Jacques Offenbach. Maître Péronilla

CD-Book. Bru Zane Label. French Opera Collection n. 23.

Maître Péronilla is a work of Offenbach’s maturity, premiered on 13 March 1878 in a particularly awkward context for him. With Les Contes d’Hoffmann abandoned by the management of the Théâtre-Lyrique and Madame Favart postponed at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques, all his hopes of glory rested on Maître Péronilla, a large-scale operetta set in Spain, whose libretto he wrote himself. Spanishry had always brought Offenbach luck, as an enthusiastic journalist pointed out: ‘There is more Spain in Offenbach’s brain than in Spain itself.’ And this work too abounds in snappily rhythmic numbers with glittering orchestration, especially the much-applauded Malagueña. But, as usual, Offenbach mixes styles in order to produce a witty clash between utterly opposing types of music. Such is the case with the big Act Two finale in the form of a slow waltz, of which the journalist Moreno observed that it ‘seems to have been cut from the cloth of the Viennese composers'. And no fewer than twenty characters cross paths in a theatrical imbroglio worthy of the finest plays of Labiche and Feydeau.

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