L'étoile is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Emmanuel Chabrier with a libretto by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo.

Chabrier met his librettists at the home of a mutual friend, the painter Gaston Hirsh, in 1875. Chabrier played to them early versions of the romance "O petite étoile" and the ensemble "Le pal, est de tous les supplices..." (with words by Verlaine which Leterrier and Vanloo found too bold and toned down). They agreed to collaborate and Chabrier set about composition with enthusiasm.

The story echoes some of the characters and situations of Chabrier's one-act comic opera Fisch-Ton-Kan, which premiered in 1875.

Performance history

L'étoile premiered on 28 November 1877 at Offenbach's Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens. In its initial run the members of the small orchestra were appalled at the difficulty of Chabrier’s score, which was much more sophisticated than anything Offenbach wrote for the small boulevard theatre.

The opera was first performed outside France in Berlin on 4 October 1878, then in Budapest on 23 November 1878. In New York City in 1890 at the Broadway Theatre, an English adaptation by J. Cheever Goodwin was titled The Merry Monarch, with new music by Woolson Morse. Chabrier's music fared no better in London in 1899, where the score was rewritten by Ivan Caryll for an adaptation at the Savoy Theatre called The Lucky Star. In Brussels in 1909, Chabrier's music was restored, and there was a performance at the Arts Décoratifs Exposition in Paris in 1925, conducted by Albert Wolff.

The operetta's first major revival was on 10 April 1941 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris under Nazi occupation, with Fanély Revoil, René Hérent, Lillie Grandval, and André Balbon in the cast, at which time highlights were recorded, conducted by Roger Désormière; this production was revived in December 1946 with Revoil and Payen. New productions were mounted at the Opéra-Comique in October 1984 with Colette Alliot-Lugaz and Michel Sénéchal in leading roles, and in December 2007 with Jean-Luc Viala and Stéphanie d’Oustrac.

The first complete recording, by EMI in 1985, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, followed a production at the Opéra National de Lyon the previous year starring Alliot-Lugaz, which was also filmed for television by FR3 in November 1985 and broadcast in 1986.

L'étoile has been performed with increasing frequency and more widely in the 21st century, with productions at Opera North in 1991, Glimmerglass and Maastricht in 2001, New York City Opera in 2003 (revived in March 2010), Toronto in 2005, Montreal and Cincinnati in 2006, Zurich in 2007 and Geneva in 2009. In 2010 it was presented at the Austin Lyric Opera, Texas, the Berlin State Opera (conducted by Simon Rattle) and Theater Bielefeld. A production by David Alden was mounted in repertory at Frankfurt Opera in 2010 and 2011. New Sussex Opera staged an English-language in 2013, touring production in Sussex and London as Lucky Star, conducted by Nicholas Jenkins.

The opera was part of the Dutch National Opera's 2014/15 season in October 2014, and a 2019 DVD/blu-ray of this Laurent Pelly production with d'Oustrac, conducted by Patrick Fournillier, was awarded a Diapason d'Or. The Royal Opera (London) gave several performances in early 2016, the first at that house.

Roles

{| class="wikitable"

!Role

!Voice type

!Premiere Cast, 28 November 1877<br> (Conductor: Léon Roques)

|-

|Ouf 1<sup>er</sup>, King of the 36 realms

|tenor

|Daubray

|-

|Siroco, astrologer

|bass

|Étienne Scipion

|-

|Prince Hérisson de Porc-Epic, Ambassador of the court of Mataquin

|baritone

|Alfred Jolly

|-

|Tapioca, Hérisson's secretary

|tenor

|Jannin

|-

|Lazuli

|mezzo-soprano

|Paola Marié

|-

|La Princesse Laoula

|soprano

|Berthe Stuart

|-

|Aloès, Hérisson's wife

|mezzo-soprano

|Luce

|-

|Oasis, Maid of honour

|soprano

|Blot

|-

|Asphodèle, Youca, Adza, Zinnia, Koukouli, Maids of honour

|sopranos, mezzos

|

|-

|Chief of police

|spoken

|Pescheux

|-

| colspan="3"|Chorus: People, guards, courtiers

|} Source: Delage

  • Patrick Fournillier (conductor), Laurent Pelly (stage director and costume designer), Hague Residentie Orchestra, Dutch National Opera Chorus, with Stéphanie d’Oustrac (Lazuli ), Christophe Mortagne (Le Roi Ouf I), Hélène Guilmette (La Princesse Laoula), Jérôme Varnier (Siroco), -Elliot Madore (Hérisson de Porc-Épic), Julie Boulianne (Aloès), François Piolino (Tapioca), François Soons (Patacha), Harry Teeuwen (Zalzal), Jeroen van Glabbeek (Le Maître), Richard Prada (Le Chef de la Police), Naxos 2019 Blu-Ray and DVD.

References

  • Vocal score
  • L'étoile Libretto, 1877 (in French)