The piano on the proscenium is surrounded by US soldiers.

No wonder, because a musical star performed a song in the middle of the Second World War: "Love In A Mist", breathes Dionne Wudu, the main actress in the late Austrian premiere of Kurt Weill's "One Touch Of Venus", with a soft voice into the microphone and With her front performance, she reminds us that Marlene Dietrich was originally supposed to have sung Venus at the premiere in New York in 1943.

At the same time, this prologue at the Graz Opera reveals the setting of the director Magdalena Fuchsberger, who wrote "Ein Hauch von Venus", the title of the German version, at the time Weill's musical comedy was being written, i.e. shortly after the USA entered the world war. settled.

Accordingly, a devastated scenario usually dominates the stage: A towering scaffolding with several ladders and staircases stands in the middle of the revolving stage, all around are the ruins of a sculpture whose rather unequal proportions can never fit together, no matter how busy a crowd of art students are about the restoration of the statue strives.

Set designer Monika Biegler wants to tell us that repairing the damage caused by war is just as impossible as turning an artificial character that has come to life back into stone.

Because Weill's musical is based on a Pygmalion adaptation that has in part been transferred into the ironic: Due to the resemblance to a childhood sweetheart, the New York art collector Whitelaw Savory (the lithe Ivan Oreščanin) wants nothing more than to bring the perfectly designed Venus statue to life.

A hairdresser, Rodney Hatch (the youthful, bright Christof Messner), succeeds in doing this by putting an engagement ring, actually intended for his girlfriend (Corina Koller as resolute Gloria Kramer), on the stone goddess of love.

Whereupon the awakened Venus promptly falls in love with Rodney and causes strange confusion, which ultimately leads to a happy ending for the two of them.

Because convinces with musical skills, also in the musical genre

It is still too little known in Central Europe that Kurt Weill composed ten musicals in American exile, some of which were very different, of which “Street Scene” or “Lady In The Dark” are among the best of the genre.

The criticism that the composer had pandered to the US entertainment industry must be questioned for two reasons: On the one hand, Weill would hardly have been able to continue the path he had started in Europe in the USA, as even his " The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”.

On the other hand, the composer never denied himself, but convinces with musical skill even in the apparently light musical genre.

This can also be seen in "One Touch Of Venus", which unfortunately had to be played in the sometimes somewhat clumsy German translation, since the Kurt Weill Foundation of Music had forbidden a mixed version.

On the other hand, it's great how Weill combines the most diverse rhythms: the rumba from Venus' and Rodney's love duet "Speak Low", which is used almost as a leitmotif, is followed by a brisk cancan, and the operetta-like waltz in "Foolish Heart" is followed by swinging big band sounds, which in turn Add slow waltz rhythms.

This is dramaturgically so skilfully built that the very different sources of the songs - operetta, musical, light music and jazz - naturally flow into one another under the safe direction of Marcus Merkel.

No wonder Broadway audiences loved "One Touch Of Venus"

Stale humor

The libretto by SJ Perelman and Ogden Nash, which was tailored entirely to the American vision of a “Perfect Family”, also stood in the way of its reception in Europe after the war.

With clever instinct, Marlene Dietrich canceled her participation after reading the text because she found Venus to be too profane.

In fact, the libretto, written entirely from the male perspective, leaves the goddess of love brought to life little choice but to become either a glamor girl or a housewife in the human world of the 1940s.

This is reminiscent of screwball comedies of the time, such as the film His Girl Friday, in which Rosalind Russell, a bright and successful reporter, ends up giving up her career to marry the newspaper editor played by Cary Grant.

Unfortunately, the director Magdalena Fuchsberger was not able to counteract this either, as she concentrated too much on the war background, which of course has little to do with the content of the play.

In addition, the good choreography by Alexander Novikov also slipped into tastelessness, such as a dance with wooden grenade launchers in the second act. Even the glamor of the Graz Ballet with red feather pom-poms on the steep stairs could not cover it up.

After all, Venus is cast with an Afro-German mezzo-soprano, Dionne Wudu, who gives the goddess of love great stage presence.

With a little more imaginative directing, she could certainly have easily counteracted some of the libretto's clichés.