Der Zarewitsch

Operetta by Franz Lehár

In German language with German and English surtitles

No Pause

The young successor to the throne Aljoscha is unhappy and tormented by loneliness. He avoids contact with women, yet he longs for another person. Eventually, he meets a young man – who, in Lehár’s version, is a girl in disguise. However, for Dutch director and artist Steef de Jong, the situation is more complex … He relocates the story, originally set in Russia, to a more universal fairytale world, focusing entirely on the slowly blossoming love story. He uses beautiful drawings and animations, filmed live and projected, creating a work of art that blends operetta and animated film, capturing the melancholy of Lehár’s music while also adding humor and lightness.

Synopsis

The plot of Der Zarewitsch is loosely based on a true story: the self-imposed exile of the son of Peter the Great, Alexei, who shirked his father's command to become a monk or take interest in the military by running away to his brother-in-law's kingdom, the Holy Roman Empire, with his Finnish mistress disguised as a page. The couple spent two years in hiding until Alexei was compelled by his father to return. His father was paranoid that Alexei was conspiring against him and ultimately Alexei ended up being imprisoned and tortured. The Russian senate convicted him of conspiring against his father and he was sentenced to death. He died due to ill health before he could be executed, most likely resulting from the poor treatment he received while imprisoned.

Reichert's libretto differs on several points from the life of Alexei. First, he changed the story so that the young girl, Sonja, is first seen disguised as a male Circassian dancer. When the Tsarevich runs away with Sonja he believes that she is a boy adding what Richard Traubner of Opera News called an "underlying homosexual frisson" to the operetta.[This quote needs a citation] Eventually the young prince discovers that Sonja is in fact a girl disguised as a boy. The two fall in love and escape to Naples. A further major difference is that the operetta does not have such a tragic ending, though it is not exactly happy either. Eventually the Zarewitsch learns that his father has died and he knows his relationship cannot continue with Sonja as he is now the Tsar. The operetta ends with a "bittersweet royal–commoner parting".