Sparkling wine
Johann Strauss II: Die Fledermaus, Chisinau National Opera, New Theatre, Oxford, 7 December 2006.
Having in recent years extolled Ellen Kent’s Opera International for a succession of superb performances of Italian operas, it was not without trepidation that I set out to arrange a group booking for her first excursion into Viennese operetta. Having made the decision to trust her, I then encountered a strange phenomenon. The ladies invited to join the party responded in one of two distinct ways: either they were just not interested or they accepted with alacrity saying that it was an opera that reminded them of their youth. Which response was completely unpredictable!
This new production of Die Fledermaus must be regarded as a great personal triumph for Ellen Kent. Not only was she responsible for adapting the English text of the spoken dialogue (to include the conventional topicality) but she also produced and directed this adaptation of a Russian version of the original Viennese operetta. The whole performance had an exotic piquancy, being delivered in the charming Eastern-European English familiar to us nowadays from the staff in shops and restaurants in Oxford though some of it requiring English surtitles to ensure full comprehensibility.
In this variant of the story, Gabriel Eisenstein is due to start a short prison sentence for shooting a gamekeeper on his animal-rights activist neighbour’s estate, missing a grouse. Owing to a number of deceptions and misunderstandings, an old flame of his wife, Rosalinde, the opera star, Alfred, is arrested in his place, while Eisenstein, Rosalinde and her maid Adele, take advantage of this, all ending up disguised from each other at a party given by the sated Prince Orlovsky, who has been promised amusement by a Dr Falke seeking revenge on Eisenstein for deserting him dressed as a bat after a fancy-dress ball. Rosalinde arrives dressed as a Transylvanian countess also bat-disguised, to be wooed by her husband who parts with his seduction-aid chiming watch. Matters are resolved the morning-after at the prison under the supervision of the drunken jailer Frosch.
To succeed, a production of Die Fledermaus must fizz like champagne. This one does, but it is Moldovan champagne rather than the genuine article, though I can assure you that that is no bad substitute! At any rate it was better than the flat variety that I experienced first at the Vienna Volksoper in 1977 – it had been open just too long. I must confess to never having seen an opera house gala performance, of which many are legendary and I deliberately missed WNO’s crass misjudgement of a few years ago – the director, Bieito, was already on my black list as he should have been on theirs.
The overture was played bouncily enough but it was the bounce of Tchaikowski’s ballet music rather than of the Viennese waltz and this formed the sound pattern for the evening. The curtain rose on a sumptuous drawing room set. Adele appeared and charmed us with her coquettish approach. I did not realise immediately that the singer was Maria Tonina, who had so impressed as Gilda in the outstanding Rigoletto in March (OM No.250). Other old friends played Eisenstein and Rosalinde – Andriy Perfilov, the Duke of Mantua from Rigoletto, and Irina Vinogradova, whose Mimi in La Bohème was so moving. Indeed that part suited her far better than the feisty (in modern terms) Rosalinde who required a much more extrovert personality. All the male roles were very well sung but exceptional was Ruslan Pacatovici as Albert whose tenor operatic ‘excerpts’ whetted our appetites to hear him in the full works. The mezzo, Zarui Vardanean, cross-dressed as Prince Orlovsky, had suitable panache and conveyed well his transition from world-weary ennui to slight amusement.
The party scene had a spectacular set with fountains of (Moldovan) champagne. The handling of the chorus could have been more animated and better stage-managed (a fault shared with the second act of Bohème and to some extent Rigoletto) but there was sufficient ‘fizz’ in the detail of the main characters’ action. The promised traditional mystery guest did not appear on the second night when I saw the operetta. The final prison scene rounded things off in traditional style. Mihai Timofti played Frosch, the inebriated jailer, as if to the manner born but requiring his surtitles for comprehension, prior to the satisfactory resolution.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable performance of the familiar score, made fresh by its Moldovan accents. Its strengths were, as usual with Opera International, the quality of the singers and the visual element of the traditional stage setting with its attention to detail. Its main weakness is the quality of the orchestral accompaniment, which, while adequate, is not worthy of singers of this calibre. Nevertheless we eagerly await their return in Aida on 9,10 February 2007.
19 December 2006
Johann Strauss II: Die Fledermaus, Chisinau National Opera, New Theatre, Oxford, 7 December 2006.
Having in recent years extolled Ellen Kent’s Opera International for a succession of superb performances of Italian operas, it was not without trepidation that I set out to arrange a group booking for her first excursion into Viennese operetta. Having made the decision to trust her, I then encountered a strange phenomenon. The ladies invited to join the party responded in one of two distinct ways: either they were just not interested or they accepted with alacrity saying that it was an opera that reminded them of their youth. Which response was completely unpredictable!
This new production of Die Fledermaus must be regarded as a great personal triumph for Ellen Kent. Not only was she responsible for adapting the English text of the spoken dialogue (to include the conventional topicality) but she also produced and directed this adaptation of a Russian version of the original Viennese operetta. The whole performance had an exotic piquancy, being delivered in the charming Eastern-European English familiar to us nowadays from the staff in shops and restaurants in Oxford though some of it requiring English surtitles to ensure full comprehensibility.
In this variant of the story, Gabriel Eisenstein is due to start a short prison sentence for shooting a gamekeeper on his animal-rights activist neighbour’s estate, missing a grouse. Owing to a number of deceptions and misunderstandings, an old flame of his wife, Rosalinde, the opera star, Alfred, is arrested in his place, while Eisenstein, Rosalinde and her maid Adele, take advantage of this, all ending up disguised from each other at a party given by the sated Prince Orlovsky, who has been promised amusement by a Dr Falke seeking revenge on Eisenstein for deserting him dressed as a bat after a fancy-dress ball. Rosalinde arrives dressed as a Transylvanian countess also bat-disguised, to be wooed by her husband who parts with his seduction-aid chiming watch. Matters are resolved the morning-after at the prison under the supervision of the drunken jailer Frosch.
To succeed, a production of Die Fledermaus must fizz like champagne. This one does, but it is Moldovan champagne rather than the genuine article, though I can assure you that that is no bad substitute! At any rate it was better than the flat variety that I experienced first at the Vienna Volksoper in 1977 – it had been open just too long. I must confess to never having seen an opera house gala performance, of which many are legendary and I deliberately missed WNO’s crass misjudgement of a few years ago – the director, Bieito, was already on my black list as he should have been on theirs.
The overture was played bouncily enough but it was the bounce of Tchaikowski’s ballet music rather than of the Viennese waltz and this formed the sound pattern for the evening. The curtain rose on a sumptuous drawing room set. Adele appeared and charmed us with her coquettish approach. I did not realise immediately that the singer was Maria Tonina, who had so impressed as Gilda in the outstanding Rigoletto in March (OM No.250). Other old friends played Eisenstein and Rosalinde – Andriy Perfilov, the Duke of Mantua from Rigoletto, and Irina Vinogradova, whose Mimi in La Bohème was so moving. Indeed that part suited her far better than the feisty (in modern terms) Rosalinde who required a much more extrovert personality. All the male roles were very well sung but exceptional was Ruslan Pacatovici as Albert whose tenor operatic ‘excerpts’ whetted our appetites to hear him in the full works. The mezzo, Zarui Vardanean, cross-dressed as Prince Orlovsky, had suitable panache and conveyed well his transition from world-weary ennui to slight amusement.
The party scene had a spectacular set with fountains of (Moldovan) champagne. The handling of the chorus could have been more animated and better stage-managed (a fault shared with the second act of Bohème and to some extent Rigoletto) but there was sufficient ‘fizz’ in the detail of the main characters’ action. The promised traditional mystery guest did not appear on the second night when I saw the operetta. The final prison scene rounded things off in traditional style. Mihai Timofti played Frosch, the inebriated jailer, as if to the manner born but requiring his surtitles for comprehension, prior to the satisfactory resolution.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable performance of the familiar score, made fresh by its Moldovan accents. Its strengths were, as usual with Opera International, the quality of the singers and the visual element of the traditional stage setting with its attention to detail. Its main weakness is the quality of the orchestral accompaniment, which, while adequate, is not worthy of singers of this calibre. Nevertheless we eagerly await their return in Aida on 9,10 February 2007.
19 December 2006