Maurice Yvain - Gosse de Riche, at the Athénée-Théâtre Louis Jouvet

Athénée-Théâtre Louis Jouvet, Paris, Friday March 15 2024.

Production; Pascal Neyron. Sets and Lighting: Camille Duchemin. Costumes: Sabine Schlemmer, Julia Brochier, Anaïs Parola, Selma Delabrière. Choreography: Aure Wachter. Colette Patarin: Amélie Tatti. Achille Patarin: Philippe Brocard. Suzanne Patarin: Lara Neumann. Baronne Skatinkolowitz: Marie Lenormand. Nane: Julie Mossay. André Sartène: Aurélien Gasse. Léon Mézaize: Charles Mesrine. Orchestre des Frivolités Parisiennes.

Photos: Camille Girault.

The 'Frivolités Parisiennes' opera company was founded in 2012 to dust off, and present in vibrant modern productions, French light opera of the 19th and 20th centuries: opéra-comique, opéra bouffe, opérette, vaudeville musical, period French musicals and the like. The frontiers between these different genres seem to be porous: Wikipédia lists Gosse de Riche as an opérette, but according to the title page of the book (available in full on the website of France's National Library), it's a comédie musicale en trois actes.

As far as I know, they use the original scores, not arrangements. (Manuel Rosenthal's Offenbach is bad enough, but I'm sorry to say I recently saw there's now, in the US,  a 'jazz-infused opera' drawn from La Périchole, called Songbird, 'crafted,' the blurb gushes, 'for today’s musical theater lover who may be put off by some of the conventional opera norms, such as the long running times, superfluous singing, and heavy drama.' Superfluous singing...)

The 'Frivolités Parisiennes' mount their own productions, sometimes with the Palazzetto Bru Zane - e.g. Hahn's Ô mon bel inconnu in the same house just a year ago - and sometimes with French opera houses, and their orchestra dispenses with a conductor. They also seem to be taking a special interest in reviving the stage works of Maurice Yvain, whose name is less well-known than some of his pre-war songs: Mon homme (i.e. My Man), J'en ai marre, En douce, La Java, La Belote, etc.

Gosse de Riche was premiered just six years after the end of WWI, and exemplifies the années folles that followed. The plot is thoroughly but gaily immoral, a breathless and typically French hurricane of mistresses, lovers and cuckolds, male and female (cuckqueans is apparently the word), with a one-woman Annina and Valzacchi - the ambiguous Baronne Skatinkolowitz - scheming at the eye of the storm. The following, in small type, is a sketch of the plot, translated from the Opéra Comique's website; you can skip it if you don't need it:

'A painter, André. A nouveau riche, Patarin, who wants his portrait painted. They share the same mistress - the pretty Nane - but Patarin doesn't know it... There's talk of Patarin going on holiday - and with his family - to the Breton home of the intriguing Baroness Skatinkolowitz, promising a month of solitary billing and cooing for Nane and André. But here's the thing. Patarin has the idea of providing Nane with a fictitious husband - Mézaize - so that this newly-formed "couple" can join them on holiday. André and Nane's amorous plan becomes complicated... all the more so when Colette appears in the studio, a young, modern, free-spirited girl who asks the painter for his hand in marriage... and who turns out to be Patarin's daughter. The situation becomes deliciously confused...'

The quick-fire libretto adds to the zaniness. There's no way I could hope to translate it, but it's well worth at least a glance if you can read French. It crackles with comical repetitions and whacky, disjointed onomatopoeias delivered, often, with what the French call 'gouaille'. This is usually translated as 'cheekiness', but it's the blasé, drawling, titi-parisien cheekiness of Arletty in Hôtel du Nord, or indeed (sometimes, at least) of Maurice Chevalier - for whom Yvain indeed wrote songs. Here's a sample:

PATARIN, modeste

Tous les jours au Bois

J'bois

Trois 'Martini sec' !

C'est qu'

Il est bien porté,

Té !

D'savoir se cuiter !

J'possèd' quatre autos

To-

Tal'ment peint's en vert ;

Vers

Minuit au Dancing,

Dzing !

J'm'amène en smoking !

Chez moi, faubourg Saint-Germain,

J'donn' des bals gallo-romains,

J'invit' tous les gens connus

Et j'les r'çois complèt'ment nu...

Quand on est chic, chic, chic comme je suis,

On peu s'flatter d'êtr' quelqu'un dans Paris !

Hier, j'ai soupé près d'Guitry :

Tout l'mond' murmurait : 'C'est lui !'

Quand on est chic, chic, chic comme je suis,

Voilà l'effet qu'on produit :

J'étais gêné pour Guitry...

C'est fou d'être chic, chic, chic comme je suis !

The onomatopoeias are sometimes as wicked as the plot. Here, they evoke both infantile 'pipi caca' and the dernier cri in art (the Patarins have artsy aspirations) in 1920s Paris:

PATARIN

Car

Je suis amateur d'art !

ANDRE, poliment

Je l'ai vu d'un regard.

PATARIN

D'ailleurs, ma femme aussi !

Ell' ne jur' que par Pi...

Mme PATARIN

Pi ?

PATARIN

-Ca...

Mme PATARIN

-Ca ?...

PATARIN

-Bi...

Mme PATARIN

-Bi ?...

TOUS

- A !

Mme PATARIN, comprenant soudain

Ah !

J'y suis... par Picabi-

TOUS

- A !

PATARIN

Ma-

Tisse nous enflamma

Pour ses panoramas,

Et nous somm's tous trois fous

Des pochades de Fou...

Mme PATARIN

-Fou ?...

PATARIN

- Ji...

Mme PATARIN

- Ta,

PATARIN

Q'on

Mme PATARIN

Nous

PATARIN

Ex...

COLETTE

-Hi...

TOUS

-Ba !

ANDRE

J'en suis tout baba !

These things are tricky, but Pascal Neyron's vivacious, brightly-lit, pastel-coloured production succeeds in sustaining the right spirit, the right tone, the right rhythm.

Visually, it's kept to an effective minimum. In the first act, a large rectangular frame under a sheet, and an old-fashioned telephone on the floor represent the artist Sartène's studio. In act two, set in Brittany, the rectangle has become a picture window at the rear, with the telephone on the ledge. A multi-faceted abstract sculpture covered in mirror mosaic is enough to evoke art-déco. Act three takes us back to the studio, where the rectangle is now a gold-spangled recess - a picture - where Sartène, the Tabarins and the Baroness pose until the libretto calls for them to make their entrances.

Though with little in the way of actual period details - there's nothing 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' about it: no fringed dresses, Eton crops, cloche hats or Charleston - the staging manages, evidently on a near-shoestring budget, to catch the mood of the era without attempting to reproduce it. It's helped in this by the zany chic of the extravagant, borderline over-the-top costumes, wigs and hats (the Baronne's towering Breton 'coiffe bigoudène' tilts over the tipping point), and occasional outbursts of crazy, 'cubist' choreography, hinting at Dada. The acting is amiable but energetic. Marie Lenormand's forceful but funny Baronne brings to mind the late Jacqueline Maillan, a name that won't mean much to non-French readers, but she was, not so long ago, a pillar of Paris's boulevard comedies, on stage and on TV. And Amélie Tatti brings a spark of madness to the gangling, exuberant Gosse, Colette.

Yvain's score is well-made, lively, witty, sometimes surprising, and has occasional echoes of the French music hall. 'A score,' says the theatre's website, 'of high musical value, marrying the foxtrot with counterpoint, harmony and orchestration, and a melodic vein of compelling seduction.' Honneger, apparently, admired it, and André Messager's review in Le Figaro, available online (on the extraordinary Encyclopédie Multimédia de la Comédie Musicale Théâtrale en France website) is dithyrambic. The voices were all of a good, light opera sort - sometimes a little too light, with the exception, perhaps, of Philippe Brocard's more stentorian baritone. The supertitles were useful. The three acts were played with non-stop delicacy and verve, without a break: intervals were replaced with stirring Breton folk intermezzi, complete with biniou bagpipes and and bombardes, that I supposed weren't part of the original. The audience loved them anyway, and clapped along, egged on by the unflaggingly energetic Lara Neumann.