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Der Zarewitsch, oder wie man das Publikum langweilt Vienna
Volksoper
04/13/2026 - & May 6, 26, June 3, 26*, September 15, 23, October 7, 19, 26, November 3, 18, 23, December 1, 2026
Franz Lehár: Der Zarewitsch
Ilker Arcayürek*/Timothy Fallon (Der Zarewitsch), Hedwig Ritter*/Anita Götz (Sonja, Kautschukoff), Martin Enenkel (Iwan), Juliette Khalil*/Jamie Petutschnig (Mascha)
Chor der Volksoper Wien, Holger Kristen (chorus master), Orchester der Volksoper Wien, Alfred Eschwé (conductor)
Steef de Jong (stage director, sets, costumes), Alex Brok (lighting), Wei Ken Liao (choreography), Jürgen Bauer (dramaturgy)
M. Enenkel, J. Khalil (© Barbara Pálffy/Volksoper Wien)
Franz Lehár’s Der Zarewitsch is a stage work based on a real historical character but which is as remote from reality as can be. The plot is loosely inspired by the life of Alexei, son of Peter the Great. Refusing his father’s ultimatum to either enter a monastery or pursue a military career, Alexei chose instead to flee to the Holy Roman Empire with his Finnish mistress, who disguised herself as a page. The couple remained in hiding for two years before Peter persuaded his son to return to Russia. Suspecting Alexei of plotting against him, Peter had him imprisoned and tortured. Alexei was convicted by the Russian Senate of conspiracy against his father and sentenced to death, but he in fact died from ill health brought on by the harsh conditions and abuse he endured in prison before the sentence could be carried out.
If that distortion was not problematic enough, Lehár chose to make the love interest one of a troupe of exotic Circassian dancers, one of the many nations subjugated by Imperial Russia. In 1864, after decades of war, the Russian Empire defeated Circassian resistance and carried out a campaign of deportation, village destruction, and mass violence. Hundreds of thousands of Circassians died from massacres, starvation, disease, and exposure during forced marches and overcrowded transport across the Black Sea. Most survivors were exiled to the Ottoman Empire. Historians describe these events as a genocide, while the Russian government did not. The result was the near‑total removal of the Circassian population from their ancestral homeland in the northwest Caucasus, and the creation of a large Circassian diaspora across modern‑day Turkey, the Middle East, and beyond. Lehár’s choice for the young prince’s lover to be one of these genocided people only a few decades after the event was offensive.
After an exceptional performance of Kálmán’s Die Csárdásfürstin and an entertaining “Gay Pride Edition” Die Fledermaus, I had high expectations for Volksoper’s production of Franz Lehár’s Der Zarewitsch. Alas, last night the public was subjected to amateur hour. Dutch director Steef de Jong must have found Lehár’s operetta terribly lightweight, as he had no qualms about deconstructing it.
To play with the operetta’s story involving the Russian heir to the throne, a lad averse to women, and more interested in sports and books, into the story of a gay man’s search for love is not the problem. It is defensible and even plausible, for in the original libretto, he befriends a dancer he initially thinks to be a young man. As he gets closer to him, he finds out that the boy who dresses up as Sonja is actually a woman. The staging would have been yet another gay appropriation of a stage work, such as making Gennaro and Orsini in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia lovers rather than best friends. The fact that Sonja masquerades as a boy to start with justifies the choice.
The problem is in de Jong making the operetta’s characters play out their roles as stage hands rehearsing a performance, denying make‑believe costumes and sets. De Jong opts instead for a handmade theatrical universe of drawings, live animation and cardboard sets. Hundreds of hand‑drawn images are manipulated in full view, filmed and projected onto a large screen, while a narrow strip of stage beneath functions like a studio in which the singers not only perform their roles but also help create the animated world around them. The result is a hybrid of operetta, paper theatre and live silent film. This was initially refreshing, but after ten minutes, it was utter tedium. As the projected animation was substantially larger than the singers dressed as stage hands, one’s attention was taken away from the singers to follow the inanity of the cartoonish narration.
The live animation, cardboard props and visible stage mechanics created an atmosphere of childlike wonder. But given the relative triviality of the story, the operetta does not withstand de Jong’s whimsical treatment. Instead of bittersweet melancholy, we get repetitive images of a doomed relationship. With the projected animation overwhelming the now secondary singers, the comic effect of Iwan and Mascha’s coupling was barely noticeable and felt artificially superimposed.
In the title role, Turkish tenor Ilker Arcayürek had the difficult task of embodying a hero far less sympathetic than the typical operetta tenor. Aljoscha is withdrawn, emotionally stunted and, for much of the evening, curiously passive. Arcayürek’s achievement was to make the character touching without sentimentalising him. Rather than presenting the Tsarevich as a generic romantic sufferer, he suggests a young man warped by isolation and courtly repression. Vocally, the role requires not only lyrical sweetness but also the ability to sustain Lehár’s long, yearning melodic lines without heaviness. Arcayürek proved a convincing exponent of this more introspective Lehár style, and he brought genuine pathos to a character who risks seeming merely inert.
Austrian soprano Hedwig Ritter was an appealing Sonja/Kautschukoff. Sonja serves as much more than just a romantic interest; she is the pivotal figure who unlocks Aljoscha’s capacity for tenderness and emotional vulnerability. Ritter gave the role warmth and poise, avoiding the temptation to overplay operetta charm or self‑sacrificing nobility. She made Sonja a credible emotional centre for the evening, and her presence ensured the love story would retain its humanity amid the stylized visual concept. Since Der Zarewitsch ultimately depends on our belief that Sonja represents a real emotional alternative to courtly imprisonment, such sincerity is no small asset.
Martin Enenkel and Juliette Khalil, as Iwan and Mascha, provided the evening’s comic relief. Lehár, like many operetta composers, uses the secondary couple to relieve the pressure of the central romance, yet there’s always a risk they’ll pull the evening into farce, more than they can bear. Given that almost all attention was to the projected animation and not to the singers, this danger was easily avoided. Enenkel and Khalil were lively and engaging, but they did not descend into the kind of mugging or grotesque overstatement that so often plagues operetta. For those able to concentrate on them and not the much larger projections, their scenes retained a modicum of charm and humour.
Under Alfred Eschwé, the musical side of the performance served Lehár’s score with idiomatic warmth. Der Zarewitsch may not have the effervescent rhythmic sparkle of Die lustige Witwe, but it contains some of the composer’s most touching lyrical inspiration, and it requires a conductor who understands the music must breathe without becoming sentimental. Eschwé’s reading gave the score shape and suppleness, allowing its melancholy cantabile to unfold naturally while keeping the evening alive and vital. This was especially important for an interval‑free performance of an hour and forty‑five minutes, where any dramatic lapse could be its death knell (in fact it did, but that was thanks to de Jong’s staging).
Sadly, de Jong’s take on Der Zarewitsch removed the champagne gaiety of “operetta” from the work, reducing it to an animated fairy tale with projected images. Concentrating on said projections impeded the characters from developing and prevented the audience from relating to them. Lehár’s work is called Der Zarewitsch, but de Jong’s production might almost claim a second title of its own: Der Zarewitsch, oder wie man das Publikum langweilt (“Der Zarewitsch, or how to bore an audience”).
Ossama el Naggar
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