Maître Péronilla

Maître Péronilla is an opéra bouffe in three acts of 1878 with music by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was by the composer with Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter and Paul Ferrier.

The sub-title was La femme à deux maris; the working title during the preparation of the libretto and composition had been Frimouskino, which Offenbach had drafted in the late 1860s. Composed in Nice, Offenbach asked Nuitter and Ferrier to help him with the song lyrics as his regular collaborators, Meilhac and Halévy had distanced themselves in order to concentrate on other projects, including work with Lecocq.

Premiered at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, the piece was taken off after less than two months, and Le timbale d’argent returned to the Bouffes. Reflecting on his many previous successes, when the opera failed to run more than 50 performances, Offenbach wrote to Ludovic Halévy that ‘Offenbach’ was not to be found on the billboards for the 1878 Exhibition.

The work is one of several by Offenbach with Spanish connections: Pépito, La Duchesse d’Albe and Les bavards. The malagueña was inserted as an additional song for Fiorella in the Christmas Day revival of Les brigands at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in 1878.

Two lawsuits concerning the subject of the opera were brought - against Offenbach and after his death against the theatre manager Charles Comte - alleging that the subject matter had been plagiarized from a stage work by Oswald and Lévy.

The gardens of Péronilla
The daughter of Péronilla, the leading chocolate maker in Madrid, the young and beautiful Manoëla, is to be married to old Don Guardona, to the displeasure of Ripardos, a soldier, and Frimouskino, a notary’s clerk. Léona, the sister of Péronilla, has arranged the wedding in order to thwart the attentions of the handsome music master Alvarès. He, having been dismissed by Léona, returns to Péronilla’s house. The marriage contract has already been signed, but Ripardos and Frimouskino in the dim light of the chapel manage to get Alvarès, not Don Guardona into religious union with Manoëla – thus giving her two husbands.

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Wikipedia