Composers › Jacques Offenbach › Programme note
3 fables de Lafontaine (1842)
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
La cigale et la fourmi
Le rat de ville et le rat des champs
Le corbeau et le renard
Offenbach is not known for his songs. He did, however, write as many as a hundred such works, some of them in German (which was his first language) but most of them in French. Unfortunately, he was far from discriminating in his choice of texts: the French poet he drew on more than any other was Édouard Plouvier, who wrote a couple of operetta libretti for him but who is otherwise forgotten. Had he turned more often to writers of the distinction of Théophile Gautier or Alfred de Musset, the author of the words of his once popular Chanson de Fortunio, Offenbach might have developed ways of reflecting the beauty of well wrought French verse. As it was, given the material at his disposal, he was more interested in the comic potential.
Lafontaine’s fables are both well wrought and rich in comic potential - just the thing, one might think, for a master of operetta like Offenbach. In fact, in 1842, when he wrote the Six Fables de Lafontaine, he was still making his living as a cello virtuoso and had little experience of composing for the stage. Even so, these songs are essentially dramatic. Of the three two-handers chosen for today’s programme, the most eventful is the confrontation of the grasshopper with the ant in La cigale et la fourmi. Lavishly resourceful, while covering a range of expression from pathos to moral indignation, it is animated by three different dance tunes - the last of them a waltz culminating in a grandly dismissive cadenza. The town and country rats have more in common than the two insects. So in Le rat de ville et le rat des champs the drama is reserved for the middle section and the inconvenient intrusion from outside. The delight of Le corbeau et le renard is the witty characterisation of the fox, the exaggerated language of his flattery reflected in the operatic gestures of the vocal line.
Although the Fables de Lafontaine were not well received on their first performance – one critic remarked that the composer should have remembered the fable about the mountain giving birth to a mouse – they seem to have found an echo in Chabrier’s farmyard songs of the late 1880s, which in their turn had an influence on Ravel’s Histoires naturelles in 1906.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Fables de Lafontaine”
La cigale et la fourmi
Le rat de ville et le rat des champs
Le corbeau et le renard
Offenbach is not known for his songs. He did, however, write as many as a hundred such works, some of them in German (which was his first language) but most of them in French. Unfortunately, he was far from discriminating in his choice of texts: the French poet he drew on more than any other was Édouard Plouvier, who wrote a couple of operetta libretti for him but who is otherwise forgotten. Had he turned more often to writers of the distinction of Théophile Gautier or Alfred de Musset, the author of the words of his once popular Chanson de Fortunio, Offenbach might have developed ways of reflecting the beauty of well wrought French verse. As it was, given the material at his disposal, he was more interested in the comic potential.
Lafontaine’s fables are both well wrought and rich in comic potential - just the thing, one might think, for a master of operetta like Offenbach. In fact, in 1842, when he wrote the Six Fables de Lafontaine, he was still making his living as a cello virtuoso and had little experience of composing for the stage. Even so, these songs are essentially dramatic. Of the three two-handers chosen for today’s programme, the most eventful is the confrontation of the grasshopper with the ant in La cigale et la fourmi. Lavishly resourceful, while covering a range of expression from pathos to moral indignation, it is animated by three different dance tunes - the last of them a waltz culminating in a grandly dismissive cadenza. The town and country rats have more in common than the two insects. So in Le rat de ville et le rat des champs the drama is reserved for the middle section and the inconvenient intrusion from outside. The delight of Le corbeau et le renard is the witty characterisation of the fox, the exaggerated language of his flattery reflected in the operatic gestures of the vocal line.
Although the Fables de Lafontaine were not well received on their first performance – one critic remarked that the composer should have remembered the fable about the mountain giving birth to a mouse – they seem to have found an echo in Chabrier’s farmyard songs of the late 1880s, which in their turn had an influence on Ravel’s Histoires naturelles in 1906.
Le corbeau et le renard
La cigale et la fourmi
La laitière et le pot au lait
Le rat des villes et le rat des champs
Le berger et la mer
Le savetier et le financier
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Fables de Lafontaine/n.rtf”