Barbe-bleue (Offenbach)

Overview

Barbe-bleue is an opéra bouffe in three acts and four tableaux by Jacques Offenbach, to a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, first performed at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris, on 5 February 1866 (Wikipédia fr, "Barbe-Bleue (opéra bouffe)"). It retells Perrault's fairy tale as a farce: the prince's five earlier wives have in fact only been given sleeping draughts by his alchemist and are found alive in a luxurious store-room, and the peasant girl Boulotte leads a "feminist" procession on the palace (same source). It belongs to the Second Empire golden age of Offenbach's collaborations with Meilhac and Halévy, with Orphée aux enfers, La Belle Hélène and La Vie parisienne.

Marie and this work

Marie never describes the piece; she mentions it three times, always in passing.

• 1875-11-05 (048.0592): "On donne «Barbe bleue», il est au théâtre." Audiffret goes to the theatre; Marie stays at home, absorbed in card-reading and prayer. The work is not named beyond the title; Offenbach's operetta is the obvious candidate (identification by the researcher, not stated by Marie).
• 1876-11-08 (067.0894): her father comes to sing "des airs de Barbe-Bleue" while she plays the piano; she turns to the "Lettre de Vénus" from La Belle Hélène instead and remarks that La Belle Hélène is delightful, from the time when Offenbach "commençait" and had not yet cheapened himself with "opérettes à deux sous".
• 1881-05-05 (091.0564): "je n'aime pas l'opérette ... tout ce qu'on a fait depuis «Barbe Bleue, la Belle Hélène, Orphée, Giroflé-Girofla» est insipide." Here the title heads her list of the operettas she accepts as classics of her childhood (see the footnote in 091: Giroflé-Girofla is by Lecocq, not Offenbach, and dates from 1874).

Identification notes

Entries 048 and 091 do not name the composer. Given the titles listed alongside it in 091 and the airs sung at the piano in 067, Offenbach's 1866 Barbe-bleue is certain for 067 and 091 and very probable for 048. The diary does not say which production Marie saw in 048, or whether Audiffret's evening was a Nice performance.

Sources

• Wikipédia fr, "Barbe-Bleue (opéra bouffe)" (premiere date, authors, plot).
• Wikisource fr, "Barbe-Bleue" (libretto text, from Théâtre de Meilhac et Halévy, vol. III).

Supersedes

Old auto-stub `people/mentioned/BARBE_BLEUE.md` (a person-type stub for the same references).