By Kathryn Olsen
To seasoned opera buffs, Johann Strauss II’s 1874 Die Fledermaus is an old friend, but Utah Opera isn’t simply catering to that crowd.
Performed at Salt Lake City’s Capitol Theater, this production was previewed two nights before its opening for a theater full of high school students. “They’re our best audience,” says Dr. Carol Anderson, the company’s principal coach. “Their reactions have an unschooled energy.” She also cited the decision to stage this production as “What better way to end a season than with a party?” Strauss intended the plot to be of lighter stuff and more joyous endings than traditional opera and the resultant storyline is a completely absurdist delight that had the entire audience reacting like high schoolers on Saturday night. I, myself, attended with my mother, who raised me on the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan and cultivated a love of all music. We had both seen Die Fledermaus at Brigham Young University in our respective college years and looked forward to this “lavish” production.
Die Fledermaus literally translates to “The Flying Mouse” or “The Bat.” The original Batman of the title is Dr. Falke, who had been the butt of a practical joke at the hands of his old friend, Gabriel Eisenstein (Daniel Belcher). Following a night of revelry, he had been left in a drunken state and dressed in a bat costume far from home and had to endure the attentions of the crowds as he made his way home. Eisenstein himself has more recently committed another infraction and, as the play opens, has just received an extended sentence for assaulting a train ticket-taker. He is on the eve of an eight-day jail sentence while his wife, Rosalinde, is despairing over the imminent absence of her beloved husband. She is also being ruthlessly wooed by her former paramour, Alfred, who keeps appearing to serenade her. Meanwhile, her chambermaid Adele is desperate to rise above her station and find some real joy and purpose in life. They are all invited to attend one of Vienna’s famous New Year’s Ball at the house of Prince Orlofsky, and each has a reason for sneaking off to the same party. Not one of them realize that Dr. Falke has masterminded all three adventures as part of “The Revenge of the Bat.” Naturally, things fall apart. It arrived at opera after a three-act was turned into a and then converted into a libretto by Karl Heffner and Richard Genee.
Rosalinde (Sara Gartland), is the traditional diva of the stage. She has flawless vocal expression and a wide range, but she swoons and flirts and laments and beseeches in equal parts. One of her principal dilemmas is that Alfred (Robert Breault) not only sings to his beloved ex-girlfriend at the top of his voice, but his singing voice acts as an aphrodisiac on her. She is constantly professing how happy she is in her marriage to Eisenstein while begging him to stop bursting into song. Naturally, he refuses and every line of dialogue turns into some kind of musical flourish just to remind her that she still has feelings for him.
This distraction is so great that Rosalinde fails to even pay attention to the misery of her chambermaid, Adele (Abigail Rethwisch). We all know that Adele is trying to get the night off, but her mistress is repeatedly reminded that Adele’s poor aunt is suffering from lumbago, pronounced with the same dreadful misery as the word tuberculosis in Act I. When her mistress fails to show adequate sympathy, Rethwisch resorts to more and more ostentatious displays of hysteria over her dear aunt’s backache. She even whines one note for an entire trip across the stage and the self-involvement of Gartland and the over-the-top sympathy of Rethswisch are played to great effect. This all changes in Act II, when she assumes the identity of the famous actress, Madame Olga, and responds to accusations that she’s a chambermaid in a spirited rendition of the operetta’s well-known “Laughing Song.”
Eisenstein has no attention for his wife’s despair or her chambermaid’s personal horror. He went to court for a sentencing of five days, but after he called the judge by his first name and demanded money from him, the sentence is extended to eight. He blames his hapless lawyer, Dr. Blind (Christopher Oglesby) and we see in these interactions that he is a man who regularly gets in over his head by not considering consequences. It was mentioned that Belcher most recently appeared in an opera about a veteran of the Iraq War and the contrast between his two roles is startling.
Dr. Falke (Troy Cook) is a skillful manipulator who has his own revenge plotted, but also schemes to win the favor of Prince Orlofsky (Abigail Levis). While Eisenstein is impulsive and hot-blooded, Falke is a master of patient conniving. Cook makes you wish you were watching his performance in close quarters so you could glean added enjoyment by watching his deadpan expression and mild-mannered delivery of dramatic scenes. He ensures that Adele has a formal introduction to her mistress’ husband while both of them hope to not be found out. He tricks Eisenstein into wooing his own wife, who has naturally come in the disguise of a Hungarian Countess. And in the course of this “Revenge of the Bat”, he convinces Rosalinde that her husband is being unfaithful to her. As Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe said in The Phantom of the Opera, “You’d never get away with all this in a play, but if it’s loudly sung and in a foreign tongue, it’s just the sort of story audiences adore–in fact, a perfect opera.”
The three most underrated and understated characters of the play are the law enforcement and the prince, Frank (Christopher Clayton), the Warden of the jail, comes to arrest Eisenstein and mistakenly carts off Alfred. He attends the ball as the Chevalier de Chagrin–The Knight of Melancholy–and makes a personal connection with both Adele and Ida. Due to the party’s excess of champagne (to which they repeatedly propose a toast), he returns to the jail to find the ersatz Eisenstein singing constantly and his deputy, Frosch (Tobin Atkinson), threatening to throw Alfred out if he doesn’t shut up. He locks Frosch to Eisenstein without locating the handcuffs’ keys and the audience nearly missed a portion of the final scene as Eisenstein interrogates his own wife about her reasons for being at the party because the confrontation takes place while Frosch is hidden under his coat and the laughter would not stop at the absurd maneuvers.
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The comedic stand-out of the night is Prince Orlofsky, played by former Utah Opera Resident Artist, Abigail Levis. She is petite, prancing and delivers every line in a superb imitation of Despicable Me’s Gru. During intermission, the Opera featured notes about the staging on the screen and it was from this that we learned that every time Levis flung a champagne glass off-stage, it would be caught by one of the stagehands. Any time she travels, she demands to be carried by a servant and is frequently nudging someone out of her way to flirt with another.
The key to the piece’s tone is the chemistry of the ensemble cast and the principal players could not have been more well-chosen. The cast is comprised of both current and former members of the Utah Symphony (http://www.usuo.org), who dazzle vocally while taking themselves a little less seriously than usual. This, combined with comedic improvisations by the actors (and with the encouragement of Stage Director/Choreographer Kyle Lang), made it an accessible experience. Most impressive for me was the choice to use an English translation of the entire work rather than relying solely on the supertitles to explain what was so funny in German. R. Keith Brumley’s sets are elaborate and pleasant, the music is accompanied by Utah Symphony artists and conducted skillfully by Gary Thor Wedow and the costumes by Susan Memmott Allred and Kate Casalino are everything you would hope for in a Viennese ball.
Utah Opera presents Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II, Original German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genee, English translation by Ruth Martin and Thomas Martin, English dialogue by Charles Ludlam
Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theater, 50 W 200 S, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
May 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 7:30 PM
Tickets
Contact: 801-533-5626
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