Tonight: Lola Blau

Jewish stage performer Lola Blau is looking forward to her first engagement at the Landestheater Linz, but Hitler's rise to power in Austria shatters her dreams. While her boyfriend Leo and her uncle Paul emigrate, she continues to keep her head above water as a nightclub singer - and initially ignores the growing anti-Semitism. Eventually, she also emigrates to America, where she becomes a successful star as a sex bomb. However, she feels alienated and lonely there, and her love for her boyfriend Leo leads her back to her "homeland".

"Her transformation from blue-eyed firebrand to sharp-tongued and melancholy survivor is traced above all by Kreisler's exquisite chansons: sometimes cheeky, poetic, sarcastic or deadly sad, always eloquent and with catchy melodies - a multi-colored arc of songs that touches and entertains." (Anne Freyer, Bad. Zeitung)

"Lola Blau is basically the story of an impotence... She really wants nothing more than to dance and sing a little and has to realize that it's no use just trying to get a modest place in the sun..." (Georg Kreisler)

Georg Franz Kreisler came from an Austrian Jewish family. Due to his Jewish origins, he emigrated to the United States with his parents after the National Socialists came to power in Austria in 1938 and became a US citizen in 1943. He returned to Europe in 1955.
With his black, profound humor and linguistic wit, Kreisler strongly influenced the musical German-language cabaret of his time as a performer and author of his own works.

Lola Blau is performed by Julia Ibrahim,
accompanied on the piano by Florian Bischof,
directed by Jesse Coston.