The young heir to the throne, Alyosha, is deeply unhappy and lonely. On the one hand, he has withdrawn into his palace; on the other, he longs for nothing more than a person who truly understands him.

At last, he meets this “angel” who breaks through his emotional armor. But can love endure in a world shaped by constraints? In 1927, The Tsarevich premiered in Berlin. In his later work, Lehár increasingly moved closer to opera; The Tsarevich also has little in common with the dance- and jazz-influenced operettas of its time and is permeated with melancholy. Yet humor is not neglected, thanks to the comic duo Ivan and Mascha, who experience their own lively love story within the operetta.

The Dutch director and artist Steef de Jong relocates the story—originally set in Russia—into a universal fairy-tale world and focuses entirely on the slowly blossoming love story. Through beautiful and imaginative drawings and animations, filmed live and projected, as well as cardboard stage sets, an aesthetic universe emerges that combines operetta, visual art, and animated film—perfectly matching Lehár’s music and brought to life by just four singers, along with the orchestra and chorus of the Volksoper. 

(Source: volksoper.at)