Operetta and the Beautiful Game image

Operetta and the Beautiful Game

2024 Season: Roxy and Her Wonder Team

$17,915 raised

$20,000 goal

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Roxy and Her Wonderteam tells the madcap story of a runaway bride who stows away with a touring soccer team. Abraham’s infectious score, with its blistering jazz melodies and extravagant dance numbers, was written at the height of the craze for the 1934 Austrian “Wunderteam” which had taken European soccer by storm. The show was a hit in Budapest and Vienna and was made into a film in 1937. With the unmistakable drumbeat of fascism on the horizon, Roxy is both an homage to the team and a not-so-subtle final poke in the eye at the Nazi craze for sports and the absurd pageantry of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was the last hurrah of the celebrated Jewish humor and wit of operetta that had flourished in Vienna for over 50 years.