So imagine the challenge, then, of adapting the story of America’s first treasury secretary for a German-speaking audience — preserving the rhythm, the sound, and the sensibility of the original musical while translating its dense libretto into a language characterized by multisyllabic compound nouns and sentences that often end with verbs, and all in a society that has minimal familiarity with the show’s subject matter.

The animals in a zoo in Germany were depressed and never left their dens. This happened during the pandemic. Nobody went there anymore, neither children nor adults. The zoo remained empty. So the zoo keeper called this pianist to play for them…. And see what happened.