Le château à Toto is an opéra bouffe

Opéra bouffe

Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....

 in three acts of 1868 with music by Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....

. The French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 libretto was by Henri Meilhac

Henri Meilhac

Henri Meilhac , was a French dramatist and opera librettist.-Biography:Meilhac was born in Paris in 1831. As a young man, he began writing fanciful articles for Parisian newspapers and vaudevilles, in a vivacious boulevardier spirit which brought him to the forefront...

 and Ludovic Halévy

Ludovic Halévy

Ludovic Halévy was a French author and playwright. He was half Jewish : his Jewish father had converted to Christianity prior to his birth, to marry his mother, née Alexandrine Lebas.-Biography:Ludovic Halévy was born in Paris...

. It is situated in an important sequence of fifteen opera works and revivals by Offenbach between 1867 and 1869.

Background

Offenbach began work on the piece in January 1868 while staying in Nice; he was also composing Les brigands and Vert-Vert at the time. The piece was premiered in the Théâtre du Palais-Royal

Théâtre du Palais-Royal

The Théâtre du Palais-Royal is a 750 seat theatre at 38, rue Montpensier in Paris. In 1637 Cardinal Richelieu began work on a theatre on the east wing of the Palais-Royal building, to break the theatre monopoly of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and it was opened in 1641...

 in Paris but achieved nothing like the success of his previous venture at that theatre, La vie parisienne

La vie parisienne

La vie parisienne is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, composed by Jacques Offenbach, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.This work was Offenbach's first full-length piece to portray contemporary Parisian life, unlike his earlier period pieces and mythological subjects...

. Despite having as many disguises as the earlier work, and some isolated successful numbers such as the ‘café-concert

Café-chantant

Café chantant is a type of musical establishment associated with the belle époque in France. Although there is much overlap of definition with cabaret, music hall, vaudeville, etc. the café chantant was originally an outdoor café where small groups of performers performed popular music for the...

’ song of the rural postman (where he debates the merits of long or short legs, and the value of the penny-farthing

Penny-farthing

Penny-farthing, high wheel, high wheeler, and ordinary are all terms used to describe a type of bicycle with a large front wheel and a much smaller rear wheel that was popular after the boneshaker, until the development of the safety bicycle, in the 1880s...

), the work closed by the end of July.

After the initial run, a two-act version was staged at the Palais-Royal on 16 December 1868 with Lucy Arbell as Toto, but this closed by the end of the year. The work was seen at the Carltheater

Carltheater

The Carltheater was a theatre in Vienna. It was in the suburbs in Leopoldstadt at Praterstraße 31 .It was the successor to the Leopoldstädter Theater. After a series of financial difficulties, that theater had been sold in 1838 to the director, Carl Carl, who continued to run it in parallel to his...

 in Vienna in February 1869.

The critical edition of Le château à Toto in the Offenbach Edition Keck has been performed in Frankfurt (2003) and at the Offenbach Festival des Châteaux de Bruniquel (2008).

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 6 May 1868, (Conductor:)
Le Baron de Crécy-Crécy	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Gil-Pérès
Pitou	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Jules Brasseur
Maitre Massepain, notary	baritone	Hyacinthe
Raoul de la Pépinière, marquis	tenor	Lassouche
Un vieux serviteur	bass	Vollet
Hector de la Roche-Trompette ‘Toto’	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Zulma Bouffar Zulma Bouffar Zulma Madeleine Boufflar, known as Zulma Bouffar, born Nérac 24 May 1841, died Couilly-Pont-aux-Dames 20 January 1909, was a French actress and soprano singer, associated with the opéra-bouffe of Paris in the second half of the 19th century who enjoyed a successful career around Europe.-Life and...
Catherine	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...	Alphonsine
Jeanne de Crécy-Crécy	soprano	Worms
Blanche – ‘la Vicomtesse de la Farandole’	mezzo-soprano	Paurelle
Niquette	soprano	Verne
Chorus: Peasants.

Act 1

Hector de la Roche-Trompette, called 'Toto', has blown his fortune in the pleasures of Paris, and returns home in order to auction his ancestral home. The neighbouring Baron Jean de Crécy-Crécy plans to take advantage of this opportunity to win the centuries-old feud between the Crécy-Crécys and the Roche-Trompettes, and use the castle as kennels and stables. The local notary Ernest Massepain is organising the sale. Toto, accompanied by the Marquis Raoul de la Pépinière and the Vicomtesse de La Farandole come to stay at Catherine’s farm. Raoul is fascinated by Catherine who browbeats her admirer Pitou. Toto is moved by the affection shown to him by the daughter of the Baron, Jeanne.

Act 2

In the second act the Vicomtesse (in reality the worldly Blanche Taupier, once a peasant in the region) expresses the wish to buy the castle. Crécy-Crécy bids as much as he can, but he and the Vicomtesse are outdone by the old General Bougachard – Pitou in disguise, to whom Jeanne has lent her dowry to outdo her father.
After the sale during the celebration Pitou loses his disguise and is discovered; he escapes to
Catherine’s farm, where Toto, Raoul and the Vicomtesse are staying.
He flees just as a rural patrol (none other than Massepain, disguised in order to get near the ‘Vicomtesse’) approaches.

Act 3

In the final act the Baron also resorts to disguise, as a rural postman, as he also wishes to court the Vicomtesse.
While Catherine finds Raoul too common for her liking, Pitou, dressed as a dandy wins her heart finally.
The Baron de Crécy-Crécy is unmasked and obliged to allow Jeanne to marry Toto, who will therefore be able to keep the family castle; her father wins over the ‘Vicomtesse’. Toto renounces the pleasures of Paris to return to the simple joys of the country life.