Well new year's begun, all right.....

I listened to our New Year's Day concert... it was above average with some rarities in it.

And got to thinking about Strauss, and taking my cousins to see 'Die Fledermaus' in Vienna, which I tried to explain beforehand. It's operetta, the forerunner of musicals. And it is viciously funny, and a satire on the hypocrisy of the upper middle class in Vienna around the 1890's or so. And couples acting sanctimoniously upright.... but fooling around on the side... or trying to.

Although they don't understand German, I figured there'd be enough sight gags to amuse them, and of course, there's that wonderful music. And when you have part the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra playing... well, it really doesn't get any better or more Austrian than that, hey.

Whatever, all the subterfuge and deceit gets revealed in the third act. Which is a doozy... as we used to say. And a big part of that is a still very drunk and confused jailor named Frosch...(frog). It's a huuuge role, even though it seemed to be written as an afterthought, and for a comedian... it's red meat, Preciousses, and a very few do it so well, tja... to flip out over. Fortunately, the production we saw had one of the most talented and funny ones I've ever seen. And from the minute he came on, my cousins were doubled over laughing, because the body language was unlike any Frosch I'd seen before. People near us had heard us talking, so instead of watching the stage, they were watching us to see how they would react... and I'd whisper one of his zingers in english to them, and they were off.

Later they told me they'd gone to see an english version of it somewhere in the Northeast, and said, 'NOW we know what we were laughing about.' So guess it impressed them. It was a beautiful production.

Sometimes, some opera houses perform it on New Year's Eve, and have guest stars for the party scene, and it goes on for hours. But just alone, it's remarkable.

Since they played one of the comprimised overtures in the concert this morning, I thought I'd go looking for something, as a remembrance, and that piece really is part of New Year's in Austria. I couldn't find anything of the production we saw, which was highly praised. Found no Frosch worth posting.

But the Met seemingly had a stunning production, and found a culmination scene of the third act, where the truth starts to unravel. Great voices, but what else would you expect of the Met, hey. Dialogue in English, and subtitles for the music. What isn't in there is that everyone ends up happy, and blames it all on the champagne.. The party scene had songs and a philosophy that you would hear any local person quote some time or another. Most importantly, 'happy is he who forgets what can't be changed.' Think about it a minute. Or the host, the russian Prince Orlovsky, who is decadent, and often sung by women in drag. 'I bore myself and invite my guests to amuse myself, and what bores me isn't allowed. With my guests, it's chacun a son gout... sorry, my keyboard doesn't have the french accents... 'to each his own', in other words. Agnes Baltsa did it in a moustache.