An operetta in which a dog is appointed Sultan of Lahore and, thanks to a resourceful market trader, ushers in a more enlightened despotism – what’s not to like? Plenty, to judge by the critical mauling doled out in 1860 to Offenbach’s Barkouf. Even Berlioz – a fine one to talk – accused the composer of crimes against harmonic convention. It duly sank without trace until unpublished bits and pieces resurfaced in recent decades. It’s fallen to Opera Rara to splice it back together again, fill in the odd blank and give us a chance to judge for ourselves.
Barkouf followed hot on the heels of Orpheus in the Underworld, against which it must inevitably be considered a failure. Eugène Scribe’s workaday lyrics lack the divine silliness of the composer’s finest collaborators while blunting the story’s satirical potential. Offenbach, on the other hand, was never short of an idea and his energetic score has sufficient tics and quirks to suggest he was on the trail of something a little bit different. The orchestrations are original (there’s four horns) and a string of witty ditties go off like uncorked bottles of pop. Unfortunately, at other times it runs on a lower level of inspiration.
