Skip to main content

Review: Die Fledermaus at the Met


Review: Die Fledermaus at the Met



<em>Die Fledermaus</em> © Ken Howard | Metropolitan Opera

A wave of trepidation slowly overcame the audience of the Met's December 4th performance of Die Fledermaus, as people opened their playbills and read the insert that said Mireille Asselin would be on for Lucy Crowe, who was ill, in the pivotal role of Adele. Fortunately, the immensely charming Asselin displayed no signs of nervousness at having to command the gargantuan Met stage. She has a beautiful voice that suits Adele nicely.  It should be noted that a cover being a highlight of the evening is not unlike a chambermaid becoming the sensation of the New Year's Eve party at the center of the story.



Jeremy Sams' production of  Johann Strauss Jr's classic operetta bursts with an energy appropriate for the joyous music played expertly by the Met orchestra. Susanna Phillips, who sang the role of Rosalinde, has a lovely singing voice, but her delivery of lines of dialogue left something to be desired. Christopher Fitzgerald gets a lot of laughs as Frosch the jailer, even if his third act scene drags on for too long. Paulo Szot made for a strong Doctor Falke, and the hammy Dimitri Pittas did not disappoint as Alfred. Toby Spence was fine as Eisenstein. Susan Graham's Orlofsky unfortunately was a bit a of let down.

The sets and costumes by Robert Jones use rich colors to create a sumptuous visual representation of 1899 Vienna, reminiscent of a Klimt painting. Conductor James Levine has the orchestra playing with an energetic vitality. The revised libretto by Douglas Carter Beane was the weakest part of the production, rushing through most of the action and  lingering on the comedic bits. This is not entirely unsurprising, as this is the same Douglas Carter Beane responsible for the perplexing book to the 2013 Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, bizarre political subplots and all. The translation of the lyrics to English are not always as smooth as one would hope, as awkward phrases occasionally inhibit the inherent giddiness of the music.

While the evening as a whole was enormously enjoyable,  a tighter libretto would undoubtably elevate this innuendo-laden farce to a operetta on par with Strauss' unabashedly blissful music. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Muppets Bring Humor and Heart to the Hollywood Bowl in "The Muppets Take the Bowl": Review

The Muppets are in  a bit of weird situation. Six years ago they made their big comeback with a smash hit movie, but since then they have had another flop movie and a short-lived television show. The franchise is still figuring out what iteration of itself works best for a 21st-century audience, and if it's not movies and it's not TV, what is it? It seems like they are trying to answer that question by putting on a rare live performance, happening September 8-10th at the Hollywood Bowl. Like the good Muppet fan I am, I was on hand opening night in eager anticipation of finding out what a live Muppet show looks like. It looked like, well, what you might expect it to look like. Puppeteers dressed in all black performing their characters right before our very eyes. That is when there wasn't a platform or podium they could hide behind, which there occasionally was during the course of the two-and-a-half hour show. While it certainly isn't how we are used to experienc

"My Mind Turns Your Life Into Folklore": Why Taylor Swift's "Gold Rush" Is a Song About Songwriting

"My mind turns your life into folklore." That line, from the song "Gold Rush," is the only time the word "folklore" is spoken on either of Taylor Swift's 2020 records, Folklore and Evermore , the latter of which is where the song appears. The presence of the line indicates that "Gold Rush" is a pivotal song not only in Swift's lockdown duology, but in her maturation as a songwriter.  Swift's early albums often drew heavily from her own experiences, with fans and the media scouring her lyrics for clues as to which ex-boyfriend her numerous breakup songs referred. Her tumultuous dating life made as many headlines as her music, in part because it informed so much of the music. The discourse was often ridiculous and reductive, and thankfully, that period of her career is over (Swift has been in a relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn since 2016).  Both of her 2020 albums have their fair share of autobiographical songs, but they also see

Every Julie London Album Ranked

Last month, for school I had to write a long research paper about 17th century Flemish flower paintings, which was a bit outside my comfort zone. So, I needed writing music and a lot of it. After listening a bit to Amazon Music's playlist "Big Band Christmas", I came across the song "Warm in December" by Julie London. It was a name I'd heard before, but I knew next to nothing about her. But the song was good enough to send me to Wikipedia, where I learned that London released 30 albums in the 14 years between 1955 and 1969. Most of the material she recorded was standards, the kind I spent most of 2020 listening to, so I decided that listening to London's entire discography (in order) would be perfect for writing my paper. Now, the paper's done ( I got an A), and I'm left with many, many thoughts about Julie London.  A film actress before releasing her first album, Julie is Her Name , in 1955, London had a mega-hit single with "Cry Me a River