Die Fledermaus (The Bat) is an operetta by Johann Strauss II, the waltz king, first performed on 5 April 1874 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, with a libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée. It is a comedy of disguises built around a good-natured revenge: that of Dr Falke, who years earlier was left asleep in the street in a bat costume. Hence the title, and hence the whole intrigue.
Act I: Gabriel von Eisenstein must spend a few days in prison for a minor offence. His friend Falke persuades him to postpone his sentence by one night to attend Prince Orlofsky's party. The maid Adele slips out as well, in a dress borrowed from her mistress Rosalinde, and the prison governor mistakenly arrests Alfred, an old admirer of Rosalinde's.
Act II: at the party, everyone appears in disguise. Eisenstein unknowingly courts his own wife, who is passing herself off as a Hungarian countess and takes his watch as evidence. The champagne flows and nobody is who they claim to be.
Act III: at dawn, everyone converges on the prison. The tangles come to light, Falke reveals that it was all his planned revenge, and the final ensemble decides to blame everything on the champagne.
The libretto derives from a French vaudeville, Le Réveillon, by Meilhac and Halévy, itself based on a German comedy by Roderich Benedix. Strauss, already world-famous for his waltzes, composed the score quickly and found in it his most accomplished work for the stage.
The operetta opened in 1874, shortly after the stock market crash that had struck Vienna in 1873. Its portrait of a society that dances and toasts while pretending nothing is wrong carried, even then, an undertone of irony that audiences recognised at once.
The overture, built from the work's main themes, is a concert piece in its own right. The second act glitters with Rosalinde's csárdás, a homage to Hungarian music, and Adele's couplets, a model of vocal comedy.
The famous toast Im Feuerstrom der Reben and the chorus Brüderlein und Schwesterlein show Strauss's other talent: turning the waltz and the polka into theatre. The whole score breathes a calculated lightness, with clean orchestration and melodies remembered at first hearing.
Die Fledermaus is the operetta the great opera houses programme without apology, starting with the Vienna State Opera, where seeing it on 31 December is a tradition. Its humour still works because it laughs at permanent failings: vanity, the white lie, the pleasure of the party.
For anyone new to the lyric stage, it is an ideal beginning: it lasts no longer than a comedy, needs no effort to follow and contains some of the most infectious melodies in the repertoire.
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