Ba-ta-clan

Ba-ta-clan is a "chinoiserie musicale" (or operetta) in one act with music by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Ludovic Halévy. It was first performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Paris, on 29 December 1855. The operetta uses set numbers and spoken dialogue and runs for under an hour.

Ba-ta-clan was Offenbach's first big success, and opened his new winter theatre, the Salle Choiseul. The witty piece satirised everything from contemporary politics to grand opera conventions. It was frequently revived in Paris, London and New York for decades, and Offenbach eventually expanded it as a full-length piece with a cast of eleven. Offenbach's early operettas were small-scale one-act works, since the law in France limited the licence for musical theatre works (other than most operas) to one-act pieces with no more than three singers and, perhaps, some mute characters. In 1858, this law was changed, and Offenbach was able to offer full-length works, beginning with Orpheus in the Underworld.

In 1864, a music-hall called Bataclan opened in Paris, named after the operetta, and is still functioning today.

The action takes place in Ché-i-no-or - in the gardens of the palace of the Emperor Fè-ni-han, with kiosks and pagodas. Ko-ko-ri-ko, chief of the guard is the head of a conspiracy to dethrone the Emperor; the opera opens with the conspirators setting the scene in Chinese. They leave, and the princess Fé-an-nich-ton reads a book - La Laitière de Montfermeil by Paul de Kock; she notices that Ké-ki-ka-ko is leafing through a copy of La Patrie. They realize that each of them is not Chinese, but French. Ké-ki-ka-ko is the Viscount Alfred Cérisy, once shipwrecked on the coast of China and captured, tortured and brought to the palace and condemned to only repeat the rebels' song Ba-ta-clan. Fé-an-nich-ton confesses in song that she is Mademoiselle Virginie Durand, a light soprano who was on a Far East tour to initiate the locals into the great French repertoire: Les Huguenots and La Dame aux Camélias, La Juive and Les Rendez-vous bourgeois, Phèdre and Passé minuit, when she was captured by the soldiers of Fé-ni-han. The two Parisians reflect wistfully of home, and Fé-an-nich-ton sings the 'Ronde de Florette'. They both decide to run away, dancing as they go.

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