As part of its 2012/2013 season, the Canadian opera Company is running a production of Johann Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus”. Each year, the COC holds a series of talks about their shows that balance history and guided listening with images and production insights into the operas. The goal is to communicate the excitement of opera as a multi-media genre.
Talk #1: Join the COC and opera fans for a look into opera’s lighter side with Strauss’s lively comic operetta, “Die Fledermaus.” This perennially popular, memorably tuneful piece will be presented in a new production by Christopher Alden which conjures up the elegance of early 20th-century Vienna.
Thu Oct 04, 2012 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
North York Central Library Auditorium
Call to REGISTER: 416-395-5639.
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is perhaps Johann Strauss’ masterpiece and the the definition of the grand Viennese operetta. Strauss composed this scintillating work, containing some of the his most famous arias and waltzes, in 1874 in the midst of economic and social upheaval. The characters are at a masked ball. Each of them seeks the exhilaration and exaltation of love and seduction while disguised. After several cases of mistaken identity and trickery, ‘King Champagne’ is blamed as the reason behind all the pranks. The work was adapted from the French version Le Réveillon, and is traditionally performed in Vienna each year on New Year’s Eve.