Anatevka

(Fiddler on the Roof / Der Fiedler auf dem Dach) | Based on the stories of Scholem Alejchem with the express permission of Perl Arnold

Book by Joseph Stein, music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, German by Rolf Merz and Gerhard Hagen

The musical from 1964 is based on the novel »Anatevka / The Story of Tevje, the Milkman« by Scholem Alejchem, who had adopted the Jewish greeting »Scholem alejchem« / »Peace be with you« as a pseudonym for his literary work, which was completed in 1916. The story is set at the beginning of the last century at a time when Jewish communities in Eastern Europe were increasingly threatened by anti-Semitic pogroms, resulting in a large wave of emigration of the Jewish population to America and Palestine.

»If I were rich one day ...« dreams the Jewish milkman Tevje at the beginning of the musical. However, he not only has money worries, but above all problems with his daughters, who have recently rebelled against the strict rules of tradition that had previously held the world of the shtetl together. Instead of submitting to the marriages that the matchmaker Jente proposes to the head of the family Tevje as usual, Zeitel, Hodel and Chava suddenly choose their husbands themselves.

But the Jewish community is not only threatened from within. In the middle of Zeitel's wedding to the tailor Mottel, soldiers devastate the village, which the Jews are forced to leave within a few days. Tevje's family is also scattered to the four winds.

It is the »despite«, the »laughing through tears« of the simply moving, rousing and comforting music, in which traditional Jewish sounds meet modern Broadway sound, that made the musical by composer Jerry Bock a worldwide success.