Look Backwards, from the Curtain

The main story here is the venue. The Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique in Paris is a stunner, and it’s entirely fun to walk in there and look around, regardless of what’s on the stage. Statuary, carvings, hundreds of small decorative lights, stacks of loge levels, gold leaf everywhere, and a “puce and wheat” color theme that delivers both opulence and calm.

This building is from 1898, and the venue is technically called the Salle Favart; Opéra-Comique is an opera company that has been around for much longer than this building, so it’s easy to get the terms mixed up. It’s the third Salle Favart on the site (fire after fire, the usual story).

Even with a balcony and three additional levels of boxes, the place is small (1,200 or so max), so you’re close to the stage, regardless of your ticket.  I was in the balcony, several rows back, and I believe it was just 150 feet to the conductor, a bit more to the curtain. I remembered to bring my binoculars this time, but I didn’t need them.

What Happened To Daniel Auber?

He wrote about 50 operas in the mid-1800’s, with many achieving moderate success, so here is a contemporary of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, but he doesn’t get a statue in the La Scala lobby, or a place in the list of bel canto luminaries. (He even took a shot at The Masked Ball before Verdi, and Manon Lescaut before Massenet and Puccini, but we know what history did for those efforts.)

I can’t judge how his operas compare with the competition of the 19th century, because I’ve only seen one of them – not much of a sampling.  I’ll look around for La Muette de Portici, Haydée, and Fra Diavolo, with subtitles I can read.

This Brand of Humor

By 1837, Auber was on a roll, staging about two new operas every year, with his librettist Eugene Scribe. (Scribe also wrote with Donizetti, Offenbach, Meyerbeer, and even Verdi, but mainly, he partnered successfully with Auber for 40 years, and they churned out 39 operas together.)

In December that year, they opened Le Domino Noir, handled by the company Opéra-Comique, but not at that theater. It is a comedy, because that is what these two guys did well.

For me, this comes across as a funny story for sure, and I have no objection to lightweight operas, so fine. That’s not my problem with this show.

The problem is, I’m uninspired by comedy that relies so heavily on crazy costumes, animals with acting roles, amped-up diction and vocal expression, and opera singers that are required to perform as comedians. This stuff is a hangover from baroque festival opera, is my guess. The early Rossinis are the worst examples; I struggled through his zany Bruschino, and gave up on Gazzetta in Act 1. (I’m still trying to make it through Simon Mayr’s godawful farsa called Che originali!; I’ll let you know if I ever succeed.) For me, Domino would still be funny, and easier to stomach, if they toned down the histrionics and hired a less imaginative costume designer.

It's easy to guess that this type of opera comique, whether Opéra-Comique staged it at Opéra-Comique or just at the Salle de la Bourse (as they originally did), was first performed as silly entertainment for everyone on a Friday night. It’s just not for me, 200 years later.

Also, the opera style that uses spoken dialogue (here, manière parlée) so extensively, was probably all the rage in Auber’s era, but I don’t want it.  Domino ramped up for nearly 10 minutes before anyone sang, and it doesn’t take that long for me to begin to feel like I’ve come in for a stage play, or, at best, a modern musical. Indeed, there was a lot of music in those two hours, but it might have been evenly balanced by dialog. Too much. These are opera singers – let them sing, not just act.

One more gripe (then we’ll talk about the splendid music). The comedy here involves lots of characters and lots of costumes, and especially it depends on changing identities for the lead soprano (the masked Domino character, Angèle). This is a feature that really confuses the other characters in the story, and me, too! They are all trying to sort out whether this is the old nun or a new one, someone’s wife or an impostor, the governess’ niece or the queen’s cousin, and I’m trying to sort out whether this is an inscrutable plot, or I just drank too much in the lobby. Next time: use the binoculars, even at close range.

Take the Challenge, Dan

So, enough about Eugene Scribe and his fantastical story and simple humor. Personally, I wish Daniel Auber had worked with someone more down-to-earth, or written for an audience outside the Comique. I truly want to hear how he handles a solid drama, because some of this music is delightful.

Most of the solos by Angèle (here sung beautifully and with precision by Anne-Catherine Gillet), her duets, and all the male choruses, have a light, sparked-up sound that made me forget the costumes and masks, and listen closely – this is energetic and new, and one could make a very intelligent comedy out of this. This is what Rossini would have written if he’d cut back on the laudanum; this is how Verdi would sound if he’d tried for comedy much earlier in his life.

The final act opens with a soprano solo so long, so complex, and so much fun, that I just wanted to switch to the concert version and take it from there. If Auber had the genius to give us this sort of music, then, my opinion, he was sadly spinning his wheels with Scribe and his circus act. Auber should have competed more with Offenbach, not so much with Disney, or Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Always Eager For a Tragedy

Comique performed Domino in 2018 (with the same leads as in ’24), and Compiègne (also France) made a video of its 1995 production, which you can find on YouTube. Unfortunately, the subtitles are in French. A quick scan suggests that it might be less over-acted, so maybe it’s worth a try, at least for the music.

I’ll keep looking for something less funny from Auber, but his work is pretty hard to find in the present century, onstage or online. Looks like Turin is presenting all three Manons at once in October, so that’s interesting, but then you’d have to endure Puccini, so I’ll pass on that option.

So, it looks like I picked the right time and the right place to learn about Auber. Let’s see what else Paris opera has to offer this week…