La Périchole | Offenbach

Pelly's production of Offenbach's play guarantees a wildly cheerful evening in the pure spirit of vaudeville. As a master of the genre, the director knows what the pomp of this cheerful Peru of fantasy expresses: the arbitrariness of power and the ravages of corruption. But hush! Tonight is the Viceroy's party!

The short story by Mérimée entitled Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement has a strange destiny: its few pages inspired a great film by Jean Renoir, and one of Jacques Offenbach's most rousing scores. The scene is Lima, in the last years of Spanish colonial rule. La Périchole is pretty, she sings well, but she has an empty belly, and her lover Piquillo is a little too shady to let her beg for money, as she should, from the male audience. Thus begins one of the wittiest librettos Meilhac and Halévy ever wrote for their accomplice Offenbach. Applauded at its premiere in 1868, this Périchole was even more so six years later after a few alterations and the addition of a third act, earning Hortense Schneider some of her finest triumphs. There is no doubt that Laurent Pelly, with his well-known inventiveness and sense of rhythm, will make the most of these riches to take a Périchole that promises to be unforgettable to new heights.