Belle Lurette

Belle Lurette is a three-act opéra comique with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Ernest Blum, Edouard Blau and Raoul Toché.

[2][3] In the early 1870s Offenbach had been temporarily eclipsed by a younger rival, Charles Lecocq, who was associated with the Théâtre de la Renaissance, but by the end of the decade Lecocq's works began to find less favour among the public, and in 1880 Offenbach was delighted to accept an invitation from Victor Koning, director of the Renaissance, to write a piece for the theatre.

A note in the published vocal score indicates that the rôle of the Duke of Marly may be played by a woman en travesti, as was done when the piece was first seen in Brussels, a few weeks after the Paris premiere.

One of the laundresses, the beautiful Belle Lurette, has a trio of would-be lovers, the singer Campistrel, the poet Merluchet and the painter Cigogne, but she fends off all three.

He dines with dancers from the Opéra and says goodbye to his past love life by burning strands of hair, portraits, letters and ribbons he has kept as mementos.

He needs to marry urgently to comply with the terms of a large financial bequest, and intends to abandon his bride after the wedding and send her to live in the country.

On discovering that it was she who once saved his life by standing in the freezing cold and dark to intercept him and warn him of an assassination attempt, he finds his feelings for her transformed, and he asks her to be his wife in reality as well as in name.

[12] An English version, adapted by Frank Desprez and others opened in March 1883 as Lurette, with Florence St John, Lottie Venne and Henry Bracy in the leading roles.

[13] The piece was twice adapted for the cinema in East Germany, with alterations to the original plot to point up the class conflict between the ruling élite and the proletariat.