Western Opera Theater, a touring group of the San Francisco Opera, put its best foot forward with a cast of excellent young singers in a performance of Strauss' comic classic "Die Fledermaus" Thursday night in Spaulding Auditorium.
While the performance of the three act operatic comedy about love and infidelity did suffer from the lack of an orchestra (the orchestration was simplified for two pianos and did not include the overture), the talented soloists were able to preserve the majestic quality of the score and keep in step with the comic banter of the dialogue.
The story of Fledermaus (or the Bat) based on Le Reveillon by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevey, is set in three acts and portrays an elaborate scheme to entrap a philandering husband, Eisenstein, on the same evening he is to serve an eight day jail sentence for socking a police officer.
With elaborate backdrops of turn of the century Vienna, the comedy moves from Eisenstein's living room in the first act to a ball in the home of a fictitious prince Orlofsky in the second to the fated jail in which Eisenstein is to serve his sentence in the third.
A complex trap is set by Frank Falke as revenge for a prior practical joke played on him by his friend Eisenstein, and involves inviting Eisenstein, his wife Rosalinda, his chambermaid and the warden of the Jail to the Orlofsky ball where they are forced to interact under assumed names and identities.
Rosalinda, disguised as a Hungarian countess, is the only one of the four aware of the plot and deftly seduces her own husband who unwittingly falls prey to her charms thinking that he is the seducer.
The truth only erupts later that night at the jail when Eisenstein runs into the warden, Rosalinda and her former lover who was mistakenly incarcerated in Eisenstein's stead earlier that night. Soon the entire Orlovsky party ends up at the jail, the plot is exposed, Eisenstein is forgiven and the mix-ups are all blamed on champagne.
The effect is a delightful farce set in some of Strauss' most moving music. The cast of the Western Opera under the musical direction of Rudolfo Fischer competently filled the demands of the comedy and effectively brought the opera to life.
