La Fleur

In a blend of historical and contemporary entertainment cultures, the transnational collective La Fleur examines the sociopolitical context of the Viennese operetta through the life and work of Emmerich Kálmán. Kálmán, a Hungarian Jew and one of Vienna’s most successful composers, was forced into artistic exile by the Nazis: his works were banned, and he fled to the United States. Exile, however, did not only mean loss—it became a catalyst for artistic transformation. In forced migration, new hybrid forms of expression emerged—between nostalgia and avant-garde, glamour and political reflection. The performers sing, dance, and analyze—accompanied by a string quintet—the operetta from a postcolonial perspective. They explore the productive tensions between European and non-European art, while also addressing the museal containment and aesthetic depoliticization of this once-vibrant genre in postwar Germany. The result is a witty, multilingual, and virtuosic performance that looks behind the genre’s dazzling facade, exposing its colonial, racialized, and gendered narratives. It reveals that operetta was never merely escapist. In exile, it unveils its potential as a subversive art form—open to rupture, transformation, and resistance.