HAHN
NAXOS 2.110697
, and a letter delivered on a tambourine: these are the things that ensure a happy ending for Ciboulette, the title heroine of Reynaldo Hahn’s delightful operetta hit of 1923, who in three elegantly tuneful acts progresses from vegetable-marketing farm girl to toast of the Parisian music-hall stage. If you detect a whiff of a Cinderella story, well, you’re not wrong; and if Ciboulette doesn’t wind up with a, when the capricious Zénobie—like Musetta in Puccini’s opera—hurries one suitor off on a bogus errand so she can reunite with another; and when she passionately embraces her mustachioed captain, there’s a direct lift of the “Toi! Vous!” opening of ’s Saint-Sulpice duet. There’s a hint of as well, at Act III’s posh gala, with Duparquet showing up newly self-styled as a baron, like Eisenstein playing marquis at Orlofsky’s ball, and Ciboulette now a mysterious, masked Spanish señorita to rival Rosalinde’s masked Hungarian countess.
