LOVE LANGUAGES

A cabaret performance in Vienna’s smallest opera house

In Vienna, there’s the Staatsoper (very large, very elegant, very impressive, opened in 1869) and the Volksoper (not quite as large, more relaxed, somewhat whimsical, opened in 1898), and then there’s the LEO, the Letztes Erfreuliches Operntheater, rendered in English as the Last Enjoyable Opera Theater (very small, very relaxed, ready to rumble, opened in 1993). As an American visiting Vienna who packs light, I was extremely underdressed for the first one, somewhat so for the second, and more or less on target for the third.

Tucked away on a side street in a fin de siècle former bakery, the LEO bills itself as “the smallest opera house in Vienna, perhaps even in all of Europe.” Who could resist? I was curious, and so I added it to my agenda for my visit to the city—and I was not disappointed.

LEO is indeed small. It seats about 50 in folding chairs with cushioned seats. Yet it takes itself seriously as an opera house. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling; electric candles in wall sconces provide an elegant atmosphere. A bar offers wine and other beverages. A scarlet curtain covers the stage until the show begins. On this past Tuesday night, the show appeared to be sold out.

Jasmin Bilek and Stefan Fleischhacker

Past productions at LEO have included Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (Girl of the Golden West). Upcoming productions include a Verdi gala and Der Ring des Nibelungen (in a single evening!), all performed on a stage about the size of a one-car garage. Much of that tiny stage was occupied by the gleaming black grand piano that serves as the company’s orchestra on the night I was there to see Dream the Impossible Dream, a cabaret performance featuring singers Jasmin Bilek and Stefan Fleischhacker with Ruglada Lee on piano.

The theme of the evening was “Of Great and Small Loves.” It included selections by Italian superstar Claudio Baglioni and French chanteuse Edith Piaf. Bilek and Fleischhacker sang German renditions of “A Whole New World” from Disney’s Aladdin and “I’m Always True to You in My Fashion” from Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, as well as many English-language renditions of songs such as “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Big Spender,” and “For Your Eyes Only.” Bilek delivered most of the English-language songs in this first half of the show in perfectly accented and inflected English appropriate to each song. Fleischhacker delivered the Italian and many, though not all, of the German numbers.

Jasmin Bilek

Both singers changed costumes multiple times, Fleischhacker occasionally in drag appropriate to Vienna’s Jugendstil art movement of the early 1900s. Both performers flirted, teased, and joked their way through their performances in a manner very reminiscent of the between-the-wars era, in which sexual and social mores were challenged and overturned. Bilek left the stage to move among the audience members at times, coquettishly rubbing heads and sitting on laps.

The second half of the show featured a moving selection of songs from West Side Story, with Bilek and Fleischhacker taking the roles of Maria and Tony as each song required, culminating in a duet on “Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us).”

With my rudimentary understanding of German, I didn’t “get” all the jokes. Nor were all the French, Italian, or German songs familiar to me. Yet the performances were engaging enough, and the number of English songs sufficient, for me to feel that LEO had provided a perfectly delightful experience of one aspect of Vienna’s many musical riches during my visit to the city.

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photos by Luiza Puiu

Dream the Impossible Dream
Theatre LEO (Letztes Erfreuliches Operntheater)
Ungargasse 18 in Vienna, Austria
ends on March 26, 2026
for tickets (€10-€35), call 43 680 335 47 32 or visit LEO or Wien Ticket

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BIO: Lynne Weiss is a member of the Boston Theater Critics Association. Her work has also appeared in Literary Ladies Guide and in The Common, Black Warrior Review, and the Ploughshares Blog. She has an MFA from UMass Amherst and has received residencies from Yaddo, the Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center and grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. A lifelong social justice activist, she is at work on a novel set in 1930s Cornwall. Her reviews, travel tales, and progressively optimistic opinions are on her substack.