Ô mon bel inconnu

A hat maker, his wife, his daughter, their maid,  and amorous complications between a small shop in the city centre and a villa by the sea: in Ô mon bel inconnu, the brilliant and acerbic writing of Sacha Guitry perfectly captures the quirks and qualms of a society that dreams of elsewhere, set to the sprightly music of Reynaldo Hahn.

A bourgeois tragedy that ends in farce, this is how the witty Sacha Guitry liked to describe Ô mon bel inconnu, a play with a suggestive title: inadmissible fantasies of romantic encounters, the mirage of a better life ...  a situation not without echo in our own unconfessed aspirations. The composer Reynaldo Hahn has devised music somewhere between cafe-concert and grand romantic score, where saxophone and piano respond to the strings. On stage, Émeline Bayard honours the elegance of the 1930s and unveils, with subdued staging,  the misunderstandings, blunders, and complex stratagems of the rather endearing protagonists. A dashing and tart musical comedy that offers a perfect mix of humour and poetry.

Music Reynaldo Hahn
Libretto Sacha Guitry (Editions Salabert)

Musical director Samuel Jean
Staging Émeline Bayart

Orchestre des Frivolités Parisiennes

Set and costumes Anne-Sophie Grac
Lighting Joël Fabing

Prosper Marc Labonnette
Antoinette Clémence Tilquin
Marie-Anne Sheva Tehoval
Felicie Émeline Bayart
Claude Victor Sicard
Jean-Paul / M. Victor Jean-François Novelli
Hilarion Lallumette Carl Ghazarossian

^{Production Palazzetto Bru Zane
Coproduction Tours Opera, Avignon Opera, Opéra de Rouen Normandie
Costumes produced by the workshops of the Avignon Opera
Stage sets produced by the workshops of the Tours Opera}

^{Illustration © Lorenzo Mattotti}