Met 'Fledermaus' covers Vienna to New York, with waltzes and laughs

By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer

January 1, 2003, 2:00 PM EST


NEW YORK -- The Metropolitan Opera rang in 2003 with Viennese waltzes_ plus a polka, some blues and a few New York jokes.

The musical smorgasbord was served up in Johann Strauss Jr.'s 1874 operetta "Die Fledermaus" (The Bat), which on New Year's Eve poked fun at everything from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's effort to snuff out cigarettes in city restaurants to Puccini's opera "La Boheme" in its current Broadway production.

"No, no, no smoking, said the mayor," noted a drunken Viennese jail guard, causing the audience to roar at the new lyrics.

The guard is in charge of a wealthy man, Gabriel von Eisenstein, trying to evade jail for calling a police officer an idiot. But in this comedy of romantic errors, an Italian singer named Alfred offers to serve the time, after he's caught romancing Eisenstein's wife and pretends to be her husband.

Alfred, a rather flat-sounding tenor Paul Charles Clark, launches into an aria from "La Boheme," and the jailer concludes he must be "a Broadway singer" _ a jab at contemporary musical crossover.

Meanwhile, Eisenstein _ sung with comic vigor by tenor David Kuebler _ flirts with a masked "Hungarian lady" who is really Rosalinde, his wife in disguise. In this role, a shrill-voiced soprano Solveig Kringelborn disconcertingly switches between singing in German and speaking in a Cockney-tainted English.

Eisenstein's mischievous maid Adele appears in a ball dress pretending to be an actress, a role delivered with brilliant vocal flourishes by Welsh soprano Rosemary Joshua.

Another character is disguised as a bat _ hence the work's title.

The traditional New Year's Eve performance includes a gala banquet scene that allows "surprise" guest appearances.

This year, it was soprano Deborah Voigt alighting from a flurry of feathers to sing a medley of waltzes including Richard Rogers' "Do I Hear A Waltz" and George Gershwin's "By Strauss."

Also in the stellar lineup was mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, who delivered Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night." Soprano Karita Mattila sang the Cole Porter tune "Wunderbar," mezzo Stephanie Blythe offered a number from Mary Rodgers' musical "Once Upon a Mattress," and Siberian-born baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang the Italian song "O Sole Mio" with more Russian than Neapolitan soulfulness.

Hardly grand opera.

With its waltzes, laughs and "Thunder and Lightning Polka," Otto Schenk's 1986 production of "Die Fledermaus" comes with a special touch _ Schenk playing the spoken role of Frosch, the Austrian jailer who could pass for a standup comedian in the Catskills.

Prince Orlofsky, presiding over the masked ball, is sung by a woman, the rich-voiced mezzo Jennifer Larmore who infused the trousers' role with effeminate sprightliness.

Conductor Philippe Jordan matched the musical froth with elegant musical flourishes from the pit.