Die schöne Helena (La Belle Hélène)

Just as in "Orpheus in the Underworld", this opera-travesty by Jacques
Offenbach (1819-1880) also uses an ancient Greek subject as a means of
caricaturing contemporary social and political issues. The main target of
Offenbach's barbs are the unscrupulousness and moral decline of France's
"Second Empire". The action of the ancient saga of gods and heroes is
stripped of its loftiness and parodistically reduced to an ironic display
of very human motivations, weaknesses and excesses. "The ambivalence of
Offenbach's genius emerges here more clearly than in any other of his works
- a genius that masters with the same skillfullness all the facets of
musical expression: emotion and intellect, romance and parody." (Bernard
Grun, Cultural History of the Operetta)

Composer:	Jacques Offenbach
Title:	Die schöne Helena (La Belle Hélène)
Conductor:	Franz Allers
Staged By:	Axel von Ambesser
Soloist:	Anna Moffo, René Kollo, Josef Meinrad, Iwan Rebroff, Harald Serafin, Simone Rethel
Set:	Gerd Krauss
Orchestra:	Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart
Chorus:	Südfunk-Chor Stuttgart
Video Director:	Axel von Ambesser
Genre:	Operetta
Length:	110 minutes
Cat.No.:	A05004529