Grétry was in his 49th year in 1790 when he composed La jeunesse de Pierre le Grand. It was his first stage work after the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution. Even though he had been a favoured employee of the royal household, and for a while director of music for Marie Antoinette, Grétry succeeded in pleasing the Parisian public throughout the 1790s, altering his stance from pro-royalist to supporter of the new republic. This ‘comédie mêlée de chants’ stands halfway between.

It shows some sympathy for the notion of royalty (Louis XVI was still in theory the king), while celebrating the common people. The libretto, by JN Bouilly, was based in part on Voltaire’s Histoire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand, and tells the story of the carpenter-Tsar Peter. While working in the shipyards, Peter meets and falls in love with Catherine, who after some misunderstandings becomes his bride and Tsarina.

This live performance from Compiègne uses a drastically altered version of the piece prepared by Pierre Jourdain. The original four acts have been condensed to three; all the dialogue has been replaced by a narration, written by Jourdain, which places the action in a French village, where a group of travelling players put on the opera. In his introduction, Jourdain states that ‘the dialogue of the period was not suitable for an audience in 2001’. We will probably never have the opportunity to find out why, but as it stands the conceit seems quite effective.

The music is certainly very interesting, for while exhibiting the traits familiar from Grétry’s earlier, better-known works, such as Richard Coeur-de-lion and L’amant jaloux (aka Les fausses apparences), it has several scenes that are forward-looking.

Christophe Einhorn, as Tsar Peter, has a fine aria in which he declares his love, ‘Je vais unir à ce que j’aime’; this is very much the youthful Peter, and Einhorn’s light tenor negotiates the florid fast section with some charm. There is an excellent duet for Peter and Catherine, sung by Anne-Sophie Schmidt, but it is her scene, accompanied by a quartet of onlookers, when she believes Peter has deserted her, ‘Qu’entends-je?’, which is the most intriguing. Intended, perhaps, as a parody of Gluckian frenzy, it also seems to anticipate the heroic style of the early 19th century. Philippe Le Chevalier, in the character of Lefort, ‘leading the Emperor of Russia in everything great that he did’ in Grétry’s own words, has a strophic song with chorus, obviously intended to be the big crowd-pleaser, ‘Jadis un célèbre Empereur’. This has the rather hopeful chorus, in which the spectators join, declaring that wealth, rank and grandeur do not make for happiness.

Olivier Opdebeeck and the chamber orchestra and choir attempt a period sound. There is no note about the orchestration – many of Grétry’s scores were later updated by other hands – but the whole performance is atmospheric and in its small-scale way casts an interesting sidelight on a still little-known part of Parisian operatic history.