There was a time, not so long ago, when, in art and music, people waltzed endlessly between Paris and Vienna…
Meilhac and Halévy, the brilliant librettists behind Carmen and Offenbach’s most outrageous fantasies, also penned plays for the stage. Written in 1880 as a farce, their Réveillon delights in the follies and foibles of bourgeois, and provincial, France under the Third Republic. Intrigues, misunderstandings, disguises, arrests, seductions, as well as petty jealousies and bruised egos: all contribute to the comic mayhem.
But music was never far behind. The play soon caught the attention of the great Viennese composer Johann Strauss, who transformed it into the dazzling operetta Die Fledermaus (The Bat), an instant triumph!
Today, this emblem of Viennese elegance returns to its French roots (with its original setting in Pincornet-les-Bœufs), in a version featuring newly rewritten dialogue for Opéra de Lille by Agathe Mélinand, and brought to life by the exuberant imagination of Laurent Pelly. After his unforgettable Roi Carotte and enchanting Midsummer Night’s Dream in Lille, this master of theatrical fantasy finds here the perfect playground for his love of absurd situations.
And so, this sparkling Fledermaus is turned completely upside down… which, it seems, is still its most natural position.