The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta

ACT II Some time has passed, during which Stromminger has died and Wally has inherited his fortune. She returns to the village for a festival and, believing that Afra is now engaged to her beloved Hagenbach, insults her. Hagenbach, hearing of this, decides to avenge Afra. He dances with Wally, kisses her and swears undying love, and she is enraptured – until the mocking laughter of the onlookers alerts her to the truth. Furious and humiliated, she promises to marry Gellner if he kills Hagenbach.

ACT III Wally goes home and, reflecting more calmly on the situation, realises that she must stop Gellner from harming Hagenbach. But before she can act he bursts in, telling her he has pushed Hagenbach into a ravine. Wally, spurred on by guilt and remorse, goes down a rope into the ravine and rescues Hagenbach. Wally gives him into Afra’s care and leaves.

ACT IV Living alone and isolated on the mountainside, Wally resigns herself to her fate. Suddenly Hagenbach, fully recovered, appears and says he has come to tell her he loves her. Wally confesses her part in his accident’ but he reassures her of his love. As they make their way down to the village the sound of an approaching avalanche is heard. Hagenbach is swept away by the snow and, distraught, Wally throws herself after him.

Music

Set in the Swiss Alps, La Wally is notable for its incursions into local colour, including Tyrolean dances in Act II. But at the end of the day this is Italian opera, looking forward to the kind of through-composed verismo writing of Puccini (whose Manon Lescaut appeared the following year) and quite well characterised. Its weakness is a story which, for all its momentous happenings, makes less than powerful theatre.

Highlight

Wally’s poignant farewell at the end of Act I, ‘Ebben? Ne andrò lontana’, is the most celebrated item in all Catalani’s output and a tune made still more famous by extensive use in the 1981 film Diva.

Did You Know?

This opera became known largely through the efforts of the conductor Toscanini; he saddled his daughter with the heroine’s name.

Recommended Recording

Renata Tebaldi, Mario del Monaco, Monte Carlo Opera/Fausto Cleva. Decca 425 417-2. A finer cast than it probably deserves.

Gustave Charpentier (#ulink_58d7176b-7159-528e-a24d-6a210a551bda)

(1860–1956)

Louise (1900)

Not to be confused with the earlier Marc-Antoine Charpentier who wrote a famous Messe de Minuit and several less-famous pastoral operas in French Baroque taste, Gustave Charpentier was a student of Massenet at the late 19th-century Paris Conservatoire. He began work on the one and only score for which he is known, Louise, while still studying there. An urban low-life forerunner of La Bohème, Louise was an instant success and Charpentier rested on its laurels ever after, writing little in the last half-century of his life beyond a sequel, Julien, that reworked already-written music and never caught on.

Louise (#ulink_497ddad1-6d44-51e7-9b15-55ef10b3e2e9)

FORM: Opera in four acts; in French

COMPOSER: Gustave Charpentier (1860–1956)

LIBRETTO: Gustave Charpentier (and, possibly, Saint-Pol-Roux)

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Paris, 2 February 1900

Principal Characters

Louise, a young Parisian working-class girl

Soprano

Her mother

Soprano

Her father

Baritone

Julien, a young poet

Tenor

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: Montmartre, Paris

ACT I Louise and Julien are in love, but Julien has failed to gain Louise’s parents’ approval for their marriage. He tells Louise that he has written again to her parents but, if they still refuse to let them marry, she must elope with him. Louise’s mother mocks Julien, saying he is a lazy good-for-nothing who drinks too much, and they argue violently until Louise’s father comes home and opens Julien’s letter. He tries to be reasonable but his wife becomes increasingly vituperative about Julien, and Louise collapses in tears.

ACT II Early in the morning Julien and his friends are waiting near Louise’s workplace. When she arrives he manages to talk to her, but is angered by her refusal to leave her parents, without their blessing, to live with him. At work, the other girls tease Louise and then discuss the glories of love and romance. When Julien appears outside the window to serenade her, Louise can bear no more and abruptly leaves the workroom to join him.

ACT III Now happily living together and very much in love, Julien and Louise take part in the local carnival procession, during which Louise is crowned Muse of Montmartre. But when Louise’s mother appears it is as a very different person from the termagant of Act I; looking sad and anxious, she explains that Louise’s father is very ill and desperate to see his daughter. On the understanding that she can leave when she wants to, Louise finally agrees to go and see him, despite Julien’s suspicions.

ACT IV Louise’s father has recovered but he has changed and become irritable and dissatisfied with his life. Both he and Louise’s mother refuse to let her go back to Julien, in spite of her obvious sadness and longing. In the end Louise insists on leaving, pushing past her father as he tries to bar the way, and leaving him to curse Paris, which has stolen his daughter from him.

Music and Background

Bustling with the atmosphere of Montmartre street life, Charpentier’s score is rich in local colour and memorable for the avant-garde incorporation of sewing-machine noise, in the interests of realism. Otherwise, the music is more conventional for its time than is the Zola-esque story of free-living and loving it sets. Influences are basically Gounod and Massenet.

Highlights

This is effectively a one-number opera and the (very celebrated) number is the Act III romance with which Louise celebrates her happiness with Julien, ‘Depuis le jour’.

Did You Know?

Louise was sensationally successful on its first night and was performed one thousand times in Paris alone during Charpentier’s lifetime.

Recommended Recording

lleana Cotrubas, Plácido Domingo, New Philharmonia Orchestra/Georges Prêtre. Sony S3K 46429. Nicely done and no real competition.

Luigi Cherubini (#ulink_25d31294-0f52-5ac0-99cd-60c9b9acc1c8)

(1760–1842)

Lodoïska (1790)

Eliza (1794)

Médée (1797)

Les Deux Journées (1800)

Born in Florence to a musical father, Cherubini was a prodigy who began writing stage works in his teens, came to London in his twenties, and finally settled in Paris where he founded an opera company that somehow survived the traumas of the Revolution. A survivor himself, Cherubini perfected a genre of heroic rescue-opera with spoken dialogue, designed to please post-Revolutionary tastes after the old style of grand, static and completely sung Classical stories lost favour as a relic of the royal past. His influence in France was short-lived, but in Austro-Germany it was considerable and fed through to Beethoven’s rescue-opera Fidelio.