La fille de Madame Angot
The opera depicts the romantic exploits of Clairette, a young Parisian florist, engaged to one man but in love with another, and up against a richer and more powerful rival for the latter's attentions.
Unlike some more risqué French comic operas of the era, the plot of La fille de Madame Angot proved exportable to more strait-laced countries without the need for extensive rewriting, and Lecocq's score was received with enthusiasm wherever it was played.
The first, the opérette Les cent vierges (The Hundred Virgins), ran for months at the Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes;[3] productions quickly followed in Paris, London, New York, Vienna and Berlin.
[8] The heroine's mother, Madame Angot – the formidable market woman with aspirations – is fictional, but was not the invention of the librettists, being a stock character in stage comedy of the Revolutionary period.
A marriage with Pomponnet, a sweet and gentle hairdresser, has been arranged for her against her wishes, for she is in love with Ange Pitou, a dashing poet and political activist, who is continually in trouble with the authorities.
The latter has paid Pitou to suppress the song but Clairette gets hold it and, to avoid her marriage with Pomponnet, sings it publicly and is, as she expects, arrested so that her wedding is unavoidably postponed.
The jealous Larivaudière appears meanwhile and, to clear herself, Lange declares that Pitou and Clairette are lovers and have come to the house to join in a meeting of anti-government conspirators to be held at midnight.
After a lively duet in which the two young women quarrel vigorously there is a general mêlée, ended by Clairette who extends a hand to her friend and declares that she truly prefers the faithful Pomponnet to the fickle Pitou.
Act 2 highlights include Lange's virtuoso "Les Soldats d'Augereau sont des hommes"; Pomponnet's "Elle est tellement innocente"; the duet of the old schoolfriends "Jours fortunés de notre enfance"; the encounter of Lange and Pitou "Voyons, Monsieur, raisonnons politique"; the whispered "Conspirators' Chorus"; and the waltz "Tournez, Tournez" that concludes the Act.
"[14] The Paris correspondent of The Daily Telegraph also commented on the propriety of the piece, and remarked that its enormous success with a public used to broader entertainments at the Folies-Dramatiques was "the most eloquent possible tribute to the intrinsic beauty of the music".
[7] The Athenaeum took a different view on the latter point, regarding the piece as in the true tradition of French opéra comique, as practised by Boieldieu, Hérold, Auber and Adam, rather than the less refined manner of Hervé and Offenbach.
Some of Britain's leading theatrical figures were involved: H. J. Byron, H. B. Farnie and Frank Desprez all made adaptations of the text, and London stars including Selina Dolaro, Emily Soldene, Harriet Everard, Fred Sullivan, Richard Temple and Pauline Rita appeared in one or more of the productions.
[21] By the turn of the century, British revivals had become few, and the last London production recorded by Gänzl and Lamb was at Drury Lane in 1919 during Sir Thomas Beecham's opera season.
[23] Productions were staged in translation in Germany (Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater, Berlin, November 1873); Austria (Carltheater, Vienna, January 1874); Australia (Opera House, Melbourne, September 1874); and Hungary (State Theatre, Kolozsvár, March 1875).
[6] In the later decades of the 20th century, the music of La fille de Madame Angot became familiar to audiences in the US, Britain and Australia arranged as a ballet score for Léonide Massine.
[24] Massine created a new version of the work for Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1947, as Mam'zelle Angot, with a new score arranged from Lecocq's original by Gordon Jacob.
