Back in the Seventies, when I was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, I happened to see on television one of the most memorable broadcasts of a performance of Die Fledermaus, probably the most popular of the operettas composed by Johann Strauss II. It was a video document of a performance at the Royal Opera House on New Year’s Eve of 1977. The production was staged by Leopold Lintberg, and the conductor was Zubin Mehta. All of the music was sung in German; but, in what was apparently a Royal Opera tradition, each performer delivered the spoken text in the language of his/her own choice.
When commercial videos began to go on sale, I eagerly searched for a copy of this recording. Unfortunately, the best I could find was a subsequent performance of the production, this time from New Year’s Eve of 1983. Many of the key cast members remained the same, particularly soprano Kiri Te Kanawa as Rosalinde, baritone Hermann Prey as her husband, Gabriel von Eisenstein, and baritone Benjamin Luxon as Dr Falke. While this made for pleasant viewing, it lacked the spontaneous freshness of the 1977 broadcast. The latter was probably an opening-night performance, since one of the “guest appearances” in the second act was announced as the world premiere of a new ballet by Frederic Ashton.
This afternoon I discovered that, through YouTube, I could return to that more memorable performance. The video looks as if the source was a videotape recorded from a television broadcast, which was subsequently digitized. Aside from the fact that the first half of the overture is missing, everything else seems to have been captured in its entirety.
What made the production so memorable was its heady blend of sight gags, no end of verbal connotations in the text, and shameless appropriations of music from other sources. Of course it is taken for granted that the tenor Alfred (Ryszard Karczykowski), who is trying to lure Rosalinde away from her husband, should add no end of operatic solos into his part of the libretto. However, my favorite moment comes in the first act, when Eisenstein takes his leave of Rosalinde (who thinks he is departing to serve his prison sentence). Prey spiced up the scene by weaving “Wotan’s Farewell” from Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre into his part.
Notice that I wrote “operatic moment.” Just as impressive, if not more so, was the Ashton ballet being premiered by Merle Park and Wayne Eagling. The choreography was set to the music of Strauss’ Opus 410 “Frühlingsstimmen” (voices of spring) waltz. Those that know their ballet history are likely to hypothesize that Ashton had decided to poke fun at the outrageous acrobatics of the Soviet ballet “Spring Waters.” (I doubt that anyone was surprised when Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo decided to add “Spring Waters” to the repertoire.) There is more than a fair share of bodies hurling each other around, not to mention and endless number of flower petals that Park drops on the stage while perched on Eagling’s shoulder.
The 1977 recording is somewhat longer than the 1983 release. This is because there are far more “guests invited to perform” at Prince Orlofsky’s party. Both Daniel Barenboim and Isaac Stern gave lengthier performances than are usually expected, Chopin’s Opus 23 ballade in G minor and the final movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 64 violin concerto in E minor, respectively. Still, this was a New Year’s Eve event, meaning that, for most of the audience, the occasion was a “pre-party party.” The “visiting talent” simply made the occasion more festive.
As might be expected, the video quality is far from the best possible. Nevertheless, none of the humor of the occasion has been impeded. This is one of those opportunities to see what some of the best musical talents of that time could do to serve up the perfect blend of the outrageously comic with the joyously festive.
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