Reviewed by James Karas
Louise is an opera by Gustave Charpentier that has the distinction of being the first opera of the twentieth century or so they tell us. Charpentier (1860-1956) had a long life but wrote only one viable opera. It was successful for a while, but it has fallen out of favour, and one is grateful to the Aix Festival for producing it.
It is a love story that branches out into family dynamics, social commentary especially about women’s rights and provides a vignette of moral standards of the time.
Louise (Elsa Dreisig) is in love with Julien (Adam Smith), but she is caught in the social mores and family traps of the era and there are few choices for working class girls in late 19th century France. She wants to start a new life with her lover in Paris, the symbol of freedom, but her parents do not approve of her leaving them. She rebels and does move to Paris. but the breakup with her parents and her choice of work as a seamstress are not completely successful. In the end she does find happiness with her lover and with life in Paris, but she is wracked with guilt about her decision.
In the midst of enjoying the pleasures of freedom, love and parties, her mother (Sophie Koch) shows up and breaks up the party by telling Louise that her father is not well. Louise returns home to the tense and unhappy atmosphere and eventually she finds the strength to break the chains of family pressure and morality of her class and leaves her father and his curses.
Despite its broader tentacles, this is a sappy story, but Charpentier gives us a lot more than that and makes Louise an enjoyable work. He adds a couple of dozen characters from Louise’s place of work and Parisian society and creates a celebration with Louise’s coworkers as well as street parties with a colorful and fascinating cross section of working-class Paris.
It includes a crowd of pleasure seekers, street vendors and a night prowler who calls himself The Pleasure of Paris (played colourfully by Adam Smith). Soon Louise’s co-workers join the festive crowd, and all present a vivid and joyous scene in the opera. In the meantime, Julien is serenading Louise and her co-workers tease and even ridicule her, but in the end the two lovers leave together.
The two lovers escape and move into their own apartment and Louise sings the opera’s most famous aria “Depuis le jour” about how wonderful life is, about being in love, about her first kiss, about life in Paris. It is beautifully done by Dreisig.
Nicolas Courjal starts as a tired, and brooding father who adores his daughter but ends up as a nasty man who cannot let his daughter grow up. Sophie Koch starts as a tyrannical mother, overprotective of her daughter but her character matures and, in the end, she ends up breaking away from the patriarchal family. The adoring father does not appear to accept change.
The four singers who handle the immediate family show vocal beauty without being stressed with pyrotechnics. The crowd scenes are handled beautifully, and they provide a much-needed balance to the family squabble and the need for the young lovers to break away from the apron strings of the traditional family of the day and strike a note of freedom and of course give us Paris as a symbol of liberty.
The set by Etienne Pluss consists of the stage of the Théâtre de l’Archevêchê being turned into a large well-appointed room. There are couches lined up at the back with large windows above that. This could be a huge waiting room, and it does not represent the home of Louise’s working-class family. The basic structure serves as the humble apartment of the lovers and her workplace as well as the street party. The windows are shuttered and closed to indicate change of venue, but the changes are subtle, and we prefer to watch the action rather than the set changes.
In the end this production of Louise expertly directed by Christof Loy presents us with a coherent, well-done work that deserves more attention and productions than it is getting. Loy and dramaturg Louis Geisler add a nice touch at the end of the opera. Louise’s mother exits with her when she leaves her family home. The mother has seen the light. The father has not.
Giacomo Sagripanti conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Opera of Lyon in a vivacious performance of a highly enjoyable night at the opera.
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Louise by Gustave Charpentier was performed a total of four times until July 13, 2025, at the Théâtre de l’Archevêchê, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com
James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press