100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (11 page)

ACT II

In the Kremlin at Moscow, where the Czars of Russia always lived, we find the two children of Boris with their old nurse. The daughter is mourning the death of her fiancé, and the nurse vainly tries to comfort her by singing a fable about a couple of young lovers. Then she turns her attention to the little boy, Feodor. She sings a song to him, too—about a gnat who threw a stick at a flea and hurt himself so badly that he died. Nurse and Feodor then play games together, clapping their hands in time. But when Czar Boris comes in, the games
have to stop. Boris turns to the map of Russia that Feodor has been studying from, and it saddens the aging man. Here he has a great monologue. Things are going badly in Russia, both politically and economically. Everyone blames the Czar, who feels guilty, for he still remembers the murdered body of the little Czarevitch. A nobleman enters to whisper to Boris about dangerous intrigues at court, but the Czar dismisses him, turns once more to his son, and gets some comfort and pleasure from the silly story about a parrot that the boy tells him.

The comfort does not last long. Prince Shuiski now enters. He tells Boris about the growing success of a pretender, who is raising an army. Boris demands to know whether it was really little Dmitri who had been murdered by his orders. The crafty Shuiski tells him that it was, but that the body did not decay, and that a smile continued to play on its face. The Czar dismisses Shuiski. Then, left alone, he is prey to all his superstitions. His conscience bothers him, and he imagines he sees the bloodstained body of the murdered boy. In an agony of fear, he cries for it to leave him in peace. And the act ends as he pitifully begs for God’s forgiveness.

ACT III

Much of the music of this act—called “the Polish act”—was added by Moussorgsky in his second version. The criticism had been made that there wasn’t enough music for a good leading lady. Moussorgsky agreed.

Scene 1
Dmitri has been making progress in his effort to overthrow Boris and supplant him. He has reached Poland; he has begun to raise an army of followers; and he has the support of certain Polish nobles, including the Voivode (roughly—Governor) of Sandomir. The Voivode’s beautiful daughter Marina has ambitions to become the Czarina; and in the first scene, after being entertained by her ladies-in-waiting with songs about love, she tells them that tales of derring-do suit her better. After dismissing them, she sings an aria, in the rhythm of the Polish mazurka, indicating quite clearly that it is through Dmitri that she expects to realize
her ambitions. Suddenly there appears in her apartment the rather sinister figure of Rangoni, a Jesuit priest, who lectures her sternly on her duty to convert Russia to the true church of Rome once she is Czarina. Marina is terrified.

Scene 2
takes place by a fountain in the romantic garden of the castle of Sandomir. The false Dmitri awaits a rendezvous with his beloved Marina, for whom he once thought of giving up his ambitions. Rangoni appears to strengthen these ambitions, to assure him that Marina loves him despite certain snubs she has had to endure for his sake, and to ask only to be allowed to accompany them to Moscow and be his spiritual guide.

And now the garden is filled with fashionable guests, who dance a polonaise, paying court to and even flirting with Marina, as Dmitri jealously watches. The scene concludes with a long and melodious duet in which Marina alternately repulses and encourages the pretender. The false Dmitri ends by vowing to lead an army to Moscow, and to make Marina his Czarina. As they embrace, Rangoni steps out from behind his hiding place, while the music in the orchestra—no longer on the famous love theme-seems to signify that this victory will be, not Dmitri’s or Marina’s, but that of the Roman Catholic Church.

ACT IV

Scene 1
There are two scenes in the last act, and sometimes one is given first, sometimes the other. I shall start with the one usually given first in the Rimsky version. It shows how the people are rising to follow the false Dmitri in rebellion against the hated Czar Boris. In the dead of winter, in the forest of Kromy, a ragged crowd drags in a nobleman, bound and gagged. They mock this follower of the Czar, and they mock the Czar, too. The village idiot comes in, and a group of children mock him, for he sings a foolish ditty. Our old friends, the vagabond monks Varlaam and Missail, also join the crowd of rebels. But when two Jesuit priests come in, praying, the crowd turns on them. Led by Varlaam and Missail,
the peasants attack the monks and drag them off, intending to hang them.

But now Grigori, the pretender, rides in on a fine horse. All bow to him; he promises to rid them of Boris; and, shouting their allegiance, they follow the false Dmitri. Only the fool is left on the stage. Sadly he sits down; the snow begins to fall; and he sings his prophecy:

The foe will come …

Darkness will descend …

Weep, weep, you hungry Russian people!

Scene 2
takes place in the council hall of the Kremlin in the year 1605. The boyars—that is, the noblemen of the Czar’s council—are discussing in a foolish way the revolt of the false Dmitri. When Prince Shuiski comes in, he tells them of the agony that he saw Czar Boris suffering a few days before, and he describes the scene in which Boris imagined he saw the murdered Czarevitch. The foolish boyars will not believe him. But suddenly Boris himself enters, deeply distraught. Shuiski calls in an old priest, who turns out to be Pimen, the monk who shared the cell with Grigori in Act I. Pimen tells Boris about the dream of a blind shepherd. He had seen the murdered boy Dmitri in that dream, and the boy had urged him to pray at his grave. So the blind shepherd had gone to the cathedral of Uglich and prayed there, and lo, he was cured of his blindness. Boris hears this tale with growing horror. At its end he cries for air and falls fainting into a chair. He dismisses the boyars and calls for his son, Feodor. The boyars and Boris himself now know that he is dying, and he sings a last and deeply touching farewell to little Feodor. He advises him how to be a good ruler and begs him to care for his sister, Xenia. Then he prays heaven to protect the boy and to guide him.

Off-stage the funeral bell begins to toll, and a sad chorus is heard. Presently a procession of boyars and monks files in, stunned into silence. The once mighty Boris rises to his full height. “I am still your Czar!” he cries, and then, more feebly, “God forgive me. There—there is your Czar.” A last spasm
overtakes him as he still points to little Feodor. And as he whispers, “Forgive me!” he falls back, dead, in his chair—or, as some of the more athletic bassos act it, rolling on the floor.

    
Postscript for the historically curious:
The regency and reign of Boris were, historically, a very mixed blessing for Russia. Among his “reforms” was a law that prevented peasants from moving off their land, thus virtually creating serfdom in Russia. It was this law that inspired many peasants to join the standard of Dmitri, as is shown in the forest of Kromy scene.

The more experienced part of Dmitri’s army included Poles, Cossacks, Hessians, and Russian exiles. They were virtually at the gates of Moscow when Boris died unexpectedly April 13, 1605. Dmitri, a well-educated, able man, had himself crowned Czar, executed the widow and son of Boris, bettered the lot of the peasants, formed a number of Western alliances, and saved the life, on one occasion, of the rather oily character Prince Shuiski of the opera. He was also received into the Roman Catholic Church by Rangoni.

On May 8, 1606, less than a year after his coronation, Dmitri married Marina, and nine days later, in a plot hatched by Shuiski, was assassinated. Thereupon Shuiski became Czar.

Grigori was not the only “false Dmitri.” A second one was successful enough to raise an army of over 100,000, unseat Shuiski, and marry Marina, the widow of the first false Dmitri. He was murdered by a man whom he had ordered flogged. That was in 1610.

Two years later there was still another false Dmitri. This one succeeded in persuading the Cossacks to acknowledge him as Czar but reached Moscow only as a prisoner. There he was executed.

CAPRICCIO

Opera in one act by Richard Strauss with libretto
in German by Clemens Krauss with the
assistance of the composer

Time: about 1775

Place: near Paris

First performance at Munich, October 28, 1942

    In an opera, which is more important, the words or the music? Mozart plumped for the music, Gluck for the words. It is a favorite subject of discussion among composers and aestheticians, and Richard Strauss discussed it at length with his conductor, Clemens Krauss, in 1933 during the rehearsals for
Arabella
. Six years and several operas later, Strauss wrote to Krauss suggesting that they collaborate on the libretto of an opera on the subject. It was to be the last opera that Strauss completed.

Only one act, the work still takes almost two and a half hours to perform, and most of it is given over to the discussion of this very interesting but not very dramatic question of aesthetics. The discussion takes place in the home of a charming French Countess named Madeleine, who lives near Paris in
the latter half of the eighteenth century. (This was about the time when Gluck was trying to get operas to make more sense by insisting that the words were more important than the music.) Among the guests of the Countess are Olivier, a poet; Flamand, a composer; Clairon, an actress; La Roche, a theatrical director; Taupe, a tenor; and the Countess’s brother. The discussion is held in a civilized fashion; and before the guests leave for Paris, they agree that Olivier and Flamand shall write an opera on the subject in which each of those present will portray himself.

Olivier and Flamand are associated in another way, too: each is in love with the Countess (who admires both of them), and Olivier has written a sonnet to her which Flamand has set to music. And Madeleine has promised to decide, by eleven the next morning, which of the two she will marry.

The last scene finds Madeleine alone in her boudoir. (Strauss loved to write long scenes for sopranos alone—especially alone in their boudoirs.) One immediately thinks of the famous mirror monologue in Act I of
Der Rosenkavalier
. Well, there is a mirror in this one, too; and the general atmosphere of sweet and melancholy sentiment is not dissimilar.

“Tomorrow at eleven!” begins the soliloquy. Madeleine simply cannot make up her mind. Which art is more potent? Poetry or music? She goes to her harp and sings over the sonnet written to her—a fine, old-fashioned love sonnet. She feels herself a prisoner—a prisoner of the web of two arts. Choose one and not the other? Impossible! So she turns to her mirror to ask counsel. But the mirror has no answer either. And the opera ends without our finding out just who will be the lucky one tomorrow at eleven.

If you ask me—I think it will be the musician. His music seems to me to be so much more persuasive than that German sonnet! But then, that’s only one man’s opinion.

CARMEN

Opera in four acts by Georges Bizet with libretto
by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy
based on the novel by Prosper Mérimée

Time: about 1820

Place: Seville and thereabout

First performance at Paris, March 3, 1875

    
Carmen
is, I believe, the most widely popular of all operas. There is a legend that disappointment over the failure of its premiere caused Bizet’s death three months later. But the fact is that the opera was more popularly received than any music Bizet had composed before (it scored thirty-seven performances at the Opéra Comique in its first season and has been performed there more than three thousand times since), and Bizet died, at thirty-seven, of a physical disease-probably an embolism. It is now part of the repertory of every opera company in every language—even the Japanese—and its popularity is not confined to the opera stage. It has been made
into restaurant music, virtuoso piano transcriptions, and several movies; and the latest and most successful of the movie versions,
Carmen Jones
, is based on a Negro operetta version that was a huge Broadway hit.