The Bat by Strauss II, Od (2021/2022), Režie Alexei Stepanuyk, Ilya Ustiantsev, Dirigent Waleriy Trubin-Leonoff, Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, Vladivostok, Russia

The waltz, wine and totally unrestrained merriment reign supreme in Die Fledermaus. Even the prison here is joyful rather than fearsome – people enter it almost willingly and there continue to celebrate. The leitmotif of the entire operetta comes with the words from Alfred and Rosalindeʼs duet – “Happy is he who passes by grief and cares.” “Easy listening” it may well be, but it is by no means easy to perform: both female leads demand virtuoso operatic control of the coloratura technique. Russian audiences will be familiar with Die Fledermaus first and foremost thanks to the 1979 Lenfilm studiosʼ comedy with the Solomin brothers. In the film, the female vocals were provided by Larisa Shevchenko and Sofia Yalysheva, soloists of the Kirov Theatre. The text by Nikolai Erdman and Mikhail Volpin (1947), which provided the basis for the film script and for the current Mariinsky Theatre production, departs from the original libretto and offers an essentially separate and new opus, albeit retaining the majority of the characters. And yet however much the plot peripeteia may differ, in any version and in any interpretation what remains unaltered is the dizzying and intoxicating music of Strauss. As critics noted following the premiere, it “enters the bloodstream through the ears and flows down to the feet, and even the most lazy listener unwittingly begins to nod his head, bestir himself and start tapping his feet. ‹…› One might well develop a good case of seasickness – the whole of the stalls 'rocks' so much from those magical waves of music that rise up from the orchestra pit.”