Word: fledermaus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even before the curtain went up, the Boston Conservatory's "Die Fledermaus," at the Emerson Majestic, offered a visual treat. Because of the lighting in the orchestra pit, conductor Ronald Feldman's shadow covered the entire right wall of the theater. As the overture progressed, one sensed with delight the contrast between the unintentionally sinister apparition and the music's light waltzes...
...audience was temporarily blinded by the bright, glassy, modern set, and seemed surprised by the English-language production. It's usually a bad idea to translate German libretti. It's also risky to tamper with the original setting of a staged work of art. Why, then, did this "Fledermaus" come off so well? Because it was damn funny...
...finale in the police department was silly, and so very "Mayberry." Eisenstein and Rosalinda had an unmistakably Ted-and-Peg Bundy exchange on their way to making up. If "Die Fledermaus" has a moral at all, it's that any reconciliation is possible if both parties are sufficiently drunk. Since only Falke emerges from the third act sober, we have to conclude that, in life, the grudge-bearers have less...
...walks, it talks; it vamps, it camps; it does Mozart and Sondheim, Gershwin and Strauss. What more, indeed, could Kate deLima need? Singlehandedly, she's taken over Harvard musical theater; one could hardly imagine a "Marriage of Figaro" or a "Fledermaus" getting off the ground without her. Not to mention a one-woman cabaret act, complete with schmaltz, Catskills-style patter, and a big band...
Nevertheless, some observations should be made. DeLima's roles in Harvard opera have always been the grandes dames -- the Countess in "Marriage of Figaro," and in "Die Fledermaus" as well. That is to say, she has a solid operatic voice, better for power than for subtlety. (Even in this nightclub act, she wore a high-waisted Empire dress of the type made famous by Emma Thompson and Gwyneth Paltrow, an inappropriate but curiously telling choice, as if to declare that she's better suited for more aristocratic pursuits...