Review: LES BANNIES ONT DROIT D'AMOUR at Théâtre Rouge, Jardin D'Acclimatation

The Chœur à l'Horizon is a professional musical theatre choir created in 2019 and based in Paris, with the ambition of foregrounding the beauty and richness of vocal ensembles in musical theatre as well as works from the classical and contemporary repertoire. The company is managed by the association l'Esquif, and Les Bannis Ont Droit d'Amour marked their sixth annual production. At its helm is Nima Santonja, founder and artistic director, whose formidable credentials span virtually every corner of French musical theatre — from the keyboard of Le Roi Lion at the Théâtre Mogador to the Cours Florent, where she serves as Choral Director and music professor.

There is something quietly audacious about a professional choral ensemble choosing to spend a year preparing a tribute to Alan Menken. The Disney canon is beloved precisely because it sounds effortless — the melodies arrive fully formed, impossible to shake, deceptively simple. That ease is the trap. Put fifty trained singers on a stage to render it live and the seams can show, the magic can deflate. The Chœur à l'Horizon, in their sixth annual concert, found the opposite to be true: in the hands of real musicians, in a proper theatre, this music reveals depths that a cinema speaker never fully delivers.

Les Bannis Ont Droit d'Amour — a title taken from the French version of "God Help the Outcasts" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Menken's own favourite among his scores — announced its ambitions clearly from the start. The programme combined crowd-pleasing staples from La Petite Sirène, La Belle et la Bête, Aladdin, and Hercule with pieces rarely or never performed in French, giving the evening a genuine sense of discovery alongside its pleasures of recognition. The Théâtre Rouge, nestled within the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the 16th arrondissement, provided an intimate and characterful setting — warm enough for the quieter moments, live enough to let the full ensemble bloom.

The ensemble itself was the evening's central achievement. More than fifty professional artists filled the stage, and the choral blend was consistently impressive — not merely loud, but shaped, with clear dynamic intention and genuine colour changes between sections. The arrangement choices were smart, regularly surprising: moments of unaccompanied close harmony gave way to passages of considerable choral weight, and the ensemble moved between these registers with ease. Two arrangers shared the programme's material between them, with the aim of sculpting texture and creating those moments of explosive energy that transform a well-known melody into a distinct live experience — and largely, they succeeded.

The instrumental forces were modest — five musicians in total — which placed considerable responsibility on the piano and necessitated that the arrangements do real harmonic work. They did. The evening never felt under-accompanied; if anything, the leanness kept the vocal lines front and centre, where they belonged.

The title piece arrived at a well-judged moment in the programme — a genuine emotional peak that earned its place rather than being deployed as an easy effect. The larger ensemble numbers from Hercules and Newsies were handled with particular distinction, the company throwing themselves into the propulsive, gospel-inflected writing with obvious relish. More delicate was the handling of the ballads; the legato line on material from Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid was cleanly sustained, with good tuning under pressure.

One of the programme's stated aims — to present French adaptations of Broadway and Disney material that have rarely or never been performed on stage in France — added genuine cultural interest beyond mere spectacle. The French translations of this repertoire carry their own history, their own slight melodic compromises and lyrical adaptations, and hearing them performed live rather than through a nostalgic animation soundtrack gave them unexpected freshness.

If there was a criticism, it was one of pacing rather than execution: the concert's second half arrived at its climactic moments almost too quickly, with a few of the mid-programme pieces functioning more as connective tissue than fully realised numbers. A little more room to breathe in the middle would have made the final stretch feel even more earned.

But these are the quibbles of an evening otherwise generously and enthusiastically delivered. The company's commitment was total throughout, and the audience — clearly well acquainted with this repertoire — responded with the kind of warmth that transforms a concert into something closer to a communal celebration.

A spirited, affectionate, and genuinely accomplished tribute to one of Broadway and Hollywood's greatest living composers. The Chœur à l'Horizon continues to make a compelling case for the choral voice as the natural home of this repertoire.

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