Scaramouche et Music-Hall

SCARAMOUCHE ET MUSIC-HALL« A rather gloomy evening in prospect, that's for sure!  »

" Hervé Niquet Composed by Hervé Niquet, this concert's programme holds many surprises… While the Orchestre de chambre de Paris feels quite at home at the Théâtre du Châtelet, who would expect a conductor specialising in French Baroque opera to bring along his choir to sing orchestrated melodies by Bourvil, Charles Trenet, or Maurice Chevalier?

Yet these artists take pride of place in this programme, as does the successful operetta composer Francis Lopez, who, besides writing La Belle de Cadix and Le Chanteur de Mexico, ran the Théâtre du Châtelet in the early seventies.

It was around that very time that Hervé Niquet discovered the Paris of the arts and the capital's musical life, of which Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier's famous television programmes offer a small glimpse.

Hervé Niquet became friends with musicologist Madeleine Milhaud, who made him promise to perform a work her husband, Darius – who liked to describe himself, not without mischief, as "a Frenchman from Provence, of the Jewish faith" – had composed for the Lemon Festival, in Menton.

Barba Garibo, a divertissement on themes from Menton folklore for mixed choir and orchestra, with texts by Armand Lunel, is indeed one of the gems of this concert placed under the sign of celebration!

Beyond an Auberge du Cheval-Blanc, extracts of which also feature on the programme, this evening promises to be a real auberge espagnole for musicians in love with the Théâtre du Châtelet!

Conductor Hervé Niquet Clarinet Florent Pujuila Choir of Le Concert Spirituel Orchestre de chambre de Paris Works by Darius Milhaud (Scaramouche, Barba Garibo), Charles Trenet, Charles Lecocq, Francis Lopez, Ralph Benatzky, Maurice Chevalier, Roger Roger, Bourvil, Henri Betti, Leroy Anderson, Cole Porter, George Gershwin