Messager: Fortunio

This 2019 Opéra Comique production of Messager’s Fortunio is a celebration of the work’s success when it was premiered by the same company in 1907 and received acclaim that was to last decades. One of the last composers to devote his entire career to opera and operetta, Messager exemplified in his music a feeling for dramatic pacing and the spirit of Belle Époque, qualities that permeate Fortunio, a comédie lyrique in which the dialogue in the libretto is given a continuous musical setting. Taking Alfred de Musset’s play Le Chandelier as his source, Messager explores upper-class society at the turn of the 19th century with subtlety of characterisation and a thoroughly French orchestral transparency.