Gustave Charpentier's Louise

Gustave Charpentier's Louise from the 2025 Aix-en-Provence Festival.

A rare staging of Gustave Charpentier's Louise, a 'novel in music' that was once hugely popular, having received nearly 100 performances in its first year - including one at Paris's Opéra-Comique when 400 seats were given to Paris dressmakers.

Louise was premiered on 2 February 1900 and, although it was pipped to the post by Puccini's Tosca, this 'roman musical', combining social preoccupations with idealistic aspirations, magnificent flights of lyricism and great picturesque scenes, maybe be seen to have given the twentieth century its first opera. Young Louise, a seamstress living with her parents, loves Julien, an artist; she desires freedom and rejects the strict moral code of her parents. Ultimately she chooses to face an uncertain future alone, a future associated in her mind by Paris, the 'City of Lights,' freedom and pleasure. And there are few passages in opera that express so evocatively the pleasure of love and its potential to emancipate a young woman as Louise's hit aria, 'Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée..'
Elsa Dreisig plays Louise, the young woman full of determination and fighting spirit; and she is surrounded in this performance from the Théâtre de l'Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence by some of the finest upholders of the French repertoire.

Presented by Georgia Mann in conversation with French music specialist, Emma Kavanagh.

Gustave Charpentier: Louise, roman musical in four acts and five scenes

Louise.... Elsa Dreisig (soprano)
Julien/The noctambulist.... Adam Smith (tenor)
Mother/La Première de l’atelier.... Sophie Koch (mezzo-soprano)
Un Marchand d’habits.... Grégoire Mour (tenor)
Balayeuse.... Annick Massis (mezzo-soprano)
Irma.... Marianne Croux (soprano)
Gertrude.... Carol Garcia (soprano)
Camille.... Karolina Bengtsson (soprano)
Madeleine.... Marie-Thérèse Keller (soprano)
Marguerite/La Laitière.... Julie Pasturaud (soprano)
Élise / La petite Chiffonnière.... Marion Vergez-Pascal (soprano)
Suzanne / La Glaneuse de charbon.... Marion Lebègue (mezzo-soprano)
Blanche / La Plieuse de journaux.... Jennifer Courcier (soprano)
L’Apprentie, Le Gavroche.... Céleste Pinel (soprano)
Le Bricoleur.... Frédéric Caton (bass)

Lyon Opera Children's Chorus
Lyon Opera Chorus
Lyon Opera Orchestra
Giacomo Sagripanti (conductor)

Followed at: 8.40pm by chamber music recorded at the Britten Studio in Snape by Ernest Chausson, a short-lived contemporary of the long-lived Gustave Charpentier.

Chausson: Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, Op.21
Tom Borrow (piano), Ionel Manciu (piano),
Van Kuijk Quartet
(Live recording from Radio 3 New Generation Artists weekend at Snape Maltings in March 2022. )