Vancouver Opera opens its 65th season with Die Fledermaus

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Die Fledermaus

When: Until November 3

Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre

Tickets and information: From $25 in Vancouveropera.ca

As the overture plays, a guy in a lion costume and another in a Batman costume stagger drunkenly around the stage. When Batman passes out on a park bench the lion abandons him, leaving crowds of flirtatious teenagers, dog walkers, and nuns to taunt the drunk back into semi-consciousness. The further comic revenge of Batman on his disloyal lion friend will be the plot of Johann Strauss “The Bat”, or “The Bat”.

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Kicking off Vancouver Opera’s 65th season, Strauss’s 1874 operetta was staged by Ashley Corcoran of the Arts Club as a dumb, sexless 1960s sex farce. While the production retains the original German libretto (with English subtitles), the spoken English dialogue, skilfully adapted by Canadian comic playwright Mark Crawford, is sprinkled with bombastic jokes and meta-theatrical groans. Q: What do married men look like? A: Les Miserables.

The bizarrely unrealistic The plot of Die Fledermaus invites all sorts of playful twists, which writer Crawford and director Corcoran generously offer. When Warden Frank and Jailer Frosh arrive at the home of Gabriel and Rosalind Eisenstein to take Gabriel to prison, the warden shares a glass and sings a song with Rosalind’s boyfriend Alfred, who is pretending to be Gabriel, while Frosh casually walks through a magazine.

Later, in front of a chorus of well-heeled revelers at Prince Orlovsky’s party, a drunken Gabriel tries to seduce a Hungarian countess: his own wife, disguised by a thin mask over her eyes.

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Despite the verisimilitude and often overly broad comic acting, Strauss’ lively scores of waltzes and holiday odes to alcohol are given full value by conductor Jacques Lacombe’s Vancouver Opera Orchestra. Without any flashy arias, the singers merrily slide across the surface of this carefree vehicle.

as budding actress AdeleEisenstein’s maid with a sweet comic touchsoprano Claire de Silzné is a great lead in the iconic “Laughing Song”. Lara Chekevych uses her more powerful soprano to mask the contradictions Rosalind when she tries to catch her husband Gabriel’s debauchery when she cheats on him with Alfred (tenor Owen McCausland). In the traditional trouser part of Prince Oryol, mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel is a powerhouse of rhinestone-encrusted decadence.

John Chest’s rich baritone gives Gabriel Eisenstein more weight than the foolish man deserves, even as his friend Dr. Falke (baritone Peter Barrett), the Bat, plays trick after trick on the cowardly lion. The Casket also has one of the best comic scenes in operetta with bass-baritone Giles Tomkins as Frank. Both in disguise like the french to prove his good faith to Orlovsky with dueling French phrases taken from a vocabulary lesson in the first year.

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Beatrice Zeilinger gets ta comic audience favorite for his non-singing role as Frosh, a cynical, sharp prison guard who can’t stand the operatic singing of jailer Alfred.

Mise-en-scene and production design of the 1960s, with a striking orange and green candy set by Julie Lévesque and colorful costumes Emily Wallman, were borrowed from L’OpQuebec era. Gerald King designed the brilliant lighting and Shelley Stuart Hunt choreographed a mix of 19th century waltzes and 1960s frugés.

A story that could have been called Much Ado About Nothing if the title hadn’t already been adopted, the absurdist costume comedy Flying Man is a good choice for Halloween week.

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