Szenen zweier Ehen

An Evening of Opera in Two One-Acters

Who wears the pants in a marriage? The correct answer would be: No one, because they just get in the way. Yet, both then and now, men like to see themselves as the heads of the household. With scenes from two marriages, the Munich Chamber Opera presents a double bill that showcases comic opera for what it can be: a precise tool for dissecting male self-delusions—and a view of the fragile balance of cohabitation that is as entertaining as it is accurate.

Male Identity Crisis

In Georg Philipp Telemann’s *Intermezzi Pimpinone* and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s *Susanna’s Secret*, these male self-images are dismantled with obvious delight. What was intended to be a confident order turns out to be a fragile facade: here, the dapper yet overwhelmed Pimpinone; there, the jealously suspicious Count Gil—two men who fail not so much because of their wives’ infidelity as because of their own notions of how marriage is supposed to work.

Female Power

The women? Vespetta and Susanna act with that blend of intelligence, pragmatism, and subversive wit that quietly but permanently undermines the men’s fantasies of control. In the end, little remains of their claimed authority other than a pose and the realization: In a relationship, you can’t hide anything—and certainly not yourself.

Cast

Aris Alexander Blettenberg – Arrangement & Musical Direction
Felix Scharff – Direction & Adaptation
Jan-Henrik Witkowski – Pimpinone
Florentine Schumacher – Vespetta
Lucija Spevec – Susanna
Lars Conrad – Count Gil
Yasmin Li – Dancer & Servant Sante