The man still believes in operettas and can compose: the world premiere of Daniel Behle's operetta "Hopfen und Malz" in Annaberg-Buchholz turns into a weird, bantering party.
There's a lot to laugh about and potential for cuts too.
From time to time you have to watch out for Daniel Behle.
Not when he's on stage: Strauss, Wagner, Mozart, Lieder - always a feast for those who like their voices.
But when the tenor speaks, the other person quickly sits or stands in a shower of words and associations.
Very amusing, but also a lot.
And since the weekend at the latest it has been clear: the man also composes like this.
It is remarkable that someone sits down in the lockdowns to drive away the frustration with setting the tone.
The fact that it is still, in the first fifth of the 21st century, about saving the operetta's honor deserves even more respect.
Perhaps for security reasons, away from the hotspots, "Hopfen und Malz" was premiered, Behle's first act for musical theater.
While outside the Ore Mountains and with it Annaberg-Buchholz are sinking in the snow (the Christmas tree on the market square is still beaming), regular guests and Behle fans can be found in the small Eduard von Winterstein Theater with its already highly ambitious repertoire.
There is laughter, a lot even.
Not just out of courtesy to the popular celebrity, it's really fun.
Beer brewing competition between two villages
With lyricist Alain Claude Sulzer, Behle has put together a completely weird three-act play.
A good division of labor: here the Hanseatic singer bursting with ideas, there the deliberate Swiss writer who cleared, channeled, reduced.
The result is still growing, at three and a quarter hours including a break it is too long.
In any case, “hops and malt” can hardly be retold.
It's about the annual beer brewing competition between the villages of Ölsum and Meersum.
About a voodoo brew, with which the latter finally want to win and which is stirred with the help of a monk searching for sins.
There is a love story between the brewer's daughter Senta and Pilger Klaus and Bernd, who was booted out as a result - and at the end there is a mother-daughter relationship that has been kept secret until now.
The fact that the plot likes to take surprising turns, cheerfully treading side streets and sometimes dead ends, is mainly due to Behle's love of writing.
Music nerds are in good hands with him because he is one himself.
The score moves through a thunderstorm of quotations.
Again and again Richard Strauss rushes through the small orchestra pit.
Then Wagner's "Tannhäuser" flares up, his "Lohengrin", and Borodin with the "Polowetz Dances".
Everyone sings a chorale twice in the style of Bach, after all you are in Saxony.
Numbers with catchy quality
But there is also a lot of original Behle with catchy quality.
The number "Wandering is the Pilgrim's Desire", for example, with its twisted syncopations, the monk's hit "I would like to hear your sins" or the despairing outburst of the rejected lover "This is Bernd's wound".
Behle, the tenor from Kalau, lives out his vices unrestrainedly from the opening number "Der Flens ist da" to the waltz "Willst du ne Fanta, Klaus?"
However, his art is not limited to inventing texts and melodies, the composing singer is also amazingly confident in the use of the instruments.
You can hear a lot of experimentation and imagination.
Behle is a color fumbling and little atmosphere magician.
And someone who uses the triangle excessively because it's there.
And demonstrates that the tuba can also be used as a cantilena.
You can see that Annaberg-Buchholz does not have a state theater budget, but it doesn't matter.
Director Jasmin Solfaghari uses this for an exhilarated, enigmatic staging, in which even the improvised has punch line quality.
Walter Schütze built a practicable setting: at the back an accessible dune dyke, on the right Senta's mobile kiosk, which can be converted into the monk Theophil's hermitage.
And otherwise plenty of room for action.
All people of today in rubber boots.
No flat figures, but – thanks to Behle/Sulzer and Solfaghari – real types.
From quirky to wacky: everything is included.
And the fact that Bernd is a Dutch fan in the orange jersey but also reminds one of a right-wing chav with a gold chain is a nasty East German punch line.
Four theaters are bringing out the play
It doesn't matter that some people reach their vocal limits.
Behle demands a lot from his colleagues.
Opera-heavy mixes with musical parlando.
And you also have to understand something of the almost inflationary text joke, the singers cleverly have microports.
What the Erzgebirge Philharmonic Aue has to do also demands the greatest respect.
Precisely because Behle often has large caliber à la Strauss and ambitious solos in mind, the musicians get a lot to do.
In the ditch you are audibly animated by the score, also because the conductor Jens Georg Bachmann is a sovereign motivator.
Four theaters have so far taken the bait on “Hopfen und Malz”.
The next new production is already in April in Neustrelitz.
And Munich's Gärtnerplatztheater is also interested.
As can be heard, the operetta could be released there next season - the dramaturge has already traveled to Annaberg-Buchholz for the premiere.
Behle probably knows himself that the work needs to be tweaked and made a few things more stringent. And some plot twists don't need it, especially since some things are hardly communicated quickly.
But the insanity of the piece is fun.
Let's foam.