La Perichole

Aude Extrémo (La Périchole), Stanislas de Barbeyrac (Piquillo), Alexandre Duhamel (Don Andrès de Ribeira), Eric Huchet (Le comte de Panatellas), Marc Mauillon (Don Pedro de Hinoyosa) & Les Musiciens du Louvre, Chœur de l'Opéra National de Bordeaux, Marc Minkowski

One of the composer’s great champions celebrates last week’s bicentenary in style with the first period-instrument recording of this 1868 opéra bouffe about a couple of down-at-heel street-performers who are coerced into a drunken sham marriage.

Offenbach’s La Périchole (1868) will never cease to delights music lovers of all persuasions. Marc Minkowski – long one of the composer’s prophets – was keen to pay tribute to him with this world premiere recording on period instruments, in the company of the young school of French singers, including the bewitching Aude Extrémo, the dashing Stanislas de Barbeyrac and the hilarious Alexandre Duhamel. Combining fashionable rhythms with the most unexpected touches of folklore, the score is a veritable flood of hit numbers. How can one not be swept away by the insolence of the Seguidilla, the frenzy of the Bolero or the furious rhythm of the Prison Trio? Never before, perhaps, had Offenbach gone so far in caricaturing political leaders – nor used drunkenness to resolve the imbroglio of inextricable sentimental relationships. And indeed, the ‘Tipsy Arietta’ is one of the composer's best-known numbers. Cheers!

Contents of the book: Alexandre Dratwicki, The ‘Péricholes’ of Offenbach, and Marc Minkowski’s version
Gérard Condé, ‘La Périchole’, step by step
Waldemar Kamer, The Spanish amours of the Second Empire
Arnold Mortier, How Offenbach rehearses

Synopsis / Libretto

Offenbach:
 La Perichole