The Viennese composer’s masterpiece, on a libretto by Carl Haffner and Richard Genée from the French play Le réveillon by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, is offered in the Italian rhythmic edition by Gino Negri-as it was also for the 1979 TCBO performance-and with Italian dialogue by Cesare Lievi.

“My directing Konzept,” Lievi comments in the auditorium notes, “stems from the idea that the title of the operetta could be ‘The Bat, or the Ostrich.’ All the characters in this play are ostriches, in fact they deceive each other, betray each other, are disloyal to each other and yet they do not want to see the situation, to see what they really are. Deceiving themselves,” the director further explains, “they constantly put their heads in the sand. Maybe they can’t stand their own reality, because if they acknowledged it they would understand that they can’t continue living like this.” The director from Lombardy, who has collaborated with such prestigious musical entities as the Wiener Staatsoper, Teatro alla Scala and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, returns to work with the Bologna theater after Britten’s Peter Grimes in 2016.