A perichole of Offenbach joyful and colorful, carried by a very great lady Stéphanie d’Oustrac and the touching Piquillo of Philippe Talbot: it is, in a staging by Valérie Lesort (often an accomplice of Christian Hecq for eccentric and poetiques), the new show at the Opéra-Comique, welcomed by an enthusiastic audience. This will not prevent us, despite the pleasure we had there, from expressing certain reservations…
“Native female dog!”
She existed, this Périchole. Her name was Micaëla Villegas, she was really Peruvian, she died in 1819 at the age of 71, two years before the independence of her country (and all of Latin America) by the Bolivar-San Martin couple. The viceroy of Peru, who was a hot rabbit as Offenbach tells us, spotted her, wanted to make her his mistress but… We don’t know what really happened between them, a slap probably from one to the other. another and the furious Viceroy was heard to shout: “Perra chola!” which meant “native female dog”. From “Perra chola” to “Périchole”, there was only one step –If Micaëla Villegas had kept her virtue, she had lost her name, wrote Robert de Flers in Le Figaro in 1920. This did not prevent him from making a career and also… from reconsidering his decision somewhat, which favored his fortune.
The Viceroy (Tassis Christoyannis) and the Périchole (Stéphanie d’Oustrac) C) Stefan Brion
social desperation
Before being embodied by Hortense Schneider for Offenbach, La Périchole was the heroine of a famous play by Prosper Mérimée, The carriage of the Blessed Sacrament from which Jean Renoir will make a film with Anna Magnani, The Golden Carriage. This means that La Périchole was not unknown when Offenbach and his librettists, the faithful Meilhac and Halévy, took it over. However, after so many sometimes falsely burlesque successes,Orpheus in the Underworld in Parisian life, of Beautiful Helen in Grand Duchess of Gerolsteinthis Perricholi, which will be the last masterpiece before the fall of the Second Empire, will have only half success. We understand that she confused the public a little by her starting situation, very little joyful, which is almost the observation of a society divided between the poor and the wealthy, with all its consequences, the despair of some, the selfishness others, which is the leaven of revolutions.
Piquillo (Philippe Talbot) between Panatellas (Eric Hichet) and Hinoyosa (Lionel Painter) C) Stefan Brion
Whoring to eat?
Thus, in teeming Lima at the end of the 18th century, La Périchole, street singer, and Piquillo, her peasant lover, try to earn a living by cooing, but they only get meager coins. The viceroy of Peru, disguised as…anonymous and bumping into them, falls madly in love with the young woman who resolves, tormented by hunger, to abandon Piquillo in favor of fortune. But now they will be reunited and forcibly married again, she knowing that it is he she is marrying, he not knowing it… before discovering, in the viceroy’s palace, and after having received the high-sounding titles of Marquis of Mançanarez and Count of Tabago, that he inherited these titles to play the role, with the one he loves (whose identity he understood when she was presented to the court), of “happy cuckold”.
The moving farewell to the beloved man
History swarms with these royal mistresses whose husbands, gorged with advantages, turn their heads away when they themselves do not seek good fortune elsewhere. But that’s not quite what it’s about either. La Perrichole. The turning point in the story is obviously this air, one of Offenbach’s most beautiful, worthy of the great airs of Verdi or that of “the Letter” of theEugene Onegin from Tchaikovsky: O my dear lover, I swear to you. With a cruel and desperate lucidity, Périchole renounces Piquillo in favor of prostitution – since she deliberately puts herself, because of hunger, in the hands of the viceroy: And I sign: La Périchole / Who loves you but can’t take it anymore.
The Three Cousins (Julie Goussot, Marie Lenormand, Lucie Peyramaure) and Hinoyosa (Lionel Painter) C) Stefan Brion
Offenbach’s time was also the time when old bluebeards came to do their shopping among the young dancers in the grand foyer of the Opera. The time when young actresses found extremely wealthy protectors. We know that a Sarah Bernhardt, a Hortense Schneider also perhaps (who created The Périchole), had their police file for soliciting, which was nothing other than to look for themselves, in their youth, at their beginning, a rich bourgeois who would allow them not to starve. La Perrichole, it’s this story, we understand that it was confusing.
A staging with joyful energy, sublime costumes
But the staging of Valérie Lesort evades that. For the benefit of a joyful energy without downtime, in decors dominated by ochres, orange and red of a fantasized Latin America, where we party (between two naps). A staging reinforced by the extraordinary inventiveness of the costumes (bravissimo to Vanessa Sannino, of which we can realize, in the photos that accompany this column, the creative madness that is hers!), the humor of the dialogues and certain finds (the appearance of llamas, macaroon hair that turns into raisin bread), the dynamism of movement. This is enough to delight an audience who will applaud the show, it will not be enough to satisfy us…
Piquillo (Philippe Talbot), the Viceroy (Tassis Christoyannis) Périchole (Stéphanie d’Oustrac) C) Stefan Brion
Not enough tragedy in this comedy
First, precisely, because the melancholic dimension (we won’t go as far as tragedy) is completely forgotten. A little also because of Offenbach himself, who signs music of very high quality, both emotionally (the air of Piquillo, I was offered to be infamous, is magnificent, and magnificently rendered by Philippe Talbot), in the various “hits” of the work (My God, men are stupid / O my dear lover, already quoted / He will grow up because he is Spanish/ Ah! what a dinner I just made!) than in some lesser known ones, deliciously written by Meilhac and Halévy: the hilarious verses of the wines (Malaga, Madeira, Porto, Alicante) or those, very ironic, very cruel, sung to Piquillo by the court: Hey! hello, husband! What have you done with your wife?… But here it is: as if it were impossible, for the favorite of the time, to scratch too much the society which had nourished him, La Perrichole ends up a little water pudding, with a conclusion which is not one, as constrained (and “hypocritical”) as is that of Tartuffe two centuries earlier. In general – and musically – this work ends much less well than it had begun.
Piquillo (Philippe Talbot), Périchole (Stéphanie d’Oustrac) and two lamas C) Stefan Brion
And too much dancing
Lesort does not seek to attack this ambiguity. She also falls into a trap that affects many of her peers: the “fear of emptiness”. Filling the scene with all possible movements, all possible whirlwinds, to the detriment of the meaning of the work. Thus these incessant dancers, women in long Peruvian dresses with Inca hats, men who add a mustache to the point of making… Turkish-Peruvians: they are welcome when, at the end of act 1, they launch into a kind of Latin French-cancan, panties (in these gentlemen) included. But the choreography (by Yohann Têté) tires when it is superimposed on the slightest orchestral passage. And especially when it comes to visually pollute the turn of the work, the air already quoted, O my dear lover, who demanded a naked emotion, a Stéphanie d’Oustrac alone and distilling music and emotion, no, behind her, these video game gestures…
Pericholes, Piquillo, excellent
An impeccable Stéphanie d’Oustrac who, in keeping with her firm and precise mezzo voice, embodies a great lady Périchole, without self-pity, discreet in emotion, a little too much no doubt. Philippe Talbot is formidable, anger and despair, dignity and burlesque, with the voice that we know him, perfectly led: his characterization of a Piquillo who could turn to benet is excellent. Very good also the viceroy of Tassis Christoyannis, more good-natured than odious, with this “above ground” carelessness of nobles and sovereigns which will lead to revolutions. Lionel Painter (Don Pedro de Hinoyosa, the governor of the city), Eric Huchet (Don Miguel de Panatellas, the first gentleman of the chamber, in drag) are also impeccable in these roles of spineless courtiers that Offenbach loves. As a Tarapote, and as an old prisoner, Thomas Morris does a lot, but it’s the staging that demands it. Among the “Three cousins”, Julie Goussot is a little worse than Marie Lenormand and Lucie Peyramaure.
Tarapote (Thomas Morris) with the ladies of the court C) Stefan Brion
The public is happy
Excellent choir (Les Elements) And Julien Leroy, at the baton, holds his troops rather well, even if the Paris orchestra showed sometimes acidic brass and strings lacking in softness and cohesion here and there. Nevertheless, let’s repeat it: the public is happy. We will also have the opportunity to make very interesting comparisons since the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées is going up La Perrichole in November in a staging by Laurent Pelly. The quality of the music and the subject which accompanies it amply justify it.
La Perrichole by Jacques Offenbach, direction by Valérie Lesort, musical direction by Julien Leroy. Opéra-Comique, Paris, 17, 19, 21, 23 and 25 May at 8 p.m.