Die Fledermaus comes to the Teatro Real for the first time with Marc Minkowski with Les Musiciens du Louvre, one of the most famous and well-known Viennese operettas, full of amorous entanglements, games of seduction and changing identities with a lot of humour. This operetta is a rarity for the composer, but well known for its overture and medley of ideas. It is a piece that is not usually absent from New Year's Eve concerts, and with which Strauss introduced a novelty into the genre as it was conceived at the time.
Premiered in the same theatre which saw the birth of The Magic Flute eighty years before, the third and most famous opera by the “King of the Waltz” perhaps represents — thanks to an imbroglio of love, infidelity, and transvestism— the 18th century spiritual relative closest to the universe of Mozart that we know in the Da Ponte/Mozart trilogy. In part, it is because of the carefree schematic of the story, but even more so, there is the luminous spontaneity and contagious joviality of its score, which is a true prodigy of inspiration and musical elegance.
The lavish ball which is central to Act II of Die Fledermaus takes place, in the original French libretto — entitled Le réveillon, by the authors of, none other than, La bella Helena, Carmen and Manon, — on New Year’s Eve. This circumstance partly explains that, although the German adaptation did not hold on to this fact, the operetta has consolidated a place in the theatres of half the globe as the favourite title during the Christmas season. An expert in these matters, the French conductor Marc Minkowski will know how to extract all the frivolous charm from this score.
Komische Operette in three acts
Music by Johann Strauss (1825-1899)
Libretto by Carl Haffner and Richard Genée, based on Le réveillon by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy’s
Premiere at Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 5 April 1874
Premiere al the Teatro Real
Concert version
Artistic team
Orchestra conductor: Marc Minkowski
Chorus master: Xavier Puig
Cast
Gabriel von Eisenstein: Huw Montague Rendall
Rosalinde: Jacquelyn Stucker
Príncipe Orlofsky: Marina Viotti
Alfred: Magnus Dietrich
Dr. Falke: Leon Košavic
Dr. Blind: Krešimir Špicer
Adele: Alina Wunderlin
Ida: Megan Moore
Frosch: Sunnyi Melles
Les Musiciens du Louvre
Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana
