Music Theatre since 1990 - Schott Music

Synopsis
St. Petersburg (1.-3. scene): Sophie, a Russian orphan lives with her aunt Yadwigha. She falls in
love with Heinrich, but her aunt forbids her to marry him. So the two of them decide to escape.
Meanwhile Sophie’s aunt dies in St. Petersburg. Heinrich doesn’t really intend to marry Sophie
– she is too poor for him. He absconds. Eduard, their wedding witness, has to tell Sophie, who
is prostrate and decides to shoot herself. General Bosquet, a veteran of the Crimea war, takes
care of her as his own child. Sophie’s friend Nina writes a letter from St. Petersburg to tell
Sophie that Heinrich has married a rich woman. When General Bosquet dies Sophie, now an
orphan again, goes back to St. Petersburg, and decides to take revenge on Heinirch. He is lured
by a trick to a masked ball at Nina’s home, where he is exposed and shot in a duel with Gaston,
Sophie’s former devotee.
Die Rache einer russischen Waise
18.03.1993 Saarbrücken, Saarländisches Staatstheater, Alte Feuerwache
Rousseau’s work is a goldmine for satire. Girlish dreams of the fairy prince, love at first sight, a
guardian who stands in the way of young love, seduction, escape, unfaithfulness, lovesickness,
thoughts of suicide, duel, death: no stereotype is left unexplored. This work is a strange and unconventional
presentation of contemporary music theatre. What in Rousseau is still a utopian idyll,
becomes in Gruenauer and Kaiser a both pensive and cheerful game, juggling with feeling and
expression. (Opernwelt, Mai 1993)
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