Is there a more perfect soufflé than Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne?

Mysteriously it has been poorly served on disc where its catchy ditties transcend the slenderest of plots. This Christian Lacroix production on DVD, filmed in 2021 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, is only its second filmed outing (the other is Laurent Pelly’s 2008 update), but if you think you know the work, you will be in for an intriguing surprise.

Despite its eventual success, the original 1866 production was troubled. The actors, many of them supposedly of limited ability, lost heart with the material written for the fourth and fifth acts forcing Offenbach and his librettists Meilhac and Halévy to jettison the entire Act IV and hastily rewrite whole scenes and songs. When the work was revived in 1875, the composer compressed the revised Acts IV and V into a single act, which is how it has been heard ever since. 

For this new staging, the creative team has attempted to restore the original, speculating that maybe the authors threw the baby out with the bath water. Sadly,...