Opera QC Returns to Davenport’s Galvin Fine Arts Center With Comic Jewel By Strauss
If you like your summer entertainment fun, fizzy, frothy and frivolous, Opera Quad Cities has the ideal concoction for you.
For the first time since pre-COVID, the 24-year-old opera company is returning to St. Ambrose University’s Galvin Fine Arts Center this weekend for a new production of the classic “Die Fledermaus,” with a glorious score by Johann Strauss II, and an intoxicating, silly story of parties, drinking, disguise, and revenge.
Opera QC says this evening of mischief, masks, and laughter “whisks you away to a glamorous masquerade ball where secrets come out, old grudges bubble up, and the champagne never stops flowing. What begins as a harmless prank quickly spirals into a night full of clever disguises, mistaken identities, and unexpected twists.”
The Kennedy Center called the 1874 comic operetta “a sparkling confection of mistaken identities, illicit liaisons, and champagne-fueled merriment.”
Composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), hailed worldwide as the “waltz king,” invested his “delightful score with an irresistible wealth of vocal melodies and dance music,” the Kennedy Center synopsis says. Born into a musical family, Strauss enjoyed tremendous success as both a composer of dance music and as a conductor.
Noting the success of French composer Jacques Offenbach’s frothy opéra bouffes in Vienna, “Strauss turned to the stage, creating a graceful, distinctly Viennese style of operetta. His charming stage works brought him much wealth and international fame and would even help mold the form and style of the American stage and screen musical” the summary says.
The website guidetomusicaltheatre.com says that “Die Fledermaus” is “intoxicatingly melodious and exuberant. Mistaken identities, flirtations at a masked ball, elegant frivolities and confusions of all kinds provide a hilarious vehicle for some of the most captivating music ever written,” the site says. “A blissful show – especially rewarding for societies with high singing standards. The Overture is one of the most popular ever written…”
Opera QC’s conductor Nathan Windt said recently it was such a popular opera at the time because Germany was coming out of a severe economic recession and people wanted escapism and frivolity.
“They’re starting to see the end of the financial downturn, getting their money back,” he said, noting the story represented Champagne, masks, having a good time with no consequences. “It reflected a past reality they wanted to return to.”
Soprano Rochelle Schrader – who plays a lead role, Rosalinde — has been involved in opera and musical theater around the Quad Cities. Locally, she has performed with Countryside, Opera Quad Cities, Opera@Augustana and Genesius Guild, Quad City Music Guild, The Green Room, and Ghostlight. She has music directed for Countryside, Ghostlight, and many school productions. Most recently she was seen last summer in Quad City Music Guild’s “A Little Night Music.”
Some of her favorite roles are The Countess in “The Marriage of Figaro,” Anna in “The King and I,” Lily in “The Secret Garden,” and Mabel in “Pirates of Penzance.” She met her husband Jon in 2005 doing opera (“Barnum’s Bird,” about Jenny Lind) at Lincoln Park in Rock Island for Genesius Guild.
Schrader sang in the 2022 Opera QC gala concert (of opera excerpts) at Bartlett Performing Arts Center, including a duet from “Pagliacci.” She said Rosalinde in “Fledermaus” is her favorite role. “The music is really quite beautiful; the character is fun to play. A lot of the leading roles I have done are more stuffy.”
“This one, she’s funky and fiery,” Schrader said of Rosalinde. “She’s spunky and interesting to play.”
LtoR: Miriam Anderson,ShyamDevasthali, Chelsea Crumbleholme as Adele, Travis Richter as Eisenstein, Caleb Schrader, Law Ger Htay
The character receives a letter, saying her rapscallion husband Eisenstein is going to be at the party with other women. He has invited one of her past lovers to come, when they know Eisenstein is supposed to be going to prison. “It’s quite the story, of intertwined, tangled messes,” Schrader said, noting her character also pretends to be a Hungarian countess.
Chelsea Crumbleholme plays Rosalinde’s maid Adele (a coloratura role), who she described as “young and energetic and confident.”
She disguises herself to get into the party, pretending to be somebody else.
The women are looking forward to the fancy, glittering costumes, which are being assembled and tailored by Greg Hiatt and Lora Adams. They’re being rented from another opera company.
LtoR: Chelsea Crumbleholme as Adele, Rochelle Schrader as Rosalinde
“Die Fledermaus” is German for “The Bat,” and Rosalinde’s husband had played a practical joke on Falke, dressed up as a bat. “It’s all a big practical joke,” Schrader said. “These two guys play jokes on each other. There’s a lot of drinking in it.”
The story is very much like soap operas, and Crumbleholme said there’s a reason the TV staple was called “opera,” based on these ridiculous, comic flights of fancy.
Schrader said operatic music allows you to express real-life emotions, whether they’re happy or sad, comedy or tragedy.
“I feel like both the characters I’ve played are similar, where they’re both young, innocent,” Crumbleholme said, noting she was Zerlina in 2023’s Opera QC production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” She also has played Rapunzel in Music Guild’s “Into the Woods.”
Chelsea Crumbleholme as Adele
Cast member back from Berlin
Jesslyn Cohen (a chorus member here) fits the “Fledermaus” cast to a T, since she was raised doing many operas and earlier this year, took a physical theater course in Berlin, Germany for 10 days. Fairly fluent in German, Cohen tested out of German classes at Augustana (majoring in English and theater, graduating in 2023).
“I think because it is an operetta, it’s not often done at the Lyric, where my mom worked for 34 years,” she said of the famed Chicago company. Her mother was in the Lyric Opera Chorus, retiring one year ago.
“I love working with musicians, because they are so goal-oriented and they’re very professional,” Cohen said. “That’s the biggest part for me, that’s so enjoyable about this whole process – how professional the environment is, and how productive. Theaters around here are not like that, so it’s so refreshing to be around that environment.”
LtoR: Chorus: Bob Gull, Lillian Dawn, Morgan Wehling, Georgi Feigley, Miriam Anderson, Jonathan Schrader, Jesslyn Cohen, Thayne Lamb, Catie Johnson, Abi Jensen
“Die Fledermaus” is literally a ball for her because, “the music is waltzy, flirtatious, and vibrant; the professionalism of the cast and crew is refreshing, and singing, especially opera, especially in a group setting, brings me great joy,” she said.
A native of Itasca, Ill. (near O’Hare airport), she was in the children’s chorus for the former Glen Ellyn Singers (in suburban Chicago), for seven years, and performed at Lyric Opera seven times between 2006 and 2013. Cohen’s first role was one of the bird children in “The Magic Flute” and she loved it.
She’s also performed in a children’s choir for the Chicago Symphony summer series, in “Carmina Burana” at Millennium Park.
First at Galvin since 2019
“Fledermaus” is the first QC opera at Galvin’s auditorium since “Pirates of Penzance” (another operetta) in 2019.
“Die Fledermaus” will be performed in the original German (with projected English supertitles), and the dialogue between musical numbers spoken in English. “La Boheme” was done in Italian last year, at Bettendorf High School, and “Don Giovanni” was done in English translation at Bartlett Performing Arts Center at Moline High.
“It was different,” Crumbleholme (a Moline alum) said of singing that in English. She knows German, so she enjoys doing “Fledermaus” in its original language. She was a foreign exchange student in high school for about three months, near Stuttgart. Crumbleholme studied German four years in high school and is still friends with the German girls she stayed with.
LtoR: Travis Richter as Eisenstein, Alice Lind as Prince Orlofsky, Sean Wallace as Dr. Falke
“Sometimes it’s awkward if you know the aria in the original language and then have to re-learn it in English for a production,” Schrader said. “If I was choosing a language to be singing in, I’d choose Italian. That’s my favorite to be singing in.”
Her son Caleb, 18, is in the “Fledermaus” chorus. He just graduated from Pleasant Valley High School, and likes to sing. Jon Schrader also is in the chorus.
Dancers from Ballet Quad Cities will also be part of the production. Windt said this is the first Opera QC production to have true professional dance in it.
“It’s popular because it’s a comedy and comedies are more accessible than tragedies,” “Fledermaus” director Michelle Crouch said. “It’s a story about a really elaborate practical joke, so it’s something that people can relate to. The music is really awesome.
“People know Strauss’s music because of New Year’s Eve concerts and things like that,” she said. “There’s a large German community in the Quad Cities, for them to hear something in German, that’s acted on the stage. There’s beautiful costumes, a big party scene. This is one of the operas, when that Act II finale comes to its climax, it really blows you away, this wall of sound that is really impressive.”
There is some cast crossover from past Opera QC productions, and their voices are bigger and improved, Crouch said. “This is a chance for them to experience the power of that development,” she said.
LtoR: Josh Morey as Alfred, Rochelle Schrader as Rosalinde, Benjamin Laur as Frank
“Die Fledermaus” features a woman playing Prince Orlofsky, mezzo-soprano Alice Lind, in a “pants” role – a male character written for a woman.
Orlofsky is the one who’s planning this practical joke, which allows the plot to unfold in his palace. Cherubino in Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” is a famous pants role.
“In Cherubino’s case, he’s a young boy, an unchanged voice,” Crouch said. “Orlofsky is young, but not that young. It’s the decadence of the late 19th-century Vienna; there may be a little androgyny going on, but it’s always been that way.”
Opera Quad Cities will present “Die Fledermaus” on Friday, June 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 22 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $30 general admission, $25 for seniors and free for students 18 and under, available HERE.
Travis Richter as Eisenstein, Rochelle Schrader as Rosalinde
