Lecocq La Fille de Madame Angot

 Day 134

Lecocq la Fille de Madame Angot

Soloists

Choeur du Concert Spirituel

Orchestra de chamber de Paris

Sébastien Rouland

La Fille de Madame Angot was one of the most popular of all light French operas in the 19th century. According to Wikipedia it was performed in more than 100 French towns and cities within a year of its first performance and was produced all over the world. This is a recording in the Bru Zane series so there is a lot of interesting detail in the accompanying book, including Lecocq’s own reminiscences of how he came to write the score.  The title will be familiar because of the ballet version choreographed by Massine, which broadly follows the plot of the opera and uses much of its music. So some of the score was familiar to me from that context.

I must confess to a slight disappointment with the opera. Everything I have read about it suggests that it was one of the finest of all these lighter operas with a really high quality score. I didn’t quite hear it that way. It was clearly the work of a very accomplished composer and is full of interesting ideas but to me it didn’t quite hit the spot. There weren’t as many memorable numbers as I was expecting - indeed I don’t think that there was any really big tune in the whole of the first act. There were some in the latter acts, including a rather gorgeous waltz theme at the end of the second movement. The score was more overtly operatic than I was expecting - with many recit and filling in passages that would not have been out of place in Meyerbeer and perhaps Lecoq did not quite get the balance right between serious and light music. The comparison with yesterday’s opera by Verney is illuminating: Lecocq was clearly the more accomplished composer yet the much more basis score by Verney fizzed off the page in a way that the Lecocq didn’t.  It is surprising to me that la Fille was taken up by so many amateur operatic societies - I can’t be an easy piece to put together.