Die Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus comes to the Teatro Real for the first time with Marc Minkowski with Les Musiciens du Louvre, one of the most famous and well-known Viennese operettas, full of amorous entanglements, games of seduction and changing identities with a lot of humour. This operetta is a rarity for the composer, but well known for its overture and medley of ideas. It is a piece that is not usually absent from New Year's Eve concerts, and with which Strauss introduced a novelty into the genre as it was conceived at the time.

Premiered in the same theatre which saw the birth of The Magic Flute eighty years before, the third and most famous opera by the “King of the Waltz” perhaps represents — thanks to an imbroglio of love, infidelity, and transvestism— the 18th century spiritual relative closest to the universe of Mozart that we know in the Da Ponte/Mozart trilogy. In part, it is because of the carefree schematic of the story, but even more so, there is the luminous spontaneity   and contagious joviality of its score, which is a true prodigy of inspiration and musical elegance.

The lavish ball which is central to Act II of Die Fledermaus takes place, in the original French libretto — entitled Le réveillon, by the authors of, none other than, La bella Helena, Carmen and Manon, — on New Year’s Eve.  This circumstance partly explains that, although the German adaptation did not hold on to this fact, the operetta has consolidated a place in the theatres of half the globe as the favourite title during the Christmas season.  An expert in these matters, the French conductor Marc Minkowski will know how to extract all the frivolous charm from this score.

Komische Operette in three acts

Music by Johann Strauss (1825-1899)

Libretto by Carl Haffner and Richard Genée, based on Le réveillon by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy’s

Premiere at Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 5 April 1874

Premiere al the Teatro Real

Concert version

Artistic team

Orchestra conductor: Marc Minkowski

Chorus master: Xavier Puig

Cast

Gabriel von Eisenstein: Huw Montague Rendall

Rosalinde: Jacquelyn Stucker

Príncipe Orlofsky: Marina Viotti

Alfred: Magnus Dietrich

Dr. Falke: Leon Košavic

Dr. Blind: Krešimir Špicer

Adele: Alina Wunderlin

Ida: Sandrine Buendia

Frosch: Sunnyi Melles

Les Musiciens du Louvre

Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana