"After Werner Egk's "Revisor", the repertoire of the German opera stage, chronically at a loss for cheerful works, has now gained a new opportunity in Freiburg: "Des Kaisers neue Kleider", a chamber opera by the 31-year-old Genzmer pupil Bertold Hummel, was premiered in the Großes Haus. The libretto by Oskar Gitzinger summarises Hans Christian Andersen's satirical fairy tale of an emperor whose vanity clouds his mind until he struts along in his pants as the victim of two charlatans, acclaimed by the blind-faithful people. Only the impartiality of a child is able to reveal the rather naked truth. Emperor and people admit their self-deception and plead guilty together.

Bertold Hummel has ventured from church music into the milieu of these cheerfully moralising yarn spinners and bag cutters. He summarised the individual images in strict musical forms and accompanied the burlesque events with a chamber orchestra of four woodwinds, a trumpet, three violas, two cellos, a double bass, piano and rich percussion, partly illustrative, partly contrapuntal. Despite the demands placed on the soloists and choir, his music is pleasing, although the instrumentation is occasionally a little perforated.

The Freiburg premiere under the musical direction of Günther Wich was staged by Reinhard Lehmann in Renate Riß's particularly attractive decorations, crowned by elegantly curved coat hangers. The Emperor was sung by Carl Schlottmann. The entertaining little work was warmly received by the audience."

Bertold Hummel has turned Andersen's fairy tale into an ironic musical joke. He has given each of the five pictures a self-contained musical form. In the second picture, where the two tailors Jacques and Christian make the court marshal believe he has new clothes, a satire of modern dance rhythms is pleasing.... His chamber opera, which has now been premièred, shows the expert, the formal designer who gives nothing to himself or the audience.