'Bat'-ter up!

Observations from “Die Fledermaus,” performed by the Berlin Staatsoper on Dec. 3, 2009: Mehta came out looking pissed. He didn’t acknowledge the crowd and rapidly launched into the overture. Berlin audiences have given him a rough time. Maybe he’d rather be back in Bombay or Tel Aviv, or playing the Hollywood Bowl or something. Anyway, it’s the kind of operetta you’re familiar with, even if you’re not. Many of its duets and larger choral pieces are familiar in other contexts -- movies, advertisements, etc.

First, the Staatsoper: Compared with the Komisch Oper, the singers are better, the orchestra is better, the Web site is better, the tickets more expensive, the clientele better-dressed. The building positively creaks, to the point where I didn’t feel entirely safe sitting 60 feet above the floor. The U-shape of the hall is so narrow that many of the sightlines suck. The upside of that configuration is that the acoustics are superb. During a duet in Act 3, a high-pitched vibe note was produced by a member of the orchestra raising his mallet no more than a quarter-inch and letting it drop. The sound penetrated my head way up in the nosebleeds.

The plot is difficult to summarize quickly, but the backbone of the performance is formed by a rave party (a ball, in Strauss' time) held at the home of Prince Orlofsky (played by Stella -- that’s right -- Stella Gregorian, pictured above) in Act 2. When it was over, a few loud “boos” were shouted from the audience. As luck would have it, one of the complainers was a woman two seats to the right of me, and given the crystalline acoustics of the place, it drew a lot of attention. I had been warned about this in the German papers, and I respect it. When you buy your ticket, you purchase the right to boo, and the act did end with an extended waltz number in which nobody on stage -- I counted 130 singers and dancers at one point -- seemed to know what they were doing, dancing spastically to their own rhythms while a guy rolled around on skates. But part of me wonders if the booer to my right was intent on making a scene regardless, even if Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau had been exhumed and was singing the lead role. Honestly, if the theatrical narrative frayed a bit at the end of Act 2, shouldn’t the composer, Strauss the younger, be the one to blame? Speaking of exhumations, woman, why don’t you dig him up and smash his coccyx for good measure? Another part of me wonders if she yelled at the top of her lungs because … well this is awkward, but Mehta isn’t exactly “white.” You know, if you go to Prague, you want to be able to relay your impressions of the city without constant reference to Kafka. It’s lame and shallow to do so. In that spirit, I was intent on reporting on my trip to Germany without ever having to mention National Socialism or the SS, but you know what? These people make you do it.

“Die Fledermaus,” or “The Bat,” is really a semi-opera, with lots of spoken parts that went over my head, though I got some jokes involving the recession, Botox, McDonald’s and the difference between Koreans and Japanese. God forbid you put yourself before an audience without a raft of references to current events. The toe-tappingly familiar choral bits were best; the dancing too laissez-faire for my taste. If Memorex decides to revive its “Is it real, or is it Memorex?” campaign, it could do worse than to hire Adele, played by Christine Schaefer. That girl has a got a high roof to her mouth, as Andy Griffith would say, and is up to cracking a few glasses. I’m going back to this concert hall in a few days for “Die Zauberflote,” with much better seats, so that’ll be a new ballgame. Below, the cast, and nary a brickbat.