The Impresario from Smyrna

Five singers and not an engagement in sight. Life is hard for the unsuccessful yet thoroughly vain divas of this comedy, forced to hold their ground in the grubby struggle for survival on the boards that, after all, mean the world. So they do everything they can, the higher the better, and now and then that means reaching for less than honest means.

Then a rich merchant turns up in town. He wants to found a new opera house back home and is looking for an ensemble. The agents and go-betweens scent fat commissions and put their singers forward. A game of intrigue, self-promotion and outsized vanity begins, a squabble over the longed-for contracts. And, as always, everything turns out differently than planned.

The inexperienced impresario, who has heard plenty about casting couches and other rumours of the trade, believes his dreams are about to come true and is bitterly disappointed. This business is exhausting, he decides, and resolves to look for his dream in another line of work.

A wild revue about money troubles and vanity, ingratiation and lost dignity, a macabre game played by the powerful with those who cannot afford anything else. Funny, and uncomfortably current.

Performed in German. Cast, production team and tour dates are listed on the German page.