Komische Oper Berlin, season 2025/2026
“IN FRISCO IST DER TEUFEL LOS” (IN FRISCO, ALL HELL’S BROKEN OUT)
Operetta in four acts Libretto-Neufassung von Maurycy Janowski
Otto Schneidereit. Revised libretto by Maurycy Janowski
Music by Guido Masanetz
Anatol Brown ALEXANDER VON HUGO
Virginia West SOPHIA EUSKIRCHEN
Kay TOBIAS JOCH
Chica ALMA SADÉ
Ben Benson CHRISTOPH SPÄTH
Xonga Miller/Dr. Spinner CHRISTOPH MARTI
Jonas HANS GRÖNING
First madhouse warder YAUCI YANES ORTEGA
Second madhouse warder/Notary JAN-FRANK SÜSSE
Third madhouse warder SASCHA BORRIS
Sailors, dock workers, girls, waiters CHORSOLISTEN DER
KOMISCHEN OPER BERLIN
Or­ches­ter­ der­ Ko­misch­en Oper Ber­lin
Conductor Kai­ Tie­tje
Choirs Inga Diestel
Choreography Martina Borroni
Choreography tap dance Marie-Christin Zeisset
Scenic arrangement Martin G. Berger
Costumes Es­ther Bia­las
Light design Johannes Scherfling
Berlin, 30 December 2025
Since its founding by Walter Felsenstein in 1947, the Komische Oper Berlin has also been committed to light-hearted musical theatre. In recent years, it has begun to revive plays that were extremely successful in East Germany but later fell into oblivion, such as Gerd Natschinski’s Messeschlager Gisela (Trade fair hit Gisela) and now Guido Masanetz’s semi-staged In Frisco ist der Teufel los (In Frisco, all hell’s broken out). It is a journey back in time to the GDR shortly after the Berlin Wall was built, even though Otto Schneidereit invented the subject in the mid-1950s and wrote the lyrics for the first version, Wer braucht Geld? (Who needs money?). The GDR, always short of foreign currency, could not afford expensive imports of Western musicals, so Guido Masanetz composed music somewhere between Gershwin and early Bernstein, garnished with Latin American rhythms, Mexican or Cuban, but exotic enough for GDR audiences. The plot revolves around boat captain Anatol Brown, who unexpectedly inherits a hotel burdened with debt. His opponent, Xonga Miller, wants to turn it into another lucrative entertainment venue, while he plans to convert it into a home for retired sailors. Thanks to the solidarity of the dock workers, he succeeds in implementing his plan, and his friend Jonas, who is homeless and unemployed, is the first to move in. The mixture of criticism of capitalism, which is still relevant today, and class struggle against big business led to a rare convergence of ideology and public demand, with the result that after its premiere at Berlin’s Metropoltheater in 1962, the play was quickly staged throughout the GDR, from Stralsund to Meiningen, from Frankfurt an der Oder to Magdeburg, and was even exported to socialist brother countries as far away as Bulgaria. As regrettable as the cancellation of Gerd Natschinski’s Mein Freund Bunbury may be due to the Berlin Senate’s austerity measures, we can be all the more grateful to the Komische Oper Berlin for now performing this example of sophisticated ‘light-hearted musical theatre’ from the GDR. Although there is no stage set – instead, the Orchester der Komischen Oper sits on stage and is conducted energetically and loudly by the ambitious Kai Tietje – there is a staged plot by Martin G. Berger with singers and dancers in costumes by Esther Bialas. The lyrics of the songs were not changed in the uninterrupted version, which was shortened to one and a half hours, but the dialogues were updated on the grounds that people need encouragement in difficult times – a statement that would have been impossible in East Germany! The GDR itself is represented in video projections of Alexanderplatz from the 1970s and 1980s by neon signs for the nearby Berlin market hall or Pneumant tyres at the S-Bahn station, the Palasthotel in Karl-Liebknecht-Straße with advertisements for chemical products from Bitterfeld, the Red Town Hall including the no longer existing Ratskeller restaurant, the functioning fountains between the TV tower and the Neptune fountain in front of it, the big wheel in the Plänterwald cultural park and the Müggelsee lake. Martina Borroni provides appropriate choreography for the numerous rousing dance numbers, and Inga Diestel ensures the Chorsolisten der Komischen Oper to sing with great presence behind the orchestra. Three of them also act as madhouse warders and notary: Yauci Yanes Ortega, Jan-Frank Süße and Sascha Borris. Thanks to director Berger, all the soloists are fully committed: Alexander von Hugo, who comes from musical theatre, as Anatol Brown, Sophia Euskirchen as bartender Virginia West and Tobias Joch as her brother Kay and lover of Chica Alma Sadé, who cannot hide her operatic voice, just like Christoph Späth as Ben Benson, as well as Hans Gröning, who studied with one of the mezzo divas of the GDR, Gisela Schröter, and yes: you can hear it! Christoph Marti, alias Ursli Pfister, is absolutely perfect as Xonga Miller, with Marlene Dietrich as his blueprint for Karl Marx’s opponent! It was a harmonious evening in the sold-out Schiller-Theater with a play that the critic did not experience during the GDR era, but for him it was an enjoyable journey back in time to a country, which he did not particularly like. He still remembers composer Masanetz’s folk opera Sprengstoff für Santa Ines (Explosives for Santa Ines) at a small but fine Central German music theatre, the starting point of his passion for opera. Oh yes, according to reports, the GDR had the highest density of music theatres in the world: who has ever heard of Zeitz, Greifswald, Rudolstadt, Görlitz-Zittau or even Bernburg and their theatres? The perversion of German division is manifested by the fact that the author had considered the hit Seemann, hast Du mich vergessen (Sailor, have you forgotten me) from In Frisco ist der Teufel los to be a pop song by Freddy Quinn, a singer of sea shanties from Vienna who used to be very present on West German TV, which was received in Bernburg, officially Saxony-Anhalt, until he prepared for this review! Photo Monika Rittershaus