From Around the World: PARIS.(Brief Article)(Review)

The Opera National officially settled a bedeviling strike just in time to greet the new century with a new production of Die Fledermaus. One could be forgiven for fearing the worst. Never an institution to hide its intellectual credentials, the Bastille published extensive program notes that left the audience drained before a note had been played: psychological examinations of betrayal and the traumatic Strauss family background rubbed shoulders with photos of Nazi soldiers and Third Reich propaganda, all of which seemed more appropriate to Berg's Lulu than to Strauss's popular operetta. In the event, Coline Serreau's staging was less ponderously "modern" than was feared, helped by Jean-Marc Stehle and Antoine Fontaine's lavish sets and by Elsa Pavanel's stylish costumes.

The mimed overture began with unpromising seriousness, as passers-by heartlessly rejected the disguised Dr. Falke, later sung by a smooth-voiced Marian Pop. Fortunately, to the delight and relief of the audience, an ever-growing number of dancers descended spectacularly from the fly tower as silver bats, gently flapping their wings in time to Armin Jordan's baton. A fine conductor, Jordan drew excellent playing from the orchestra but conspicuously lacked Viennese style, preferring a wholesome, somewhat stolid approach to the waltz king's music.

Act I took place in an extravagant bourgeois apartment, where Adina Nitescu's wronged Rosalinde was flustered by the Pavarotti-style antics of Eduardo Villa's well-sung Alfred. In keeping with the director's feminist concept, this Rosalinde had suffered greatly and seemed too often distressed by the goings-on, making it hard to establish any Viennese charm. She sang lustily (Jan. 16), even if the final pages of the czardas sounded hazardous. Her husband, Eisenstein, was sung by the personable William Joyner, who made a good case for a young tenor in the role rather than a veteran baritone, as is so often the practice, but the character was presented very much as a feckless wastrel rather than an elegant philanderer. Marlis Petersen's Adele was, on the other hand, a strong, ruthlessly ambitious figure in a performance that bubbled with accomplished vocal charm and idiomatic German.

In Act II, Serreau took her biggest step from tradition by portraying Prince Orlofsky as mortally ill, suffering from post-chemotherapy hair loss and accompanied at all times by an odd nineteenth-century designer drip. Presumably only illness could explain such devotion to decadent living. Fortunately, Russian mezzo Marina Domaschenko summoned up plenty of energy to provide a vocally generous account of her music, even if her German sounded imbued with vodka. In the dialogue, she wasn't alone: the cast featured very few native German speakers, making for an unintentionally amusing linguistic tangle of accents. The performance caught fire with Laura Scozzi's wonderfully wacky choreography to additional ballet music by Joseph Strauss. A clever mix of transvestite dancers and break dancing combined with classical elements had the audience laughing and buoyant for the first time in the evening.

The grand marble hall of Act II then transformed into a virtuoso prison set based on sketches by Piranesi. Frosch's long spoken monologue is always a difficult moment to stage, and the decision to perform it in French with a Swiss accent was only partially successful. Gilles Privat needed a better script and more interplay with the audience to justify the decision, but, helped by good character work from Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as Dr. Blind and Oddbjorn Tennfjord as Frank, the evening came to a successful conclusion -- but it would have pleased Freud more than it did lovers of frothy operetta.

Meanwhile at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Jean-Claude Malgoire and la Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy launched their Monteverdi trilogy with a performance of Orfeo (Jan. 13). Summoned from the foyer, Bayreuth-style, by the opening brass fanfare, the evening proved disappointing. L'Incoronazione di Poppea, Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria and Orfeo were ...