Sunday January 16 2022 at 8 pm before the five o’clock performance on the bill for Dying Fledermaus, that is “Il Pipistrello”, famous and effervescent composition, among the most represented in the world, in three acts (in May represented in two parts) signed by Johann Strauss jr. with libretto by Carl Haffner and Richard Genée and taken from Le Reveillon by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. On the podium of the great hall of the Teatro del Maggio the director emeritus Zubin Mehta at the helm of the Choir and Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Alongside the maestro a cast of great interest: Markus Werba in the role of Gabriel von Eisentstein, Olga Bezsmertna come Rosalinda, Alex Tsilogiannis come Alfredo, Regula Mühlemann come Adele while Reinhard Mayr it’s Franco. The direction is entrusted to Josef Ernst Köpplinger, making his debut at the Teatro del Maggio, the sets are by Rainer Sinell while costumes and lights are respectively curated by Alfred Mayerhofer And Valerio Tiberi. The choreography is entrusted to Karl Alfred Schreiner; the footage of the Overture is by Meike Eber and Raffaello Kurig, the dramaturgy is by Fedora Wesseler. The choirmaster is Lorenzo Fratini. As of May, the Bat was staged only in 2015.

The “operetta” genre can be narrow if associated with Dying Fledermaus, because in fact this composition goes beyond the genre to which it is usually referred to, with a rich score and with parts of considerable difficulty for the leading artists. Johann Strauss jr. the best known and most prolific of the sons of the “Father of the waltz”, he admirably brings together the panache, the malice, the lightness, the melodies, the parody of the “serious” opera, the dance, the elegance and the humor by writing a of the masterpieces of musical theater of all times. Strauss translates the lightness and disenchantment of the story into a phantasmagoric of heterogeneous elements. The heartbeat Bat beats in a ternary waltz rhythm but the potpourri music created by the composer also includes polkas, arias that make the verse of the Italian opera, citations of the hit of the moment (Offenbach’s operettas) and folkloric pieces, such as the crackling csárdás sung by Rosalinda at the party. At the center of the plot of this masterpiece everything revolves around the party organized by Prince Orlofsky in which the protagonists, for various reasons, want to participate. To achieve their goals, everyone must resort to lying. Gabriel von Eisenstein, who has to serve a short sentence in prison for insulting an officer, decides to show up at the party in disguise and postpone the prison to the next morning, the house maid Adele, invited by her sister Ida to the party, pretends to have to be absent for assisting a sick aunt, while Gabriel’s wife, Rosalinde, takes advantage of her husband’s absence, whom she believes to have left to go to prison, to welcome her suitor Alfred into the house. However, the latter will be exchanged by the guards who have come to take Eisenstein for Rosalinde’s husband and taken to prison in his place. Arriving at the party Gabriel does not know that his friend Falke is about to make a trap for him by making him meet first the maid Adele disguised as an actress and then his wife Rosalinde in the guise of a Hungarian countess. In fact, Falke wants to take revenge for a joke he suffered in the past, when after a night of revelry at a masked party Eisenstein had left him drunk in the street like a bat, thus unleashing the jokes of passers-by. Deceived by the disguises of women, Eisenstein courts first Adele and then the mysterious Hungarian countess by giving her a watch. At the end of the party he goes to prison but with surprise that there is already a man in prison in his name. When he learns that it is his wife’s suitor he goes into a rage, only to retrace his steps when Rosalinde shows him the watch given to the self-styled Hungarian countess he met at the party. The bat’s revenge is complete but in the end the peace will be sanctioned by a nice toast. In the cloudiness induced by the fumes of the champagne that cheered up the party, the secret of happiness seems to be concealed: it is better to forget, even if momentarily, rather than accept the inevitable.

Speaking of his new production and the characteristics of this new one, the director Josef Ernst Köpplinger expressed his satisfaction with his first job in May: “It’s really fun to debut here in Florence, in this splendid theater: Dying Fledermaus it’s an Austrian operetta where anyone in the show is a liar. The story is based on a very funny French comedy but, behind it, there is a ‘bad’ story: in the end everything goes right. Perhaps. Oh maybe not. Continuing his analysis, Köpplinger underlined how the overall work carried out by both artists and technicians was fundamental: “The operetta for a director is always more articulated to be staged than a classic opera: it is a whole between the two, a drama and an opera joined together. The same goes for the singers: they have to speak, they have to act fast, almost non-stop, and they have to sing and speak at a very high pitch. I am really happy to work with Zubin Mehta, with the technicians and the machinists: they are a fantastic team and I think the public will have a lot of fun. I think it will be a good business card to bring the classic Austrian operetta to the Teatro del Maggio. “

The bat, in this case in a staging in co-production with the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, he presents vocal difficulties that are not usually associated with the operetta genre and a highly experienced cast has been called for the Maggio edition. Markus Werba is Gabriel von Eisentstein: endowed with a wide repertoire ranging from Donizetti to Wagner, the Austrian baritone, who has long been a stable presence on the billboards of the most prestigious theaters in the world, is also one of the most popular Mozart performers in recent years. For Werba, who in the course of his almost thirty-year career has collaborated with some of the most conductors of recent decades such as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta and Daniele Gatti, it will be an important return on the stage of the Teatro del Maggio: on November 24, 2021 he interpreted in fact Adam / Raphael in the symphonic concert by Franz Joseph Haydn Die Schöpfung, always alongside the master Zubin Mehta. Werba will also return to the Florentine scene during the next Maggio Musicale Festival.

Olga Bezsmertna è Rosalinde: graduated from the Kiev Conservatory in 2010, the Ukrainian soprano has linked her name to the prestigious Wiener Staatsoper, where over the last few years she has been able to showcase her vast repertoire, which embraces the roles of various composers, from Mozart up to Verdi. During his career, in addition to performing on the stages of the most important theaters and festivals in the world, he has collaborated with important conductors such as Valéry Gergiev, Adam Fischer, Alain Altinoglu, James Conlon and Christian Thielemann. Speaking of her character Olga Bezsmertna, who with this new production makes her debut on the stage of the Teatro del Maggio, focused on the traits that perhaps her part: “The character of Rosalinde is my favorite; it was the first role I ever received, now being here in Florence and singing like Rosalinde again makes me really happy and excited. I love to sing this part because Rosalinde is quite nice, intelligent and, without a doubt, a liar, like all the other characters who lie in this beautiful operetta. ” Alex Tsilogiannis è Alfred: the Greek tenor graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and during his career he has developed a wide repertoire that has seen him several times in Verdi and Puccini roles. For Tsilogiannis this new one will mark a double interpretation and production in the role of Alfred, being his first in Dying Fledermaus, both on the stage of the Teatro del Maggio. Regula Mühlemann plays the role of Adele: the young Swiss soprano had already collaborated with the Maggio on the occasion of the 80th Festival, during a cycle of four lieder concerts held at the Goldoni Theater. Despite her young age, Regula Mühlemann has trod some of the most important stages in the world and is endowed with a broad and solid repertoire, ranging from baroque music to Mozart, of which she has recorded numerous works including Die Zauberflöte And The clemency of Tito, up to authors such as Richard Strauss and Engelbert Humperdinck. Reinhard Mayr instead is Frank: the Austrian bass links his name to Florence since 1996, when he made his debut on the Florentine stage in Die Zauberflöte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, directed by Simone Young and directed by Julie Taymor. Reinhard Mayr, who completed his studies at the Anton-Bruckner-Konservatorium, has a repertoire that ranges from Franz Schubert’s Lieder to Rossini. They complete the cast Marina Viotti in the role of Orlofsky e Livio Holender in the role of Falke, both making their debut on the stage of the Maggio; Francesco Grifoni it’s Ivan, Daniel Prohaska is blind, Valentina Stadler is Ida while Robert Mayer And Michael Dangl they will alternate in the double role of Frosch / Voice acting.

This production will also see the return of the Compagnia Nuovo BallettO di ToscanA directed by Cristina Bozzolini, which with the Teatro del Maggio has already collaborated in numerous productions, the last of which for the ballet Cinderella by Sergej Prokof’ev, staged in December 2019 directed by Giuseppe La Malfa for the choreography by Jiří Bubeníček.

Further information: www.maggiofiorentino.it

Photo: Michele Monasta