Offenbach’s Secret - A film by István Szabo [97:00]
includes two operettas by Jacques OFFENBACH– Les Deux Aveugles;
Croquefer
The Missing Manuscript – the History of the Tales of Hoffman [52:00]
Jacques Offenbach – Tamás Jordan; Count de Morny – János Kulka:
Les Deux Aveugles: Patachon – Laurence Dale (tenor); Giraffier –
Graham Clark (tenor):
Croquefer: Croquefer – Jorge Lopez-Yanez (baritone); Boutefeu – Justin
Lavender (tenor); Ramass-ta-Tete – Jeffrey Francis (tenor); Fleur-de-Soufre
– Inger Dam Jensen (soprano); Mousse-à-Mort – Jonathan Barreto-Ramos (bass)
Broadcast Symphony Orchestra of Saarbrücken/Jia Lü
Filmed on location at the Katona József Theater, Kecskemét, Hungary
Region Code 0; NTSC 16:9; Dolby Digital 2.0/PCM (The missing Manuscript)
Language or subtitles – English, French, German
EUROARTS 2012488 DVD [149:00]
The main film is probably one of the oddest I have seen, and I remain unclear
as to what is its purpose. It shows performances of two of the short works
Offenbach wrote for the Bouffes-Parisiens in the context of an evening at
which the Count de Morny encourages Offenbach to re-write the libretti to
make fun of several dignitaries in the audience, especially those from foreign
countries. The two works are then played with interpolated reactions from
the audience – usually indignation from the more expensive seats and delight
from the gallery. Both reactions are incomprehensible to this viewer, as the
“fun” is at the most puerile level imaginable and the various attempts at
humour are played so slowly as to be more likely to embarrass the audience
than to make them laugh. The whole concept of an opera within a play as devised
here is simply ineffectual and actually does much to spoil the impact of two
of the composer’s best works.
Les Deux Aveugles (The Two Blind Men) was Offenbach’s first big success
at the Bouffes-Parisiens, the very small theatre which he ran himself. It
has only two singing parts, both beggars who pretend to be blind, is less
than half an hour long and can be immensely funny. It is not so funny here
as the jokes are spoilt by tedious underlining but the music is as funny as
ever. The first song, for instance, has one of the beggars singing to his
own trombone obbligato, with odd notes from the trombone splitting words in
two. This is followed by a duet in which the two beggars sing separate songs,
one slow, the other fast before the two are combined. Given the work’s popularity
in London Sullivan must have known it and copied it on many occasions. Later
there is the best number in the piece, a bolero in Offenbach’s familiar imitation
Spanish style. All in all it is a terrific work, and here it receives a vocally
terrific performance from Laurence Dale and Graham Clark. I have no idea how
they were recorded but from the occasional lack of coordination between them
and the orchestra I suspect that the two were recorded separately. When in
addition there is no coordination between what is heard and the singers’ lips
it is clear that the filming was yet another process. The songs are all in
French, with subtitles in English or German, but the dialogue can be heard
in any of the three languages but does not seem to match with the mouth movements
in any of them. Technically and visually the result is unconvincing, and by
my second “viewing” I simply listened with closed eyes. This was much more
enjoyable, and indeed given singing of this quality this is in itself a good
reason to buy the disc.
Croquefer is a later and longer work. I suspect that it would require
considerable effort from a director to make it funny to modern audiences but
the laboured treatment here once again is self-defeating. The music is less
immediately attractive than Les Deux Aveugles but even then there
is enough to entertain any fan of the composer’s music. One of many oddities
about the production is that whilst much of the humour is explained out of
existence there is no explanation for why one of the characters, Mousse-à-Mort,
says nothing but shows little placards with his answers to questions. I believe
that this is because the licensing of the theatre at the time of this work
did not allow five speaking or singing parts but Offenbach got round this
with this device. If this is the case this could have been more worth explaining
in the film. Once again the singing is of a very high class, and once again
a CD with these artists would have been much more enjoyable than this strange
affair, produced with the aid of funds from the European Union which may explain
why artists from so many countries are involved.
The so-called bonus item is quite another matter. It is a documentary telling
the strange story of how Offenbach’s last opera, Les Contes d’Hoffman,
came to be very heavily cut at its first performance, was subsequently subject
to various mutilations, and then the recent discovery of much of the lost
material and the tussle between editors and publishers to produce a new and
scholarly edition. It is a fascinating story and unusually for a television
documentary the tale is told as if to intelligent adults, and even more unusually
at the end I found myself wanting more.
As I explained at the start, this is a very odd DVD, but despite that I am
sure that I will return to it for the musical quality of the performances
of the operettas and for the fascinating
tale of the missing score.
John Sheppard
Very odd but I will return to it for the musical quality of the performances
of the operettas and for the fascinating tale of the missing score.
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