Jacques Offenbach: Pomme D’api/Sur Un Volcan (CD Album) – Jacques Offenbach

An absolute highlight rounds off the Offenbach Year 2019: two one-act operettas presented in historical performance practice by renowned soloists and the Kolner Akademie on instruments from the epoch. Trafalgar ‘Sur un volcan’ is set in Dublin during the Napoleonic period, while the action of ‘Pomme d’api’, it too with its love triangle, takes place in the household of the retiree Rabastens in Paris. He forces his nephew Gustave to renounce his beloved Catherine, nicknamed ‘Pomme d’Api’ (little red apple), a bride beneath his social class. Gustave pretends to agree to this arrangement, but a little later is surprised to find her as the unsuspecting Rabastens’ new housekeeper. In other words, this too is a menage a trois that will not last in the long run. Both works are full of witty arias, duets, and trios and rise to the absolute heights of Offenbach’s melodic genius, which is magnificently revealed in his brilliant instrumentations.