Comedy at the opera
By Casey Gillis on Jan. 18, 2008
Wayne Kompelin says “Die Fledermaus” is one of the most beloved operettas ever written.
“The melodies are just outstanding,” says Kompelin, director of Liberty University’s opera program.
The college’s production of the comic operetta opens at 7:30 p.m. tonight in LU’s Lloyd Auditorium.
An operetta is often characterized as a light genre of opera and contains both singing and spoken dialogue, where as a full-fledged opera has no spoken dialogue.
“It’s really a predecessor of what we know as musical theater now,” Kompelin says.
“Die Fledermaus,” which was written by Johann Strauss, is “totally a farce,” he says. “It’s (about) a practical joke played between two friends.”
The two friends in question are Eisenstein and Falke.
Falke has promised Prince Orlofsky, who has all this money and is bored with life, that if he throws a lavish ball, Falke will make sure the evening will be an amusing one.
The prince agrees, so Falke convinces Eisenstein to attend a ball, as well as Eisenstein’s wife, Rosalinda, and their chambermaid, Adele. But Falke has the ladies dress in disguise, so Eisenstein won’t recognize them.
“(Eisenstein) ends up pursuing his own wife at the ball, who he doesn’t know is his own wife because she’s wearing a mask,” Kompelin says.
“It becomes a big maze of funny situations.”
Kompelin says that Strauss was urged to compose the operetta to lift people’s spirits after a stock market crash in 1873. It premiered at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien in April 1874 and is listed by Opera America as one of the most-performed operas in North America.
Subsequent performance dates for LU’s production are 7:30 p.m. Jan. 18, 19, 22, 24 and 25, as well as 2:30 p.m. Jan. 26. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at LU’s Box Office or at the door on the night of the performance.
For more information, call (434) 582-2085.
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