Marie Lenormand and Philippe Talbot give Offenbach’s operetta “La Périchole” an “I Love Lucy” sensibility. (Carol Rosegg)
To close its season this week, New York City Opera is unleashing hurricane-force galesof laughter.
The show is Offenbach’s “La Périchole,” and although the 1868 operetta’s not so top-drawer a work as his “Tales of Hoffmann,” Sunday afternoon’s performance was a delight.
The effervescent score frames a farce about a sultry street performer, Périchole, who catches the eye of the randy Viceroy of Peru.
In Christopher Alden’s updated and offbeat version, downtown Lima teemed with tackily dressed North American tourists swilling umbrella drinks, and the heroine’s “Spanish” musical act played like a classic “I Love Lucy” routine.
Though some of the piece’s romantic comedy got trampled among the stampede of sight gags, Alden — whose “Don Giovanni” and “Cosi Fan Tutte” were gems of recent NYCO seasons — never flinched and never faltered in his surreal vision.
Top comic banana was Kevin Burdette as the Viceroy, his easy, warm bass contrasting with hilariously creepy shtick worthy of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
Equally wacky was mezzo Marie Lenormand as Périchole, though her delicious waltz songs were more notable for tangy French diction than vocal glamour. As her dumb-as-rocks boyfriend Piquillo, Philippe Talbot flaunted a honeyed tenor — it certainly didn’t hurt that he bore a striking resemblance to the young Desi Arnaz.
In the tiny part of the Old Prisoner, Philip Littell accomplished the near impossible — a “comic” operetta cameo that was actually funny, not silly. Under Emmanuel Plasson’s lilting baton, the NYCO chorus never missed a beat, not even during the second-act finale, with Seán Curran’s frenetic “YMCA”-style choreography.
This “Périchole” isn’t just the jolliest opera in town; for sheer fun, it could hold its own against Broadway’s best.