Die Fledermauswas Johann Strauss II’s most celebrated and popular operetta intoxicatingly melodious and exuberant. Mistaken identities, flirtations at a masked ball, elegant frivolities and confusions of all kinds provide a hilarious vehicle for some of the most captivating music ever written. Die Fledermaus takes place around 1850 in Vienna. The operetta itself premiered in 1874. Its three acts move from the Eisenstein home to Prince Orlofsky’s villa’s New Year’s Eve Ball, to the city’s jail in the final act. Its orchestral overture is one of the most popular ever written with five of the best operetta’s tunes woven into a framework of the great ‘Fledermaus Waltz’.
The leading characters include Rosalinde and her husband Gabriel von Eisenstein, who is headed for jail on New Year’s Eve. Then there is Adele, the Eisenstein’s talented and ambitious maid. Next is Alfred, Rosalinde’s former suitor, and then Prince Orlofsky who grandly hosts the big New Year’s Eve Ball. We cannot overlook Dr. Falke, Eisenstein’s old friend, who is seeking revenge at the party for an embarrassing incident that took place when he was masquerading as a bat a year earlier. Frank is the warden of the jail, and his employee Frosch, who, although he has only a speaking role, stages a comic spellbinding scene in the third act.
(Sung in German with English titles projected above the stage)
(A fully-staged live opera presented by Connecticut Lyric Opera and Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra)