Le 66!

The Tyrolean cousins Frantz and Grittly wander the roads of Württemberg as travelling musicians and imagine what they would be able to buy themselves if the lottery ticket they have in their pockets turned out to be a winner. The dream becomes reality with the appearance of the pedlar Berthold, who knows the result of the draw.

The number 66 will bring its holder 100,000 florins: this is precisely the number Frantz thinks he has. But, rather than use this unexpected windfall to help Grittly and his recently widowed sister, Frantz borrows the money and goes into town to squander it. The exhilaration of wealth gives way to despair when he realises that he had read his number upside down: his ticket is 99... The moral – money does not bring happiness – greatly appealed to the bourgeois public of the Champs-Élysées. The press saw the work as above all a show of strength on Offenbach’s part, in which he displayed his compositional talents. Here he openly declared his allegiance to the tradition of French opéra-comique and presented numbers that became hits right from the premiere.

François Bernard’s new arrangement for piano, clarinet and trombone and Victoria Duhamel’s participative staging will bring out all the finesse and the parodic dimension of this one-act operetta.