Die Fledermaus benefits from very strong cast
Edmonton Opera version offers an exuberant winter escape
Edmonton Opera’s 50th anniversary season opened and will close with a tragedy, so it was entirely appropriate that the company should sandwich a comedy in between.
And what a sparkling comedy Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus is. With its twists and turns of situational comedy and its echoes of bubbling French farce, it’s one of those works that, if you don’t mess around with it too much, carries away an audience for a happy couple of hours.
And that’s largely what Edmonton Opera’s production, which opened at the Jubilee on Saturday, does. Pace is critical, and conductor Peter Dala set (and maintained) a lively joie-de-vive in the overture. Occasionally in the spoken dialogue, that pace flagged (notably in the opening of the ball).
Gary Eckhart’s sets are suitably period — the first Act could double for a Feydeau farce, with multiple doors and exits, and the lover hidden behind bed-curtains.
Prince Orlofsky’s ball is a mad-cap belle-époque concoction, a Viennese imagining of a Russian oriental palace, though, somewhat surprisingly given the size of the Jubilee stage, it does seem rather cramped at times. David Fraser’s lighting goes for mood settings — a little too much for me, but particularly effective in the use of domestic light fittings.
Fledermaus is sometimes used as a showcase for one or two star singers, but not here. There is a palpable sense of the cast acting as a team. Gordon Gietz revels in the central role of Eisenstein, at times adding just a slightly more serious touch as bewilderment or anger take over. Edward Hanlon as Frank, the governor of the prison, has excellent comic timing.
Jacqueline Woodley as the maid Adele suitably sparkles, though her main range is more effective than her coloratura, and Betty Waynne Allison is in turns imperious and seductive as Rosalinda.
The most interesting casting was the counter-tenor Gerald Thompson in the trouser-role of Orlofsky. It was a bold idea, and it works, though only because he has such a marvellous voice (one I would dearly like to hear in more conventional countertenor roles). His “Russian” speaking accent is less convincing, coming across as a little stagey.
But that may have been intentional, because Allison Grant’s production has a secondary layer, one that didn’t detract from the entertainment, but provided its own interest for aficionados. Ruth and Thomas Martin’s English version of Die Fledermaus is effective (and natural), but it does emphasize the theatricality of the whole thing.
This is played up by the production. The entire piece is revealed as a charade right at the beginning (inevitable, if the revenge story is told to everyone before Act I, rather than at the ball in Act II). Dr. Falke, very well played here by Peter McGillivray, becomes even more of a puppet master.
The result is a kind of slightly self-indulgent commentary on theatre itself. That is perhaps inherent in the piece, but this production is packed with subtle and not-so-subtle references to stage and opera, from the strong hints of the Fawlty Towers’s character Manuel in Adam Fisher’s Alfred, to musical references, and addresses to the conductor and the audience, drawing that audience into the overthrow of the suspension of disbelief.
This adds an interesting gloss on the work, and perhaps only stumbles once. The production is commendably free of added present-day references, until Julien Arnold comes on in the speaking role of the jailer.
His cameo was marvellously entertaining in itself, but the Canadian jokes do stop the flow of the comedy, changing the tone.
But this was a minor blip. If you want to escape the winter blues for a couple of hours of exuberant escape, pithy social comedy, and the sheer joy of the waltz, get yourself to the Jubilee.