Strauss Fledermaus

Die Fledermaus (1874) is the ultimate Viennese operetta, composed by Johann Strauss Jr., the most famous member of the Strauss Waltz Dynasty. Once conceived as an attempt to creatively outgrow the dance-hall, the operetta was a huge success from the outset and still enchant audiences today with its unmistakably Viennese mix of comedy and sophistication and its uplifting waltz rhythms.

A comprehensive collection of recordings of the music of Johann Strauss, almost all of them come from a Japanese collector, Mayumi Cho, who began collecting all recordings of Johann Strauss' music just after the war. His collection exceeds 700 discs with no fewer than 100 versions of An der schönen blauen Donau.

This is a very plush production of Fledermaus from 1990 at Covent Garden that also was Dame Joan Sutherland's farewell to a house in which she had been singing for nearly 40 years. The production of Fledermaus is very well done, with very lavish settings from the Vienna of Johann Strauss, including the centerpiece ball of Act II. The cast is excellent throughout and the singing is in English ((with subtitles available). Dame Joan's husband Richard Bonygne leads the orchestra and the chorus under John Brown is excellent.

By Dan Sherman

The most famous and enduringly successful composer of nineteenth-century light music, Johann Strauss II captivated not only Vienna but the whole of Europe and America with his abundantly tuneful waltzes, polkas, quadrilles and marches. This unique collection brings together for the first time ever his entire orchestral output. The Strauss Edition, originally fifty-two separate releases on the Marco Polo label, represented a milestone in recording history. It is celebrated by this beautiful box-set.

Johann Baptist Strauss II, also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger or the Son (German: Johann Strauß Sohn), was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well as a violinist. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in the 19th century. Some of Johann Strauss's most famous works include "The Blue Danube", "Kaiser-Walzer" (Emperor Waltz), "Tales from the Vienna Woods", "Frühlingsstimmen", and the "Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka". Among his operettas, Die Fledermaus and Der Zigeunerbaron are the best known.