A very sad evening in prospect, that’s for sure!
Hervé Niquet
Composed by Hervé Niquet, the programme for this concert holds a wealth of surprises… While the Orchestre de chambre de Paris is very much at home at the Théâtre du Châtelet, who would expect a conductor renowned for his expertise in French Baroque opera to appear alongside his choir, performing orchestrated songs by Bourvil, Charles Trenet, and Maurice Chevalier? And yet these artists are given pride of place in this programme, as is the celebrated operetta composer Francis Lopez who, in addition to writing La Belle de Cadix and Le Chanteur de Mexico, directed the Théâtre du Châtelet in the early nineteen seventies.
It was around this time that Hervé Niquet first discovered the artistic life of Paris and the capital’s musical scene, glimpsed through the famous television programmes of Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier.
Hervé Niquet formed a close friendship with the musicologist Madeleine Milhaud, who persuaded him to promise that he would perform a work composed for the Lemon Festival in Menton by her husband, Darius who, with playful insistence, liked to describe himself as “a Frenchman from Provence of the Jewish faith”.
Entitled Barba Garibo, this cantata for mixed chorus and orchestra, drew on themes from Menton folklore, with texts by Armand Lunel, stands as one of the true gems of this concert, placed under the sign of celebration.
More than an Auberge du Cheval Blanc, from which excerpts also feature in the programme, this evening promises to be an abundant and joyful gathering of musicians devoted to the Théâtre du Châtelet.
Programme
Œuvres de 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
