Strathpeffer Pavilion, 14 September 2006 and touring

Die Fledermaus

DIE FLEDERMAUS is not a nice operetta. Without exception its characters are selfish, amoral and lustful, drinking like fish, and cheerfully manipulating and betraying each other without a hint of remorse.

Now, all this ghastly behaviour is usually cloaked, in conventional productions, by the apparatus of opera capes, ballgowns, champagne flutes, and echt Viennese settings at the height of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while Johann Strauss II’s music fizzes and sparkles like the bubbly it celebrates.

But Scottish Opera’s new small-scale touring production by Lee Blakeley reveals the skull beneath the skin, with a setting that is not just contemporary but very close to home—the dubiously affluent, thoroughly tasteless, pleasure-seeking, clubbing class of Glasgow—or any other major UK city today.

Attempts to update ‘Die Fledermaus’ have not always been successful: Powell and Pressburger’s status as Britain’s greatest filmmakers took a knock with ‘Oh! Rosalinda’, which adopted a contemporary setting in post-war Vienna, under the control of the Four Powers.

But that film couldn’t resist keeping in the air of whimsy and schlagobers—whipped cream—which the rest of the world associates with Strauss and Vienna.

Scottish Opera go for the jugular with no concessions to sentiment or nostalgia. If that sounds bleak, then worry not—the energy, brio, and sheer fecundity of comic invention on display make for a thumping good night out.

The witty dumb-show during the overture sets the scene immediately—these are a shallow, self-gratifying bunch. And when the action proper gets going, Giles Havergal’s sharp translation (plus a few up to the minute additions) keeps the action moving at a cracking pace.

Act Two could have been a problem—how do you stage a lavish party with only eight performers and no chorus? Easy—keep the main party offstage and restrict all the action to the foyer—which quickly comes to resemble the ante-chamber to hell of Sartre’s ‘Huis Clos’.

For this bunch hell is definitely other people! Even Strauss’s schmaltzy hymn to ‘matinees’—‘Brüderlein und Schwesterlein’ is undercut by being delivered as a mass karaoke number.

The third act in the prison often seems an anti-climax after the glitter of the party but in this production it seems an entirely logical continuation. There’s no happy resolution: Falke’s ‘vengeance of the bat’ has turned sour, Eisenstein still has to spend his eight days in jail, Rosalinde is disappointed in all her men, and the Russian billionare Orlofksy is still bored.

That final apostrophe to the powers of champagne has never sounded more hollow.

A uniformly talented cast are equally skilled as singers and actors—and indeed dancers, thanks to some astute choreography–though Highland loyalties insist that I single out Inverness girl Kate Valentine who shows real star quality as Rosalinde.

The real hero of the evening was music director Oliver Rundell, whose sparkling pianism kept up the drive and momentum throughout the whole evening.

Thanks to special efforts by the Eden Court team as well as Scottish Opera technicians, the Strathpeffer Pavilion was turned into an acceptable theatre for the evening, although not many of the capacity house can have had as clear a view of the action as your reviewer, who had the unfair benefit of some raised seating!

The tour still has four further Highlands and Islands dates in October—beg, buy or steal a ticket!

(Die Fledermaus can be seen at the Village Hall, Lochinver, 14 October; Craigmonie Centre, Drumnadrochit, 17 October; Arainn Shuaineirt, Strontian, 19 October; and the Village Hall, Whiting Bay, Arran, on 28 October).

© Robert Livingston, 2006

Links

• Scottish Opera