{"id":178110,"date":"2026-04-28T10:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T10:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/178110\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T10:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T10:37:07","slug":"opera-philadelphias-new-season-includes-a-comedy-about-fascism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/178110\/","title":{"rendered":"Opera Philadelphia’s new season includes a comedy about fascism"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

In George and Ira Gershwin\u2019s \u201cLet \u2018Em Eat Cake\u201d, a fictional U.S. president denies his lost re-election, reclaims the presidency in a fascist coup and capitalizes on his own dictatorship. Along the way, he launched a business selling blue shirts, turns the Supreme Court into a baseball team and redesigns the White House.\n<\/p>\n

The plot of the Ira and George Gershwin comic musical \u201cLet \u2018Em Eat Cake\u201d was written 93 years ago and has not been seen onstage in America in almost as long. Now, Opera Philadelphia is bringing it back in its upcoming 2026-2027 season.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to think about what these great artists were writing about in 1933 and how it still rings resonant,\u201d said Anthony Roth Costanzo, the company\u2019s general director and president. \u201dThe music itself, when you sing it with operatic voices \u2014 just like \u2018Porgy and Bess\u2019 \u2014 it takes on a really operatic quality.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"AnthonyAnthony Roth Costanzo is general director and president of the Opera Philadelphia. (Lisa Pavlova courtesy of Opera Philadelphia)<\/p>\n

\u201cLet \u2018Em Eat Cake\u201d flopped when it opened on Broadway to poor reviews, with critics at the time saying the story about a farcical dictatorship \u201cwanders dreamily away into demented unreality.\u201d<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

It has not been fully staged in America since the original production closed after 90 performances<\/a>. Costanzo has programmed it for January.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we go into the midterm elections, we can be really responsive to the moment we\u2019re in,\u201d he said. \u201cTo have an opera that feels so pertinent to what\u2019s going on and what people are thinking about and talking about on both sides, it feels like a cathartic, hilarious, terrifying reflection. Opera\u2019s goal is to make you feel things, and I think this is going to make people feel a lot of things.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLet \u2018Em Eat Cake\u201d was written as the sequel to the Gershwins\u2019 wildly popular \u201cOf Thee I Sing,\u201d a satire poking fun at American politics featuring a presidential candidate, who runs on a love platform. \u201cOf Thee I Sing\u201d became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize.
\n\"WilliamWilliam Gaxton, Lois Moran and Victor Moore in a 1933 promotional photo for the original Broadway version of \u201dLet \u2018Em Eat Cake\u201d at the Imperial Theatre in New York. (Courtesy of the Opera Philadelphia)\n<\/p>\n

Its sequel was distinctively darker and more cynical. A New York Times reviewer called it \u00a0\u201cmerciless and mirthless.\u201d<\/a> The musical did not resonate with Depression-era audiences who, presumedly, were not interested in stories about dictatorships for entertainment, although one song from \u201cLet \u2018Em Eat Cake\u201d called \u201cMine\u201d<\/a> eventually entered the American songbook.\n<\/p>\n

In 1978, co-writer of the book for \u201cLet \u2018Em Eat Cake,\u201d Morrie Ryskind, told The New York Times<\/a> that \u201cwe went for a Marx Brothers kind of lunacy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Costanzo said it\u2019s a cartoonish farce, yet also a musical masterpiece.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see that the Supreme Court is made into a baseball team, for example, they do a \u2018Sis boom bah!\u2019 cheer, except they replace some of those syllables with \u2018Habeas corpus! Ra! Ra! Ra!\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt is in a way very, very silly and ridiculous. But also, Gershwin writes in all these familiar American tunes that descend into minor key. It\u2019s fascinating musical writing from Gershwin where he\u2019s really telling a story in his music.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6161,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-178110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-opera-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}