The Baker and his Yeast

My new musical comedy, “Des Kaisers neue Walzer (The Emperor’s new Waltz)“ will have its world premiere at the Salzburg State Theatre on March 4. (Details in German below.) It’s a romantic comedy about a billionaire’s daughter, who is obsessed with Mozart and wants to be a conductor, and a poor gardener who’s a talented singer-songwriter. So it’s the love story of two young people, but also the love story of two musical worlds: the classical and the popular. The opera is also a parody on the tuneless world of modernist classical music. I want to emphasize, however, that this is not a criticism of the music of any particular composer. I have enormous respect for all composers who in good faith bring their music in front of an audience, regardless of whether I like their music personally or not. My opera only parodies an ideology, which has dominated the world of classical music in the last generations, and which dictates to audiences and to aspiring composers alike what ’serious m