Die Fledermaus

Asher Fisch
Principal Conductor & Artistic Adviser

A renowned conductor in both the operatic and symphonic worlds, Asher Fisch is especially celebrated for his interpretative command of core German and Italian repertoire of the Romantic and post-Romantic era. He conducts a wide variety of repertoire from Gluck to contemporary works by living composers. Asher is now the longest serving Principal Conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO), commencing his tenure in 2014. His former posts include Principal Guest Conductor of the Seattle Opera (2007- 2013), Music Director of the New Israeli Opera (1998-2008), and Music Director of the Wiener Volksoper (1995-2000).

Born in Israel, Asher began his conducting career as Daniel Barenboim’s assistant and Kappellmeister at the Berlin Staatsoper. He has built his versatile repertoire at the major opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and Semperoper Dresden. Fisch has conducted at leading American symphony orchestras including those of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia. In Europe he has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Orchestre National de France, among others.

In addition to his concerts with WASO, Asher’s 2024 season includes Aribert Reimann’s Lear at the Teatro Real de Madrid, Carmen at the Wiener Staatsoper, and Dialogues des Carmélites at the Israeli Opera. Guest engagements with orchestras include a return to the Queensland Symphony in Brisbane. His recent seasons featured Lohengrin and La forza del destino at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Cavalleria Rusticana & Pagliacci at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre and concerts with the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Queensland Symphony, Sydney Symphony, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Asher’s award-winning recordings include Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and tenor Stuart Skelton’s first solo album “Shining Knight” - all recorded with WASO - and Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with the Munich Radio Orchestra. In 2016, the complete Brahms symphonies with Asher Fisch and WASO were released on ABC Classic to great acclaim. His recording of Wagner’s Ring Cycle with the Seattle Opera was released in 2014. His first Ring Cycle recording, with the State Opera of South Australia, won ten Helpmann Awards, including best opera and best music direction. Asher Fisch is an accomplished pianist and has released a solo recording of Wagner piano transcriptions for the Melba label.

Asher Fisch appears courtesy of Wesfarmers Arts.

Paul O'Neill
Gabriel von Eisenstein

Australian tenor Paul O’Neill has forged a compelling international career singing in opera houses and concert halls throughout Europe and Australasia. In 2024, he sang The Prince (Rusalka) for West Australian Opera and as a soloist with the Melbourne, West Australian and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras.

Other recent engagements include Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly) and Alfredo (La traviata) for Opera Australia, Macduff (Macbeth) for State Opera South Australia, and Don José (Carmen), Cavaradossi (Tosca), Alfredo, Rodolfo (La bohème), Turiddu (Cavalleria rusticana), Canio (Pagliacci) and Otello for West Australian Opera. He was the tenor soloist in Britten’s War Requiem and Siegmund in Die Walküre for West Australian Symphony Orchestra. In 2025, he sings Pinkerton and Manrico (Il trovatore) for WA Opera and returns to Opera Australia in Verdi Gala concerts.

He has sung Don José at the Glyndebourne Festival, Laca in Jenůfa and Janáček’s song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared for Opéra de Lille, the title role in Faust at Theater Hagen and the Mainz State Theatre, Rodolfo for Halle Opera, Elvino (La sonnambula) and Laca with Graz Opera, Radamès in Aida at the St Margarethen Opera Festival, The Prince in Rusalka at the State Theatre of Saarbrücken and Isepo in La Gioconda in concert at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.

Rachelle Durkin
Rosalinde

Australian/American soprano Rachelle Durkin became an established solo artist at The Metropolitan Opera, singing principal roles for many years – most notably Norina in Don Pasquale (recorded live for Sirius Radio), Lisa in La sonnambula, Clorinda in La Cenerentola, Miss Schlesen in Phillip Glass’ Satyagraha, Frasquita in Carmen, Masha in Pique Dame, First Flower Maiden in Parsifal and Young Girl in Moses und Aron.

In recent seasons, she has sung Donna Anna in Don Giovanni in Hawai’i and with Pittsburgh Opera, Mrs Schlesen with Opera Australia, Violetta in La traviata for Victory Hall Opera, the title role in Tosca for Opera Queensland, Tytania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Governess (The Turn of the Screw) in Adelaide, Morgana (Alcina) in Canberra and Musetta (La bohème) in Perth. In concert, she appeared with the Sydney, Tasmanian and West Australian Symphony Orchestras. She returns to Opera Australia in 2025 as Musetta in their Sydney Winter Season of La bohème.

Other highlights have included Romance at the Met - Opera’s Most Romantic Moments, soprano soloist in Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 with Detroit Symphony Orchestra (c: Leonard Slatkin) and West Australian Symphony Orchestra (c: Asher Fisch), and Gala Concerts with Placido Domingo, Bryn Terfel and José Carreras.

Johann STRAUSS II Die Fledermaus
A Timeless Operetta of Wit and Revelry

Early-1800s Vienna was a city mostly based upon agriculture and trade. At this time, diverse entertainments for the upper middle class were salon-based, with larger concerts usually devised under the banner of music societies such as the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music), and often for the benefit of a composer, performer, or member. Following a period of political instability in the first two decades of the century, the city transitioned towards bustling industrialisation accompanied by an increasing population. With the rise of the middle class, the demand for regular public events having a broader patronage grew rapidly.

Johann Strauss Senior, a gifted composer, violinist, and orchestra leader, capitalised upon these changes, and developed musical events such as concerts and dances that the rising numbers of the middle class could access and enjoy — and that also ensured his own popularity. Dance music, and in particular waltzes, became increasingly in demand for cafes, balls, and even within theatrical entertainments. As Egon Gartenberg states, “As the minuet, the gavotte and sarabande breathed their last gentle sighs, the mazurka and quadrille might briefly intrude, but it was the waltz that was to reign supreme — a peasant dance elevated to an art form by the grace of its rhythm and melody.”

Strauss discouraged his three sons from pursuing musical interests, but his eldest, Johann Strauss II, secretly undertook lessons in violin and composition with the support of his mother. While pursuing his work as a bank clerk, he developed his skills as a composer and was granted a licence to perform with his small orchestra in the 1840s — to his father’s chagrin. Despite mixed early success, it was not until the younger Strauss toured and later returned to Vienna that the sheer output and “hum-ability” of his tunes gave rise to his informal title as “The Waltz King.”

This success, and perhaps his own inexperience, may have been the reason that Strauss avoided writing music for theatrical works. However, his first wife Henrietta “Jetty” Treffz, a mezzo-soprano, actress, and astute business partner, had previously encouraged the director of the Theater an der Wien, Maximilian Steiner, to cobble together some of Strauss’ stand-alone compositions into shows; Indigo und die vierzig Räuber (1871), and Der Karneval in Rom (1873). Strauss was at first reluctant to progress these works, as he had clear views as to how his music should be performed. Notwithstanding these being modest successes with audiences, the local press tended to agree that a man of Strauss’ reputation should never have allowed his name to be associated with such endeavours, as they compromised his high-quality dance music by overlaying it with lesser quality lyrics and characters.

The Komische Operette — comical little opera, or operetta, and describing a form of opera in which spoken dialogue replaced recitative and musical numbers were memorably tuneful — was a developing artform which had its roots in works such as Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). Operettas were intended to entertain, and to promote feelings of sentiment, comedy, and romance. Unlike grand operas, they were performed in privately owned theatres, were attended by a wide social spectrum, had elements of improvisation, often featured cross-dressing by the characters, and were afforded more lenient censorship — meaning that more lascivious themes could be explored.

Above all, they were public entertainments, and were expected to turn a handsome profit for the theatre management and creative team. This latter aspect is perhaps why operettas have been deemed less important by musical historians or some “serious musicians,” and may also explain why such luminaries as Offenbach, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Strauss have been consigned to a class of “lesser” music. In the words of Alfred Grünwald, librettist to Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, and others:

“What we must recognise is that operetta is a distinct art form, and a very important one, in view of its unquestioned universal popularity. It was born, it grew up, developed, reached heights now already regarded as classical, passed through an occasional period of decline, [and] was reborn again: that is, it has a history, just as drama and opera have.”

While dance music remained Strauss’ chief interest and the primary reason for his popularity, he completed 13 complete operettas from 1871, preceded by two incomplete works. In 1874, and at the urging of Steiner, he reviewed a libretto of Die Fledermaus (The Bat) by Richard Genée, who had collaborated with him on some lyrics for Karneval in Rom the previous year. The libretto had a chequered history: originally a farce by German playwright Julius Roderich Benedix (1851), appropriated into a French three-act vaudeville Le Réveillon (New Year’s Eve) (1872), translated back to German by Karl Haffner, and revised and completed by Geneé.

Strauss may have been interested in attempting an operetta for a third time for a few reasons. First, Jacques Offenbach had previously encouraged Strauss, when they met in 1864, to turn his attention to operetta. Offenbach’s operettas (or opera bouffe or opéra-comique as he preferred them called) were experiencing great commercial and artistic success. Second, the 1873 financial crash may have provided impetus for Strauss to consider a work of escapism for audiences, and perhaps also for financial reasons. Third, Geneé had been working with Offenbach, which may have attached credibility to his libretto (Genée was also to complete much of the orchestration).

For whatever reasons, at the age of 49, and across a six-month period in 1874, Strauss wrote Die Fledermaus. The work included the repurposed concert aria Csárdás for the character Rosalinde, and blended waltzes, polkas, and arias into a cohesive, lively operetta. In 1894, the Vienna Court Opera elevated the status of Die Fledermaus to “opera” by hosting a production.

To an audience of 1874 Vienna, the characters and plot of Die Fledermaus would have been recognisable as de facto “stock” characters employed in commedia dell’arte, albeit in Viennese form, that poked fun at themselves, their peers, the acceptable norms of society, and the world at large. Within Die Fledermaus, the characters and their dispositions include: outsiders (Alfredo who, being an Italian, can of course only sing operatic arias and seduce women); social mismatches (the maid Adele and the prison director Frank dressing up and trying to fit in at a high society ball); marital infidelities (the well-to-do couple Gabriel and Rosalinde von Eisenstein, who aim to keep up appearances while ‘managing’ their relationship); revenge (Falke appearing charming while being clearly disgruntled); vanity and indolence of wealth (the Russian Prince Orlovsky, whose motto is “each to their own”); and above all, that dancing, jollity, and drinking champagne can solve anything!

As the original French version Le Réveillon — a long dinner held in the evening preceding Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve — was not considered suitable for Vienna, Genée devised Act II to occur at a grand masked ball held on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the century. (An interesting side note is that the work has been performed every New Year’s Eve in Vienna since about 1900). Off-stage, the masked ball was a common event
and allowed the socialites of Vienna to mingle in a way that permitted anonymity, and to engage in behaviours that would otherwise not be acceptable. Strauss had performed at many such events during his career as a dance orchestra conductor. On-stage, the masked ball offered the opportunity to disrupt the social order, and provided the perfect vehicle for Falke’s revenge to be played out.

Viennese audiences were drawn to operettas because these works mirrored the dynamics of their own social circles, and they delighted in the appealing melodies, spirited dance sequences, and humorous situations. The predictable ending with resolution of the characters’ moral or social transgressions being reconciled, and where all were returned to an established social order, provided a reassuring narrative that aligned with the audience’s need for a sense of escapism, and comfort to provide relief from the stresses of daily life. In Die Fledermaus, most of the principal characters adopt disguises during Act II to impersonate members of a higher social class. However, by the conclusion of the operetta they joyfully return to their original roles and social status. Allied with some of Strauss’ most enduring melodies, there is a reason to smile and say, “And they all lived happily ever after.”

Andrew Foote © 2025