L'Etoile

Cincinnati Opera's marketing savants usually come up with campaigns that outclass any other for attracting audiences, but this year they got it wrong.

Forget all those posters of a doe-eyed sylph looking nervously around the top of the Castel Sant'Angelo, proclaiming "Make it your first opera." Don't give it another thought if you missed out on Tosca, which concludes its run Friday.

Cincinnati Opera's production of Emmanual Chabrier's L'Étoile ("The Star") is a delight for opera novices and aficionados. It's pure theater, staged with wit and panache and performed by a gifted cast who whip this French froth into a sparkler.

The plot is silly and the characters are barely beyond two dimensional. King Ouf I celebrates his birthday with games, fireworks and a public execution of one of his subjects. Ouf disguises himself and searches the kingdom for his next victim, but the citizens foil his every move.

Enter next a quartet disguised as shop assistants who are really the Princess Laoula, the Ambassador Herisson, his wife Aloes and his secretary Tapioca. The princess knows nothing of her secret engagement to Ouf, and when the peddler Lazuli who's been following her declares his love, Laoula is happy to reciprocate.

It doesn't take five minutes before Lazuli is named as Ouf's next victim -- and then Ouf's astronomer royal, Siroco, discovers that Ouf's and Lazuli's stars are fatefully linked: If Lazuli dies, Ouf will meet his end the next day, followed by Siroco 15 minutes later. Naturally, it's in everyone's best interests to keep Lazuli alive and, although his sentence is indeed The Comfy Chair, he does get the Princess and everyone lives happily ever after amid a shower of stars.

The first-rate ensemble are all excellent singers blessed with impeccable comic timing. The puffed-up King Ouf I gets a rousing performance from Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, and Kevin Glavin is his hapless astronomer Siroco. They bring down the house as they drown their sorrows in green Chartreuse ("Those monks were onto something!") and even the scenery gets into the act.

Mezzo soprano Jennifer Rivers makes a triumphant return in the "trouser" role of Lazuli. Her voice has a purity and sweetness that are ideal for French operetta. She's also a great physical comedienne, clambering around the stage with the confidence and angularity of the 18-year-old youth she's supposed to be.

Elspeth Kincaid is a libidinous Aloes, Gerard Powers is her imperious, officious husband Herrison and Phillip Addis the overly eager Tapioca.

This production was originally staged for Glimmerglass Opera and New York City Opera, where it was a surprise hit with audiences and critics. The set of curved, mirrored columns and globular eye pieces set in walls and hanging from the ceiling evoke an art-deco funhouse inhabited by Magritte-inspired men sporting bowlers and umbrellas.

Alain Gauthier's witty staging combines slapstick, sight gags and wildly imaginative stage business. The vivid lighting design is by Thomas Hase, and J.M. Rebudal's choreography makes the opera chorus look like Broadway gypsies.

Pascal Blanchet provides a witty English translation of the original French dialogue, helping the audience make what sense there is to be made of the plot. The score is sung in French and conducted with style and energy by Jean-Marie Zeitouni.

This is a night at the opera not to miss, even if it is sans les frères Marx. Grade: A.