L’étoile, RNCM, Manchester review - lavish and cheerful absurdity

Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’étoile is not exactly a French farce, but it comes from a post-Offenbach era (1877 saw its premiere) when cheerful absurdity was certainly expected, especially at Offenbach’s old theatre, the Bouffes Parisiens.

In some ways it resembles Gilbert and Sullivan’s later creations – a topsy-turvy land of eccentric royal customs, where public executions must be routine and the titled and privileged are out to keep their wealth and status through convenient marriages (shades of The Mikado and The Gondoliers in the plot-line).

In this case King Ouf’s birthday is to be celebrated with an execution, and an ambassador, his wife, daughter and secretary with ridiculous names sounding as if taken from a restaurant menu are the ones on the make. Laoula (the daughter) and a penniless pedlar called Lazuli fall in love – but Lazuli finds himself condemned to death… until the royal astrologer finds that his fate and that of the king are inevitably linked. Complications, as they say, ensue.

The "lucky star” of the title is the one that saves Lazuli – a travesti (ie. trousered) role for mezzo soprano on whom most of the comic opera centres. This production, directed by Mark Burns with design by Adrian Linford, majors on lavishly spectacular sets, full of surreal imagery (the period seems to have been brought into some fairly early point in the 20^th century) and employing a cast of grotesques and caricatures for the frequent crowd scenes. There are 20 names in the credits in the programme for the RNCM Technical Team, and you can see why.The three acts each open with a visual coup – the first a kind of “living statuary” effect behind a gauze, the second presenting Lazuli in a bubble bath, and the third a seaside scene, complete with real sand pie and dancing fish. I loved the Groucho Marx style disguises provided for the “Nous voyageons incognito” quartet, and a human star was provided in dance for Lazuli’s “O petite etoile”. The Quartet “Quand on veut ranimer sa belle” was nicely done, and the finale of Act Two, with the “Un coup de feu” chorus becoming a sort of stupefaction number à la Rossini and then an endless procession, was good fun. And the famous “Green Chartreuse” duet in Act Three was presented with two ladies apparently providing the life-saving liquid on tap.

One thing the RNCM does in its opera productions better than almost anyone is putting a crowd on stage, and the opera chorus (credit here I guess to Kevin Thraves in particular) sound magnificent. The home team deserved credit for so much that’s good, Bethan Rhys Wiliam creating effective choreography for chorus and principals (and no doubt training them in it to the high level many achieved), and the RNCM’s head of vocal studies and opera, Lynne Dawson, included in the credits as one of the French language coaches. Production values were therefore very high, though some attempts at innuendo didn’t harmonise with the overall atmosphere (though the audience laughed at them).

Most of the principal roles are double-cast, as is the usual pattern in RNCM opera, and I have seen only one performance, so it could be unfair to comment on every performer I saw to the exclusion of those I didn’t. But the actress-singer who takes on Lazuli has to be pretty special. Anyone who saw Opera North’s production of L’étoile in the early 1990s will not have forgotten the late Pamela Helen Stephen in that role – as a bovver-booted Glaswegian laddie – and while that characterization has not been imitated in this one, Daisy Mitchell was outstanding, with a pure and smooth upper register and a very effective speaking voice in the dialogue (that was spoken in English – Jeremy Sams’ translation – while the musical numbers were sung in French). She got the male-style demeanour around 98 per cent of the time (resorting to a little hip wiggling at times, which may have been deliberate, as there were a few attempts in the production at drawing attention to the gender ambiguity of her travesti role – mostly ineffective).

A gifted comedian was also present in the cast I saw in the shape of Kristen Gregory as King Ouf. Like several roles in this show, it's meant to be a character past the first flush of youth, and in an RNCM cast that’s always a challenge, but he has a fine tenor voice allied to confident stagecraft.

The opera orchestra played skilfully under Martin Pickard’s baton, though with the numbers involved the soufflé-like lightness that might be ideal for French music of this work’s period proved elusive at times – it got better as the evening went on, and the prelude to the third act was the best. 

• Further performances tonight and December 14
• More opera reviews on theartsdesk