Adolphe Adam Le Postillon de Lonjumeau opera to a libretto by Adolphe de Leuven and Léon-Lévy Brunswick. Directed 2019 by Michel Fau at the Opéra Comique, Paris. Stars Michael Spyres (Chapelou/Saint-Phar), Florie Valiquette (Madeleine/Madame de Latour), Franck Leguérinel (Le Marquis de Corcy), Laurent Kubla (Biju/Alcindor), Michel Fau (Rose), Yannis Ezziadi (Louis XV), and Julien Clément (Bourdon). Sébastien Rouland conducts the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen Normandie, the accentus (sic) choir, and the Opéra de Rouen Normandie choir. Set design by Emmanuel Charles; costume design by Christian Lacroix; lighting design by Joël Fabing; make-up design by Pascale Fau. Directed for TV by François Roussillon. Sung in French. Released 2020, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA
Susan Brodie gives this live performance a ringing endorsement in her thorough review in classicalvoiceamerica.org dated April 5, 2019. And in the September 2020 Gramophone (page 78) Mark Pullinger cheerfully approves the Blu-ray recording stating that “Michel Fau’s production is eye-poppingly gaudy, capturing the silliness of the plot [in which a husband abandons his bride in white dress and then remarries later only to realize that he married the same woman twice] to perfection.”
We are fortunate that Michel Fau and François Roussillon teamed up to give those of us who don’t get to Paris all that often a Blu-ray glimpse into the almost-lost world of nineteenth-century French comic opera. The plot is so simple, you can actually understand it. The music comes from the composer who gave us the Giselle ballet. The singers are specialists who know how to revive this lost world, you can see for yourself in the Naxos trailer how wonderful the sets were, and who is a better costume designer than Christian Lacroix? Finally, François Roussillon was a co-producer of this, which pretty much guarantees that the video will be terrific.
Here’s a trailer from Naxos:
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