Offenbach: Oyayaye

[mikehopf]

   On Deutschlandfunk Kultur Thursday evening

SPECIAL PROGRAM: Konzert
Kölner Philharmonie
Aufzeichnung vom 06.01.2019
Jacques Offenbach

,,Oyayaye ou La Reine des îles" (Oyayaye oder die Königin der Inseln)
Eine Menschenfresserei in einem Akt
Libretto: Jules Moinaux
(Deutsche Erstaufführung)

Matthias Klink, Tenor
Hagen Matzeit, Tenor
Pablo Ferrandez, Violoncello
Gürzenich-Orchester Köln
Leitung: Alexandre Bloch
Champagner für den Meister (2 hrs.)

[Alan Howe]

From Boosey's website:

Racle-à-mort (Scrape-to-Death*), a double-bass virtuoso, has missed his solo at the Paris Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique, so he gets the sack and takes to the sea. He eventually finds himself on a South Sea island where he is caught by the indigenous people. They threaten to boil him in a soup when he fails to entertain them. When Oyayaye, the ogre queen, enters with her retinue, he passes her a note which is stuck in his boot: he tells her it is a poem he has set to music (in fact, it is a bill from his washer-woman). Oyayaye, however, loses her patience, and even a song accompanied by the double bass only strengthens her desire for the ritual cooking ceremony. In his distress, Racle-à-mort begins to accompany the ceremony on self-carved cane flutes. The cannibals are enchanted, throw their arrows away and take the flutes to accompany their wild dance. Racle-à-mort, unobserved, collects the arrows and rides his double bass to the coast, raising his handkerchief as a sail.

*My translation

[Mark Thomas]

All pretty straightforward by opera libretto standards, then. 

[Alan Howe]

Less complicated than Trovatore...

[Mark Thomas]

That's setting the bar a bit low, though, Alan.

[eschiss1]

*hee*