Thomas Hürlimann

“Operetta is a decrepit genre, it isn’t fertile anymore; the reason for it being the most popular genre in the realm of theatre despite that is caused by (as it is known) the derivative mode (the melodies that have been played before resound as recognisable melodies from the start, the stories performed are story-less).” (Botho Strauß)

She goes to the opera, he is stuck in front of the TV. They reassure each other – not without causing comical misunderstandings and then seemingly resolving them – of their grand and everlasting emotions. After she seemingly has left, the household items start performing their own opera, an aria of jealousy begins, which could hardly be more absurd, and causes grotesque entanglements between them – she comes back earlier than expected, and he has summoned a prostitute in the meantime, but in the end this aria only leads back to the phoney starting point: their marriage, which suffocated from boredom ages ago.

A brilliant persiflage on the genre of grand opera and its atrophied version, operetta.