This latest rediscovery in Kosky’s ongoing revival of Berlin’s operetta tradition comes with weighty historical baggage. It’s also a funny, gloriously theatrical entertainment, complete with showgirls, pyrotechnics and sizzling saxophones. No living director walks that stylistic tightrope with more intelligence and verve than Kosky...I can’t imagine a better demonstration of why this genre matters – or a more enjoyable one.

No doubt the show is a rip-roaring attraction, compounded of Kosky’s familiar mix of provocation, camp and theatrical wizardry. It’s a treat. But there is equally no doubt that Frühlingsstürme, a light cocktail of film-noir spy thriller and operetta clichés, exotically set in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war, is here upstaged by its staging.