Word: fledermaus
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...DOESN'T TAKE MUCH to whisk an audience off to 19th-century Vienna--a crystal chandelier, rich costumes, goblets filled with champagne, and a willing suspension of cynicism. The only concession Lowell House Opera's production of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus makes to the work's opulence is the chandelier, which you can see any time you eat at the Lowell dining hall...
Strauss built his operetta around the flimsiest of comic opera conventions, but it's loved nonetheless for its infectious waltzes. No matter what performers do to this durable music, it will intoxicate listeners. Lowell's Fledermaus refuses to take Strauss's joie-devivre seriously--which is no sin in itself--but director J. Scott Brumit fails to provide a substitute, leaving the show to wander in a wasteland of farce, sarcasm, and tastelessness...
Sills' last regular appearances will be in a series of performances of Die Fledermaus at the San Diego Opera in October 1980. Her co-star will be Joan Sutherland, and the two divas will alternate in the roles of Adele and Rosalinda. That should be a sizzling ticket. So should the fund-raising gala Sills hopes to star in later at the New York City Opera-exactly 25 years after her debut there as Rosalinda. Said Sills: "In 1980, I will be 51. I have no operas left that I want to sing. I have sung in every opera...
...disregards to the composer; he simply hears phrases, colors and rhythms that nobody else hears. The result is that when he conducts, his soloist's gift for subtlety sometimes deserts him. In Vienna two years ago, he gave a radically nontraditional performance of that proud Viennese national resource, Die Fledermaus. It was almost predictable that a Russian might fail to exploit the sassy, lighthearted flavor of the classic, and sure enough, Rostropovich's overloaded Bat crashlanded into a nest of snapping critics, who almost declared war on the Soviet Union. Wrote the International Herald Tribune's David Stevens...
...founder of the house of Strauss." Lyricists Robert Craig Wright and George Forrest make great capital of this rhyme, employing it later when Johann Jr. is toiling over his operetta and the narrator boasts in his brazen tenor: "In 43 days/ Inside this house/ Johann Strauss/ Composed Die Fledermaus...