Background Notes
It was allegedly Jacques Offenbach who first suggested Johann Strauss write an operetta, way back in 1864. The ?Mozart of the Champs-Elysées? certainly knew the art form's marketability to the local milieu. The Austrians were enamored with Offenbach 's special brand of comedy and satire, which made its Viennese debut in 1858 with Le mariage aux lanternes. In fact, the German-born French expatriate had quite recently bested his junior at his own game ? the waltz ? at the Pressball competition with his Abendblätter (Evening Papers), which courted more public favor than Strauss's entry Morgenblätter (Morning Papers). He obviously didn't fear any loss of audience share.
Strauss demurred for the moment, and it was nearly a decade later when he tried his hand at his first staged work. It took him three attempts before his scored a lasting hit with Die Fledermaus. And it just happened to be by way of a play with Offenbachian roots, Le réveillon, by the dynamic duo of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. They were a consistent playwright/librettist team for opérette française many times over (and at least one tragedy, Bizet's Carmen ) ? as they were his usual collaborators, one suspects Offenbach himself may have even considered the drama for musical treatment.
The play had recently premiered in Paris on September 10, 1871, to great acclaim. Viennese theater impresarios kept their eyes out for new French works, and the director of the Carltheater had already translated it into German by the following year. Unfortunately, in its present state, the farce was not found suitable for audiences of the suburban theaters, even though it was based on a German source, Das Gefängnis (The Prison; 1851) by playwright Roderich Benedix. Eventually Le réveillon landed on the desk of Max Steiner, co-director of the rival Theater an der Wien, who passed it on to Richard Genée for retouching. Genée was probably the most perceptive librettist of an era during which he had few real peers. Right away he realized that to suit the tastes of the Viennese he would have to ditch the intimate Act II souper scene (a réveillon is a midnight dinner party akin to French tastes, not unlike Violetta's Act I gathering in La traviata ) and replace it with a grand masked ball. Though the main concept of the drama was relatively unique and attractive (a wife's lover serving her husband's prison sentence so that their affair will escape detection), it needed a bit more intrigue. Thus, Genée introduced a subplot where the wife (Rosalinde) encounters her husband (Eisenstein) while disguised and quite directly observes his flirtations. The spunky maid, who is audacious enough to borrow one of her lady's party dresses, also receives her fair share of attention, especially from the husband, who recognizes her and tries to expose her identity. Neither women appear in Act II of the French original ? they are replaced by less reputable girls from the theatrical demimonde.
Everything is orchestrated by Falke, who is repaying in kind a past slight. Die Fledermaus 's rather loose dramaturgy hangs on this casual mention of a bat's costume from which the work's title is derived. The Viennese operetta's forerunner, the Singspiel, begat an untidy story line ? the main objective of the comedy was to delight and amuse. Generally these shows lacked uniformity in dialogue and were open to interpretation ? Mozart's The Magic Flute is one example of where there is no urtext of its dialogue. Therefore, depending on the director, certain details may or may not be brought to light. For example, it generally assumed that Falke has sent Adele the letter (not her sister) inviting her to Orlofsky's party because he knows Eisenstein finds her attractive, which will eventually compound his embarrassment. Similarly, he has sent another letter to Rosalinde advising her to attend the ball in disguise, as to watch her husband's infidelities unrecognized. Why else would she be there ? one would expect she would be trying to discover a way out of her current predicament and gain her lover's release. In Le réveillon, the ?bat's revenge? (in the French version a bluebird) is simply the act of having prisoner and warden unwittingly dine together while posing as others, a fact retained in Falke's master plan. Other details drawn directly from the French model include a party at a Russian noble's house, the watch scene (though not with the absent Fanny, Rosalinde's French counterpart, but with Métella, a woman from Gallardin/Eisenstein's dubious past) and the drunken jailor's irritation with the imprisoned Alfred's singing. The denouement is slightly different, with Fanny arriving at the prison but never actually appearing onstage ? nonetheless, all the same points are made.
Alfred is the one constant factor from play to operetta, and his original position as chef of the Russian Prince Yermontoff's orchestra adds some needed continuity to the original, as his absence from the dinner party is noted. Also, his position as the musical instigator disposed the play to lyric moments, something that made Le réveillon all the more malleable as it became a work for the musical stage. Above all, Die Fledermaus was designed to entertain its audience and reflect it as well ? a work drenched in copious bottles of champagne brought people back to happier days, before a very recent economic collapse. Alfred's refrain, ?happy the person who can forget what cannot be altered,? is telling remark, made to those few who were still fortunate enough to afford a theater ticket. A setting in the present was still relatively rare for the Austrian stage in those days, and there are other subtle references to current events. The casting of the Russian count as a mezzo-soprano, though uncommon, was still occasionally done [ie. Oscar in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera (1859); Thibault in Don Carlos (1867); Siébel in Gounod's Faust (1859); Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette (1867)], yet pants roles tended to be problematic for more traditional producers, who would sometimes recast Orlofsky as a tenor. But when one considers the cool relationship that existed between Austria and Russia at the time, the emasculation would have been a welcome joke for Strauss's audience, as would be the deceptively hospitable count's intransigent requirement that no one be bored, lest they be forcibly removed from his home, nor leave a wine glass empty, lest they be cracked over the head with the bottle. Contrary to his lilting aria ?Chacun à son goût,? things are hardly left to a guest's own personal taste.
Die Fledermaus premiered before a sullen audience, deflated and defeated by the stock market crash of 1873. As a consequence, the premiere was deemed to be a failure, but this observation is misleading. In fact, the operetta has been programmed late into the season and had to make room for the next scheduled event. In Berlin later that summer it was a triumph, enthusiastically greeted by the Prussians, glowing over recent victories and expansions in both France and Austria . When Die Fledermaus returned to Vienna that fall, it was an unqualified success, entering the standard repertoire where it has never left. The operetta had the distinction of being mounted at the Hofoper in 1894 and again in 1897 by Gustav Mahler. It has remained a cultural institution at the core of Vienna 's heart to this day.
Courtesy of the Minnesota Opera
