Chabrier: L'Étoile

Long before España, the work for which he is now best known, the French composer Emmanuel Chabrier made a splash with a comic opera: L'Étoile. Premiered at Paris's Bouffes-Parisiens – Jacques Offenbach's theatre – L'Étoile was Chabrier's suavely witty take on Offenbach's brand of operetta. Who better to revive it today than Laurent Pelly, a director who revels in both the stylishness and the silliness of 19th-century light opera? In Pelly's 2014 production, an all-French cast is led by Stéphanie d'Oustrac in the trouser role of Lazuli, with Hélène Guilmette as the love interest Princesse Laoula and Christophe Mortagne as King Ouf I. Patrick Fournillier conducts a performance that left critics wondering why L'Étoile had been neglected.