La Vie parisienne

The Palazzetto Bru Zane and its partners present an opportunity to discover the early version of La Vie parisienne as originally conceived by Offenbach. In the autumn of 1866, faced with the limited capacities of the Palais-Royal troupe, better actors than they were singers, the master of operetta had to scale down his ambitions. Preparations for the run of performances turned out to be a chaotic process of cuts and rewrites: ‘The rehearsals of La Vie parisienne are driving me almost insane’, the librettist Ludovic Halévy wrote a few days before the premiere. Against all the odds, the revised operetta was an immense success and its authors were soon cured of their disappointment at not having been able to hear the piece they had dreamt of. However, hitherto unexplored sources now permit us to restore this initial version of the immortal success of French operetta. Two new acts feature completely unknown pieces of music. The pre-censorship libretto and forgotten variants offer a different angle on some of the most famous numbers. A previously unheard Vie parisienne, which yet retains the charm of the work and includes the numbers that have made its reputation.