About the work
L'étoile is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Emmanuel Chabrier, to a libretto by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo – one of his earliest stage works, written while he still worked as a civil servant at the French Ministry of the Interior. It premiered on 28 November 1877 at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in Paris.
Plot
King Ouf I needs an execution every year to mark his birthday and picks the wandering peddler Lazuli. The court astrologer Siroco then discovers that Lazuli's fate is inseparably bound to the king's own: if one dies, the other follows within twenty-four hours. Spared out of pure self-interest, Lazuli is drawn through a tangle of mistaken identities, jealousies and a princess travelling incognito, until everyone finds a fitting match by the end.
Cultural significance
Despite a respectable initial run of 48 performances, L'étoile then fell into near obscurity for decades, even as composers such as Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky admired the score; Francis Poulenc later called it the seed of French operetta. Only later revivals, including at the Opéra-Comique and the Royal Opera House, brought the work back into the repertoire.