 
Three Hungarians
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Oswald Panagl on the linguistic charisma of Die Fledermaus
"Only a husband can be so bored and blasé!"
Stage director Hans Neuenfels had this to say about Strauss's masterpiece
of an operetta: "Die Fledermaus is not only a bitingly witty portrait
of hypocrisy, of concealed and suppressed yearning, about the disgusting
and extravagant side of life, it is also an extremely sophisticated and
equally lively and entertaining piece about music, singers and above all
about the waltz. The waltz as a life form of a country and an age, dancing
on the edge of a precipice, both exhilarating and pitiful, created by
a composer who flung the contradictions of his own person with visionary
and perfected expertise onto the stage and into the concert halls: elegantly
polished cobblestones, but stones! And gravel, lots of gravel over which
the liveliest of streams often flow and that sometimes penetrates the
eye to such an extent that it is shocked into seeing. The musical stroke
of genius of an apparently well brought-up provocateur."
Die Fledermaus shows Johann Strauss at the zenith of his creativity
There are many not merely objective reasons for regarding Die Fledermaus as the best operetta in the genre as well as subjective reasons for it to be an especial favourite: the rousing, masterfully artistic, catchy and inspired music of Johann Strauss at the zenith of his creativity; the tongue-in-cheek social criticism contemporaneous with Jacques Offenbach, and the revealing of human weaknesses; the respectful dramatic concept of the story that ties up sophisticated knots and allows the audience to be mostly more intelligent than the protagonists concerned; the off-the-cuffs in the dialogues and topical references by the prototypical third act comedian Frosch.
A libretto full of wit and irony
What is almost always forgotten in a list of such merits is the language
of the libretto. On the contrary, some critics refer
to the inadequacy of the language and stress precisely the discrepancy
between musical ingenuity and verbal routine.
In my opinion this is not entirely justified. For although Richard Genée
- regarded especially in his time as a successful composer of operettas
who could arrange tunes in good taste - and Carl Haffner, the conventional
resident librettist of the Theater an der Wien, did not come up with a
firework of wit and semantic punch-lines, it is nevertheless a real pleasure
to read and listen carefully to certain passages of the text.
The language culture of an epoch when Johann Nestroy wrote farces and
Eduard von Bauernfeld produced refined comedies, also brought about worthy
results on the more modest level of everyday literature. When a line in
the song such as "For ever, always like today, if we still remember
tomorrow" has already become a popular quote in German, and when
we think about the carefree resolutions made at New Year, then this success
alone confirms that the librettists were considerably gifted in creative
writing.
Happy is he who forgets what cannot be altered
The line in Alfred's drinking song "Happy is he who forgets what cannot be altered!" may be enjoyed or despised as a carefree and ironic avowal of the half-hearted promise. The fact is that the sentence concealed behind these words goes back to a translation by Schopenhauer of the Oracolo manual (by Baltasar Gracián) that was much read at the time when Die Fledermaus was written and is ultimately based on an aphorism by Seneca: "The cure for injustice is to forget".
A particular jewel in the libretto of Die Fledermaus is the solo of the
tormented lawyer Dr. Blind in the trio of the first act, in which the
so shamefully treated lawyer keenly extols his services and abilities:
"Application, litigation, disputation, replication, attestation,
revocation, postulation and citation, accusation, arbitration, protestation,
stipulation, jactitation, condonation ..." Here, what reaches our
ears in breathless union with the music, can be compared as a play on
language with great models - even with what Mozart produced when he was
in high-spirits.
Reminiscent of Hofmannsthal
The richness and density of the rhyming nouns takes a language custom of 19th century Vienna one step further, a custom whereby verbs that were mainly rooted in French and ended in -ieren, characterised colloquial language of the higher classes. What the libretto of Die Fledermaus goes on to offer in further song numbers (annexation, presentation, amuse, disgrace, attack, embarrass, dine - blasé, bored, urgent, invited and so on), corresponds to the conversational tone of the stage works of Hugo von Hofmannsthal: in the speech-song of Der Rosenkavalier as in the salon style of Der Schwierige. What was familiar to audiences at the time of a work's creation, enchants us nowadays with the charming patina of a vanished epoch.
see:
Fledermaus
Johann Strauß
Die Fledermaus
In German
Conductor .......... Marc Minkowski
Stage director .......... Hans Neuenfels
Stage and costume design .......... Reinhard von der Tannen
Dramaturgy .......... Yvonne Gebauer
Chorus master .......... Erwin Ortner
Gabriel von Eisenstein .......... Christoph Homberger
Rosalinde .......... Elzbieta Szmytka, Mireille Delunsch (20, 23, 28 August)
Alfred .......... Matthias Klink
Frank .......... Ernst Theo Richter
Dr. Falke .......... Olaf Bär
Adele .......... Malin Hartelius
Dr. Blind .......... Franz Supper
Frosch .......... Elisabeth Trissenaar
Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg
Arnold Schoenberg Choir
Felsenreitschule
New production: 17 August 2001
19 (performance starts at 3 p.m.), 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29 and 31 August
2001 (performance starts
at 6 p.m.) Performances start at
7 p.m. unless otherwise stated.
Tickets for Die Fledermaus are available from ATS 1,000 to 2,500 for
the performances on 20 and 23 August. For the performances on 22, 26,
28, 29 and 31 August the Ticket Office also has tickets in the ATS 3,000
category.
Reservations can be made by telephone: 0043 662 8045-579 and telefax 0043
662 8045-760.