Le caïd (Thomas, Ambroise) – IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library
Synopsis
Setting: A town in French Algeria in the 1840s [11]
Aboul-y-far, the caïd of an Algerian town under French control, is regularly beaten up by his subjects in protest against the taxes and fines that he imposes on them. Birotteau, a French hairdresser with a shop in the town, approaches the caïd with the offer of a “secret talisman” which will protect him from the depredations of his subjects. The price is 20,000 boudjous. The caïd, a notorious miser, offers him his daughter Fathma’s hand in marriage instead. Birotteau is flattered by the proposal and accepts the offer, forgetting that he is already engaged to Virginie, who owns a millinery shop in the town.
Meanwhile, the caïd’s steward and factotum, Ali-Bajou, has a different plan afoot to protect his master. He fosters a passionate romance between Fathma and Michel, the drum-major of the occupying French army. When Michel and Virginie hear of Birotteau’s deal with the caïd, they are furious. Faced with Virginie’s vow of vengeance and Michel’s threat to cut his ears off, Birotteau refuses to marry Fathma in exchange for the “secret talisman” after all. The caïd reluctantly pays Birotteau the 20,000 boudjous, only to discover that the talisman is a recipe for a hair pomade which purportedly cures baldness. In the end, Ali-Bajou becomes happily drunk on French wine. Virginie are Birotteau are married, as are Fathma and Michel. Michel becomes the caïd’s bodyguard, and the caïd’s only regret is that whole affair has cost him 20,000 boudjous.
Reception
The opera was admired by the French composers Hector Berlioz and Georges Bizet, as well as the French poet Théophile Gautier.[8][12] Some other taste-setters had some reservations. Félix Clément and Pierre Larousse in their 1869 Dictionnaire lyrique described Le caïd as follows:
It cannot be denied that this work is amusing and the music very agreeable. Nevertheless, in our view, the whole has a touch of vulgarity about it, a familiarity and parody which is not part of the opera-buffa, nor of the old opéra-comique. The score teems with charming melodies. In the harmony, under a piquant exterior, lie the purest and most learned forms; the instrumentation is ravishing. So from where does this impression come that we have spoken of above? It is likely due to the disparity of costume and theatrical genre, that people of taste saw with pain ever increasingly popular in France, pieces in which no true sentiment is taken seriously, and the spectator finds no respite from the buffooneries and stunts [cascades] of the actors. A continual alliance of the most noble of the arts with the weak sides of human character seems to us regrettable.[13]
oh!!!!!
La Cour de Célimène by Ambroise Thomas : opera rara …