Robert Tanitch reviews L’Etoile at Royal Opera House, London
It is not often, apart from Offenbach, that you are able to see a French comic operetta outside of France, so a production of Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’Étoile is something special.
I had looked forward to seeing it. I was in for a big disappointment.
Chabrier (1841-1894) wrote L’Étoile whilst he was still working at the Ministry of the Interior. The operetta had its premiere in Paris in 1877 at Offenbach’s Théâtre des Bouffes.
It has rarely been performed since and watching it you can easily understand why.
“I live and breathe in music,” said Chabrier. “I write as I feel, with more temperament than technique.”
L’Étoile has been much admired for his melodic music, its tender charm and its sophisticated frothy silliness.
King Ouf I (Christophe Mortagne), for reasons of protocol, needs to celebrate his birthday with an execution. His victim is a pedlar (Kate Lindsey in the trouser role) who is in love with a princess (Helene Guilmette) who is in disguise. An astrologer (Simon Bailey) tells Ouf that he, too, will die, if the execution goes ahead.
The plot is silly but the music is lovely. Mark Elder conducts. The performance is sung in French. Mortagne is an amusing caricature. Lindsey has all the best solos
But, and this is the whole point, there is absolutely no sense in staging L’ etoile unless you have the right comic director and the right comic designer and possibly a more intimate opera house.
Mariame Clément’s production and Julia Hansen’s cartoonish Persian/MontyPython design simply do not have the comic invention to carry the opera bouffe to success.
It is all so very unfunny; and as for the can-can it is the least exhilarating I have ever seen. The curtain-calls were absurdly overstretched.
Comedian Chris Addison as a silly ass English narrator who doesn’t understand French could clearly be funny with a better script.
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