Written in six weeks on a tatty little book and based on Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas, Don César de Bazan is one of Jules Massenet’s first works. A comic-opera in the form of an espagnolade, a genre which was then highly fashionable and culminated three years later with Bizet’s Carmen. Don César is a youthful work not lacking in charm and a young Massenet adorns it with boléros, lullabies, love songs, drinking songs and choirs that highlight the comic aspect of an opera Saint-Saëns described as “light and elegant”.
The instrumental parts and the orchestral section of the original version were burnt during the fire of the Opéra Comique in 1887. As a result, Massenet wrote a new version based on edited piano-vocal scores. Lighter and more stout in its orchestration, it debuted at Geneva’s Grand Théâtre under the direction of the composer in 1888, before some limited showings in Anvers, La Haye, Lyon, Nice, Brussels and Paris before disappearing from memory. The oeuvre was brought back in 2016 in several French towns thanks to the Frivolités Parisiennes initiative who recorded it in 2019 in an entirely revised layout in co-production with the Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne.
Laurent Naouri plays the part of Don César, the great Spaniard who becomes governor of Grenada after his many adventures and sweet romance with Maritana, an ex-busker appointed Countess of Bazan played beautifully by Elsa Dreising. Founded in 2012, the Frivolités Parisiennes company sets itself the task of bringing back, in addition to its entire repertoire, the type of orchestra seen at the Opéra Comique which disappeared in the 60s. © François Hudry/Qobuz