Marie Giroux, mezzo-soprano & flute Joseph Schnurr, tenor & guitar Jenny Schäuffelen, piano & accordion
The Ufa film and music industry and its dazzling stars shaped an era. A cheerful and state-sponsored art which, however, developed in a dark time, orchestrated as finely as nastily by Joseph Goebbels, the so-called Reich Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. He was aware that people needed a rest from the daily war-mongering and Führer indoctrination, and that non-political entertainment was suitable for this. Music, operetta and revue films therefore experienced a real boom in the 1930s and 1940s. Lilian Harvey and Willy Fritsch, Marika Rökk and Johannes Heesters, Hans Albers, Ilse Werner and Zarah Leander offered audiences glitz and glamor. For a few hours, they made them forget that their world had fallen into ruins. But how does that fit together? Can real music and art be created under censorship?
Some artists like Zarah Leander knew how to balance the scales: She met Nazi propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels at a party. He asked her dangerously ironically: "Zarah ... Isn't that a Jewish name?" "Oh, maybe," said the actress, "but what about Josef?" "Hmmm ... yes, yes, a good answer," Goebbels replied. But even abuse, regardless of its nature, motivation or system, can neither rob art of its character nor corrupt its innermost core. And one thing is certain: UFA's film music and its songs are genuine art: They have lost none of their luster and remain very popular.
Frenchwoman Marie Giroux and Canadian Joseph Schnurr, together with their accompanist Jenny Schäuffelen, offer a charming and nostalgic musical revue of the Ufa era and paint a portrait of an ambivalent epoch ... Welcome to the salon of Zarah Leander...
Tickets (18€/ reduced: 15€) are available on 038220-80465 or at the box office (only while stocks last).
