Jacqus Offenbach - La vie parisienne / Sébastien Rouland, Laurent Pelly [Opéra de Lyon 2007] [DVD] [2008] [NTSC]

I already own DVDs of Laurent Pelly's productions of "Orphée aux Enfers" and "La Belle Hélène" and consider them both to be unqualified successes from both a dramatic and musical point of view. Both productions were "wacky" and innovative, without deviating too much from the spirit of the composer and his librettists. Both operettas deal, of course, Gods and Goddesses on the one hand and Ancient Greek heroes and heroines on the other, while "La Vie Parisienne" was a much more contemporary work, poking fun at the mores of Second Empire Paris. The operetta contains some of Offenbach's most inspired music and has a host of vivid singing and acting parts, opportunities seized gratefully by the talented cast on this production, recorded live in 2007 at the Opéra National de Lyon.The production has been updated to the present day and the sets and costumes are as stunning as they are witty. The choreography is equally brilliant and has some "laugh out loud" moments, while the playing of the Lyon Opéra Orchestra under a conductor new to me, Sébastien Rouland, is exhilarating. The dialogue has been sensitively adapted without doing damage to the spirit of the work and is delivered with aplomb by the hard-working cast. It is in fact much truer to the spirit of the work that the (very enjoyable) rather more traditional production by New D'Oyly Carte Opera Company I saw some years ago, which made it seem like a slightly racier version of G&S."Orphée aux Enfers" featured Nathalie Dessay as Eurydice, while the title role in "La Belle Hélène" was sung by Dame Felicity Lott. There are no "star" names here, although that distinguished and extraordinarily versatile bass-baritone Laurent Naouri (Nathalie Dessay's husband) is brilliantly funny (and quite unrecognisable) as the thrill-seeking Swedish Baron; he had appeared to great effect as Jupiter and Agamemnon in the earlier productions. The other returnee from "Orphée" is the resourceful diminutive comic tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, who is here a hilarious Frick. None of the other singers are familiar to me, although Jean-Sébastien Bou and Marc Callahan make a convincing pair of "men about town", even if they do not sing with special distinction. Jesus Garcia is a virile Brazilian, but he does not dispatch his song with the same tongue-twisting panache as Jean-Christophe Benoit on the Plasson recording. Maria Riccarda Wesseling is a sexy Métella who sings her big number beautifully, while Marie Devellereau runs M.Naouri close as being the star of the show as an effervescent Gabrielle; her acting and dancing are almost as good as her singing, which is quite wonderful.Whether you're already an Offenbach fan or not, there is much to enjoy here...just watch the infectious dancing of the entire cast at the final curtain.

La Vie Parisienne is an opera comique readily adaptable to fit in with a modern day scenario. This production begins by cleverly capturing the atmosphere at a train station along with the multitudinous interactions of the many sounds including voices heard in such a venue. Offenbach has taken a segment of life and turned it into music. This is everyday life; this is us, this is the accentuation of what we actually are. We may not like his style; we may not like any of what we see and hear; but maybe that's because we don't like looking at ourselves in the mirror. We may very well think this is a load of trash not worthy of operatic genre; but let us not deceive ourselves: disguised as a feel-good inducing romp, this work shows us what we are truly like. It may well cause us to ask the questions: am I really like that and are we truly like that? At first we may be shocked, but then we learn to laugh at ourselves, which is a sure way of embracing reality.There used to be an old saying: we should cry at a wedding and laugh at a funeral. All right, this is a fun romp, but the tears are never very far away. This work gives us the picture of an aristocrat out for a good time in Paris, but who will he hurt in the process of attaining this? The message of this work is: fun comes at a price and this is the theme that runs right through the performance, which is much more of a masterpiece than many might suppose. In it the genius of Offenbach demonstrates how, no matter how much we try and how much we spend to escape the realities of life, they always catch up with us in the end. In this romp of an opera-bouffe Offenbach brings us face to face with the truth about ourselves.This might not sound much like a proper revue, but this opera has already been handsomely reviewed by other satisfied viewers. What I can say is that it's a great, well directed production easily worth a five star rating, which I'm happy to see it has already received from several people and which I'm certainly going to award it. Opera is wonderful because there are so many different ways of doing it. I just love the way this thought-provoking version of La Vie Parisienne has been staged and directed at L'Opera de Lyon. Thoroughly recommended.