The choice of which language to perform in seems to be the biggest problem facing operettas. One needs only to think back to the Met’s recent godawful productions of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and Léhar’s Die Lustige Witwe to understand what a miserable experience poorly done operetta can be.

I saw Blythe perform La Grande-duchesse five years before today’s Opera Philadelphia (née Opera Company of Philadelphia) version in a semi-staged production at the Kaye Playhouse by the much-missed L’Opéra Français de New York. Conducted by Yves Abel and directed by Christopher Alden, Blythe’s first stab at the role featured dialogue in English while the music was sung in the original French. This mishmash approach is often used; however, Opera Philadelphia chose to do its Offenbach entirely in English. I’ll leave it to listeners of today’s offering to decide how well this approach works.

A pair of previous Offenbach operettas presented here used other options: Frederica von Stade’s concert La Périchole skipped the dialogue in favor of a narration read by Madeline Kahn, while a Geneva staging of La Belle Hélène starring Véronique Gens in the title role of course did the entire show in French. And Jennie Tourel preceded Blythe in loving military men when the American Opera Society presented her as La Grande-duchesse in 1959.

Offenbach: La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein—in English

Grande-Duchesse: Stephanie Blythe
Wanda: Kristine Biller
Olga: Karen Blanchard
Amelie: Rebecca Whitlow
Charlotte: Susan Polack
Fritz: Gordon Gietz
General Boum: Kevin Glavin
Baron Puck: Douglas Perry
Prince Paul: Daniel Belcher
Nepomuc: Ubaldo Feliciano-Hernandez
Baron Grog: Michael Riley

Conductor: Emanuel Joel
Opera Company of Philadelphia
April 2004
Broadcast

Happy New Year from Chris’s Cache

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