The Teatro Real celebrates the Constitution Bridge with the staged concert version of The bat, a supposedly Christmas work, born in a time convinced that we come into the world to have a good time. It was called operettaa diminutive that departed from the solemnity of the term opera to take itself as a joke, only the music mattered. A music full of inventiveness, with rhythm, with a dance vocation; a music also crossed by a strange abstraction: waltzes, polkas and everything else does not end up being joyful, perhaps because joy requires a certain calmness, peaceful mood and acceptance of a mortality that the group of bourgeois, maids, the poet and the jailer or jailer refuse to admit. They are scatterbrained creatures who don’t want to be happy, but rather have fun.
Such a graceful, sparkling and jacarando work requires conviction, refinement, rigorous seriousness in the execution; lightness and frivolity require the precision of the scalpel that delves and dissects the score until it finds the secret of its beauty, a beat that has nothing tawdry or simple-minded. Interpretation of Les Musiciens du Louvre, directed by Marc Minkovski, and the Palau de la Música Catalana Chamber Choir, directed by Xavier Puig, deserves the title of optimal. Likewise, the vocal cast, structured around the maid Adele, soprano, an overwhelming Alina Wunderlin, and Prince Orlofsky, a transvestite character who makes the most of the soprano Marina Viotti. All the others are very appropriate, enjoying the recreation of a humor from yesteryear; The old comedy gracefully withstands the onslaught of music of rare filigree, although today it is not so easy to get excited about innocently immoral pranks as easily as it was a century and a half ago.
The public appreciated the retrospective fun. A timely programming, by ideal performers, that demonstrates once again to what extent the History of Opera is capable of offering great pleasures, whether it be fun, joy, or simply 140 minutes of top-notch entertainment.