LA MASCOTTE Opéra-comique in 3 acts by Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru. Music by Edmond Audran. Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, 29 December 1880.
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| Marie Montbazon as Bettina |
The turkey-girl Bettina (Mlle Montbazon) is a `mascot' -- that is to say, she brings good luck to her household -- and when she joins the working staff of the miserable farmer Rocco (Raucourt) his luck changes immediately. Bettina's boyfriend, Rocco's shepherd Pippo (Louis Morlet), isn't allowed too close, however, for a mascot ceases to be a mascot if she ceases to be a virgin. Alas, when her virtues are discovered by the interminably unlucky King Laurent (Paul Hittemans), poor Bettina is dragged off to court, much to the displeasure of the Princess Fiametta (Mlle Dinelli) who, obviously unaware of the rules of being a mascot, assumes the girl is her father's mistress. A whole barrage of complexities leads up to preparations for a double royal wedding, from which Pippo and Bettina escape just as Fiametta's rejected suitor, Fritellini (Charles Lamy), attacks the now-instantly-unlucky Laurent with his army. But luck has changed sides only for as long as it takes for Pippo and Bettina, finally, to get wedded and bedded. When all efforts to stop this disaster fail, both camps have to sit down and wait for nine months and hope the young mother will produce twins. One apiece. For it appears that mascotry is hereditary.
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| King Laurent peeps over the wall to make sure there is no sex happening |
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| Louis Morlet (Pippo) |
Chivot and Duru's joyously lubricious libretto -- in which, of course, only the juves actually had sex -- built up to wilder and wilder comic scenes which, in the last act, bordered on the burlesques of earlier days, and the comedy was illustrated by a delicious Audran score. The hit number of the show was an ingenuous love duo for the shepherd and the turkey-girl with a `glou-glou' (her as the turkey) and `bé-bé' (he as a sheep) refrain, whilst Fritellini's melodic analysis of his own qualities (`Le je ne sais quoi poétique') and his bamboozling of the naïve Pippo (`Ah, mon cher, que vous êtes naïf') and Fiametta's appreciation of Pippo's muscles (`Ah! qu'il est beau!') boasted the piece's loveliest melodies. The comic side was topped by Laurent's declaration of his main advantage as a husband for Bettina -- his impotence (`J'en suis tout à fait incapable').
La Mascotte was an overwhelming success at the Bouffes-Parisiens, playing for the entire season, and then for most of the next one as well. Cantin removed it in order to stage Louis Varney's Coquelicot, but when that piece failed to take he promptly brought back La Mascotte which proved far from having exhausted its public. It was nearly two years from its opening night when the show was finally taken off and replaced with the next Audran work, Gillette de Narbonne. Gillette de Narbonne was another fine success, but La Mascotte was naturally brought back in 1883 (11 April) with Piccaluga, Mme Gugot-Morlet (replacing a too-pregnant original star) and Édouard Maugé for another 92 performances, and it resurfaced again in 1889 with Théo, this time, in the title-rôle. Paris revivals were regular thereafter, including runs at the Menus-Plaisirs (1890, where on 14 July the show celebrated its 1500th Parisian performance), the Gaîté (1897, 1901 w Germaine Gallois, 1915 w Angèle Gril), the Apollo (1913, 1914), the Mogador (1921, 1944) and the Porte-Saint-Martin (1933 w Edmée Favart, 1935, 1968) as La Mascotte confirmed itself as one of the surest pillars of the opérette repertoire.
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| Germaine Gallois as Bettina |
The piece also travelled with considerable success. Although Vienna hosted an uncredited (and apparently insufficient) adaptation of Der Glücksengel, with Josefine Gallmeyer given top billing in the rôle of Fiametta alongside Girardi (Pippo), Karoline Finaly (Bettina) and Carl Adolf Friese (Lorenzo) for only 23 performances, and Germany extended it only a slightly warmer reception, in Hungary, where Lujza Blaha took on the rôle of the turkey-girl with Pál Vidor as her Pippo, János Kápolnai (Fritellini) and Vidor Kassai as Laurent, Az üdvöske (ad Jen*o* Rákosi) was an undoubted winner and it followed its original production with many returns. Britain reacted similarly when, after an out-of-town try-out at Brighton (a most unusual thing at the time) Alexander Henderson brought La Mascotte (ad Robert Reece, H B Farnie) to the Comedy Theatre with Violet Cameron and the 22 year-old Savoyard baritone Francis Gaillard starred, Lionel Brough heading the comedy, and Lizzie St Quinten and Henry Bracy in the chief singing rôles.
After a first run of 199 performances it came back after just a month for a further season with Clara Merivale and Gaillard starred, whilst Kate Santley took her production, and her Bettina, to the provinces. In 1884 Florence St John paired with Gaillard in a re-run, in 1885 Violet Cameron repeated her original rôle, in 1888 the French prima donna Mary Albert gave a season in French and, finally, in 1893, the Gaiety Theatre staged a La Mascotte season with Miss St John (9 September), the sixth sighting of the show in London in a dozen years.
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| Francis Gaillard |
Australia, in the meantime, had responded with equal delight to a J C Williamson production which featured his wife, Maggie Moore, as a truly lusty Bettina, alongside George Verdi (Pippo), W H Woodfield (Fritellini), Nellie Stewart (Fiametta), H M Harwood (Laurent) and Edwin Kelly (Rocco) in the first of what would be a long series of La Mascotte seasons.
The competition to get the first La Mascotte on to the American stage was all the hotter because of the vast success of the American version of Les Noces d'Olivette, but in the end it was the management of the ever to-the-fore Boston Museum who won the race. They mounted Theodore T Barker, Emile Schwab and J W Norcross’s version ('original dialogue and scenes by') of the show in April 1881 with Helen Carter, Seth Crane and Harry Brown in the principal rôles, and toured it under the banner of the 3ed-rate Grayson Comic Opera Co.
It was nearly a month after this before Broadway got its first glimpse of the new show at the Bijou Theater, the house which had so successfully staged the earlier piece. They brought in the touring Wilbur Opera Company’s production, with Emma Howson (the original London Josephine of HMS Pinafore) and John Brand heading the cast, four days before the Boston company appeared at the Park Theater with their version. It was the Bijou which came out the better, for La Mascotte, an oversized hit in no time, ran there for an uninterrupted three months (108 performances), the Gobble Duet became, as it had in Britain, one of the hits of the season, and the floodgates were opened for productions of the show around the country.
Over the next 12 months Selina Dolaro appeared as Bettina in a quick revival at the Bijou (60 performances, see above), Geraldine Ulmar and H C Barnabee (Laurent) headed the Bostonians' production at Booth's, Paola Marié introduced the original French version, which was also played in repertoire by Louise Théo; Jenny Stubel and Alexander Klein gave Der Glücksengel at the Thalia-Theater in German, whilst the young Fay Templeton appeared in the title-rôle of a (grossly) remade-to-order production at the Windsor Theater.
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| Louise Théo |
The flood slowed thereafter, but it did not stop for many years: Judic played Bettina during her 1885 tour, the Bijou revived the piece in 1887, a 1892 production at Palmer's Theater presented William Pruette as Pippo, Henry Dixey as Laurent and Camille D'Arville in the title-rôle, and Raymond Hitchcock and his wife Flora Zabelle starred, for a month, in a 1909 Klaw and Erlanger production at the New Amsterdam Theater. The last sight of La Mascotte on Broadway was in 1926 (1 December) when Jenny Syril and Servatius featured in a revival at the Jolson Theater, by which time the show had proven itself one of the most standard standards of the American-French repertoire. Largely because Audran's name has not remained a fashionable one, it has not, however, followed Offenbach and Strauss's works into the modern opera houses. Which is a pity.
A French film version was made in 1935 by Léon Mathot, with Germaine Roger as Bettina alongside Dranem, Lucien Baroux and Lestelly, which can be seen on DVD to this day, but La Mascotte had undoubtedly its most curious film exposure in 1913 when it was presented as a three-reeler film starring Minnie Jarbeau `in three six-minute acts' with accompanying sound `by means of Edison's wonderful kinetophone'. The experiment was apparently successful enough for the manufacturers to subsequently serve up the customers a version of Les Noces d'Olivette recorded in the same style.
Austria: Theater an der Wien Der Glücksengel 12 February 1881; Hungary: Népszinház Az üdvöske 10 April 1881; USA: Boston Museum 12 April 1881, Bijou Theater, New York 5 May 1881; UK: Comedy Theatre 15 October 1881; Germany: Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater Der Glücksengel 25 October 1881; Australia: Theatre Royal, Sydney 25 October 1882; Film Léon Mathot 1935
Recordings: complete (Clio, Decca), selection (EMI-Pathé) etc
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