Le Docteur Miracle

In 1856 Jacques Offenbach, feeling that opéra-comique had become too grand and inflated, organised an open competition for young composers aimed at providing new material, in the form of a one-act operetta, for his new Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, which had recently moved from the Salle Lacaze to the larger Salle Choiseul. The competition received seventy-eight entries, and in the end the five short-listed candidates were asked to set a libretto by Léon Battu and Ludovic Halévy, Le Docteur Miracle. The jury, led by Daniel Auber, awarded the first prize jointly to Georges Bizet and Charles Lecocq, both students of Halévy. Bizet’s score was premiered at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on 9 April 1857, a day after Lecocq’s. Then the two works alternated, each receiving eleven performances. Bizet’s composition was not performed again until 1951. It would be wrong to underestimate this work, composed by a young man barely twenty years of age, just a few months after his first attempt at the Prix de Rome (he was awarded second prize). Bizet’s natural gift for comedy – afterwards put on the back burner until Carmen – is in evidence here. The melodies show both elegance and freshness, and the ensembles are written with remarkable finesse and a dramatic verve that is particularly in evidence in the comical “Omelette Quartet”, involving the mayor of Padua, his daughter Laurette, the handsome soldier Silvio, and the mayor’s second wife, Véronique.