La Périchole

Although La Périchole is now one of Jacques Offenbach’s most famous opéra-bouffes, its genesis and creation were not particularly promising. After the great successes of 1867, when Offenbach was billed simultaneously at four different theatres in Paris, 1868 got off to a disastrous start with the failure of Le Château à Toto and the unsuccessful revival of Le Pont des soupirs. However, Offenbach’s fears were allayed in the autumn of that year with the première of L’Île de Tulipatan. La Périchole came next, presented at the Théâtre des Variétés on 6 October 1868 with Hortense Schneider in the title role. Its few successful numbers (the “couplets espagnols” and the letter song, “O mon cher amant”) were not sufficient to keep the work in the repertoire, given the particularly tense political climate of that time. The work did not find its way back to the stage until after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, and by that time it was in a substantially revised three-act version.

Saturday 31 December at 8 pm: opera broadcast on France Musique