Glyndebourne on Tour at Sadler’s Wells
6th December 2006
Die Fledermaus isn’t a proper opera, it’s an operetta and it’s not even a good one. It has some good bits in it like when Adele strips off and when Rosalinde puts her watch down her cleavidge and the ballet girls look hot but the plot kind of runs out in the middle and they have to do all this weird stuff to fill in the time. I think it would be long enough without those bits, it just makes you bored and then you forget what was happening before.
The original production was done about 3 years ago and they did it at the Proms and I saw it but they did it in German then. I thought it was better in German, I didn’t understand much of it but at least if it’s in a foreign language you can look at the surtitles, if it’s in English you can’t look at them unless you’re at the ENO and even then you can’t read them from half of the seats. Some of the English translation is funny though like when Adele called Rosalinde a cow which she so was and it was funny when Adele told Alfred to bugger off, swearing is always funny in opera, don’t know why. I love the bit in the English Figaro when Antonio said that Cherubino buggered off, that’s so cool.
John Graham-Hall was Eisenstein, it was Tom Allen last time. I don’t know if they transposed it up or if the role just suits tenors and baritones. Barry could probably tell just by listening and I bet I could too but we doesn’t know Die Fledermaus like we know proper operas. Johnny (that’s what they call him, cool! Wonder if his mates call him Rubber?) was well good as Eisenstein. You could really understand him all the time when he was singing and speaking and he said the lines in just the right way to get the laughs and he did loads of funny movements too. He was trying to get his leg over all the girls but I don’t blame him, I’d like to get my leg over those ballet girls especially Elizabeth Ife (Ida), she’s a singer not a dancer but I bet she’s still like really flexable.
His wife Rosalinde was like a total cow and she was messing around with Alfred anyway. She was Majella Cullagh, I can’t stand her usually because she always screeches and oversings but she toned it down a bit and she sounded better and she had the most amazing cleavidge, she dropped Eisenstein’s watch down there but he didn’t fish for it, I would of! But she was still a cow.
Peter Hoare was Alfred, I’m sure he usually sings heavier stuff than this but he was good but the Primi Divi girls says Johnny was sexier and they should know. Amelia Farrugia was good as Adele, she sang well and she sounded really English even though she was Australian but I didn’t fancy her until she started taking her clothes off and I’d probably fancy just about any girl if she did that. Robert Tear was cool as Dr Blind and so was David Kempster as Dr Falke and Frank Kelly as Frosch, he went on a bit but that was the libretto not him. Allison Cook was Prince Orlofsky, she was quite funny, there were lots of male/female jokes about her. It was all quite well sung and quite funny but still too boring in bits and it didn’t help when they didn’t speak/sing so you could understand what they were going on about. And it was all waltzes nearly, he needed to do more different stuff.
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