There can’t be many French Revolutionary propaganda comedies but Cherubini’s Koukourgi is one of them.  Written in the crisis year of 1792 and intended for the Théatre Feydeau it never actually made it onto the stage and remained unperformed until it was staged by the Stadttheater Klagenfurt in 2010.  By then the dialogues, the overture and the finale had been lost but music director Peter Marschik found a couple of bits from other Cherubini operas to fill the musical gaps and director Josef E. Köpplinger supplied rather arch German dialogue to link the musical numbers (sung in French).

Continue reading →