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Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus (The Bat) is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.
Performance history
The operetta premièred on 5 April 1874 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, and has been part of the regular operetta repertoire ever since. It was performed in New York under Bial at the Stadt Theatre on 21 November 1874, and then in English in London at the Alhambra Theatre on 18 December 1876, with the score heavily adapted by Hamilton Clarke. Its first London performance in the original German was in 1895. According to the archivist of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, "Twenty years after its production as a lyric opera in Vienna, Mahler raised the artistic status of Strauss’s work by producing it at the Hamburg Opera House … all the leading opera houses in Europe, notably Vienna and Munich, have brightened their regular repertoire by including it for occasional performance."
The role of Eisenstein was originally written for a tenor, but is nowadays frequently sung by a baritone.
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