Strahlender Mond (Der Vetter aus Dingsda)

Der Vetter aus Dingsda opened at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz in Berlin on 15 April 1921, with a libretto by Herman Haller and Fritz Oliven, and became by a wide margin Künneke's most successful piece. A young heiress waits for the cousin who left for Batavia seven years earlier; two strangers turn up at the country house and each is taken for him. The score keeps the operetta apparatus small — no nobility, no ballroom finale — and leans on syncopation and the dance rhythms then arriving from America. Berlin operetta of the 1920s effectively starts here.