DAS LÄCHELN EINER SOMMERNACHT

In the organizer's words:

MUSICAL

A Little Night Music

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by Hugh Wheeler
German version by Eckart Hachfeld
Based on a film by Ingmar Bergman
Original Broadway production produced and directed by Harold Prince

The summer night smiles three times: once for the young who know nothing, a second time for the fools who know too little, and a third time for the old who know too much. The experienced Madame Armfeldt reveals this secret to her granddaughter Fredrika. And she immediately has the opportunity to get to the bottom of the mysterious smile in her immediate surroundings: Fredrika's mother, the actress Désirée Armfeldt, wants to rekindle her former relationship with the lawyer Fredrik Egerman. He is now newly married to the very young Anne, for whom Henrik, Fredrik's son from his first marriage, also has amorous feelings. Meanwhile, Désirée consoles herself with the edgy Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, whose wife Charlotte is trying to end the affair. At Madame Armfeldt's country estate, all the love-struck lovers finally meet and the amorous round dance really takes off. Will Fredrika notice the smile of the summer night in all this turmoil?

During their collaboration on "West Side Story", director and producer Harold Prince and composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim had already considered the question of whether it would be possible to write a musical entirely in ¾ time. Years later, they found the ideal material for this project in Ingmar Bergman's film "The Smile of a Summer Night" - and the experiment succeeded! Embedded in the formal corset of waltz time and spiced up with a pinch each of Shakespeare, Chekhov and Strindberg, Sondheim and his book author Hugh Wheeler finally succeeded in creating a melancholy and fascinating chamber musical with this poetic love story set in Sweden at the turn of the century. Since its premiere on February 25, 1973 on Broadway in New York, it has taken the world's stages by storm, was captured on celluloid with Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Rigg and is the source of perhaps the biggest hit Stephen Sondheim ever wrote: "Send In The Clowns".

Price information:

U30 tickets available