Word: fledermaus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...constant promotion," the city has reinvented itself time and time again for the sake of a new hustle. In 1936 its mayor claimed that the Miss America Pageant was a "cultural event." (True, a contestant in last week's pageant -- the 63rd -- did sing an aria from Die Fledermaus, but the event is still more about swimwear than opera.) During the Prohibition era, it was the East Coast Babylon for bootlegging, brothels and betting, but in 1946 Atlantic City tried to persuade the United Nations to settle there, citing its "historically noncontroversial background." In the late '50s the Chamber...
Everything about mid-19th century Vienna was larger than life, from the caloric content of the pastries at Demel to the Emperor Franz Josef's mustaches. For its new Die Fledermaus, televised by PBS on New Year's Eve, the Metropolitan Opera has constructed outsize rooms in Johann Strauss's idealized waltzing city with such vivid realism that they could be sold today as luxury condominiums. Eisenstein's residence comes equipped with a spacious sun porch; Prince Orlofsky's pleasure palace boasts both a grand foyer and a palm-court refectory that make Maxim's look understated. When it comes...
Recent Met stagings -- notably Franco Zeffirelli's spacious La Boheme from 1981-82 and his Tosca, for which Rome was rebuilt, two seasons ago -- also have marooned their casts in movie sets. Presto: singing pygmies. Now comes this extravagant Fledermaus with singers who become a backup chorus to the brocade and the woodwork. Rosalinde (Soprano Kiri Te Kanawa) gets lost in the crowd during Orlofsky's drinking party in Act II, and the vengeful Dr. Falke (Baritone Michael Devlin) blends nicely with the patterned wallpaper and the potted ferns...
...tolerance for drunk jokes, but these times do not find inebriation quite as amusing as formerly. Further, Director Schenk's maladroit adaptation of the libretto is not particularly funny, although his appearance as Frosch, the tipsy jailer, has a couple of comic moments amid the prevailing tedium. But Die Fledermaus should soar and sparkle, not merely be endured...
...Cafe Museum (1899) makes its Thonet bentwood forebears look dowdy by comparison. Loos' nemesis Hoffmann, though, was the absolute master of furniture and domestic objects. No one has designed handsomer seating in the 20th century. His best-known and most widely copied chair was designed for the Kabarett Fledermaus (1907), a club by and for the avant-garde. The regularity of its limbs and parts is strict, but as with all the best Wiener Werkstatte work, severity is not carried too far. Six wood spheres, billiard ball-size, tucked under each arm and atop each leg, are a perfect ornamental...