With A Woman Who Knows What She Wants, the Jewish-Austrian composer Oscar Straus, one of the most successful composers of operettas in the 1920s and 1930s, created a masterpiece that embodied the operetta style of the Weimar Republic and, with hits like “Why shouldn’t a woman have an affair” and “Every woman has some desire”, threw the dominant stereotypes overbroad in a fresh and cheeky way. The text was penned by Alfred Grünwald, adapted from Louis Verneuil.
Glamour queen Manon Cavallini is an operetta diva who is idolized by all men… the full-blooded performers Dagmar Manzel and Max Hopp perform and sing their way with power and slapstick through 20 characters. This is a breathless tour de force where the orchestra can really show what it has under the direction of Adam Benzwi with a fusillade of marches, waltzes, foxtrots and chansons from the pen of Oscar Straus.
