Montrealized La Chauve-souris works well
Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus — one of the few operettas with a permanent place in the opera repertoire — works pretty well as sung in German and set in the environs of Vienna.
It also worked pretty well Saturday as La Chauve-Souris, sung in French and set in the fun-loving Montreal of the 1930s. While the waltz might not have been the leading dance craze of Outremont and Westmount in those days, a few glasses of metaphorical Champagne are all you need to accept the transplant and enjoy this remarkably goodnatured show.
The production, as modified from an Australian original, remains true to the spirit and even the substance of Die Fledermaus. An illuminated cross outside the window of Gabriel’s deco mansion (his surname, Eisenstein, is understandably suppressed) tells us firmly where we are supposed to be. Some English is integrated into the basically French text, so the mutually misunderstood language of the second act (French in Die Fledermaus) becomes Italian. Opéra de Montréal indeed.
True to the Fledermaus tradition, contemporary references are threaded into the comic narrative. A wisecrack about the Charbonneau Commission got the biggest laugh of the night. But it was not the only one. People in the well-packed house were chuckling persistently at the dialogue. “I do not like music, even by Johann Strauss,” commented mezzo-soprano Emma Parkinson as the rakish Count Orlofsky. “My apathy and lassitude could fill an opera house.”
Not that there was any lassitude in the overture, a model of witty counterpoint as led by Timothy Vernon. The trimmed-down OSM in the pit were clearly into the music. Despite his well-publicized pre-production dyspepsia, tenor Marc Hervieux as Gabriel was in great form, singing brilliantly and acting the cad to perfection. Nor does he look bad after a haircut.
Caroline Bleau (as Rosaline, with the “d” omitted) was warm in the Csardas and her fellow soprano Marianne Lambert as Adèle substituted sparkle for ice by the time she got to the laughing song. Bass-baritone Alexandre Sylvestre was sturdy-voiced and genuinely funny as Frank, and baritone Dominique Côté was robust as Falke.
The tenor of Thomas Macleay is built for a smaller house than Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, but his acting as Alfred (an anglo in this version) was convivial. A cameo by soprano Chantale Nurse as period entertainer Josephine Baker singing the period hit J’ai deux amours (with Chippendale-style quartet of dancers) was much appreciated by the crowd. Perhaps this intervention was a tad heavy-handed.
Chief among the non-singing roles was the drunken jailer Frosch, played with classic vaudevillian panache (and in a classic St. Henri idiom) by Martin Drainville. The stage direction of Oriol Tomas was fluid, fun and blissfully free of pretension. His idea of comedy, if a little broad in spots, has none of the lugubrious overtones of the deeply German COC production of Die Fledermaus that Torontonians were asked to endure earlier this season.
Still, I wonder why it is that directors ask people to drink wine from the bottle in opera. This never happens at my place. At least when I have company.