Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)
Les Divas d’Offenbach
Véronique Gens (soprano)
Choeur et Orchestre Nationale des Pays de la Loire/Hervé Nicquet
French sung texts and English translations
rec. 2023, Centre de Congrès, Angers, France
Alpha Classics 1168 [56]

Véronique Gens has made many distinguished recordings for the Palazzetto Bru Zane, the organisation which assisted her in devising this release. It is an attractive survey of Offenbach’s surprisingly wide range – operetta, opéra-bouffe and opéra-comique. In addition to familiar numbers from La Belle Hélène, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein and La Périchole, some works have been recorded here for the first time. Europadisc, Presto, Télérama and the BBC have already praised the disc.

The opening Un rêve, mon Dieu, c’est un rêve from La Belle Hélene had not been published: Offenbach added it for the soprano leading an 1876 revival of that favourite. The song sounds as if it belongs in the original score, so typical is it of the composer’s manner. The same can be said of another unpublished item from a famous work, Allez donc, allez donc bien vite from La Vie parisienne. The booklet describes it as an aria Offenbach “provided to pad out a new role in his last version” of the operetta. It sounds rather better than a piece of padding.

Not every piece here is a standalone aria. The longest vocal item, at 5:11, is a passage from La Diva, theatrical couplets Je crois bien et je le promets. Our diva interacts with the chorus, and uses both mélodie déclamée (chant-like recitative) and full-voice singing. This scena really suggests the stage, putting the listener very much in an auditorium.

Several numbers evoke the dance, especially the waltz. In Boule-de-neige we have the divorce waltz = Moi je viens réclamer le divorce: Patchouline announces at the outset she is here to file for divorce. In the second verse, she says: “Mais, pour les maris, en masse, / Je cherche et je ne vois rien” (but taking husbands as a whole / I can find nothing good to say). The chorus takes the opposite view, defending husbands but still in waltz time.

In that number, Véronique Gens at moments sounds stretched by the vocal part, but she is generally very successful in doing justice to the light-hearted material and its vocal requirements. It is all very different, of course, from her earlier work in French, in the tragédie lyrique, such as her Virgin Classics album of 2006 which covered a range from Lully to Gluck. Here she lets her hair down, and the singing mostly has the charm needed for the repertoire, even if her resources are different twenty years on.

Offenbach favoured singers who used the centre of the range for a vocal delivery that made the humour of the texts clear, somewhere between sung and semi-spoken, closer to recitative. Gens manages this manner very persuasively. The Choeur et Orchestre Nationale des Pays de la Loire sing and play very well, and the orchestra does full justice to the few instrumental items included. Hervé Nicquet conducts with real feeling for the attractions of the operetta and its cognate genres shown here, and supports his soloist very well.

Roy Westbrook

Contents
La Belle Hélène (1865)
1 Un rêve, mon Dieu, c’est un rêve
La Diva (1869)
2 Je crois bien et je le promets
La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867)
3 Dites-lui
La Vie parisienne (1866)
4 Allez donc, allez donc bien vite
Valéria (1851)
5 C’est pour aimer
Boule-de-neige (1871)
6 Moi je viens réclamer le divorce
Le Voyage dans la lune (1875)
7 Ballet des Chimères
Le Roi Carotte (1872)
8 Fruit des vieilles habitudes
La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein
9 Vous aimez le danger
Madame Favart (1878)
10 Je passe sur mon enfance
Dragonette (1857)
11 Oui, j’ai menti
Robinson Crusoé (1867)
12 Entracte Symphonique de l’acte II
La Périchole (1868)
13 Ô mon cher amant
La Boulangère des écus (1875)
14 Ah! Qu’elle est fière
La Périchole (1868)
15 Regarde-le, regarde-moi
Geneviève de Brabant (1875)
16 Jeunesse aimable et charmante
Robinson Crusoé (1867)
17 Beauté qui viens des cieux
Le Roman comique (1862)
18 De la blanche couronne
La Diva
19 Monsieur Étienne, mon coiffeur

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