Chanteuse par amour

Although the town of Étretat is usually very quiet, the finest flowers of Parisian society flock there in droves in the warmer weather. In line with a trend started by Jacques Offenbach, among others, this small Normandy town swiftly becomes a busy seaside resort and is frequently unable to meet demand for accommodation. In the absence of an available hotel, Suzanne, a café-concert singer forsaken by her lover, has been forced to stay at the home of an actress who is away on tour. The time has come, however, for her to pack her bags: her landlady is returning at the end of the day. This task proves difficult and Suzanne ends up sorting through her boxes rather than packing up her things: her teacher, a songwriter, has sent her everything she needs to achieve success, from sheet music to props. When she has finally found the song best suited to her, she is however interrupted by a strange pipe communicating with the apartment below… Staged at the Théâtre des Variétés in September 1877, Chanteuse par amour is as much a holiday souvenir as a parody of the café-concert genre. The work is, in fact, likely to have been written when the librettists, the composer and the performer (Anna Judic) were staying in Étretat at the same time. As well as the reference to the accommodation problems, they poke fun at the bourgeoning tourism associated with the celebrities of the time: those men willing to do anything in their pursuit of actresses. The opening sequence of the box of songs also provides an opportunity to imitate the style of some of the most prominent artists of the period, including that of Anna Judic herself.