The Bat

The few works that will stand the test before today's audience include Strauss' The Bat – an operetta written to the libretto by the writing duo, Carl Haffner and Richard Gene, based on the vaudeville ‘Réveillon’ by Henry Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. 

The Bat was first performed with great success in 1874 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna from where it flew to operetta and later opera stages around the world. It still passes for one of the best-written classical operettas. A witty story from a bourgeois environment about Gabriel Eisenstein who has to go to prison for a few days, his wife Rosalinda who is visited by her old love, tenor Alfred, and the revenge of dr. Falke, who wants revenge on Gabriel for his joke when he let him run across the city in a bat costume, is accompanied by other plot vicissitudes of the story, and set to the sparkling music of Strauss.