacular – with plenty of drag and PoC performers, resurrecting that fabled world of yonder where queer solidarity and Black empowerment joined forces against AIDS.

In Hamburg, Todtner also wants to show us “the queer, genderfluid New York subculture of the 1980s and 90s,” as the opera house website informs us. “We experience the world of drag and their categories, also characters who change roles and identities with shifting constellations, until they all – finally – find love and their proper drag alter ego.”

Costumes and sets are by Christoph Fischer, the new musical arrangements are by Johannes Harneit. Nicolas André conducts.

The opera house highlights the fact that Hahn was the friend and lover of Marcel Proust. So you could wonder what he – as a closeted gay man – would have said to seeing such an LGBTQ version of his “pastel-coloured romance,” which now includes a character who looks like Divine. Hairspray meets Hahn, so to speak.

“Reloaded”

Christian Lütjens, in charge at Männerschwarm/Salzgeber publishing for the new “Reloaded” edition of the book Glitter and Be Gay (due in October 2024), went to see a performance this week and reported back: “I can’t say that the piece worked in this new version, but I had a lot of fun. Liam James Karai in a harness and with chaps (and military shorts), Grzegorsz Pelutis as Duparquet/Divine, and Yeonjoo Katharina Jang as a overbearingly good humored Ciboulette were the best. When Ciboulette and Duparquet stagger home, drunk, after the interval, to their Mother House and the very attractive (yet very heterosexual) Florian Panzieri runs around in a fish net top, the confetti canon at the end has every reason to explode.”

Lütjens continues: “Vocally, Karai was the strongest, even if he didn’t have much to do in part 2. The music sounded superb, once you got used to the Hahn melodies being mixed by a DJ with ‘Vogue’ snippets. It all adds up to a wild and colorful spectacle. Or not. Which is the funny thing about this evening, because this absurd and sometimes outrageous combination of original story and texts with the new concept is simply too crazy for words.”

In a little YouTube video the director explains his vision:

The performances are sold out, so Hamburg must be doing something right. Sadly, the production is not scheduled to return next season.

“Oh! Oh! Amelio!”

Meanwhile in Munich, the Gärtnerplatz Theater presents “a brand new operetta” by Thomas Pigor called Oh! Oh! Amelio!, based loosely on Georges Feydeau’s Occupe-toi d’Amélio. It has music by Pigor and Konrad Koselleck.

What is it about? Here’s the official version from the theater’s homepage: Drag artist Amelio is in high demand. While film producer Prinz wants to grab him “as a woman” from the stage for a role in the next Tatort (a German crime series on national television) but especially on his cast couch, Amelio’s burned-out friend Marika urgently needs him “as a man” for an alibi wedding in order to get the inheritance from her Marchovian orthodox aunt. Amelio’s partner Étienne knows how bad his sweetheart is at saying no, but now of all times he has to travel to the USA for a few days. And then Amelio’s self-absorbed mother gets involved … of course, there’s bound to be all sorts of turbulence, on stage, in bed, and even in church! Christian Schleinzer plays Amelio, Armin Krahl is Étienne. The staging is by Gabi Rothmüller, Andreas Partilla conducts.

Various newspapers have reported very positively, the influential Süddeutsche Zeitung writes: “Oh! Oh! Amelio! brings overexcited gays, orthodox monks, and a lot of sexual innuendo to the stage.”First night audiences were, apparently, on their feet and cheering. There are performances till October 2024.

“Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate, Known as GHB or Simply G”

And before you say “only in Germany” can something like this happen: New York has also promised a new queer operetta called G at Wild Project. It’s a world-premiere created, composed and starring Mur, a nonbinary artist who has caught the eye of everyone from Cindy Sherman to Lena Dunham, as BroadwayWorld writes.

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We learn there: “G is an autobiographical operetta about an artist’s journey through a dark and comedic fever-dream following a drug-facilitated assault (gamma-hydroxybutyrate, known as GHB or simply G) at a gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen. In the ‘fever dream,’ the artist meets and encounters a wide range of queer characters who appear as teachers or prophets that hold the ancient wisdom of self-love, weaving together lessons from Dr. Maya Angelou, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Greek Mythology, Deepak Chopra, and Eckhart Tolle. G is a love letter to the G in LGBTQIA+; promoting self-love while advocating against violence within the gay community.”

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“There are so many tribes of gay in New York City, the Bushwick gays, the uptown gays, the Julius gays, the sex party gays, the Broadway gays, the TED gays, the poly gays, the bator gays, the fire island gays, the billionaire gays, the Drag Race gays … it can sometimes feel like West Side Story; the jets vs. the sharks. Creating deeper love for our ‘G’ community is more important than ever. We all need to come together. You know what I mean?” says Mur with a wink, quoted by BroadwayWorld.

Directed by Stephen Winter, G includes original visual collaborations with Victor Jeffreys II. The cast features Jade Amber, Jack Fuller, Aisha Kerensa, Malcolm Durning, Robert Quiles, Matthew Nasser, and Mur. G runs from July 19 to 21.

You might say that compared to all of that, the offering of Ohio Light Opera looks somewhat tame. But interesting in its own way, of course, even if a bit last millennium.