About the work
Comic opera in two acts by Hans Werner Henze to a libretto by Ingeborg Bachmann after Wilhelm Hauff's 1827 parable "Der junge Engländer oder Der Affe als Mensch" (The Young Englishman, or The Ape as Man), first performed on 7 April 1965 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin under the musical direction of Christoph von Dohnányi. The premiere was a success noted across Europe and was quickly followed by productions at major houses.
Plot
In the small town of Hülsdorf-Gotha around 1830, the eccentric Englishman Sir Edgar at first keeps his exotic retinue apart from local society. When he introduces his supposed nephew, the young Lord Barrat, into polite society, the town is enthralled — until a ball reveals that Barrat is in fact a trained circus ape dressed as a man. Alongside this plot, the opera follows the romance between the townswoman's daughter Luise and the student Wilhelm.
Cultural significance
With its biting satire on provincialism, social conformity and the blind admiration of titles and foreign glamour, the opera became one of the most successful German-language stage works of the postwar era, reaching houses such as the New York City Opera as early as the early 1970s.