Ball at the Savoy

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

The November 7 performance is dedicated to soloist Raimonda Talat-Kelpšaitė’s anniversary.

The plot of the operetta revolves around the central event: a ball at the Savoy. Once a year, members of high society and bohemian circles 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 the 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 teach the ball’s guests a new fashionable dance, the “Kangaroo”?

The operettas of Hungarian composer Paul Abraham (1892–1960) stand out for their more colourful musical scores, enriched with entertainment and show elements, and especially for their abundant rhythms of then-modern dances—slow waltz, foxtrot, rumba and others. Yet in both structure and musical dramaturgy, they remained within the fundamental principles of the genre that had prevailed for several decades. The operetta Ball at the Savoy is a striking example of late Berlin operetta-revue. It brought the composer European fame and has been adapted for the screen several times. Its subject matter is somewhat reminiscent of J. Strauss’s famous operetta Die Fledermaus, and it is equally captivating with its witty intrigue and melodies that have lost none of their charm, 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 too far from the original, but promises many connections with the present day, particularly as the plot lends itself to this: it speaks of the perennial twists and turns of relationships between women and men—shadows of the past, romantic intrigue 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 of Estonia. The principal 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.