Operettas are considered easy. Wrongly. It is difficult to ignite such total works of art from words, gestures and sounds, pardon me: from wit, whirlwind and catchy tunes! Take the production of Hervé's Opéra-bouffe “V'lan dans l'œil” (1867), which is now running at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. The director Pierre-André Weitz is sometimes too well-read, but mostly too boyish to work for the brilliant music to always ignite. Allusions to the year the three-act was composed, to models that he parodied (namely Weber's “Freischütz” and Rossini's “Guillaume Tell”), testify that the compulsory dramaturgical work was done. But very few viewers are likely to understand them.
On the other hand, the coarseness of the sets and costumes and the shirt-sleeved character of the tour stand out - Weitz, who has been the director of the Festival d'Avignon since 1989, is responsible for all three. One encounters brightly colored lightbulbs, the world of the fair, a wooden horse and a penchant for shrill and queer things.
After the overture, the first act unfavorably begins with a dialogue between three village beauties. The routine stentor tone of many spoken passages damages the comprehension of the text and makes it impossible to achieve that nuance without which the spirit of Hervé's libretto evaporates. When Dindonnette (Lara Neumann) joins the trio and raves about her lover, whom she saw for the first time "playing the oboe under a beech tree", Weitz shows said Alexandrivore (Damien Bigourdan) urinating on the edge of the stage. What may seem like an unsavory detail is emblematic for a director who consistently concretizes what the text merely alludes to. But in the love duet that follows, the positive, predominantly musical aspects of the performance come to light. Do Bigourdan and Neumann overcome the firstaristocratically sublime part with tenoral droning or soprano intonation clouding, they give the second, plebeian perky momentum. The sudden break between “high” and “low” notes within a number is a trademark of the composer.
With the appearance of the Marquis, the evening gets its first high point. Flannan Obé embodies the rabbit-hearted satyr as a "Garfield" oldie with blue blood: He is the last, perhaps the only one of his dog-panting breed. Obé's "legend of the atmospheric lobster" is a cabinet piece of the polished and humorous art of singing: esprit in tones. But the negative counterpart, like the cattle horse, follows the price ox: in violet-colored suspenders, Olivier Py plays the marquise with a weak chest and unsteady tone. His operatic travesty in screeching falsetto (the text evokes the “sweetest dream”) should at least please those who, until then, had been looking for an ideal typical embodiment of the word “charge” without luck.
But it goes on at high speed. In front of the poison green backdrop of a shooting range, the cabinet maker Ernest (David Ghilardi) presents a bouquet of blue flowers to the tinkering marquise daughter Fleur-de-Noblesse (Ingrid Perruche). The two do not sing in a trio with the governor (Jean-Damien Barbin), but they love each other so dearly that Fleur comes up with a ruse: the unsporting Ernest is supposed to win the competition with a trick and with it her hand - the Greetings from “Freischütz”.
Only a mysterious hunter gets in the way of the amorous manual workers who vows to outdo Ernest. At this point the composer comes up with a pasticcio of ensemble scenes from the Grand Opéra, which are under the sign of numbness. A double point on the organ increases the tension to the point of unbearable, a slippery improvisation on the subject of "The Pole and the Swallow" lets them sag again, then the masked shooter sends, v'lan dans l'œil !, zack, an arrow into the marquises' eyes -Daughter! It is not betrayed here how the exposed Alexandrivore is released from the dungeon. For our sake he could sing there for the rest of his life, as his song, including the yodel, that he pulls behind bars, is of a madness that even Rossini and Offenbach have not surpassed. Bigourdan,who always reveals new facets - from the heroic tenor to the trembling old man - is here in top form both vocally and mimically.
The bottom line is that production shows two things. First: During his lifetime, Hervé (1825 to 1892) deservedly enjoyed the appreciation of both the general public and colleagues such as Richard Wagner. The potential of his works is enormous, which is why the Palazzetto Bru Zane, the center for French romantic music, is to be thanked for reviving four other stage works before “V'lan dans l'œil”. Second, today's singers struggle with this repertoire. On the occasion of the last performance of the three-act play in Paris in 1999, a critic wrote that it was curious that in our day Lully and Rameau know how to sing better than Hervé. And indeed: in the only (partial) recording of "V'lan dans l'œuil" available on Youtube, probably made for France's state broadcaster in the sixties or seventies,there is more theatrical spirit than in the scenic performance in Châtelet. But singer actors like Bigourdan and Obé, fired with Schmiss by the Orchester Pasdeloup under the direction of Christophe Grapperon, prove that even today a congenial adaptation is possible. More of that, please!