This autumn is Strauss and Freud season in London: while the Royal Opera are showing Charles Edwards’s searingly Freudian take on Richard Strauss’s Elektra, ENO have opted for the polar opposite mood with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus: Christopher Alden’s production is just as Viennese, just as laden with dreams and sexuality, but filled to the brim with gags and frivolous decadence.
If you are going to this with any set ideas about what modern opera “concept productions” are like (or, indeed, what operetta is like), leave your preconceptions at the cloakroom on the way in: this is the kind of production that could give both Regietheater and operetta a good name.
The outer wrapping of Allen Moyer’s sets are plain enough, notably overshadowed by a giant fob watch which swings like a hypnotist’s pendulum in nearly continuous motion. Costume designer Constance Hoffman clothes the principals in fin-de-siècle elegance (except for Alfred the tenor, clad in full Elizabethan doublet and hose) and the chorus in a riot of burlesque weirdness: giant cracks open up in bedroom walls to usher in Rosalinde and Eisenstein’s desires made flesh; the staircase and costumes in Prince Orlov’s evoke Busby Berkeley musicals; the prison coach is pulled by men in nightmare crow’s head masks. The title Die Fledermaus (“The bat”) is the cue for a general vampire feel to be added into the mix, with video projections of bats swirling round and a truly splendid pair of giant bat wings and Dracula cape for Richard Burkhard’s Dr Falke.
The plot of Die Fledermaus defies synopsis, so I’m not going to try: suffice to say that it’s very much in the bedroom farce genre and thoroughly entertaining. Stephen Lawless’s translation adds enormously to the fun. I don’t know the original German all that well, but I think it’s a safe bet that some serious liberties were taken and that much of the dialogue was new; amongst the many gags, look out for the hilarious episode when the convicted Eisenstein and the prison governor Frank are both masquerading as Frenchmen – without, of course, knowing a word of French between them. There are excellent, inventive, riotously funny acting performances from the whole cast: combine this with visuals that are constantly both stylish and slightly disturbing, wrap it around Strauss’s heady, devil-may-care music – which sounds deliciously nostalgic to modern ears – and you get a powerful brew. As the opera draws towards a close, Alden throws in the point that what we’re seeing are the happy days of empire drawing to a close, soon to be smashed on the iron fist of Nazism. Some neat lighting tricks and a brilliant piece of acting by Jan Pohl as the jailer Frosch turn this into some powerful imagery. Gaiety and frivolity may have abounded, but you are suddenly made to stop and think.