[Met Performance] CID:286990
Die Fledermaus {126} Metropolitan Opera House: 12/31/1986., Broadcast / Telecast
(Broadcast / Telecast
Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
December 31, 1986 Broadcast / Telecast
DIE FLEDERMAUS {126}
Joh. Strauss Jr.-Haffner/R. Genée
Rosalinde...............Kiri Te Kanawa
Eisenstein..............Håkan Hagegård
Adele...................Judith Blegen
Alfred..................David Rendall
Prince Orlofsky.........Tatiana Troyanos
Dr. Falke...............Michael Devlin
Dr. Blind...............Anthony Laciura
Frank...................Franz Mazura
Ida.....................Victoria Brasser
Frosch..................Otto Schenk
Ivan....................Ari Roussimoff
Conductor...............Jeffrey Tate
Production..............Otto Schenk
Set designer............Günther Schneider-Siemssen
Costume designer........Peter J. Hall
Lighting designer.......Gil Wechsler
Choreographer...........David Birkmeyer
TV Director.............Kirk Browning
Available for streaming at Met Opera on Demand
Review of Martin Mayer in Opera (UK)
Maybe I am more a reporter than a critic (the fellow who just called "Hear, hear" should be aware that I know who he is), but I have refrained from attempting to find out whose idea it was to have Marcel Prawy of the Vienna Opera make the final version of the English dialogue for the Metropolitan's gaudy new "Die Fledermaus." (All the singing was in German.) Only a truly inspired idiot could have thought that someone not native to the theatrical and linguistic traditions of New York could make an idiomatic entertainment of this old-fashioned but still viable story. Coupled with a totally unidiomatic musical performance under the direction of Jeffrey Tate, who does not seem to know how this piece goes, and direction by Otto Schenk that concentrated on gags and situations at the expense of character, the dialogue on New Year's Eve, when I caught the show, gave most of the evening the flavour of a presentation by the parents' association of a suburban high school. What worked, oddly, was Act 3, dominated by great professionals (Schenk himself as Frosch, Franz Mazura as the warden) whose native language, so to speak, is German-accented English.
Big talents were wasted here - Kiri Te Kanawa as Rosalinde. Hakan Hagegard as Eisenstein, David Rendall (who has become a really first-class tenor and an excellent actor since losing his excess weight) as Alfred, Tatiana Troyanos as Orlofsky and Michael Devlin as Falke. (Judith Blegen, whom I heard sing a moving Pamina earlier this season in Chicago, is now miscast as Adele: she is no longer comfortable with this coloratura, and she does not have the talents as a comedienne that she thinks she has.) Schenk should know that the opera works only when its heroine communicates a sexual voltage (which Te Kanawa does easily and enjoys), and its "hero" does not, for Eisenstein is a masher rather than a seducer (and Hagegard's
teddy-bear stage personality could fit perfectly). Instead, both principals were encouraged to mug and fling themselves around - and Orlofsky, whose neutered "ennui" with everything but champagne should last at least until the end of Act 2 (and maybe till the last minutes of the opera), was encouraged to waltz the girls around during the busy staging of the czardas as though just another Viennese at the party. Partly as a result of all the guying, nobody except Rendall and Mazura (the hero of the evening) sang very well. Perhaps a re-staging some day will salvage full value from the real star of the evening, Gunther Schneider-Siemssen's sets (greatly aided by Peter J. Hall's costumes).