The Cousin from Batavia

Show Description:

For its 2000 summer season, Ohio Light Opera introduced into its repertoire a composer and work that were totally unknown to virtually its entire patron base. Eduard Künneke’s 1921 operetta Der Vetter aus Dingsda, presented at OLO under the title The Cousin from Batavia, is well known in Central Europe and recognized there as the greatest operetta to emerge from the Berlin school.  It was such a hit at OLO that it was brought back a mere two years later—a distinction that no show since has enjoyed. And now, almost a quarter century later, you will once again be able to revel in a jazzy musical score replete with waltzes, tangos, and fox trots. The comic, but sentimental, storyline is set in Holland and concerns a young lady, Julia, who is so enamored of her long-vanished (to Batavia) childhood playmate Roderich that she is willing to believe that a visiting stranger, who has fallen for her and is thus willing to maintain the deception, is none other than her long-lost friend. Under a little pressure from Julia’s aunt and uncle, the stranger calls on his full imagination to describe his seven years in Batavia—the song erupts into a glorious septet. All is sailing along splendidly … that is, until the real Roderich actually pops in from the South Seas.