The lovably garrulous jailer Frosch, as portrayed by Broadway’s Danny Burstein in the Met’s production of Die Fledermaus, has revised his opinion of the art of opera, at least temporarily. In Saturday afternoon’s broadcast of the Strauss operetta, instead of calling opera “shit,” he will call it “crap.”

A string of official-looking emails follows the jump.

From: Hveem, Lee Ellen [email address redacted]
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 12:48 PM
To: Hveem, Lee Ellen; Bongiovanni, Mia
Cc: Svokos, Elizabeth
Subject: UPDATE: Met Opera Language Alert: January 11 Die Fledermaus

Dear Partners,

We’d like to thank everyone for the helpful communication in response to the language advisory that we distributed for this Saturday’s Die Fledermaus.  Understanding that the scripted warnings we planned to incorporate into the broadcast would not be sufficient to address your concerns, we will revise the spoken dialogue for this Saturday’s performance so it does not include the expletive and will replace the word “shit” with the word “crap.”  We will remove the verbal warning in connection with this.

We appreciate the prompt feedback as we prepare for the week’s broadcast.  Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Best regards,

Mia Bongiovanni
Assistant General Manager, Media

Lee Ellen Hveem
Associate Radio Producer

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From: Hveem, Lee Ellen
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 6:48 PM
To: Hveem, Lee Ellen; Bongiovanni, Mia
Cc: Svokos, Elizabeth
Subject: Met Opera Language Alert: January 11 Die Fledermaus

Dear Network Partners,

We want to alert you to an expletive in the English language version of Die Fledermaus being broadcast this Saturday, January 11.  Die Fledermaus is performed in 3 acts, with 2 intermissions.  A description is below:

At approximately 7:30 (seven and a half minutes) into Act 3, an off-stage tenor (the character, Alfred, from his jail cell) sings a long, high note.  It’s followed by this dialogue from Frosch, the jailer:

“No opera!  That stuff won’t last.  Nobody’s gonna pay good money to hear that shit!” [laughter from the audience.]

Our broadcast host, Margaret Juntwait, will announce to the radio audience at the top of the broadcast the inclusion of adult language in Act 3 and she will give a warning before the start of Act 3 with this language:

“We want to alert you that there is one swearword in this act.  It’s just a single word spoken by Frosch in his opening monologue.”

Please let us know if you have any questions or if there is any further information we can provide.

Best regards,

Mia Bongiovanni
Assistant General Manager, Media

Lee Ellen Hveem
Associate Radio Producer

Image based on a photo by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.