Die Fledermaus

“Happy is he who forgets what cannot yet be changed” sounds like the kind of groan that was heard during the Viennese stock market crash that shook the whole of Europe in 1873. However, the world premiere of ‘Die Fledermaus’ by Johann Strauß (1825 –1899) barely a year later was not intended as a communal licking of wounds but as a cash cow for the still young genre of Viennese operetta that was having trouble finding its feet.
The target of its malicious plot is the honourable Herr von Eisenstein. He is obliged to spend eight days in prison for ungentlemanly behaviour. His best friend suggests he should really let his hair down first and takes him along to Prince Orlofsky’s party. Here he plans to gain revenge on Eisenstein for one of his earlier pranks. All this jollity ends up behind bars where their various confidence tricks and even a blatant miscarriage of justice finally lead to a happy ending.
Axel Köhler and Frank Philipp Schlößmann have refreshed this classic operetta while preserving its nonsense, which – in the words of Karl Krauss – is “self-explanatory and does not require any rational response.”