La Chauve-souris

Music from Die Fledermaus (1874), Johann Strauss II's most famous operetta, provides the score for this ballet by famed choreographer Roland Petit, first staged in Monte Carlo in 1979. The words are omitted, of course (save for the opening of Alfred's famous tune, briefly sung in the second act), and while elements of the libretto for the Viennese The Bat remain, the narrative actually represents a return to Strauss' original French source. The scene is Paris, where bourgeois wife Bella, egged on by a master manipulator named Ulrich, seduces her own husband Johann, and then literally clips his philandering wings. Ulrich is danced by Luigi Bonino, who originated the part and also restaged the piece for this performance at La Scala in Milan in 2003, and he, Alessandra Ferri, and Massimo Murru are all splendid in the leads (the latter two have an evocative pas de deux toward the close), while the Teatro alla Scala corpo di ballo do a fine job in the many dances, from waltzes to cancans, that Petit devised and Bonino recreated. The sets and costumes are lovely as well, the La Scala orchestra plays with dash under the baton of Kevin Rhodes, and the whole is captured lovingly on video by director Tina Protasoni, with sound options that include DTS, Dolby Digital 5.1, and PCM stereo. La Chauve-souris is a lightweight piece, more spit and polish than profundity, but it's presented expertly here and is a pleasure to watch. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)