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Marcel Lattès (1886-1943) : The Devil in Paris, operetta in three acts. Marion Tassou (Marguerite), Sarah Laulan (Marthe Grivot), Julie Mossay (Paola de Walpurgis), Mathieu Dubroca (André), Denis Mignien (Le Diable), Paul-Alexandre Dubois (Fouladou), Céline Groussard (L’entremetteuse); Ten Girls and Boys; Parisian Frivolities Orchestra, conducted by Dylan Corlay. 2020. Notice in French and English. Booklet in French with English translation. 101.00. A two-CD album B Records LBM 033.
Born in Nice, Marcel Moïse Alfred Lattès studied music with Louis Diémer and Charles-Marie Widor in Paris, where he obtained a first prize in piano at the Conservatory in 1906. His career was devoted to operetta and music for the movie theater. In the first area, there are a dozen works, created in the French capital between 1908 and 1935; in some of them, we find the names of Denise Gray (Nelly, 1921) or Jean Gabin (Arsène Lupine banker, 1930). Four dozen films punctuate his career, with music for GW Pabst, Abel Gance (Lucretia Borgia), Christian-Jaque, Maurice Tourneur, Marcel L’Herbier and many others. But Lattès will meet a tragic fate because of his Jewish origins. In 1941, he was taken in a roundup, interned in Compiègne then in Drancy, from where he was released following an approach by Sacha Guitry to the German authorities. But he was arrested again in October 1943. After a second internment in Drancy, he was sent to Auschwitz from where he would not return.
Today’s album pays tribute to this somewhat forgotten composer of light music, with joyful and playful accents, through The Devil in Paris, created at the Théâtre Marigny in 1927, where it will be successful in 84 performances. In the cast of the time, we find Dranem (stage name of Charles-Armand Ménard), Marguerite Edmée Favart, who had played the role of Chive for Reynaldo Hahn four years ago, and Raimu, as well as the Dolly Sisters, the orchestra being entrusted to Paul Letombe. The ORTF will give a broadcast version in 1949, and a recording will be made in 1957, with narrator, under the direction of Marcel Cariven. Some extracts will know the honor of the disc on the occasion of one or the other recital. For this edition, Benjamin El Arbi and Mathieu Franot, founders in 2012 of the Orchester des Frivolités parisiennes, who work with the musicologist and artistic advisor Christophe Mirambeau, author of a recent André Messager the century ferryman (Actes Sud, 2018), specify in the notice that restoration work has been undertaken to establish the booklet, with some modifications, and orchestration. It was decided not to record the long dialogue parts, but to entrust an actress with linking texts which summarize the action between the airs.
The content of the Devil in Paris is signed by specialists in the genre of the interwar period: Francis de Croisset, elegant and brilliant author who inspired Proust for one of his characters, the playwright and academician Robert de Flers, who died while writing , and Albert Willemetz, prolific author, notably for André Messager, Reynaldo Hahn, Arthur Honegger, Vincent Scotto or Francis Lopez; he will take up the torch of the deceased. The plot is clever: André has been ruined by his mistress Paola. At Guétary station in the Basque country, he sees Marguerite helping her aunt Marthe as a gatekeeper. Seduced, he pretends to be the conductor. Courted on her side by the already old Foudalou whose advances she rejects, Marthe does not take a good look at her niece’s affair. Rejected and annoyed, André and Foudalou appeal to the Devil, very happy to be solicited and no longer to have his wife on their backs. He agrees to help them on one condition: to be immersed again in the atmosphere of Paris that he has not known since the middle of the 19th century. In return, he offers millions to André and the youth to Fouladou. But in the capital, everything has changed. Disguised, the Devil, who is in fact a great naive, will be confronted with funny and unexpected situations and discover that humans can be more treacherous than him. Everything will end nevertheless with marriages: Marguerite will marry André, who will keep the money; Marthe will end up giving in to Fouladou, with gray temples found. As for the Devil, he will have a hard time getting out of his failing memory the formula that will allow him to join his wife. This is all good fun, and guarantees fans of the genre some delicious vaudeville moments. It is of course necessary to give credit to the codes of the world of the operetta and to accept the lightnesses, even the improbabilities. Whatever, we are in a context of whatnot …
Musically, we navigate amid tunes enriched by swing aspects or inspired by jazz, with marked rhythms and the appearance of blues, to which verses are given. We note the presence of a dozen Girls and Boys, well-turned dances, cheerful and fanciful choirs. The vocal stage is in place; we encompass them in the same praise. The founders of Les Frivolités parisiennes explain in the notice that they were very attentive to the quality of play of the performers, who are on stage as much actors as singers. What we hear is indeed a public performance of December 19, 2019 given at the Parisian theater of the Athénée. If we miss the visual part, the slaughter of each one makes it possible to imagine that the evening must have been delightful and that the public had a great time. The whole team is to be congratulated, because the text has its importance here, with its finesse or its excess of language, and careful diction is one of the qualities that we appreciate. However, we will put a slight drawback to the interventions of the actress who connects the phases of the action: they sometimes tend to break her progress. Céline Groussard, whose voice is young and fresh, is not in question; it fits perfectly into the overall context of lightness.
The Orchester des Frivolités Parisiennes, around thirty instrumentalists, animates this unpretentious and unmistakable fantasy with great enthusiasm, led by the flexible stick of Dylan Corlay, winner in 2015 of the 1st Prize of the International Orchestral Conducting Competition Jorma Panula in Finland. The Devil in Paris may not be essential in a nightclub, but it provides moments of relaxation that comedy lovers will appreciate. In our somewhat battered world, we will admit that this is not to be despised.
Sound: 9 Record: 8 Repertory: 7.5 Interpretation: 9
Jean Lacroix
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