Music: The King of Yvetot

Though he is not well-known in the U.S., Jacques Ibert (rhymes with he bear) is one of France's best composers. U.S. music lovers may have heard his iridescent orchestral piece Escales (Ports of Call), but few knew him as an opera composer. Last week some 2,500 Americans listened to an Ibert opera and saw the composer in person.

A month ago, looking as French as frogs' legs, the beret-bearing, 60-year-old composer arrived at Tanglewood, in Massachusetts' Berkshires, to be guest instructor in composition. Before he left Paris, he had received a cable from Tanglewood's Serge Koussevitzky: "We will perform your [opera] Le Roi d'Yvetot. Are you happy?"

After the first performance, Composer Ibert was happy indeed. So were his students and an overflow audience in leafy Tanglewood's theater-concert hall. Most found the plot of Le Roi, which had first been given in 1930 in Paris' Opera-Comique, pleasantly satirical to the taste, if a little unsubstantial.

The people of medieval Yvetot dethrone their king. Then the women find that their menfolk are too busy running the state to work their land or flatter their wives. So they rebel and restore the king. Meantime, the king does his bit by making love to a serving girl, who eventually becomes queen of Yvetot. That leaves the women in charge of things, as usual, and everybody takes it happily from there.

Ibert's music is more animated and fresh than his plot. A composer who owes a lot to Debussy and Ravel, he gives his orchestra a palette full of colors, his 40 singers (at Tanglewood, all students) arias and choruses with wit, tune and charm. Le Roi is the work of a king among craftsmen, if not of a composer working by divine right.