Marie Antoinette

The inspi­ra­tion for the drama musi­cal MARIE ANTOINETTE came from a Japan­ese book about the beau­ti­ful Queen of France who fell vic­tim to the mob of the French Revolution.

At age 14, the daugh­ter of the Aus­trian Empress, Maria There­sia, was mar­ried to the fat and ugly King of France. He couldn’t care less about his young bride, and soon Marie Antoinette went her own ways within the lux­u­ri­ous lifestyle of the Royal Court. Nightly excur­sions to Parisian gala events and secret affairs helped the young Queen to deal with her mis­er­able marriage.

Marie Antoinette — The Musical

When France sank into deep debts over the financ­ing of the Amer­i­can War, the coun­try suf­fered short­ages and infla­tion. For that, the cit­i­zens blamed their First Lady and her waste­ful behavior.

The French Rev­o­lu­tion brought Marie Antoinette under the blade of a never-resting revenge machine — the guillotine.

Ini­tially, Michael Kunze found this story to be lack­ing the cru­cial ele­ments of a good drama musi­cal: The pro­tag­o­nist must work her­self out of a hole, by fac­ing and over­com­ing per­sonal short­com­ings. In addi­tion, a pow­er­ful antag­o­nist should repeat­edly try to keep the hero from succeeding.

Michael solved this dilemma by cre­at­ing the char­ac­ter of Mar­grid Arnaud (antag­o­nist), a peas­ant girl of sim­i­lar age as Marie Antoinette (pro­tag­o­nist). In fact, these two woman had a lot in com­mon, except for the lux­ury of one and the bit­ter poverty of the other. No won­der there was noth­ing but hatred and igno­rance between Marie and Mar­grid. Over the course of the drama musi­cal, how­ever, their oppo­si­tion soft­ens and they begin to rec­og­nize parts of them­selves in the other person.

Musi­cal Marie Antoinette — Mar­grid Arnaud

MARIE ANTOINETTE — The Musi­cal — pre­miered on Novem­ber 2, 2006, in Tokyo. The Euro­pean bow hap­pened on Jan­u­ary 30, 2009, at the Musi­cal The­ater Bremen.

Watch the video here!