A material that is as popular as it is ambivalent and evokes countless associations with one word: Casanova! Just one day after Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill had launched probably the theater sensation of the Weimar Republic with the Threepenny Opera in what would later become the Berliner Ensemble, director and choreographer Erik Charell followed suit right next door in the predecessor of the Friedrichstadtpalast. The capital’s press was enthusiastic: “Casanova is a great success. It means the resurrection of the operetta!” (Der Montag). The “electrifying music of Johann Strauss” (Berliner Tageblatt) was not only rearranged by Ralph Benatzky, but also electrified – by “the new instrument vibraphone”, as announced in the program booklet for the premiere. Viennese waltzes are combined with Tango Argentino, string cantilenas with saxophone sounds, the 19th century with the 20th century, operetta with revue. “In the intoxication of pleasures”, the anthem of the evening, we accompany Casanova through seven images. Venice, Spain, Vienna, Potsdam, Bohemia and back to the Venetian carnival: masquerade and nostalgia, cliché and projection. The title hero becomes an idea, an image of fear and desire, while the most dazzling figure, the most casanova-like, is the dancer Barberina, who turns the head of even the great lover. Or was that Laura? Or Trude? Or Helene? With Casanova, Marco Štorman and his team create a lusty discourse revue about desire, seduction and nostalgia. A play with identities and surfaces, with images of masculinity, femininity and the in-between.
