from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording
Jacques Offenbach was born on June 20, 1819, meaning that, towards the end of this season, there will be celebrations to honor his 200th birthday. However, to get an early start on the festivities, this past Friday Erato released a six-CD collection of three of the composer’s best known comic operettas, Orphée aux enfers (“Orpheus in the Underworld,” although I have always felt the spirit would be better served by translating the title as “Orpheus goes to Hell”), La belle Hélène, and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein. The conductor for all three of these operettas is Marc Minkowski, best known as the founder and director of the period-instrument ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre. Here in San Francisco, he is also known for his debut with the San Francisco Opera in June of 2017, when he managed the orchestra pit for a particularly dark (and highly effective) account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 527 opera Don Giovanni.
While it may seem anachronistic, Minkowski conducts Les Musiciens du Louvre, along with its associated chorus, on two of the operetta recordings, those of Hélène and Gérolstein. The recording of Orphée, on the other hand, comes from a production by the Opéra National de Lyon, with its orchestra and chorus supplemented by musicians from Grenoble, probably affiliated with Les Musiciens du Louvre. Each operetta fits comfortably on two CDs.
Among “serious” opera-goers Offenbach is probably best known for The Tales of Hoffmann, written at the end of his life and not completed. However, for the better part of his life he was best known for his operettas, the first of which was Orphée. He worked with librettists that were never shy of providing him with no end of risqué humor, which he would harness in the interest of undermining many sacred cows of authority, whether they were the all-powerful divine powers of Greek mythology or those of nineteenth-century military forces.
Indeed, Otto von Bismarck was in the audience for a performance of Gérolstein and apparently remarked that the satire of the script was right on the money. (He also is said to have observed that a country that makes fun of its military is ripe for conquest. Three years after Bismarck saw Gérolstein, France declared war on the German confederation; and, as Bismarck predicted, things did not go well for France as the Franco-Prussian War ensued.)
Across the three operettas in this collection, the music is consistently delightful; and Minkowski never fails to serve up the instrumental and vocal work with the light touch it deserves. The only downside with this release is that the accompanying booklet provides only cast summaries and track listings. There are no synopses of the the plots, let alone libretto texts in either the original French or in translation. In this digital age, one could at least expect a URL for PDF sources of this information!
The fact is that the text is just as much fun as the music. There are plenty of instances in which the vocalists provide some sense of that humor through their rhetorical delivery. Nevertheless, having seen two of these operettas staged (Orphée and Gérolstein) I know the sorts of devils that lurk in the verbal details; and things are much more fun when they come to light. (The New York City Opera production of Gérolstein that I saw was performed in English, as was a Los Angeles Opera production of Orphée.)
Nevertheless, the spirit behind Minkowski’s leadership definitely makes the trip through each of these operettas worth taking.
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