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The Bat Hibernates in Spain Barcelona
Teatro Liceu
12/18/2024 - & September 6 (Bremen), December 13, 15 (Baden‑Baden), 20 (Sevilla), 22 (Valencia), 28 (Tenerife), 30 (Las Palmas), 2024
Johann Strauss, Jr.: Die Fledermaus
Huw Montague Rendall*/Christoph Filler (Gabriel von Eisenstein), Iulia Maria Dan*/Rachel Willis‑Sørensen (Rosalinde), Leon Kosavic*/Dominic Sedgwick (Dr. Falke), Michael Kraus*/Martin Winkler (Frank), Alina Wunderlin (Adele), Annelie Sophie Müller*/Ekaterina Chayka‑Rubinstein/Marina Viotti (Orlofsky), Magnus Dietrich/Robert Lewis* (Alfred), Kresimir Spicer (Dr. Blind), Manfred Schwaiger (Frosch), Sandrine Buendia (Ida)
Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana, Xavier Puig (chorus master), Les Musiciens du Louvre, Marc Minkowski (conductor)
Romain Gilbert (staging)
I. M. Dan, H. Montague Rendall
Six years ago, La Scala gave its first performance of the most popular Viennese operetta, Die Fledermaus (1874). Last December was the famous operetta’s debut at Madrid’s Teatro Real. Barcelona’s venerable El Liceu, more open to the idea, has produced it a few times since the early sixties. However, its last time there was in 1984.
The dichotomy between opera and operetta may have lasted too long in Mediterranean countries. A Spanish form of operetta, the zarzuela, continues to be vibrant, but it’s a different world from opera. Nevertheless, in Spain and in German-speaking countries, the most accomplished opera singers have a tradition of performing their variation of operetta, Montserrat Caballé, Teresa Berganza, Pilar Lorengar, María Bayo and Alfredo Kraus in the former, or Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Anneliese Rothenberger, Erna Berger, Fritz Wunderlich and Hermann Prey in the latter.
After its overwhelming success last December, Les Musiciens du Louvre’s tour of Die Fledermaus in concert form returned to Spain making more stops than ever. In addition to Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Tenerife and Las Palmas have been added. Not a bad place to hibernate for the Parisians.
Marc Minkowski, a giant of early music, has an obvious affinity for operetta, and has made some of the best recordings of Offenbach’s works. An early music ensemble conducting a late nineteenth century work is an interesting prospect, bringing a fresh outlook and eschewing a heavy‑handed and (in the case of Viennese operetta) schmaltzy tradition. Indeed, as the overture commenced, one sensed a different atmosphere: faster tempi and a lighter sound.
What is remarkable is the fact that six of the ten soloists now touring with Minkowski were also featured last year. The only new singers are those portray Rosalinde and Orlovsky, in addition to the actors in non‑singing roles playing Frosch and Ida. That was bound to lend cohesion to the ensemble, and it showed.
This performance’s Rosalinda, Romanian lyric soprano Iulia Maria Dan, was the show’s star, thanks to an immense stage presence and a lovely distinct voice with trills, fruity and feminine, evocative of past legendary Romanian lyric sopranos Virginia Zeani and Mariana Nicolescu. Blessed with extraordinary stage presence and a natural comic verve, one could not take one’s eyes off her whenever onstage (the whole operetta in fact, save for the beginning of Act III). She dazzled in her Act II aria, “Klänge der Heimat” (Czardas), with both her high notes and temperament. Her put‑on Hungarian accent made her pretense to be a mysteriously masked Hungarian countess quite credible. Her flirtation with Gabriel, her own husband, was simply delicious.
As in last year’s Madrid performance, German coloratura soprano Alina Wunderlin was a terrific Adele, the Eisensteins’ temperamental chambermaid. She was the perfect soubrette, coquettish and charming. Thanks to her precise high notes, her Act II aria, “Mein Herr Marquis”, was an audience favourite. Her dress at Orlovsky’s party, pilfered from her mistress’s wardrobe, was splendidly elegant, suited only for someone with her figure. Her Act III “Spiel ich die Unschuld vom Lande” aria, also known as the audition aria, was utterly charming and funny. In this aria, Adele is trying to impress the prison warden Frank, who had fallen for her at Orlovsky’s party. She hopes he would take her under his wing and pay for her training as an actress, a polite way of auditioning to be a kept woman. She sang one musical phrase intentionally off key – to the public’s bemusement – to make clear the aspiring actress has limited talent.
English tenor Huw Montague Rendall, son of mezzo Diana Montague and tenor David Rendall, was a vibrant Gabriel von Eisenstein, a role that demands charisma more than vocal bravura. He definitely has both. He reveled in his role even more than he had done a year ago in Madrid. The camaraderie between Eisenstein and Dr. Falke was evident in their dancing and clowning around.
Croatian baritone Leon Kosavic was delightful as Dr. Falke, Eisenstein’s friend who instigated the whole farcical revenge plot for having been left drunk in the middle of the city dressed as a bat. This gave him the ill‑fated sobriquet of Dr. Fledermaus (Dr. Bat), the operetta’s title. One wished the role had more singing. His velvety voice is beautiful, and his stage presence marvelously intense. His phrasing was the best of the entire cast. Moreover, he truly seemed to have a ball throughout the performance.
German mezzo Annelie Sophie Müller’s Prince Orlofsky was completely convincing; haughty and supercilious, blasé and hard to please. Müller is a solid actress; she managed to sound foreign in her native German, since Orlovsky is Russian. Hers was no exaggerated Russian accent, but rather a subtle distortion that evoked a Frenchman speaking German. French, after all, was the language of Russia’s pre‑revolution aristocracy. Her Act II “Ich lade gern mir Gäste ein... Chacun à son goût” had panache. She seemed to be truly curious about the events unfolding in the charade orchestrated by Dr. Falke. To add humour at the opening of Act III, she pushed Minkowski off the podium to temporarily conduct the composer’s Russian March.
The third act is a tough one to pull off in a non‑German speaking city. How successful can a dialogue‑rich act be in a concert performance? Moreover, the specifically Viennese humour of this act is hard to grasp for those unfamiliar with Austrian culture. Nonetheless, it was an undeniable success thanks to the considerable editing of dialogue and to the addition of musical pieces at the beginning of the act. Strauss’s Russischer Marsch, written for his second visit to Russia in 1886, was played with Prince Orlovsky at the podium for its first half. It was followed by the more familiar Donner und Blitz Polka (“Thunder and Lightning”), which aroused the public to clap on beat, as is now tradition at Vienna’s New Year’s Concerts.
Viennese baritone Manfred Schwaiger performed the spoken role of the drunkard prison guard Frosch. Often this role is overbearing and the humour forced, especially for one not familiar with Austrian culture, but not here. His delectable working class Viennese accent was probably lost on the Spanish public, but it was glorious, as was his acting. For the first time ever, I regretted the omission of so much of the dialogue here.
Problems inevitably arise with attempts at spoken dialogue in a language few understand, surtitles notwithstanding. Last year, at the performance in Madrid, Spanish dialogue was inserted to elicit mostly forced laughs. Ideally, spoken dialogue ought to be in the vernacular, especially in operetta, a lowbrow popular art form. However, it would be impractical for a visiting ensemble, performing in German, to be effective comic actors in Spanish. This year, the ensemble seemed to have learnt from last year’s experience, refraining from gratuitously peppering the operetta with Spanish words, with the exception of Adele’s lamentation about her “sick” aunt, “mi tía”. More appropriate was Annelie Sophie Müller’s intervention at the beginning of Act III to present the Russian March in perfectly accented Catalan, to the audience’s delight. In addition to her warm and technically polished voice and great acting, linguistic skills are another feather to add to Müller’s cap. Impressive!
It must be noted that the operetta was heavily cut, with almost no dialogue, though at times the dialogue clearly indicates the characters’ nature and psychology. The omitted dinner ordered by Eisenstein, subsequently cancelled once he learns of Prince Orlovsky’s party, comes to mind. Same for Orlovsky’s tedious anecdotes and sayings that enumerated the various nationalities of Imperial Russia – Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkmen, Tajik, and Kyrgyz – though this may have been politically motivated. Nonetheless, this was overall a wise choice, as having to endure an additional thirty minutes of dialogue in a foreign language would have rendered the evening much less festive.
Given the huge success of Minkowski’s Die Fledermaus on tour in its second year, one gets the feeling we are witnessing a new tradition. That would indeed be an auspicious one for the Liceu public, as well as for Les Musiciens du Louvre, their leader and the soloists. A warmer climate for them would be an added bonus.
Its success may well inspire smaller companies, such as those presenting opera for the general public and for tourists at the Palau de la Musica Catalana, to present a Spanish or Catalan version of Strauss’s masterpiece. Die Fledermaus, despite its classification as an operetta, is indeed a chef‑d’œuvre. Its social critique of bourgeois values and hypocrisy, written for a shimmering fin de siècle Vienna, still resonates today.
Ossama el Naggar
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