Realisation
Vereinigte Bühnen Wien
Music
Martyn Jacques, Christian Kolonovits
Text
Felix Mitterer
Conductor
Christian Kolonovits
Director
Stephanie Mohr
Stage Design
Miriam Busch
Costumes
Alfred Mayerhofer
Lighting
Nicole Berry
Sounddesign
Martin Mayer, Claus Bühler (Sounddesign Tiger Lillies)
Artists
Martyn Jacques/Tiger Lillies, Ruth Brauer (Sofie), Eva Maria Marold (Josefa), Robert Meyer (Cilly), Tanja Schleiff (Konstanze), Anne Weber (Aloisia)
Orchestra
Orchester der Vereinigten Bühnen Wien
Premiere
28.08.2006
Dates
until 21.09.06 every day except Monday
Place
Halle E im MuseumsQuartier,
Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna
www.halleneg.at
Tickets
Wien Ticket, Phone: +43-1-58 885, www.wien-ticket.at
Infocenter WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006, Phone: +43-1-58999
Web
www.musicalvienna.at
For information about the MuseumsQuartier Wien, please see:
www.mqw.at |
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Die Weberischen - A Street Ballad
Commissioned work
The leader of the cult band "Tiger Lillies", Martyn Jacques, wrote the music to Felix Mitterer`s script commissioned by WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006. The result is a black-comedy musical of English/Austrian provenance: Die Weberischen - Mozart`s life told from the perspective of the Weber women.
Enter - no, not Mozart! Not a man! And heaven knows, the Weber women - Aloysia, Constanze and Sophie) - went through enough men in their time! While the street ballad is begun by a certain Mr. Schikaneder, his falsetto voice suggests that he might swiftly reveal himself to be yet another woman. And while there are other men in the story apart from him - Webers, Langes, Nissens, dukes and rakes, to say nothing of two Mozart boys - none of them actually enter the field, which remains firmly in the hands of this squadron of women about whom Felix Mitterer’s ballad tells its tale. Apart from intermittent pregnancies - some of which just happen, sometimes are planned, and on occasion are deliberately terminated - the five women always have the upper hand; although they squabble tempestuously among themselves, they always retain some sort of advantage over the men.
Starting in 1778, when Mozart fell into their clutches in Mannheim at the age of twenty-two, the Weber women remained in his vicinity, humiliating and admiring him by turns, competing for his attention, singing his compositions (or marketing them in other ways), and repeatedly exploiting him. Each of the daughters did so according to her own nature - the overly loving Sophie, the diva Aloysia, lazy Constanze who was unable to rouse herself to do anything, and Josepha, the only workhorse in the stable of the money-grubbing Cilly.
All five went down in history because of Mozart. Whether they bore his children or created his operatic roles, whether they squandered his money or lent him some of their own (this, too, sometimes occurred!), after Mozart broke with Salzburg and bade his father Leopold goodbye, the Weber women became his family. However, he always remained on the outside looking in, while the Weber women arranged things among themselves. Mozart (as we said) does not make an appearance in this play - except as a corpse lying on the stage: the message is that the Weber women care for him, inherit from him, love him, and destroy him.
The exceptional British band "Tiger Lillies", together with a large orchestra and five actresses with excellent singing voices, provides the music for this reminiscence about Mozart. The band’s lead singer Martyn Jacques performs the songs, including Schikaneder’s ballad in falsetto, and also composed the music for the production together with Christian Kolonovits.
Felix Mitterer is one of Austria’s leading authors. He was born in 1948 in Achenkirch in Tyrol and grew up as the adopted child of farm labourer parents. In the early 1960s he studied at the teachers’ training academy in Innsbruck and then worked for ten years at the Innsbruck customs office. In 1970/1971, his writings began to be aired on the radio and published in newspapers and literary magazines. Felix Mitterer moved to Ireland in 1995. He is the author of many well-known plays, scripts, radio plays and children’s stories. In his first play, Kein Platz für Idioten (No Room for Idiots) , Mitterer himself played the leading role. Since then he has repeatedly made appearances as an actor in addition to his literary work.
"Felix Mitterer persistently deals with controversial themes. Nazism, homosexuality, terrorism, handicapped people ? his works always expose repressed and unacknowledged problems, thereby creating space for criticism", was one of the comments of the jury that awarded him the Ernst Toller literature prize in 2001. Most recently, Mitterer received the Prix Italia 2004 for his radio play Die Beichte (The Confession) .
Martyn Jacques, the founder of the "Tiger Lillies", grew up in the seamy London district of Soho. His songs describe prostitutes, drug addicts and other losers. Jacques also wrote the music for Shockheaded Peter , and he received the prestigious Olivier award for his achievements as a theatre musician.
Commissioned by WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006. A production by Vereinigte Bühnen Wien in cooperation with WIENER MOZARTJAHR 2006
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