Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz’s operetta Im weißen Rößl (The White Horse Inn) is a delightful lighthearted work which, in terms of both its themes and music, anticipates the golden age of the Hollywood musical.
Im weißen Rößl was originally co-written by Gustav Kadelburg and the Berlin theatre director, Oscar Blumenthal who came up with the idea for the comedy after witnessing the amorous designs of a headwaiter on the widowed owner of a hotel he once stayed at while on vacation. What he saw provided the entire premise for the play.
Im weißen Rößl opened, as a play, in Berlin in 1897; by 1926 it had been made into a film; the only thing that had not yet been done was to create a musical version which The White Horse Inn’s humour clearly called out for.
Benatzky and Stolz’s operetta, like the play, was premiered in Berlin. Following its first performance in the German capital on 8 November 1930, it went on to be staged in theatres all over the world, including London, Paris, Vienna and New York.
Leopold Brandmeyer, headwaiter at The White Horse Inn, is hopelessly in love with his boss, the owner of the inn, Josepha Vogelhuber. She however is more interested in one of her guests, a lawyer, Dr. Erwin Siedler, who is representing a client called Sülzheimer in a business dispute. Siedler makes the faux pas of falling for his client’s opponent’s daughter, Ottilie Giesecke, only for her father, Wilhelm, to see advantage in swapping a lawsuit for an engagement by marrying Ottilie off to Sülzheimer’s son, Sigismund, who has just turned up at the inn. And so it continues: a comedy of errors which has each character chasing the wrong person, with hilarious results.
