Melody, comedy make for delightful 'Fledermaus'

TAMPA -- "Couldn't you trip the light fantastic to this overture?" whispered someone in the audience during the opening minutes of Die Fledermaus, the operetta with a score by the Viennese "Waltz King," Johann Strauss II, being staged by Opera Tampa at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

The pure giddy pleasure of Strauss' melodies is a big part of the appeal of the operetta, and they were given a buoyant lift Friday night by the Florida Orchestra under the baton of Anton Coppola.

Full of tenor jokes and some inspired comic characterizations, this was a Fledermaus played strictly for laughs in a slangy English-language adaptation that was unfortunately not credited in the program. Any pretense of taking the preposterous plot at all seriously went out the window during the Act II party thrown by Prince Orlovsky, when accordionist Nina Slusar-Wegmann came out to accompany Raul Melo, playing Alfred, the jailed tenor, in a plummy rendition of Antico Amor, a hit from last season's Opera Tampa premiere of Coppola's Sacco & Vanzetti.

Two seasoned opera performers were responsible for much of the fun in the James Lucas-directed production. Usually Orlovsky is a pants role for a mezzo-soprano, but Douglas Perry made it his own by turning the mad Russian prince into Vienna's answer to Truman Capote, complete with white suit, long cigarette holder and a high voice. In the third act, the sight gags and pratfalls of Spiro Malas' Frosch, the tipsy jailer, owed a lot to Red Skelton's Clem Kaddidlehopper.

Amy Johnson was a ravishing Rosalinde, the society wife who goes to Orlovsky's bash disguised as a Hungarian countess in order to check up on her wandering husband.

Of course, Rosalinde has a tenor on the side, and Johnson brought out the frank insincerity of the character in charming, witty fashion in numbers like the first-act trio with her husband Eisenstein (Justin Vickers) and his stuttering lawyer (Perry). She is an unusually fine actor for an opera singer, and only a slight hardness of tone that crept into the high-flying Hungarian csardas at Orlovsky's villa kept her performance from something like perfection.

Kate Egan was an excellent Adele, taking the chambermaid's famous "laughing song" with a nice sense of restraint. Vickers seemed lightweight as Eisenstein, more the horny frat boy than suave philandering aristocrat. As Dr. Falke, whose revenge on Eisenstein set the whole silly sequence of events in motion, Vernon Hartman was a delightful narrative presence, but his baritone got a bit cloudy in his champagne toast to brotherhood at the party.

Boyd Ostroff's ingenious set from Philadelphia Opera framed each of the operetta's scenes -- drawing room, ballroom, jailhouse -- against a Viennese skyline. The chorus looked great in colorful party costumes from Santa Fe Opera.

Opera review

Die Fledermaus has a performance at 2 p.m. today at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tickets: $19.50-$56.50. (727) 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045.

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