There’s always something fishy about the French

Messager was not one of the great song composers. He was, however, one of the great musicians of his time, the conductor selected by Debussy to introduce his Pelléas et Mélisande to the world at the Opéra-Comique in 1902 and the composer of distinguished ballets like Les deux pigeons and high-quality operettas like Véronique. L’amour est un oiseau rebelle (which takes the first line of its text from the famous Habanera in Carmen) comes from one of his last operettas, Passionément, which was first performed at the Théâtre de la Michodière in Paris in 1926. Julia, the young maid of an American couple arriving in France by yacht, puts her romantic hopes in the French… She’s a bright girl - that much is clear from her witty way with words and her vivacious vocal line - but if she had been born into the next generation of musical comedy she would have known, like Noel Coward in Conversation Piece, that There’s always something fishy about the French.