The Fair Helen by Offenbach, Céa 24 Aibr 2019, Ó (2018/2019), Faoi stiúir Pascale-Sabine Chevroton, Seoltóir Marie Jacquot, Mainfranken Theater, Würzburg, Germany

Helena is considered the most beautiful woman in the world. However, she is terribly bored. As the wife of the king of Sparta, Menelaus, she leads an unsatisfied existence. So she asks Venus to finally find her a lover worthy of the name. At a competition in Sparta, she sets her sights on a candidate: an impressive shepherd with quick wits who is in fact none other than Prince Paris of Troy. The providence of the goddess of love unfolds its effect. Husband Menelaus is summarily ordered to Crete, and Helena receives her lover Paris in her apartments "in a dream". But Menelaus returns earlier than expected and discovers the infidelity. The betrayed husband now tries desperately to protect his honor, With Beautiful Helena, Jacques Offenbach creates an entertaining version of the story leading up to the Trojan War. The operetta is not just a parody of ancient Greece. Rather, Offenbach caricatures the heroic models of grand opera as well as the better French society of the Second Empire under Napoleon III. First performed on December 17, 1864 at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, the material, which Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy enriched with politically explosive detailed knowledge in the libretto, still has potential for social criticism today.