The comic operas of Albert Lortzing were a staple in many queer teenagers’ parents’ record collections after the Second World War — at least according to editor Sven Limbeck in “Casta Diva: Der schwule Opernführer” (“Casta Diva: The Gay Opera Guide”). He points out these recordings featuring singers such as Anneliese Rothenberger and Ingeborg Hallstein possessed a strong camp factor that, for some listeners, served as a kind of coming-out aid. The best-known work by the composer, who was born in Berlin in 1801, is “Zar und Zimmermann” (1837), about the double life of Russian Tsar Peter I., who, under the name Peter Michaelov, engages in what today would probably be called industrial espionage in the Netherlands.

For many years, both the work itself and Lortzing more generally had disappeared from Berlin stages. Now the gay interim artistic director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Christoph Seuferle, has put the piece back on— which, in Winfried Bauernfeind’s legendary production jad been one of the company’s perennial audience favorites for decades. The new production features Antonello Manacorda (of the Kammerakademie Potsdam) as conductor and Berlin-based musical theatre director Martin G. Berger, who most recently turned “In Frisco ist der Teufel los” at the Komische Oper Berlin into a drag extravaganza with Ursli Pfister. Whether this new staging will be queer and/or pop-arty — or perhaps outright super-camp — remains to be seen. In any case, the famous “Wooden Shoe Dance” lends itself to all kinds of interpretations.