On the bicentenary of Jacques Offenbach’s birth, Un mari à la porte offers a playful and ironic counterpoint to Mascagni’s passionate drama. Offenbach, regarded as one of the fathers of operetta with nearly a hundred works to his name, was both the voice of joie de vivre in Second Empire Paris and the sardonic satirist of its social vices, which he parodied with wit and brilliance.
This miniature comedy of misunderstandings follows an operetta impresario fleeing creditors and a bailiff who, by chance, ends up in the bedroom of a married woman, Suzanne. The ensuing cascade of comic confusions is enlivened by Offenbach’s sparkling score, which glides gracefully to the rhythm of the waltz—most memorably in the operetta’s highlight, the Valse tyrolienne sung by Suzanne.
