Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel follow up their excellent recording of Grétry’s Richard Coeur-de-Lion (1/21) with this DVD of the slightly earlier La caravane du Caire. Whereas Richard is an opéra-comique, that is to say with spoken dialogue, The Caravan to Cairo is an opéra-ballet, with much choral writing and, of course, plenty of dancing. It was performed before the court at Fontainebleau on October 30, 1783, and revived at the Paris Opéra a couple of months later. The caravan proceeded on its way for decades, racking up over 500 performances by 1829.

La caravane is one of the many products of the craze for operas on oriental subjects that ran throughout the 18th century and beyond. Grétry is unlikely to have known Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782); a possible model is La rencontre imprévue (Vienna, 1764), though it was not one of the opéras-comiques by Gluck that were staged in Paris in 1775. Five excerpts from La caravane were included on an attractive album from Versailles, ‘La captive du sérail’ (5/22).

The story is a simple and familiar one. Saint-Phar and his Indian wife Zélime, the daughter of a nawab, have been captured and are being taken to Cairo by Husca, the leader of the caravan. Osman, the Pasha of Egypt, chooses Zélime for himself, greatly to the distress of his wife Almaïde. Saint-Phar, a free man released by Husca after repulsing an attack on the caravan, is foiled in an attempt at rescuing his wife. Execution is about to follow when it turns out that he is the son of Florestan, who is being honoured by the Pasha for saving one of his ships from shipwreck. Father and son are joyfully reunited; Osman pardons Saint-Phar, releases Zélime and is reconciled with Almaïde.

The production, assigned to the team responsible for Richard Coeur-de-Lion, is a delight. Marshall Pynkoski’s direction is straightforward, with no gimmicks. As with Richard, extra acting space is provided by a platform that runs across the pit, behind the conductor. Antoine Fontaine’s designs are tastefully ‘oriental’; a ship can be seen at anchor, perhaps the vessel saved by Florestan. Camille Assaf’s brightly coloured costumes are a gallery of 18th-century portraits brought to life; one can’t but be amused by their showing no trace of the rigours of the journey across the desert. Subtle lighting by Hervé Gary, and the choreography by Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg, co-founder with Pynkowski of the Canadian company Opera Atelier, is as unexaggerated as his direction. You have to make quite an effort to discover that the exemplary filming is by Daphné Vollereau.

As I wrote in my review of ‘La captive du sérail’, the overture ‘begins with a stirring crescendo over a pedal-point (the “Mannheim steamroller”)’. I also mentioned the oboe solo in the middle section. Played here by Guillaume Cuiller with a lovely fat tone, the tune recurs at the end of the opera, for the C major rejoicing of the whole company. And in the opening number, the chorus of travellers is followed by the chorus of slaves, after which the two groups come together: two instances of the care with which Grétry invested this excellent score.

The mood is generally cheerful. In the very first aria, coquettishly sung by Lili Aymonino, a slave girl says that she can laugh at the blows of fate because she is French and could subjugate a sultan. Once in Cairo, she is paraded with other slaves before the Pasha, singing to the accompaniment of a harp. An Italian slave-girl follows with an opera seria metaphor aria, ‘Dans l’horreur de la tempête’, adapted from a text by Metastasio. Chantal Santon Jeffery, dazzling in the coloratura, is preceded and followed by a dance – this is a real divertissement – after which a German slave-girl is presented; but, as we know, Osman the Pasha selects Zélime.

The most powerful music is given to Saint-Phar and his father Florestan. Pierre Derhet makes a dashing hero and gives a splendid account, supported by trumpets and timpani, of ‘Oui, ce bras à ton pouvoir supreme’. Florestan laments his missing son in ‘Ah! si pour la patrie’, a chromatically inflected aria in C minor which Jean-Gabriel Saint-Martin delivers with feeling; though I suspect that he had more fun in the part of Husca, the comically drawn slave merchant. Immediately afterwards come two arias in quick succession for Almaïde: Marie Perbost, formidable in ‘Je souffrirais qu’une rivale’, is sweetness itself in the contrast of ‘J’abjure la haine cruelle’, the vocal line doubled and ornamented by a gentle flute.

Zélime is not given an aria; she has a duet with Saint-Phar near the beginning but not, sadly, with the Pasha. The part is underwritten, perhaps – she has four words to sing in Act 2, then nothing till the denouement – but Hélène Guilmette establishes her as a character both forthright and tender. Robert Gleadow – this excellent bass-baritone, like his fellow Canadian Nathan Berg, seems to have vanished from these shores – is superb as the Pasha. His lyrical, impassioned outpouring of love for Zélime, ‘Vraiment Almaïde encore’, is one of the highlights of the production. Enguerrand de Hys as Tamorin, the head of the harem, minces around as the eunuch he is presumably supposed to be, his light tenor easily meeting the demands of his aria about the butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.

The chorus and orchestra of Le Concert Spirituel are all one could wish for, and Hervé Niquet conducts admirably. One pleasure not to be missed is the sight of the percussion stick known as a ‘jingling Johnny’. I enjoyed this enormously and so, I hope, will you.