Les brigands: Opera-bouffe en 3 Actes

Colombier, 1870. Hardcover. Good. Libretto in French. [1870] Colombier (Paris), 7 1/2 x 11 inches tall beige cloth hardcover (appears recently rebound) with refreshed marbled endpapers, [4], 371 pp. Intermittent light foxing throughout, especially to front and rear prelims. Moderate soiling and edge-chipping to front prelims, including title page, which has a blue Columbier publisher's stamp at the bottom. Moderate to heavy edge chipping to last 10 pages (especially lower tips), not impacting text. Otherwise, a very good copy of this scarce imprint, handsomely bound. ~SP39~ [4.0P] Les brigands (The Bandits) is an opera bouffe, or operetta, by Jacques Offenbach to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. Meilhac and Halevy's libretto lampoons both serious drama (Schiller's play The Robbers) and opera comique (Fra Diavolo and Les diamants de la couronne by Auber). The plot is cheerfully amoral in its presentation of theft as a basic principle of society rather than as an aberration. As Falsacappa, the brigand chieftain, notes: 'Everybody steals according to their position in society.' The piece premiered in Paris in 1869 and has received periodic revivals in France and elsewhere, both in French and in translation. Les brigands has a more substantial plot than many Offenbach operettas and integrates the songs more completely into the story. The forces of law and order are represented by the bumbling carabinieri, whose exaggerated attire delighted the Parisian audience during the premiere. In addition to policemen, financiers receive satiric treatment. The satire counterpoints lively musical romps and the frequent use of Italian and Spanish rhythms; 'Soyez pitoyables' is a true canon, and each act finale is a well-developed whole. A 1983 New York Times article theorized that the music of the piece influenced Bizet in writing Carmen and noted that the librettists for this work supplied Bizet's libretto, but standard Offenbach references do not mention any such influence.