OPERA REVIEW:
DIE FLEDERMAUS

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
16 OCT 2012
R: 3/5


Pictured: Ambur Braid, Peter Barrett

If there’s one thing — beyond a good waltz — that defines Vienna for most people, it is that city’s association with Sigmond Freud, father of modern-day psychoanalysis. And disparate though those two elements may be, they are brought together, for good or for ill, by director Christopher Alden, in the Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Johann Strauss II’s DIE FLEDERMAUS, playing in rep at the Four Seasons Centre.

As for judging the merits of what Alden has wrought, that will probably be hotly debated by the two factions comprising the modern opera audience: Those to whom the story reigns supreme and those to whom a concept is to be considered king.

Alden, of course, is a director in love with concepts staging, director of the COC production of The Flying Dutchman, simultaneously loved and loathed by Toronto audiences — and while this latest production isn’t as visually dank and dismal (both were designed by Allen Moyer), it manages nonetheless to make both debauchery and 19th century Vienna seem bleak and dull, despite the lighting genius of Paul Palazzo.

Written as a mere confection — a musically driven French farce —the unbearable lightness of DIE FLEDERMAUS proves utterly incapable of carrying the weight of Alden’s re-imagining, wherein it is transformed into a funeral march through the human psyche, full of Freudian slips, and most of those worn by men in the chorus, at that. His concept is almost totally at war not only with the libretto, crafted from the bones of a vaudevillian stage play titled Le réveillon, by Carl Haffner and Richard Genée, but with Strauss’ music as well, a series of lilting Viennese waltzes deserving of a glittering meringue of a production.

And one suspects that such a production might showcase this excellent cast in a better light as well, although these performers fearlessly tackle anything Alden throws at them. Indeed, tenors Michael Schade and David Pomeroy seem to be having a better time than a major portion of their audience, cast as rivals Alfred and von Eisenstein, the former still madly in love with the latter’s wife, Rosalinde, played by magnificent soprano Tamara Wilson, who also has the dubious distinction of being by far the worst victim of Constance Hoffman’s appalling costuming.

Starting in Rosalinde’s boudoir, featuring an over-sized bed that almost never leaves the stage — underscoring Alden’s Freudian conceit — the action progresses through lavish costume ball to a police station, before it is all revealed as mere hijinks cooked up by old friend Dr. Falke, sung by baritone Peter Barrett.

This is an impressive slate of principals, supported by fine performances from the likes of soprano Ambur Braid, tenor David Cangelosi, baritone James Westman and soprano Laura Tucker. And with Johannes Debus conducting, it all comes together sounding like a musical sacher torte worthy of Vienna’s best cafés. Sadly, Alden serves it up, for those who prefer story-driven to concept-driven work, like a slab of dry black bread.