| You will be blown away by the most marvelous music and voices |
Welsh National Opera |
| Welsh National Opera- Die Fledermaus , Wales Millennium Centre , May 20, 2017 |
With Die Fledermaus, the first opera in its Vienna Vice season the WNO is letting its hair down and inviting us all to join in the fun. This Johann Strauss 11 piece is the operatic equivalent of French farce or even English farce. In fact the Libretto was based on a nineteenth century farce ‘The Prison’ that was first performed in Berlin in 1851. It may not quite be ‘Carry On Singing!’ but the ‘goings on’ and ‘getting up tos’ are exactly the same. All this aristocratic gadding about is underpinned by the highest artistry of ‘Waltz King’ Strauss’ wonderful heart lifting music. Played to perfection by the WNO orchestra, under the inspiring baton of Tomáš Hanus debuting as the company’s Music Director.Opera is essentially about great music and great singing. The singing here was inspiring. We are in the home of Gabriel von Eisenstein, a Viennese gentleman who has been sentenced to eight days in prison for insulting an official but we focus on his wife Rosalinde’s maid Adele and we are served our first delight of the evening. Rising Welsh Soprano Rhian Lois is totally captivating both with her sparkling voice and with the delightful cheekiness she brings to the role. She has a forged letter, purportedly from her sister but its actually written by Falke, a friend of Eisenstein, inviting her to Prince Orlofsky's ball. Falke arrives and invites Eisenstein to the ball and off they go, first marking the occasion with a crisply sung duet. Baritones Mark Stone, Eisenstein and Ben McAteer, Falke both with strong and true voices forge an interesting relationship. Eisenstein’s wife thinks he has gone to fulfil his jail sentence. American soprano Mary-Elizabeth William’s Rosalinde is a wonderful larger than life character; her bold strong singing voice is brilliantly matched by her great sense of humour. We often join in the laughter with her. Alfred turns up next, a former lover of Rosalinde, he still has the hots for her. He takes some of his clothes off and slips on Eisenstein’s dressing gown. Paul Charles Clarke made his debut with the Welsh National Opera and has gone on to appear in major opera houses throughout the world. He has an easy to listen to tenor voice and again he captures fully the fun in this crazy story. Colonel Frank, the prison governor turns up and thinks that as Alfred is in Eisenstein’s dressing gown, he is his man and drags him off to prison after sharing a delightful drinking song duet with his prisoner. Cornish, Alan Opie vocally captures well one of the baddies in these proceedings. Now every one is off to Prince Orlofsky's ball. It is a convention with this opera that the prince is usually played by a mezzo-soprano. Emma Carrington is in tune with the light-heartedness of the production and sings with great clarity but I would have liked to have seen a little more strength of character. As you might expect there’s a lot of great fun at the ball and as well as Strauss’ waltzes, vigorously performed by the WNO chorus we get some fun, almost high kicking from some of the main characters. There are masks, attempts at seduction and something to do with a swinging pocket watch. I did think at times some performers could have made a little better contact with the audience but in the final act with the appearance of Steve Spiers, jailor, all that was forgotten. He gave us five minutes plus of sheer stand-up comedy and totally captivated everyone. Things do sort of sort themselves out and they end by all singing about Champagne. They had drunk rather a lot of it and they had intoxicated us all with a great sense of fun always underpinned by the great artistry in the presentation of this wonderful music. |
Reviewed by: Michael Kelligan |
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