Cast a Diva

Dagmar Manzel was already a star when she was playing one great role after another at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. But it was only when she joined forces with Barrie Kosky at the Komische Oper, in works such as Kiss Me, Kate, Ball im Savoy, The Pearls of Cleopatra, and Sweeney Todd, that she truly conquered the worlds of operetta and musicals – and became an acclaimed diva. This is precisely how the Finnish composer and jazz pianist Iiro Rantala saw her on stage, and was so captivated that, together with his librettist Minna Lindgren, he wrote a ‘songspiel’ tailored especially for her: Cast a Diva. With this title, anyone detecting a playful nod to a certain famous aria from Bellini’s Norma would not be entirely mistaken.

Tonight, with the help of her fantastically talented fellow actor Sylvester Groth, Dagmar Manzel will play a character who is not herself, but could possibly be, if she were not already who she is. And this alternative version of Dagmar Manzel – who bears no resemblance to her whatsoever – discovers one day that there are people in her scene who feel compelled to comment on her advancing age. She won’t have it! Have you ever seen a diva lose her composure?

With passion, wit, and melancholy, Iiro Rantala, Minna Lindgren, and director Ingo Kerkhof present the delights and torments of a diva who has reached an age at which being a diva no longer comes quite so effortlessly. For the swinging soundtrack, Iiro Rantala himself sits at the piano each evening, joined by a small, personally selected jazz combo.