Moral

The delightful Johann Strauss comic opera Die Fledermaus was mercilessly lampooned in this truly bizarre production. For starters, a framing device has been added: After appearing in 300 consecutive appearances of Fledermaus (which translates as The Bat) the lead tenor (Georg Alexander) imagines that he's seeing bats everywhere. Driven a bit over the edge by all this, he falls asleep and has a nightmare about the opera, with a group of non-singers cast in the leading roles. The original libretto about romantic assignations, political imprisonments and mistaken identity is burlesqued to the hilt: at one point, the hero finds out that his prison cell is surrounded by rubber tubes!

A sculptor, an enemy of modern art, sets an example. He sculpts a statue of Venus in the style of the Greek antiquity and buries it in a forest. When it's dug up in 1930, it's considered to be a 2 000 year old, antique statue.

German all-star musical from 1938 that was a big commercial success.

The famous tightrope artist Truxa is drinking at the Artisan bar in New York. He meets a young man, Husen, and gives him his stage name Truxa. He is to take the real Truxa's place at a circus show in Wintergarten, Berlin. Alternate-language version, or remake, filmed in the UK and released in 1938 as STAR OF THE CIRCUS (q.v.)