Die Fledermaus: A Review By George Fleeton

Die Fledermaus at Loughcrew Garden Opera Review by George Fleeton. Loughcrew Garden Opera celebrated twelve years this month, in its ad hoc tented village, ten miles west of Kells in Co. Meath. It is a one-of-a-kind event, neither Glyndebourne nor Castleward, quite independent of public sector funding, manned by volunteers, and driven with passion by Emily Naper, owner of the big house, the home place. This year the featured operetta was the Viennese farce Die Fledermaus (1874), in two performances – an all-over-the place production (from which three singers had dropped out at the eleventh hour) that was given on a too-raised, square dais, which meant that wherever you sat, only about a quarter of the action was visible at any given time. Orchestration was reduced to four instruments and no discernible lighting effects had been designed into the staging. But it was effectively atmospheric, unashamedly rustic, with a well-filled marquee, many of the audience somewhat incongruously dressed in the theme of the piece, having accepted invitations to jaded Prince Orlofsky’s ball, after dinner, in Act 2. Adjacent to the theatre tent is the ruined 17^th century chapel of St Oliver Plunkett’s family, where the opera weekend finishes with Mass attended by whoever is staying over, or has been left behind, in rolling parkland, full of cattle and sheep, prehistoric passage graves and a huge, ruined, floodlit stone portico. Does this only happen in Ireland? One doesn’t go then to something like this expecting anything more than light entertainment, a one hour interval to picnic at sunset, some daft antics on stage, carriages at midnight, and a typical Irish mid-summer chill to nurse at home afterwards. With Fledermaus, it is today the convention to mess around with the text, and to pantomime it up, and this was the order of the day at Loughcrew. Johann Strauss II, the most famous member of a Viennese family of acclaimed musicians, would not have objected. After all, hadn’t he gone and parodied the darker genres of opera with his own brand of impertinence, satire and sentiment? Indeed this work is quite singular in that it has now achieved honorary status in most of the world’s great opera houses. Operetta is less of an acquired taste than opera per se and it has been historically the more popular. Of the younger Strauss’ works in this field Fledermaus was his third attempt to get it right. It has no hidden depths; it takes a sympathetically cynical look at the decadence and hedonistic excesses of the Hapsburgs; the plot is puerile, all the characters are caricatures, and while Strauss did criticise the primary audience to which it was first presented, it all went over their heads. Schadenfreude, the barely tangible sub-text of Fledermaus, is the key to the central revenge plotline, a kind of awkward back story which is recounted during the show. Strauss claimed he wrote it in about six weeks – a speed reminiscent of Rossini. The highlights are beyond reproach: the portentous overture, Alfredo’s snatches of Italian this ‘n’ that, Adele’s laughing and audition songs, and Rosalinde’s quasi-Hungarian czardas. On the night both sopranos, Claudia Boyle and Naomi Harvey, got it absolutely right, and every one stole as many scenes as possible from the others. Gavan Ring, a young tenor from Kerry, goes from strength to strength in every role he tackles, his energetic performance here nicely balanced by the always impressive Imelda Drumm, whose character (Orlofsky) has seen and heard it all a hundred times already. Should you wish to hear what Strauss intended it to sound like, one of the best CD sets is von Karajan’s recording from Vienna on New Year’s Eve 1960. Loughcrew Garden Opera will hopefully be back on the first weekend of July 2012, when it might be time for a darker piece of opera, such as one of Puccini’s romantic tragedies perhaps? www.loughcrew.com]]>