Ball at the Savoy

PAUL ABRAHAM: BALL AT THE SAVOY (Ball im Savoy), an operetta in 2 acts. Libretto by Alfred Grünwald and Fritz Löhner-Beda, translated by Gintaras Patackas. Premiere: 3 October 2014. Running time: 3 hours. Performed by the theatre’s soloists, choir and ballet artists.

The performance on 7 November is dedicated to the anniversary of soloist Raimonda Talat-Kelpšaitė.

The operetta’s plot revolves around a key event: a ball at the Savoy. Once a year, members of high society and the bohemian world flock to Nice, thirsting for sensational and scandalous news. To mark the occasion, the local newspaper offers a prize—a valuable painting—for the biggest sensation at the Savoy Ball. Who will win it this time? Madeleine, who will announce that she, the Marquise de Faublas, niece of a cardinal, cousin of a chamber president and wife of Marquis Aristide, has just deceived her husband? Or Daisy, who has come from America to confess that she is the famous hit-song composer José Pasodoble and to teach the ball’s guests a fashionable new dance, the “Kangaroo”?

The operettas of Hungarian composer Paul Abraham (1892–1960) are distinguished by more colourful musical scores, enriched with elements of entertainment and show, and especially by their abundant rhythms of dances modern for the time—slow waltz, foxtrot, rumba and others. Yet neither in structure nor in musical dramaturgy did they depart from the genre’s fundamental principles, which had prevailed for several decades. The operetta “Ball at the Savoy” is a striking example of the late Berlin operetta-revue. It brought its composer European fame and has been filmed several times. Its subject is somewhat reminiscent of J. Strauss’s famous operetta “Die Fledermaus,” and it is equally captivating for its witty plot, melodies that have lost none of their charm, and especially its timeless retro style.

This is not the first production of the work on the Kaunas stage. The production team does not plan to stray far from the original, but promises numerous connections with the present day, all the more fitting since the plot concerns the timeless complexities of relationships between women and men: shadows of the past, love intrigues and tests of fidelity.

The operetta was first staged at Kaunas State Musical Theatre in 1990, directed by Valius Staknys, conducted by Stanislovas Čepinskis, designed by Eldaras Renteris (Estonia), with choreography by Heino Asalu and Jelena Kõlar from Estonia. The leading roles were performed by Danutė Dirginčiūtė, Eleonora Kliučiūtė, Mykolas Rekys, Aušra Cicėnaitė, Lina Kinderytė, Laimutė Kuzmickaitė, Gediminas Maciulevičius, Benjaminas Želvys, Rita Preikšaitė, Dalė Rakauskienė and Tatjana Vilčinskienė.