DESCRIPTION:

Die Fledermaus (The Bat) is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée. For the staging of this classic operetta, artist George Dola (1872-1950) chose to depict Prince Orloffsky’s ball from the second act. This was the first time Paris saw this internationally acclaimed work, which by rights should have been introduced there thirty years earlier. It seems that in 1872, Johann Strauss visited Paris and saw a stage play titled “Le Reveillon”. He immediately approached the authors for the rights to put music to the piece, but they refused, hoping to sell the idea instead to Jacques Offenback. Strauss went home to Vienna and transformed the play into the operetta “Die Fledermaus”. Thirty years of legal wrangling ensued until finally, in 1904, by which time both Strauss and Meilhac had died, Haveley consented to have the hallowed operetta presented in a French version.