Martha

When Lady Harriet Durham, a maid-of-honour to the English Queen, is dreadfully bored again, she comes up with a brilliant idea: Together with her confidante Nancy, she disguises herself as the peasant girl »Martha« and also makes sure that she is hired at Richmond market by the rich tenant farmer Plumkett and his foster-brother Lyonel. Naturally, the noble ladies turn out to be not good at all at housework – but on the other hand, they're pretty adept at other things…

Loriot's legendary staging (first developed in 1986 at the State Theatre, Stuttgart) does not try to brush away the sensitive passages in Flotow's musically sophisticated light opera, which was premiered extremely successfully in Vienna in 1847. In the precisely detailed interpretation that is typical of Loriot, he not only makes the plot, which is in danger of becoming sentimental, bearable through adding a touch of enchanting irony but also, through his artistic skill, creates a delicate framework of staging and costumes.