Giroflé-Girofla
The composer chose an extravagantly far-fetched theme to contrast with his more realistic and romantic success La fille de Madame Angot premiered the previous year.
The opera was first presented at the Théâtre des Fantaisies Parisiennes, Brussels, on 21 March 1874, and was given in London and Paris later the same year; it was soon played in theatres throughout Europe, in the Americas and Australia, and was given many revivals into the early 20th century.
He had a substantial success in 1868 with Fleur-de-Thé, but it was not until he reached his forties that he gained international fame, with Les cent vierges (1872) and especially La fille de Madame Angot (1873).
[1] The libretto was the work of two newcomers: Albert Vanloo was a lawyer and Eugène Leterrier a civil servant, both at the start of successful new careers writing for the theatre.
[3][n 1] Eugène Humbert, the director of the Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes, Brussels, had commissioned Les cent vierges and La fille de Madame Angot; Giroflé-Girofla was the third and last piece Lecocq wrote for him before moving back to Paris, where most of his later works were premiered.
[6] Humbert's company included several popular performers who had created roles in La fille de Madame Angot, among them the sopranos Pauline Luigini[n 2] and Marie Blanche, the tenor Mario Widmer and the buffo baritone Alfred Jolly, all of whom featured in the new production.
He and his domineering wife Aurore have two identical twin daughters, Giroflé and Girofla (played by the same singer; to distinguish the two characters, she dresses respectively in blue and pink).
[14] Richard D'Oyly Carte engaged Humbert's Brussels company to play Giroflé-Girofla in French at the Opera Comique, London, where it opened on 6 June 1874, starring all the creators of the principal roles.
[14] The first production in English was at the Philharmonic Theatre, Islington, London, with a libretto adapted by Clement O'Neil and Campbell Clarke, which opened on 3 October 1874 with Julia Matthews, Walter Fisher and Harriet Everard.
[15] The Australian premiere was given in Melbourne in May 1875, starring Clara Thompson and Henry Bracy,[17] and in the same year productions opened in Buenos Aires, Prague, Vienna and Budapest.
[20] An abridged version was recorded by soloists, the orchestra and chorus of Radio Berlin under Willi Lachner in 1952, for Urania, with Kurt Pratsch-Kaufmann as Don Boléro d'Alcarazas.
The critic in The Standard wrote that the music was of very high quality, superior to that of La fille de Madame Angot, and proved that Lecocq was a composer of the first order.
The critic concurred with The Athenaeum's view that Giroflé-Girofla was "not an operetta, but a real opera comique", and predicted a place in the Académie des Beaux-Arts for the composer.
[24] After the piece opened in Paris, Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique observed that everybody was laughing at "this joyous buffoonery" and humming the music of "this charming score".
[25] Reviewing the centenary production in London in 1974, Stanley Sadie found the piece "charming … not very original or very sharp by comparison with Offenbach, but with plenty of witty harmonic touches and elegantly shaped melodic lines, and with a little more sparkle than Sullivan.
