J. Strauss: Die Fledermaus.(Video Recording Review)

[] Delunsch, Hartelius, Moss; Homberger, Hadley, Bar; Mozarteum Orchestra, Arnold Schonberg Chorus, Minkowski. Arte/ArtHaus Musik 100 341 (Naxos, dist.), 170 mins.

Remember Die Fledermaus, Johann Strauss's elegant, mellifluous and mildly naughty ode to love and champagne in old Vienna? Forget it.

This really isn't Strauss's Fledermaus at all, though most of the tunes sound familiar. This is Hans Neuenfels's rambling rape of Fledermaus, an avant-gardist monstrosity from the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg, anno 2001. This is the last defiant belch of the Gerard Mortier regime, which, if nothing else, was adventurous to a fault. Literally. The rumbling you hear must emanate from Herbert von Karajan's grave.

The DVD version of this bizarre deconstruction may do little to attract devotees of waltzing convention. But the faithful souvenir, replete with catcalls and boos on the soundtrack, will no doubt exert a certain compulsion for aficionados of schadenfreude.

What's that? You want to know how Neuenfels has contradicted both the letter and the spirit of Strauss's lilting law? Let me count the ways.

The dreary-bleary action seems to take place in a Deutschland unter Alles, some time before World War II. Eisenstein, who bears a striking resemblance to the Nazi field-marshal Hermann Goring, spends a lot of time miming equal-opportunity copulation; that is, when he isn't nuzzling Warden Frank. Both gentlemen, not incidentally, sport gigantic cylindrical lampshades over ...