Paris.(International)(La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein)(Opera Review)

The Chatelet launched its opera season on the anniversary of Offenbach's death (October 5) with a new production of La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein, using the same triumvirate--soprano Felicity Lott, conductor Marc Minkowski and producer Laurent Pelly--that had triumphed in La Belle Helene a couple of seasons back. Expectations ran high, but La Grande-Duchesse, with its dated parody of military and aristocratic power, is a more challenging task for the director and conductor than the composer's joyous send-up of Greek and Trojan antiquity. On this occasion, Pelly struggled to find the right tone for the work, despite the commanding presence of Lott in the central role, a favorite star turn for divas ranging from Hortense Schneider, who created the part, to Regine Crespin.

Lott did not disappoint her fans, creating from the outset a wacky Grande-Duchesse, draped in furs, with fluttering hand gestures and the voracious sexual appetite of a mature woman, sustained by something stronger than a cup of tea. The soprano tripped through the spoken dialogue as if to the manner born, with just the sort of regal British accent that so delights the Parisians. Vocally this mezzoish repertoire lies low for her voice, whose finest asset is still a gloriously floated top register. The soprano circumnavigated this problem admirably by careful vocal plotting, but some of the vocal lines needed a chest register of more substance. (In this respect it was difficult to forget Crespin's performance in this theater in the 1970s.)

Elsewhere, the frenetic chorus movement, the usual band of frumpishly dressed bespectacled ladies and the rather lengthy dialogue by Agathe Melinand somehow failed to engage with the composer's frivolous antiwar statement, despite an effective setting of decayed grandeur from Chantal Thomas. The work was written at the time of the Paris Universal exhibition in 1867, and the martial music is not without a certain weighty bombast, but laughing at the machinery of war is no longer an amusement in the twenty-first century. More importantly, the characters need to touch the audience. Costuming Wanda--the pert Sandrine Piau--as a Wellingtonbooted country bumpkin may raise an initial snigger, but the girl's personal drama, which finds her frequently separated by force from her fiance, Fritz, has a degree of seriousness. Only the wonderfully funny ballet by choreographer Laura Scozzi elicited genuine enthusiasm from the audience, but transvestite ballerinas are always guaranteed to raise a laugh.

Using Les Musiciens du Louvre, a band of some thirty-five players of period instruments, Minkowski restored to the work a breezy, inventive orchestral sound and a very complete version of the score, with a notable extra number for the Grande-Duchesse at the beginning of Act III. In the large space of the Chatelet, the laser-sharp lines of the players occasionally sounded a little undernourished. (If authenticity was the aim here, then it should be remembered that the composer bumped up the orchestral sound for the Viennese performances of the work.) On opening night, Minkowski was guilty of pushing the music along, as if conscious of the possibility of flagging dramatic interest. The result was unfair on the choristers, who were already working (and moving) very hard.

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