33^rd Festival Season - 2011

MADAME POMPADOUR

Music by Leo Fall

Original German Libretto by Rudolf Schanzer and Ernst Welisch

New English Version by Richard Traubner

ACT I: The poet-dramatist-wit-pamphleteer Voltaire reads an invitation at Versailles for the courtiers to attend a masked ball. King Louis XV, disguised as a wolf, attends the ball with four tarts. Madame d'Etiolles, wife of a Parisian businessman, attends the ball with her husband. Her friend, Madame d'Estrades, entreats Madame d'Etiolles to try flirting with the king, who is anxious to settle down with someone a bit more stable, not to mention accomplished in social and artistic endeavors. The king falls immediately for Madame d'Etiolles, and invites her to a quiet inn. The queen is not amused and confronts Voltaire with her distaste for the king's philandering. The king unmasks himself, and shocks the crowd by ennobling the former Madame d'Etiolles as the new Marquise de Pompadour. Several months later, Madame Pompadour is awaited in her chambers by an assortment of personages. Her chamberlain, Collin, ushers in Madame d'Estrades, who has brought a few regimental candidates to be on the marquise's night watch. Pompadour picks for the job the cousin of Madame d'Estrades, the handsome young soldier Rene. She instructs him in military bearing while he cheekily endeavors to win her love. Police Chief Maurepas tells Collin that it is suspected that Voltaire is the secret lover of Madame Pompadour. Voltaire and Pompadour then perform a scene from the dramatist's new play about the biblical character Joseph and the allures of Potiphar's wife.

ACT II: Rene reports for duty in Pompadour's chambers and is told to wait in her bedroom. But she rashly leaves, deciding to ride her stallion. The king, supposedly on a hunting trip, enters her rooms suddenly and is shocked to find Rene there, wearing the king's dressing gown. In an effort to calm the king, Madame d'Estrades reveals that Rene is in fact married, and his simple wife is quickly made more presentable to the court. Madame Pompadour is cheered up by a recital of her many accomplishments, but the king enters with two sisters on his arms, his new conquests. The saddened marquise realizes her fate, but the king keeps her on at Versailles in honor of her many artistic and charitable activities.