From THE CARLTON HOTEL
(Daventry National Programme)

Directed by John Bridge
Florence Fielden (Contralto)
(North Regional Programme)

Offenbach wrote the opera Genevieve de Brabant first in two acts in 1859; again in five acts in 1875. He was evidently pleased with the original version and thought it worthy of resuscitation. It proved, as a matter of fact, one of his most successful productions. It is a burlesque, a form very popular in those days, and caricatures mediaeval romanticism in a parody of the same tale that Schumann had already treated seriously in his opera Genoveva. Count Siegfried is at the Crusades; the villain, Golo, makes love to his wife in his absence; Siegfried returns, believes the worst, and drives his wife and child into the wilderness. Golo's accomplice confesses ; Genevieve is brought back, and all is well. This, of course, is one of the oldest plots in the locker, and being based on the soundest principles of human nature, is naturally susceptible to parody; only the beat plots can be caricatured with success. Nobody realized that better than Offenbach, who drew for his parodies on such material as the story of Helen of Troy and that of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Directed by HENRY HALL