Tonight: Scenes from
'Die Fledermaus ' by Johann Strauss
Lorely Dyer (soprano) Norah Gruhn (soprano)
Jan van der Gucht (tenor)
Tano Ferendlnos (tenor)
Geoffrey Dunn (tenor)
Dennis Bowen (baritone) Murray Davies (baritone)
BBC Theatre Chorus
(Chorus-Master, John Clements )
BBC Theatre Orchestra
(Leader. Alfred Barker )
Conducted by Stanford Robinson
Story told by Stephen Williams
' Die Fledermaus means literally ' The Bat,' and we learn that one of the characters, Dr. Falke, once went to a fancy dress ball as a bat. But that has happened some time before the opera and need not concern us: all we need to remember is - that bats are those queer creatures that fly by night and that this sparkling operetta deals with their human counterparts. It takes us back, in fact, to nineteenth-century Vienna, a Vienna that faced every political crisis by dancing and revelling and flying by night-which is as sensible a way of facing political crises as any other. ' Die Fledermaus tells us a light-hearted, irresponsible story in which, among other things, a truant husband flirts with his disguised wife at a fancy-dress ball, and Strauss has set it to music as merry as the popping of champagne corks.
— Stephen Williams