Cornwall’s top musical talent is bringing hilarious comedy plus intoxicating melodies of the Viennese Waltz to Falmouth, when Duchy Opera opens its summer season with Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, otherwise known as the Flying Fox, at the Princess Pavilion, in the first week of June.
This exclusively Cornish triumph is not only sung in English, but includes much witty dialogue and practical joking, as well as a masked ball and dancing.
The operetta, with popular numbers such as “The Champagne Chorus”, “Oh What a Night” and “Adele’s Laughing Song” is a carry-on style comedy of errors. Larger-than-life characters weave a hilarious web of accidents, infidelities, disguises, and mistaken identities.
Veteran of London and Europe’s top opera venues, award-winning music director Patrick Bailey masterminds the production. He is a winner of the prestigious Evening Standard award for Best Musical, and has conducted numerous productions and tours, appearing at the Royal Opera House and the Bregenz Festival in Austria, and has worked extensively with the BBC.
Stage director, Gillian Geer, said: “It will be a sparkling production. We are using traditional costumes, brightly-coloured satins and silks. There will be a masked ball - glamorous and stunningly beautiful.”
The cast and chorus come from all over Cornwall, from Launceston, to St Austell, and Penzance. Launceston’s rock chic June Stevenson, who is also an opera devotee, appears as Sylvia.
Though home-grown, the soloists are renown internationally. Elinor Chapman, who plays Rosalinda, and sings regularly with Intimate Opera, has twice toured China and New Zealand. Cornish born, Lydia Manuell, debuts with Duchy Opera, as her maid, Adele. The champagne ball takes place in the home of Prince Orlofsky, played by Roman Zosan, who studied singing at the Vilnius Conservatoire, Lithuania and is a laureate of the Moniuszko international competition in Poland. He moved to Cornwall 14 years ago, where he has continued to delight audiences.
Other soloists, who are popular throughout the West Country, include Ben Hoadley, playing Gabriel von Eisenstein, and Louis Dutton, as prison warder, Frosch.
The show is aimed at opera novices and aficionados alike. Strauss, known as the King of the Waltz, is considered the father of modern musicals, forging the way for Gilbert and Sullivan, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber.