Dancing on a Volcano: A Berlin Kabarett

Angelina Réaux, actress and classical singer, created A Berlin Kabarett with music by composers who were either lost in the Holocaust, forced into exile, or silenced by the Nazis. Réaux, together with Dr. Alan Lareau, an expert on Berlin cabaret and professor of German at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, undertook painstaking research all over Europe to uncover these songs, which they eventually discovered in the form of old sheet music and manuscripts hidden in publisher archives, Berlin libraries, and family attics. Originally performed in Berlin clubs before the outbreak of World War II, kabarett was a way to express anti-Third Reich sentiment and became an enormously popular form of entertainment. The majority of German cabaret music was destroyed by the Nazis, but the surviving songs are brought to life by Réaux in her cabaret performance.