100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (16 page)

ACT I

Scene 1
After a classically tragic overture, Belinda persuades Queen Dido of Carthage, her mistress, that she could fall in love with Aeneas. Aeneas is, of course, the Trojan hero who has been cast up on the shores of Carthage after the fall of Troy. Dido is already more than half in love with the man, and when, toward the end of the scene, he pleads his own case, it is clear that he will win it. The chorus (which seems to be always present at the most intimate domestic conferences in some classical operas) is all in favor of the romance.

Scene 2
In the second scene we meet the villains. These include a sorceress, a pair of head witches, and a whole chorus of assistant witches. They are really more like the witches in
Macbeth
than anything that Virgil ever dreamed of. In their cave they are busy planning to stir up a storm, to separate Dido and Aeneas, and to make the hero desert the heroine. They do it in high spirits, and Purcell provided two delightful passages of laughter, and another (at the end) with an echo to indicate a “deep-vaulted cell.”

ACT II

The very short second act concerns the famous hunt that Queen Dido has arranged for the entertainment of her distinguished guest. The chorus, Belinda, and later on a “Second Woman” describe the grove, and Aeneas boasts about the boar he has slain. When Dido and the ladies are driven off by the storm, Aeneas is kept from joining them by a mysterious spirit. This character, who is dressed like the messenger Mercury, tells Aeneas that he must leave Dido that very night, for he is destined to found the great city of Rome. Aeneas laments the necessity of deserting his beloved Queen, but he knows that he must go. The act closes with the witches rejoicing that their plans are going on in great shape.

ACT III

The last act begins with a chorus of Trojan sailors delightedly preparing to leave the hospitable shores of Carthage. Then come the Sorceress and her chorus of witches, who are even more delighted. My favorite couplet in this joyous passage goes:

Our plot has took
,

The Queen’s forsook
.

That, of course, is strictly seventeenth-century English syntax.

Then the tragic Dido comes on, with her followers. She is completely resigned to her fate, and even when Aeneas offers to defy the commands of Jove and to remain with her, she adamantly insists upon being deserted by her lover. The music becomes more powerfully tragic here as she sings the great aria
When I am laid in earth
. The calm dignity of this farewell has few equals, I believe, in all music. The opera closes with a brief and touching chorus.

DON CARLOS

Opera in five acts by Giuseppe Verdi with libretto
in French by François Joseph Méry and
Camille du Locle based on the play by Johann
Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. Usually sung in
the revised Italian four-act version by Antonio
Ghislanzoni

Time: 1559

Place: Madrid

First performance at Paris, March 11, 1867

    
Don Carlos
is a fine, mature work, but it is seldom given. One reason is that it demands so large a cast of many fine singers. It requires not only the customary leading soprano, contralto, tenor, baritone, and bass, but an
extra
equally fine basso, and an extra coloratura soprano—no less—in a comparatively minor role. The first performance, in Paris in 1867, was (perhaps for this reason) a comparative failure. Fifteen years later Verdi shortened and revised the whole opera, omitting
one whole act. He modeled it, then, more closely on Schiller’s play of Don
Carlos
, and in this form it has had at least a
succès d’estime
in many opera houses. The following description is based on the revised version.

ACT I

Scene 1
The story takes place in sixteenth-century Madrid. In the monastery of San Giusto a mysterious monk, accompanied by other monks, prays for the peace of soul of Charles V, once the proud Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. His grandson, Don Carlos, enters a moment later, and imagines he hears the voice of Charles still haunting the convent. In an aria he speaks of his love for the beautiful Elizabeth of Valois. Elizabeth, whom he had met in France, was forced, for political reasons, to marry Carlos’s father, Philip II of Spain. As Carlos pours out his heart, his great friend Rodrigo enters. He advises Carlos to ask for the governorship of Flanders: there the people are suffering and there he may forget Elizabeth. The two men, in a fine duet, swear eternal friendship
(Dio, che nell’alma infondere amor
—“God, who has filled our hearts with love”). As the scene closes, they see Philip and his queen going to prayers in the monastery, and they renew their vows of friendship.

Scene 2
takes place in a garden and begins with a Moorish love song sung by the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, led by the Princess Eboli. We shall be hearing more of this Princess, for she is in love with Don Carlos, just as the Queen is. Following the love song, Rodrigo has an interview with Queen Elizabeth. He begs her to persuade Philip to send Carlos to Flanders as Governor. When Rodrigo retires in the company of Princess Eboli, there is a scene between Elizabeth and Carlos. At first he restrains himself, but soon he is passionately declaring his love, and Elizabeth summons the strength to deny him. King Philip enters a moment after Carlos has departed, and he is furious when he finds his Queen unattended. Yet he softens somewhat in his interview with Rodrigo, for he honors and trusts this nobleman. He explains to Rodrigo (but does not
convince him) that Flanders must continue to suffer for the good of Spain, and he more than hints that the Church, in the person of the Grand Inquisitor, is the real power to beware.

ACT II

Scene 1
takes place at night in the Queen’s garden. Carlos, who has received an unsigned letter, is expecting to meet Elizabeth, and when a veiled lady comes, he begins to make love to her. But it is the Princess Eboli, in love with Carlos, who has written the letter and kept the tryst. When Carlos, greatly confused, discovers his mistake, he reveals that he really loves the Queen. Well—hell hath no fury like a woman scorned; and even the interference of Rodrigo, who threatens to murder the Princess, cannot restrain the Princess from promising herself vengeance. Nevertheless, the scene ends without bloodshed as Carlos turns over some incriminating papers to Rodrigo for safekeeping, and the two again swear eternal friendship.

Scene 2
shows the Spanish Inquisition at work. A group of heretics is about to be burned alive. When King Philip enters, many plead to him for mercy, but he and the monks stand fast. Then Don Carlos, the King’s son, requests that he may be sent to Flanders to give that suffering country a kindlier government. The King refuses; Carlos draws his sword, swearing to avenge Flanders; and the King demands that he be disarmed. Only Rodrigo dares to do this for his King, and he is rewarded by being made a duke.

The scene then ends with the fires being lighted to burn the victims of the Inquisition, and strangely (or so it seems to me) everyone joins in a chorus of rejoicing. At the very close a voice from heaven pardons the dying men and women.

ACT III

Scene 1
opens with King Philip’s great soliloquy,
Ella giammai m’amò
. Elizabeth, he says, has never loved him; he must
always be alone. There follows an uncomfortable dialogue with the Grand Inquisitor, a stern, forbidding, blind old man. Philip offers to have his own son executed for rebellion. The Grand Inquisitor not only approves; he also demands the death of Rodrigo, who, he says, is far more dangerous. The interview ends with distrust on both sides, and then Elizabeth comes in to the King, demanding that her stolen jewel casket be found. Philip has it there. He opens it and he discovers a picture of Carlos. She denies his accusations of infidelity, and when Rodrigo and the Princess Eboli enter, he realizes that Elizabeth was faithful. A great quartet develops, and then the two women are left alone. Repentant, Princess Eboli admits she had stolen the casket and given it to the King. She had done it out of love for Carlos and jealousy when he repulsed her. Elizabeth demands that her former friend choose between exile and the convent, and the scene ends with the Princess Eboli’s famous aria
O don fatale
, wherein she laments the beauty that has led her to this ruin.

In
Scene 2
Don Carlos is already in his prison cell. Rodrigo comes to him and tells him that the incriminating papers have been found on him. Carlos must now be the man to save Flanders, for Rodrigo is marked for death. Even as he speaks, a man sneaks into the cell and shoots Rodrigo dead. With his dying breath Rodrigo tells his friend that Elizabeth knows everything, and that she awaits him at the convent of San Giusto.

ACT IV

The brief last act begins with an aria by Queen Elizabeth (
Tu che la vanità
). Awaiting her lover at the convent, she resigns herself to her fate; and when Don Carlos joins her, they sing a sad duet of farewell, for Carlos, to honor his dead friend Rodrigo, must lead the Flemish people to liberty. But as they breathe their last farewells, the King and the Grand Inquisitor find them together. The King demands the death of both, and the Grand Inquisitor agrees. But the mysterious priest appears from the tomb of Charles V. Everyone believes
it to be the ghost of the old Emperor himself, and the opera closes as Don Carlos is dragged by the priest into the tomb, to the profound amazement of everyone.

Postscript for the historically curious:
Chief among the comparatively few historically reliable underpinnings of this drama is the fact that Don Carlos was affianced to Elizabeth of Valois in 1559 (when he was only fourteen) and that his father married her a few months later. Don Carlos later on aspired to be sent to govern Flanders, but the notorious Duke of Alva was sent in his stead, very likely because the Don, always a willful and difficult young man, was rapidly going insane. At the age of 23, Carlos was imprisoned on the orders of Philip, and he died some months later, possibly assassinated. Elizabeth died very soon after.

No one knows exactly what happened—or at least how or why. But the father-wife-son triangle situation inspired not only the German Schiller to produce a tragedy on the subject but also the Englishman Otway, the Italian Alfieri, the Frenchman Chénier (brother of the hero of the opera), and many others.

DON GIOVANNI

(Don Juan)

Opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart with libretto in Italian by Lorenzo Da
Ponte based partially on
The Stone Guest
, an opera by
Giuseppe Gazzaniga with libretto by Giovanni Bertati. There were also a number of
other earlier plays about Don Giovanni.

Time: 17th century

Place: in and about Seville

First performance at Prague, October 29, 1787

    
Don Giovanni
is the greatest opera ever composed. Words to this effect, at least, were written by three men with peculiarly sound equipment to pass judgment—Gioacchino Rossini, Charles Gounod, and Richard Wagner. Beethoven preferred
The Magic Flute
, for he thought the subject of the
Don
too immoral.

The intentions of author and composer were, at least on the surface, completely moral; for
Don Giovanni
was originally only the subtitle, the real title being
Il dissoluto punito
, or
The Rake Punished
. Be that as it may, Mozart and Da Ponte
both classed the work as a
dramma giocoso
, that is, a “jolly play;” and two famous anecdotes concerning the preparation of the opera would seem to indicate that it was undertaken in a spirit of levity rather than with the ponderous metaphysical significance in mind that Teutonic critics have pretended to find.