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The Bat

When: As of November 3

Or: Queen Elizabeth Theater

Tickets and information: From $25 to Vancouveropera.ca

As the overture plays, a guy in a lion costume and another dressed as Batman stagger drunkenly across the stage. When Batman faints on a park bench, the lion abandons him, leaving crowds of affectionate teenagers, dog walkers and nuns to mock the drunk until he regains consciousness. Batman’s subsequent comic revenge on his treacherous leonine pal will constitute the plot of Die Fledermaus, or The Bat, by Johann Strauss.

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Vancouver Opera’s 65th season kicks off, Strauss’s 1874 operetta was performed by Ashlie Corcoran of the Arts Club as a zany 1960s sex farce without sex. While the production retains its original German libretto (with English supertitles), the English-spoken dialogue, cleverly adapted by Canadian comedic playwright Mark Crawford, is peppered with racy jokes and meta-theatrical groans. Q: What are married men like? A: Les Miserables.

THE weirdly unrealistic The plot of Die Fledermaus invites the kinds of playful tweaks that writer Crawford and director Corcoran generously offer. When Warden Frank and Jailer Frosch come to the home of Gabriel and Rosalinde Eisenstein to take Gabriel to prison, the Warden ends up sharing a drink and singing a drinking song with Rosalinde’s boyfriend Alfred, who is pretending to be Gabriel , while Frosch casually walks away. review.

Later, in front of a chorus of revelers at Prince Orlofsky’s costume party, Gabriel, drunk, tries to seduce a Hungarian countess: his own wife, disguised by a fragile mask over her eyes.

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Plausibility and often overly broad comedy aside, Strauss’s lively score of waltzes and festive odes to alcohol is brought to full fruition by conductor Jacques Lacombe’s Vancouver Opera Orchestra. Without any breathtaking tunes, the singers joyfully travel across the surface of this light vehicle.

As aspiring actress Adelethe Eisensteins’ servant with a gentle comic touchsoprano Claire de SÉvigné takes the lead role in the iconic “Laughing Song”. Lara Ciekiewicz uses her more powerful soprano to mask contradictions Rosalind as she tries to overhear her husband Gabriel’s flirtations while she cheats on him with Alfred (tenor Owen McCausland). In the traditional pantsuit role of Prince Orlofsky, mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel is a powerhouse of rhinestone-speckled decadence.

John Chest’s rich baritone gives Gabriel Eisenstein more gravitas than this foolish man deserves, even as his friend Dr. Falke (baritone Peter Barrett), The Bat, plays trick after trick on the cowardly lion. Chest also has one of the best comedic scenes in the operetta with bass-baritone Giles Tomkins as Frank. Both disguised as a Frenchman prove their bona fides to Orlofsky with French phrases from a first-grade vocabulary lesson.

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Beatrice Zeilinger getsThe audience’s favorite comedic fare is the non-singing role of Frosch, the cynical and acerbic prison guard who can’t stand the prisoner Alfred’s opera singing.

The staging and production design in the 1960s, with a superb orange and green candy cane set from Julie Lepiscopal and colorful costumes of Émilie Wahlman, were borrowed from L’Opera of Quebec. Gerald King designed the bright lighting and Shelley Stewart Hunt choreographed the combination of 19th-century waltzes and 1960s frugs.

A story that could have been called Much Ado About Nothing if the title hadn’t already been taken, Die Fledermaus’ absurdist costume comedy is a good choice for Halloween week.

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