die fledermaus
about today’s performance
With the revival of Roland Petit’s light-hearted ballet Die Fledermaus, set to popular melodies mainly by Johann Strauss II (1825–1899), the Vienna State Ballet pays tribute to the composer’s 200th anniversary. Where else could be more fitting for the performance of this ballet than the city where the “waltz king” was born, and his operetta of that name received its world premiere in 1874 at the Theater an der Wien? Petit’s work, described as an “operette dansée”, has relatively little in common with Strauss’s original and is more an adaptation of the latter. First presented at the Vienna State Opera in 2009, Petit’s Die Fledermaus received its world premiere under the title La Chauve-souris with the Ballets de Marseille at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo on 2 June 1979 and has conquered ballet stages all over the world ever since. Petit essentially reduced the plot of this uplifting ballet to three main characters: Bella, Johann and Ulrich. The work is similar to the operetta in that all the action
ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
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revolves around masks, mistaken identities and amorous adventures. The family idyll of the opening is an illusion. In Petit’s ballet it is the charming Bella who tries to open her husband Johann’s eyes through roleplay and assuming other identities – however Johann continues to seek out extramarital pleasure by transforming at night into a bat and flying away. Supported by her friend Ulrich, both loyal and conflicted in equal measure – and who always seems to be in the right place at the right time to pull the strings that will save a marriage that has lost its equilibrium – Bella eventually succeeds in bringing her husband to his senses and clipping his wings in the truest sense of the word, while also reassessing her own role as a woman and a wife. The versatile “storyteller” Roland Petit has the ability to present real-life situations in artistic form and represent them in ways that the audience can relate to, where every movement, every gesture has a meaning, and the characters are intensely human. His technique is based on classical ballet, but always with an additional contemporary touch and typically “French esprit” and it is also enhanced with elements from a variety of dance styles, with particular importance attached to acting. Die Fledermaus therefore offers pure classical dance, coupled with the can-can, csárdás, waltzes and nuanced mime. There is no doubt that a key component of the ballet is the music of Johann Strauss II, which is so important to – not only – Vienna. Johann Strauss’s music, composed from the middle of the 19th century, first for the ballroom and soon after also for the concert halls and theatres, seems tailor-made for the ballet stage, consisting principally of waltzes in ¾-time and possessing all the essential ingredients of dance: momentum and passion, but also tenderness. The momentum of whirling spins is virtuosic and intoxicating but also conveys a great sense of freedom, as was demonstrated by the exponents of “free” dance such as Grete Wiesenthal at the beginning of the 20th century. Choreographers have repeatedly drawn on Strauss’s masterful compositions – and not only his waltzes – with those to do so at the Vienna State Opera including Heinrich Kröller, Toni Birkmeyer, Valeria Kratina, Erika Hanka, Gerlinde Dill and Grete Wiesenthal. In the more recent past, this music has been explored by former directors of the Vienna State (Opera) Ballet, notably Renato Zanella in Alles Walzer (1997), Kadettenball (2003) and the evening-length Aschenbrödel (1999) – Johann Strauss II’s final, unfinished work and his only ballet – and Martin Schläpfer, with a somewhat ironic take on Strauss’s blissful waltzes in Marsch, Walzer, Polka (2021). On the international stage, it was the Fledermaus theme, among others, that inspired choreographers such as George Balanchine (The Bat, 1936), Ruth Page (Die Fledermaus, 1961) and Ronald Hynd (Rosalinda, 1978). Meanwhile, for his Fledermaus, Roland Petit commissioned the Australian composer Douglas Gamley (1924–1998) to arrange and orchestrate a “greatest hits” of Johann Strauss II with additional material from Johann Strauss I and Josef Strauss. With the aid of his specific choreographic language, he was able to find an extremely musical, humorous and succinct interpretation. Die Fledermaus promises a great celebration of dance, but by no means one confined to charming, sweet ballet moves in a waltzing whirl: instead, it will be laced with a good portion of irony and the wink of an eye. 3
ABOUT TODAY’S PERFORMANCE
Olga Esina (Bella), Kirill Kourlaev (Johann)
about the music
For the compilation of the music for Roland Petit’s Die Fledermaus, Douglas Gamley primarily drew upon compositions by Johann Strauss II, with additional material by Johann Strauss I and Josef Strauss. Among the works heard are selections from Johann Strauss II’s operetta Die Fledermaus, including the overture and the Polka Mazur Glücklich ist, wer vergisst, mainly associated with the character of Bella. Roland Petit choreographed a lively number for three waiters to the quick polkas Leichtes Blut and Unter Donner und Blitz, as well as a virtuosic solo for Johann. To the march Es war so wunderschön Ulrich performs a humorous scene in the nightclub to which he brings the disguised Bella. Furthermore, the waltzes Wo die Zitronen blühen, Neu Wien, Künstlerleben and Wiener Bonbons, which culminate in large ensemble scenes, the Polka française Etwas Kleines and the Polka Mazur Waldine, which turns into an amusing number ending in a dance duel between Ulrich and the Csárdás soloist, as well as the overture to Eine Nacht in Venedig also appear. In addition, the waltzes Dorfschwalben aus Österreich and Sphärenklänge by Josef Strauss are featured – the latter in an intimate pas de deux for Bella and Johann in the “Prison Scene” of Act II – along with the Pizzicato-Polka by Johann and Josef Strauss, and material by Johann Strauss I.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
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EDUARD HANSLICK
“His melodic invention welled forth as delightfully as it was inexhaustible; his rhythms pulsed with lively variety; harmony and form stood pure and upright. ‘Love Songs’ he called one of his most beautiful sets of waltzes. All of them might have borne that title: little tales of the heart of shy courtship, rapturous affection, jubilant happiness, and, here and there, a breath of lightly comforted melancholy. Who could even name the most charming among Strauss’s many dance pieces! (…) Strauss’s masterpiece Die Fledermaus owes its lasting and extraordinary success certainly above all to its enchanting music, but that music would be unthinkable without the thoroughly comic plot transposed to Viennese soil. The flood of Strauss’s melody flows here within a narrow bed, yet it fills it to the brim. Wherever, as in Die Fledermaus, wit and high spirits permeate the entire fabric and give rise to dance rhythms, Strauss offers what is most genuine and best in him.”
the waltz on the ballet stage GUNHILD OBERZAUCHER-SCHÜLLER
Dictionary definitions of the waltz tend to sound dry and simplistic: the twosome danced in ¾ -time is the oldest of the modern bourgeois social dances, having succeeded the minuet in the 18th century before the French Revolution, which had been the most popular dance until then. It reached its first peak of popularity around the time of the Congress of Vienna, when composers such as Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss I had emerged and laid the foundations for its present popularity. Ultimately it was Johann Strauss II whose compositions would primarily confirm the waltz’s status as a significant – Viennese – musical form in its own right. Due to their high quality, they were soon taken out of the ballrooms and elevated to the concert platform, a position that they have continued to retain. Is the waltz then seen purely as a social dance and as music for concert programmes? Not only in Vienna, but also in other “musical” cities – such as Paris, where the waltz has an effervescent character – the dance must also be seen differently. Here the waltz is spoken of as a physical expression of the feelings associated with all manner of circumstances: of bliss, of ecstasy but also of death. At home at all levels of society, the waltz is capable of manifesting itself in a wide range of social guises: it can be plain or rough, jaunty or sedate, smoothly elegant, glitzy or frivolous. As Viennese society (and Parisian too) has inherently theatrical features, the waltzes – regardless of where they are danced or by whom – are always covert or quite explicit theatrical statements. On top of this theatrically intensified level, the waltz also has an additional one: a stage
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level where opera, operettas and ballets – and occasionally a “danced operetta” such as Roland Petit’s Fledermaus – not only uses ¾ -time but also treats the waltz as subject matter. Dance history shows that the stage waltz too can assume the broadest range of guises: from composers such as Johann Strauss II, and also taken from certain works, such as Die Fledermaus, it is at times sweet and gentle, determined and austere, revelling in drunkenness or demonically menacing. But the waltz also found other forms. It can be arranged grandly as Tchaikovsky does in works such as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, where, in common with the ballets composed by Léo Delibes, whom the great Russian sought to imitate, the waltz has the capacity to depict the state of one of the characters or a situation in atmospheric sound images. Meanwhile the symphonic waltzes elevated into independent pieces at the beginning of the 20th century, such as La Valse by Ravel, are different again. In this work, which was originally to be entitled Vienna and whose later choreographic interpreters would include George Balanchine, a female protagonist enters the spell of a dark power that turns out to be none other than death.
From the ballroom to the stage Who would be surprised that at a time – we are talking here about the second half of the 19th century – when the waltz was truly triumphant in Viennese ballrooms, efforts were made to transfer that great success to the ballet stage? The calculation was: why not put the bliss and ecstasy of this dance on the stage and be successful? The Vienna Court Opera, always keen to be topical, had already used numerous pretexts to smuggle the latest waltzes onto the ballet stage. Now, in 1885 (coincidentally the year that Grete Wiesenthal was born, who used the Viennese waltz to revive dance two decades later) the Vienna Court Opera produced a ballet with the succinct title Wiener Walzer (“Viennese Waltzes”). The work was choreographed by Louis Frappart (1832–1921), a journeyman who had belonged to the Court Opera ballet company since the middle of the century. The music was arranged by Josef Bayer, composer of The Fairy Doll. Although the ballet tells a slight story – how Vienna and the waltz developed through different periods – as so often during this period, the work can be seen as a “divertissement in costume” whose true theme is a reflection on the Court Opera ballet and the waltz itself. The ballet drew its particular sophistication from the degree to which it integrated the dance forms that were the waltz’s natural home: folk dance, ballroom dance and stage dance. This mix of different genres was also specified in the choice of musical pieces. Josef Bayer – working in a similar fashion to Douglas Gamley, who would arrange the music 100 years later for Roland Petit’s Fledermaus – conceived an orchestral arrangement for the three-part Wiener Walzer that matched the waltzes but also the image of Vienna of that time. Making no attempt at authenticity, the work traced, in the words of an accompanying text “… an evolution of the Viennese waltz and offers a generic picture of the Viennese and their life.” Among the pieces of music selected for the work, which is set in a Biedermeier entertainment establishment in Spittelberg, the “Apollosaal”, and in the Prater, alongside early, down-to-earth waltzes still derived from folk dances from the 27
THE WALTZ ON THE BALLET STAGE
Ketevan Papava (Bella), Eno Peci (Ulrich)
Masayu Kimoto (Johann)