Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester will play a very different venue tonight in their concert at the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
"We wear tuxedos on stage," Max Raabe, singer and founder of the group, said. "The violin player doesn't wear feather boas on stage, and I don't have a top hat when I enter the stage. That is a timeless elegance ... you realize you've seen it in a black and white movie. We play with this attitude, but it's not a nostalgic show on stage."
Despite its Weimar theme, the group's repertoire includes Italian, French and even Japanese songs aimed at all generations.
"It's done for a young audience and it works in front of a young audience," Raabe said.
Raabe studied opera for seven years at the Berlin University of the Arts with all intentions of becoming a baritone opera singer. He followed his love for popular music of the '20s and '30s, and his orchestra gained rapid success.
"I was always in love with this kind of music. It was always a dream to have an orchestra like this," he said. "But suddenly it was so successful, and then I realized I really found the thing I have to do."
Since the group's formation in 1986, Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester have performed worldwide at concert halls in Shanghai, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, Vienna, Amsterdam, Rome, Los Angeles and, New York. In 2005 they played at New York's renowned Carnegie Hall for the first time.
"I fell on my knees when I came on stage," Raabe said. "It's a gift for an artist especially with this kind of repertoire to play in this temple of music."
They returned to Carnegie Hall for the "Berlin in Lights" Festival in 2007.
The orchestra has covered Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb" and the song "Tainted Love" in a mixture of their own style and the modern versions, creating a quirky result.
Although Raabe intended these covers as a joke, he says he found "the real black irony in 'Oops I Did It Again,' which Ms. Spears lost in her interpretation."
Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester will perform in Spaulding Auditorium tonight at 7 p.m.
