A sort of “refined variety show”
The legacy of the disenses in contemporary musical theatre
Leo Dick
The stage and voice practice of the fortune-tellers in the early Parisian “Cabaret artistique” has left unmistakable traces in today’s composed theatre. The essay adumbrates a few lines of historical development and illuminates particular consequences of the transfer of cabaret practices between France and Germany: Mauricio Kagel and Georges Aperghis, but also contemporary students’ works prove that the bond between the radical and oppositional spirit of the Parisian cabaret and the aestheticizing procedures in the literary cabaret of German stem still strongly influences the music-theatrical production of our time. As a conclusion the paper deals with the question of further potential applications of this engagement with performance practice into classical vocal arts.
