Like a Viennese version of Peter Sellers’ The Party, Vancouver Opera’s Die Fledermaus directed by Ashlie Corcoran and set in the swinging 60s is a joyful, rollicking opening for the company’s 65th anniversary season. With a new English libretto by Mark Crawford adapted from the original French production by Opéra de Québec earlier this year, this Fledermaus is a champagne-fuelled ride through an all-night party that both mocks and celebrates our very human foibles.
The original production design by Julie Levesque has been augmented by Kevin McAllister for Vancouver Opera and offers gorgeous sets in technicolour greens and pinks of the era. It is cinematic, literally and figuratively, as Act Two’s party at Prince Orlofsky’s unfolds in a movie theatre, with guests dressed as mid-century Hollywood movie stars. And yet the musical essence of Fledermaus – the uniquely syncopated Viennese waltz, the speediest of waltzes – is never overpowered by the 1960s theme. Rather, it is evoked by the crisp stage direction that keeps pace with the music.
The opening mis en scène is a great example of this. As a drunk Doctor Falke, dressed as Batman, is left on a city bench by his friend Eisenstein after a costume party, a parade of humanity – from dog walkers to bakers to students – pass by the beleaguered partier in a playful yet tightly choregraphed sequence of comic adventure.
As VO’s music director Jacques Lacombe writes in the programme notes, Strauss is deceptively simple, but “complex and tricky if you try to perform it with the right style.” As Brahms wrote of the Blue Danube Waltz, “It is as good as a Beethoven symphony.”
Just because Fledermaus is a bit of frothy fun does not mean that absolute precision is not required to get it right. Happily, in the Halloween performance I attended, with Leslie Dala standing in for Lacombe, the Vancouver Opera Orchestra got it right, with just the correct amount of discipline and delight. In the orchestral movement before the final act, the audience was even clapping along as if we were in a Viennese operetta hall and – rather amazingly for Vancouver – was clapping along in time.
Photo Credit: Emily Cooper Photography
Claire de Sévigné as Adele, John Chest as Eisenstein, and Lara Ciekiewicz as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus
While it was hard to compete with the dazzling production design, especially the lively tableau of mid-century movie stars and television characters in the second act’s party scene, several singers outshone it. Notably, Claire de Sévigné was captivating as Adele, the maid who aspires to be an actress. Her comedic talents were as impressive as her soprano – at times delicate and lilting, strong and steely, but always warm and expressive. Her interplay with Giles Tomkins’ Frank, who performed the role of the jailer to great effect, was a highlight, as was her “Mein Herr Marquis.”
Lara Ciekiewicz as Rosalinde shone in the second-act czárdás, “Klänge der Heimat,” when she pretends to be a Hungarian princess, and her chemistry with her husband (well played by John Chest) grew as the party progressed.
Mireille Lebel’s Orlofsky was a scene stealer as she nailed the Russian ennui of a bored aristocrat who lives for the joys of poker and getting his guests hammered on vodka, her clear, strong mezzo-soprano matched by her acting chops.
The English libretto by playwright Mark Crawford brilliantly offset the sung German with pithy comments that often broke the fourth wall. When Beatrice Zeilinger’s Frosch complains about Owen Mccausland’s Alfred excessive singing in Act Three’s prison scene, she chimes, “This ain’t the Met!” And when Adele confesses that she wants to be an actress, Zeilinger’s response “Acting isn’t that glamourous you know. One minute you’re in a Hollywood movie and the next you’re playing a prison guard in an opera” brought the house down.
The renditions of the Champagne Song (“Im Feuerstrom der Reben”) in Acts Two and Three were wonderful examples of company craft at its best. Everyone seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves and the joi de vivre flowed out to the audience like a glass of bubbly. And in these uncertain times, lyrics about joy, love and brotherhood took on an unexpectedly moving meaning.
Love, peace and champagne! Who knew that Strauss could be so timely.
Photo Credit: Emily Cooper Photography
Eisenstein (John Chest) and Rosalinde (Lara Ciekiewicz) share a toast
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Hadani Ditmars has reviewed opera for the London Independent, the National Post and the Huffington Post. She is the author of Dancing in the No-Fly Zone, a critically acclaimed book that documented pre and post invasion culture in Iraq, and is at work on a new book using ancient sites as a narrative device to tell the story of contemporary culture in Iraq. She is developing a libretto based on her experiences in Iraq.
She has been writing about arts and culture internationally for three decades and her work has been published in the New York Times, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, Haaretz and the Globe and Mail and broadcast on CBC, BBC and RTE.
