La Piccola Cubana by Liebrecht, J., ons. 06 maj 2020, Fra (2020/2020), Instrueret af Pauline Beaulieu, Dirigent Peter Ruzicka, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, Germany

»La piccola Cubana« tells the turbulent story of variety singer Rachel against the background of social upheavals in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Long after the premiere in 1974, Hans Werner Henze and Hans Magnus Enzensberger discussed a chamber music version of their television opera »La Cubana«, inspired by elements of songplay, which is now being performed in Jobst Liebrecht's setting. In 1969 the Cuban writer Miguel Barnet published his novel »The Song of Rachel« as a documentary-fictional »witness account« of shifting social conditions. Tivoli and circus stages form the settings for Rachel's stories, in which memory and illusion are combined. For the composer Hans Werner Henze, who traveled to Cuba himself, the island was a place of longing that inspired him politically and artistically. In the early 1970s, together with Hans Magnus Enzensberger, he conceived the opera »La Cubana oder ein Leben für die Kunst«, whose name »Vaudeville« refers to a multifaceted scenic and musical structure between songplay and music-theatrical grotesque.