Theatre
D'Mumm Sěs oder De Gêscht
Not translated into English
Synopsis
In Clausen, at the foot of the town, under Austrian rule, Mumm Séis, a pious and timid washerwoman, is bringing up her niece Kettéi, who loves Péiter; their neighbour Sprochmates would rather marry her to his own son. Another neighbour, the Hexentommes, an amateur exorcist, covets the old woman's property and wants to marry her. He makes her believe that the ghost of a former love, the gunner Gottlieb Hurra, haunts her house, and offers to free her from it, with Sprochmates assigned to play the ghost.
Context
Text and music were written in August 1855 at the Grand-Chef hotel in Mondorf, and the piece was first performed on 11 November of the same year by the Luxembourg gymnastics society, then printed by Bück in 1856 and reissued in 1858. The author also made a German version, Mutter Suse. Two of its songs, that of the grand master sorcerer and that of the gunner, are among the best-known airs of Luxembourg musical theatre. Alain Atten reissued it in 1994, and Samuel Hamen made a new version of it in 2023 for the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg.
Who it is for
For anyone who likes musical comedies, with a fake ghost and a thwarted marriage, in a suburb of Luxembourg of days gone by.
Prizes and reception
Counted among the best-known operettas of its author, it was revived for the bicentenary of his birth.