Take this waltz

“I’m a believer that anything is possible with music and theatre,” says Barrie Kosky.

The Australian-born Intendant of Komische Oper Berlin (KOB) is direct in his opinions about music, art, the possibilities therein, and the evolution of each. “What people have to understand is, don’t confuse a night in the theatre or at the opera with a night of going to the museum or the art gallery.”

Operetta has enjoyed a resurgence of sorts at various European companies, particularly at KOB, where, under Kosky’s leadership, it’s found a whole new, enthusiastic audience. The company has produced a string of successful hits by Berlin-based composers whose works were originally banned by the Third Reich for their Jewish authorship. Titles by Paul Abraham, Oscar Straus, and Emmerich Kalman have proven extremely popular with audiences, and Kosky has presented them in bold, colourful ways that pay respect to their origins while broadening their contemporary appeal. Yet the question of producing operetta, with its itinerant issues of relevance and attraction for modern audiences, is one that bears scrutiny, particularly at a time when opera companies, especially in North America, are looking to attract wider, more varied demographics.

“It’s a different, Figaro in and Papageno in ) and operetta (Agamemnon in and Silvius in ). “Operetta is a different kind of music, but it has value—it’s not like it’s bad music. There are bad pieces everywhere, and not-good operas too.”