Dog days: Opera Rara & The Hallé to collaborate on the UK premiere of Offenbach's political satire, Barkouf

Offenbach by André Gill, 1866, with Barkouf in the bottom right

By 1860, Offenbach had written countless one-act operas for the Bouffes-Parisiens along with longer works such as Orphée aux enfers and Geneviève de Brabant, but his three-act opéra bouffe, Barkouf was his first work for the Opéra-Comique. 

In Barkouf Offenbach wrote in a more complex vein, with modern harmonies and complicated part-writing while remaining with the spirit of opéra-bouffe. The reactions of the critics were violently opposed to the work, and after its first run it was not revived. However, the work's modern editor Jean-Christophe Keck has suggested that Offenbach had never pushed his musical language so far, and would not go further – until Les Contes d'Hoffmann.

Most of Barkouf survived in manuscript in the hands of Offenbach's descendants, and editor Jean-Christophe Keck has tracked down the missing pages. The work received its first performance since 1861 in 2018 at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg.

Now Opera Rara is giving us a chance to hear it as in collaboration with The Hallé they will be presenting the work's UK premiere on 4 October 2026 at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester in association with a recording of the work using Jean-Christophe Keck’s critical edition. The Hallé will be conducted by Paul Daniel who led the award-winning revival of Offenbach’s La Princesse de Trébizonde (ORC63) [see my review], with the chorus of English National Opera. The cast includes Anne-Catherine Gillet, Antoinette Dennefeld and Katia Ledoux, who all appeared in La Princesse de Trébizonde, and they are joined by Opera Rara newcomers Mathias Vidal, François Piolino, Philippe Talbot and Thibault de Damas.

The opera is a political satire which seems alarmingly prescient today. A dog, Barkouf, is appointed governor of a fictitious place called “Lahore”, whose population has reached its wits’ end with the corruption and incompetence of successive leaders. This wasn't the first time that Offenbach had featured a dog as a character, Orphée aux enfers features Cerbère (Cerberus), three-headed guardian of the underworld who barks though the scene may have been cut

Full details from the Opera Rara website.