TIRANA, August 6 – Tirana’s Grand Park hosted The Coffee Cantata on Wednesday evening. The concert featured an Albanian-language performance of the satirical work by German composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
The event formed part of the “Bah… Café!” project with the support of the Municipality of Tirana. It combined classical music with stage performance and offered audiences an open-air cultural experience at the Artificial Lake Park.
Meanwhile, the audience welcomed the performance, which blended humor, theatre and Baroque music. The Parks and Recreation Agency contributed to the organization of the concert at the park.
Bach composed The Coffee Cantata, one of his secular works, between 1732 and 1734 for performance at Zimmermann’s Coffee House in Leipzig by the Collegium Musicum. Picander wrote the libretto.
The work tells the story of a father who tries to persuade his daughter, Lieschen, to give up drinking coffee. He threatens to ban her walks, new clothes and even marriage. However, she refuses to abandon what she calls a drink “sweeter than a thousand kisses.”
In the end, Lieschen only pretends to give in. Secretly, she decides to marry only a man who guarantees her the freedom to drink coffee whenever she wishes. The cantata closes with a humorous message that daughters will never abandon the coffee habit shared by their mothers and grandmothers.
/a.p./
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