Ciboulette | Staatsoper Hamburg

A title character named "Chives," love entanglements between aristocrats and greengrocers, baronesses and mistresses, a restaurant called "Zum smuchenden Hund," and music full of grace and esprit - these are the ingredients of Reynaldo Hahn's successful Parisian operetta, celebrated by French audiences for many decades and filmed as early as 1933. The composer was Marcel Proust's lover and friend, born in Caracas to a Venezuelan woman of Spanish-Basque descent and a Jewish merchant from Hamburg. Hahn had to flee Paris in 1940 to escape the German occupation, and after 1945 he was director of the Paris Opera. One hundred years after its premiere, Ciboulette is now coming to a German stage for the first time as a project of the International Opera Studio.