BA-TA-CLAN
- Chinoiserie musicale in 1 act
- Composer: Jacques Offenbach
- Libretto: Ludovic Halévy
- First performed: Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, 29 December 1855
| FÉ-AN-NICH-TON | Soprano | Marie Dalmont |
| KÉ-KI-KA-KO | Tenor | Jean-François Berthelier |
| KO-KO-RI-KO | Baritone | Prosper Guyot |
| FÉ-NI-HAN | Tenor | Étienne Pradeau |
| Conspirators | Tenors |
SETTING: Ché-i-no-or, in the gardens of the palace of the Emperor Fé-ni-han.
Hurrah for Jacques Offenbach!
Offenbach was one of very few clever, witty composers: a parodist who delighted in turning things on their head, putting familiar elements in strange contexts (and vice versa), toppling sacred cows, and mischievously quoting other composers in incongruous situations.
His contemporaries saw him as a musical Aristophanes; we can look back and compare him to the Pythons, Spike Milligan, Mel Brooks, or The Simpsons. Where else do you find sopranos in cannibal cooking-pots singing waltzes; Zeus disguised as a fly; or the hero pursued by Public Opinion? And the Opéra-Comique production of Les Brigands is like watching Astérix the opera.
I love Offenbach, as you’ve probably guessed. He sits quite comfortably next to Meyerbeer, Massenet, and Berlioz as one of my favourite composers.
Ba-ta-clan was one of his earliest and biggest successes. It was performed at the opening of the Bouffes parisiens in the Salle Comte, Passage Cloiseul. The theatre was twice as large as the Bouffes’ former home, in the Champs-Elysées, and the number of actors could be increased from two to four. (Nevertheless, the Revue gazette et musicale observed, the auditorium was still too small!)
Ba-ta-clan, Offenbach’s 14th operetta – and his 13th in just two years, was his first collaboration with Ludovic Halévy (Fromental‘s nephew, who went on to write Carmen). It’s giddily brilliant: a young composer and librettist really showing what they can do.
The operetta takes place in China – where all the characters are (naturally) Frenchmen in disguise. There are revolutionary anthems, conspiracies, and coups in this chinoiserie musicale.
The “Chinese” orchestra sounds like nothing else in opera, until possibly Hindemith: a mixture of cymbals, triangles, saxophones, saxhorns, and pianos, with passages of pure swing or jazz.
The Emperor Fè-ni-han (Anastase Nourrisson, of Brive-la-Gallarde) plans to escape with the courtiers Ké-ki-ka-ko (the vicomte Alfred Cérisy) and the princess Fé-an-nich-ton (opera singer Virginie Durand). Guard captain Ko-ko-ri-ko becomes Emperor; he was, of course, born rue Mouffetard, Paris.
The opera opens with a chorus and quartet in Chinese gibberish (“Maxalla chapallaxa … Bibixi midirixi … Molototo dododo … Turlunussu punussu…”), while the orchestra imitates a clock gone doolally, springs boiñngggging. It’s brilliant.
Later, there’s a nonsense duet in Italian, parodying Bellini.
“Morto ! morto ! Poignardato ! Etranglato ! Découpato ! Embrochato ! Déchirato ! Empilato !”
The highlight is the Ba-ta-clan itself, the revolutionary song that calls for the tenor to tootle melodiously at the top of his range like a bugle. It’s catchy – and utterly demented.
Its lunatic brilliance beats anything in German or Italian opera hands down. And Offenbach can’t resist a nod to Meyerbeer, the master of French grand opera. Expecting death, the characters face the audience, and launch into a parody of the great Huguenots Act V trio.
Ba-ta-clan, Héquet1 thought, “is and will long remain the most dazzling of musical buffooneries”.
What you don’t know, even after seeing Les Deux Aveugles, what you can’t imagine, is the buffoonish verve of the authors of this madness, it’s the continuous stream of jokes, puns, witty nonsense, unforeseen extravagances, which exceed all known limits to date… Truly, one would never have believed music capable of taking such liberties and frolicking thus. And it’s a German who indulges in such exuberance! What will the exclusive supporters of serious art say?
Two recommended recordings: Debart 1986, Couraud 1959.
SUR UN VOLCAN
- Comédie à ariettes in 1 act
- Composer: Ernest L’Épine and Offenbach
- Libretto: Joseph Méry
- First performed: The same night.
SETTING: Dublin, 1806
| PIERRE, called Trafalgar | Baritone | |
| ST. ELME, Lieutenant on the Sea | Tenor | |
| MISS KATRINA, actress at the Royal Theatre in Dublin | Soprano |
Also performed that evening was Sur un volcan, a comédie à ariettes in 1 act. It is a skit in which two French officers, after the defeat at Trafalgar, hold Dublin hostage with an enormous barrel of gunpowder. The elder, Trafalgar, falls in love with the actress Katrina; she falls in love with, and marries, the younger, St. Elme.
Theatrically speaking, the spark didn’t catch, and the explosion was a damp squib. It was withdrawn after the first night. “It was indeed the best thing to do,” Héquet2 thought. “When a joke falls flat and fails to amuse, one must abandon it immediately. One can only regret that the composer, M. de Lépine, fell victim to the poet’s mistake. There were some lovely phrases in his little score, some pleasant pieces, which deserved a better fate.”
The score was by Ernest L’Épine (or Lépine, as the contemporary newspapers spelt it), secretary to the Duc de Morny, Napoleon III’s brother (and co-composer of M. Choufleuri). Offenbach wrote the overture and the orchestration, and revised and corrected L’Épine’s music.3 B. Jouvin4 (Figaro) thought it a shame that the audience had not listened more attentively to Lépine’s music. “Here and there, in this score barely glimpsed and somewhat abruptly dragged down by the poem’s downfall, I thought I noticed some subtle and distinguished elements, and amidst this golden sand lost in the mud, some charming couplets, delivered a bit too casually and half-heartedly by Mlle Mace.”
The drinking song “Bien boire et ne rien savoir” is catchy; so is the second section of the trio “Quoi, c’est vous?”.
Jean-Christophe Keck rediscovered and reconstructed the score. CPO released a recording in 2020, with Marc Barrard, Florien Laconi, and Magali Léger, and the Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens.
- G. Héquet, Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 6 January 1856: « Ba-ta-clan est et sera longtemps la plus éblouissante des bouffoneries musicales. Ce que vous ne savez pas, même après avoir vu les Deux Aveugles, ce que vous ne pouvez imaginer, c’est la verve bouffonne des auteurs de cette folie, c’est le feu roulant de plaisanteries, de calembours, de spirituelles bêtises, d’extravagances imprévues, et qui dépassent toutes les limites connues jusqu’à présent. … Jamais, en vérité, on n’aurait cru la musique capable de prendre de pareilles licences et de batifoler ainsi. Et c’est un Allemand qui se livre à de tels éclats ! Que vont dire les partisans exclusifs de l’art sérieux ? » ↩︎
- Héquet, Revue et gazette musicale : « C’était effectivement ce qu’il y avait de mieux à faire. Quand une plaisanterie avorte et ne fait pas rire, il faut y renoncer sur-le-champ. On doit regretter seulement que le compositeur, M. de Lépine, ait été victime de l’erreur du poète. Il y avait dans sa petite partition de jolies phrases, des morceaux agréables, et qui méritaient un meilleur sort. » ↩︎
- Jean-Christophe Keck, 2019 CPO recording. ↩︎
- B. Jouvin, Le Figaro, 6 January 1856: « Le public, justement impatienté, n’a écouté que d’une oreille distraite la musique de M. Lépine. C’est dommage ! ça et là, dans cette partition à peine entrevue et un peu brutalement entraînée dans la chute du poème, j’ai cru remarquer des choses fines et distinguées, et au milieu de ce sable d’or perdu dans la vase, des couplets charmants, dits un peu trop sans façon et du bout des lèvres par mademoiselle Mace. » ↩︎
The Opera Scribe 