Revenge is a dish best served cold, so they say, but rarely has it been this funny.
Following a sold out season in the Opera Studio in 2016, David Lampard’s sparkling production of Strauss’s immortal operetta 'Die Fledermaus' (The Bat) makes its main stage debut in Her Majesty’s Theatre from State Opera Of South Australia.
Set on the east coast of the USA in modern times, 'Die Fledermaus' is a tale of the rich and idle behaving very badly. Dr Falke seeks revenge against his so-called friend Gabriel von Eisenstein for a stunt at a party which left Falke red-faced and underdressed. The scandal!
Eisenstein has himself been misbehaving, on his way to serve jail time for assault. His stunning wife Rosalinda, a Hollywood Boulevard boutique shopaholic, is getting a little bored with her marriage. And so enters old flame, ex-lover Alfredo, a serving maid with stars in her eyes... Stir all this up at a party held by the androgynous Price Orlofsky and you've got a recipe for disaster (or comedy).
Here, Director David Lampard talks about the performance.
“As with any popular opera/operetta, 'Die Fledermaus' has been interpreted over and over again ad infinitum. Most productions tilt towards the frivolous, however other notable recent productions have dug deeper, exploring the darker consequences of the characters’ intents and actions. I’m hoping to sit somewhere in the middle of these two extremes with a bubble-infused humorous glimpse of the Beverly Hills social elite who briefly make Adelaide their home.
The individuals that populate this work are painted with big, broad brush strokes (and with even broader accents… Some of them are atrocious!). But they are all also remarkably tragic figures. Each is yearning for something more or different or ‘better’. They are all addicts. They are deeply flawed. That’s hard for a director to ignore! We hope you will giggle and guffaw – but we also invite you to wonder why you are laughing. After all, this is a satirical work. We’re shooting for a little pathos – by way of larger-than-life pantomime. This is one night on the bubbly that is guaranteed to not leave you with a lingering headache…”
