About the work
“Comedian Harmonists – Eine Erinnerung in mehreren Stimmen” (“A Memory in Several Voices”) is a music theatre piece written by Cordula Däuper (book and direction) and Johannes Müller (book), with musical arrangements by Jörg Daniel Heinzmann. It premiered on 27 February 2025 at the Schlosstheater Schwetzingen, staged by Nationaltheater Mannheim, and tells the story of the vocal ensemble Comedian Harmonists, founded in Berlin in 1927, through memories and documentary material.
Plot
Five singers and a pianist come together in a Berlin apartment in December 1927, after Harry Frommermann's newspaper advertisement, inspired by recordings of the American group The Revelers. The piece follows the six musicians from their difficult beginnings through their 1930 breakthrough in Leipzig and international success to the ensemble's forced break-up in 1935, when three Jewish members were banned from performing and the group dissolved amid persecution and exile.
Cultural significance
The piece continues a series of Däuper and Müller's own biographical music theatre evenings about musical figures such as Cole Porter, Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel, while keeping alive the memory of a Weimar-era ensemble destroyed by Nazi persecution.