Search - Jacques Offenbach, Igor Markevitch, Lamoureux Concert Association Orchestra :: Offenbach: La Périchole

First-rate, operetta-oriented performance

L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 12/03/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Jacques Offenbach, that exemplar of the lightness and gaiety on the surface of Louis Napoleon's empire, was born in Germany and spoke all his life with an ineradicable German accent. With the crushing Prussian victory of 1870 and the collapse of both Napoleon and his frivolous empire, the suddenly very foreign-seeming Herr Offenbach and his airy confectons were largely rejected by French audiences. Artistic and financial bankruptcy loomed. Offenbach redeemed himself with a successful tour of the United States and a burning ambition to do something better. And he did do something better. Even as he was dying, he created "Les Contes d'Hoffmann", the operatic masterpiece that no-one had ever believed he had in him.



"La Perichole" is a much earlier work. It is pure fluff, and one of the finest pieces of fluff ever put on stage. It involves a lustfully incompetent ruler of Peru, a cute pair of street entertainers, confusion about who is married to whom and a prison for recalcitrant husbands. Fluff unrelieved, and highly entertaining it is, too. (Unlikely as it may seem, there actually was a Perichole. She lived in Lima and was the mistress of the Viceroy of Peru. Her life was roughly contemporary with that of Beethoven. For some odd reason, her story is told in numerous pieces of mid-19th Century French literature and music.)



"La Perichole" is full of jolly, up-tempo tunes. At least one of them being so insidious that you find yourself humming or whistling it for days.



The question arises as to what sort of work this is. Is "La Perichole" an opera, an operetta or something else. Offenbach called each of his pre-Hoffmann stage works an "opera bouffe". Perhaps he meant not-quite-an-opera but more than an operetta. And if we take operetta to mean something like "The Student Prince" or "New Moon", he was quite right. The producers of this recording appear to regard "La Perichole" as an operetta and have assembled their cast accordingly. As such, they are excellent. The lead soprano and tenor have the bright, quicksilver sound that can only be produced by French throats. The villain is crotchety as only French comic villains can be. Indeed, the whole affair is as French as the Eifel Tower.



But I am inclined to think that operas are what are put on stage by opera companies and that is exactly what "La Perichole" is on this side of the Atlantic. However it may live as an operetta in France, over here I want to hear "La Perichole" as an opera. That being the case, I find both the tenor and the soprano to be just too bright and too light. In an ideal recording, I would wish for all the cast and particularly the two leads to have heftier sound and--just occasionally--a hint of dramatic darkness to better contrast with the true joy of the piece.



The sound of this 1960s recording is quite satisfactory on CD. As a budget-priced item, it lacks a libretto. Spoken dialogue has been included. It is my impression that the dialogue has been truncated but I do not have the text at hand to confirm it. In any case, there is not enough chatter to seriously discommode non-French-speaking listeners.



Whatever one may think of the singers or the packaging of this version of "La Perichole", the conducting is impeccable. But what on earth is Igor Markewitch, a great master of the Russian repertory, doing here? It seems about as likely as Toscanini heading up the band for "Annie Get Your Gun.""

ONE OF THREE

ALAIN ROBERT | ST-HUBERT,QUÉBEC | 08/22/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This 1959 recording is not bad at all,but the two more recent versions have surpassed it.The dialogue will put off many listeners.This OFFENBACH operetta is among the six that are still being performed today.It has many delicious moments like the songs LE CONQUÉRANT DIT A LA JEUNE INDIENNE,O MON CHER AMANT and AH!QUEL DINER ,all often present in operetta anthologies.For all of those who don't know OFFENBACH,the best way to start is with THE WORLD OF OFFENBACH,a single cd that offers overtures and songs."