High Camp With Elegance: Alden’s Fabulously Entertaining L’étoile

Emmanuel Chabrier’s opéra bouffe L'étoile is very light stuff. The music is fluffy enough to make Wodehouse seem somber reading in comparison. But as with Wodehouse, the craftsmanship is audible, the ingredients refined, and the outcome of the kind of pretty sophistication that belies its superficial simplicity.

There’s plenty of dialogue in the opéra bouffe which raises the question of whether