The Bat, Ballet by Roland Petit
Anyone who has watched the New Year’s Concert broadcast from the Musikverein in Vienna will know what it is like to see Johann Strauss the Younger’s inimitable waltzes interpreted by the Vienna State Ballet. Naturally, Strauss wrote his music not just to be played in concerts but to be danced to at parties and social gatherings in the city that was his home.
In 1874, Strauss wrote his third operetta (of those he completed), Die Fledermaus (The Bat), the setting of which captured for perpetuity the magic of the nineteenth-century Viennese ballroom. Fertile territory one would assume for a ballet, but it was not until 1979 that Strauss’ music would be entirely devoted to dance in the renowned French choreographer Roland Petit’s own version of The Bat: La Chauve-souris.
Created for the Ballet National de Marseille and first performed at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Petit’s The Bat has been a perennial favourite in companies’ repertories around the world ever since and is now set to light up the stage of the Rome Opera House.
By transposing the plot from Austria to France, and a setting more in keeping with the original source for Strauss' operetta, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy’s vaudeville play, Le Réveillon, Petit was able to add a little more frisson and sensuality to his ballet than would have been appropriate for Vienna in the late eighteen-hundreds. Even a can-can makes an appearance!
The narrative introduces us to Johann who, despite her beauty, has become bored with his wife, Bella, and whiles away his time at Maxim’s in the hope of seducing someone else. Bella’s good looks are not lost on Ulrich, their children’s tutor, but when she refuses his advances, he decides to take Bella to Maxim’s (in disguise of course) so that he can prove Johann’s infidelity.
Unfortunately for Ulrich, everyone is captivated by Bella, including her husband, who is dressed up as a bat. He resorts to creating an incident that has Johann sent to jail. Bella secures Johann's release, but also clips his wings to put paid to his philandering.
Petit’s ballet is classical in form yet completely modern in its feel, no more so than in the astonishing pas de deux performed by Johann and Bella in his cell, Bella exchanging her more colourful costumes at Maxim’s for a simple bodysuit. Whether the intent is that we see Bella naked or spiritually pure is for the audience to decide, but what cannot be argued with is the effect: absolute balletic perfection.