Die Fledermaus

In the organizer's words:

Operetta by Johann Strauss

The champagne is to blame for everything: before the arrogant Eisenstein starts his prescribed prison sentence, he indulges himself at a party thrown by Prince Orlofsky. Meanwhile, his wife Rosalinde receives her lover Alfred at home until he is unfortunately taken to prison instead of Eisenstein. In what is probably the most famous operetta, decadent Viennese life swings into an ambiguous dance with champagne-soaked games of mistaken identity, masked flings and bourgeois hypocrisy.

Director Philipp Moschitz adds this spectacle to the popular tradition of lavish theater balls in Kassel and allows the audience to be witnesses and accomplices to the "Revenge of the Bat": In the midst of it all, instead of just being there, people eat, get drunk and swing one leg in waltz time while the other is already in prison. Fast-paced and full of fine humor, everyone gets a turn, from the bored chambermaid to the tipsy bailiff.

Happy is he who forgets the all-too-familiar dissonance between all the lightness and the Viennese zeitgeist: a shameful defeat at the hands of the Prussians, a seething Balkan crisis and a stock market crash that spoils the hedonistic speculators' party mood.

Fueled by the whirling catchy tunes of waltz king Johann Strauss, the ball society becomes entangled in a sweet whirlpool of unforeseen consequences. Under the musical direction of Kiril Stankow, a culinary firework display of musical temptations unfolds, completing the sensual, sinful pleasure.