Offenbach: La belle Hélène (Châtelet, 2000)
 

Cast: Helen (Felicity Lott), Paris (Yann Beuron), Menelaus (Michel Sénéchal), Les Musiciens du Louvre, Marc Minkowski (conductor), Laurent Pelly (director)

Recorded at the Théâtre Musical de Paris, Châtelet, in 2000

Issued on DVD in 2001 by TDK Mediactive (DV-OPLBH, PAL/Region 2, with menus in English and subtitles in English, French, Spanish, and Italian).

Technical Details:
Picture Format: 16:9
Sound: PCM Stereo; AC3 5.0, DTS 5.0

Running time: 127 minutes

Sung in French
 
Prescription for melancholy: Two hours and seven minutes of this recording. Repeat as often as time permits. Rejoice, delight and succumb. Signed: Marc Minkowski, master therapist
 
Deliciously naughty, ebulliently festive, irreverent and perfectly overdone, this is a recording to cherish. Dame Felicity leads the audience and her husband about with commanding ease, belying her years and charming all. Beuron is a surviving tribute to the nearly extinct breed of French tenor. Sénéchal has much too much fun to be allowed out of confinement; his singing is as crisp and apt as his French - and his expressions are beyond compare. The rest of the ensemble is wonderfully integrated, but one must cite for special merit Marie-Ange Torodovitch as Orestes. The whole performance dances across the stage - the corps de ballet is seemingly integrated with the chorus in an admirable coup de théâtre which must be seen to be believed.
 
Staging is filled with anomalies, felicities, absurdities and brilliancies which defy analysis. If all the Greek signage is cockeyed, call it fitting and move on to the antics of the kings on and around the beach chairs. You say that that makes no sense? Of course not; this is an opéra comique and here the stress is clearly on the 'comique'. It is a romp beyond description. If there are technical flaws, they eluded this reviewer despite repeated attempts to analyze the recording; it is hard to be critical when rolling on the floor with laughter.
 
See it once however you can, then pester the potential publishers to release it universally. It deserves no less.
 
Related website:
TDK Mediactive www.tdk-mediactive.com
 
Michael Richter, 22 February 2003
opera@mrichter.com
 
See also Michael Richter's Introduction to the DVD, for a list of other reviews see the DVD Project page.