100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (23 page)

Time: mythological

Places: Thrace and the underworld

First performance at Mantua, February 1607

    In Dr. Alfred Loewenberg’s monumental
Annals of Opera
you may find the vital statistics, in chronological order, of every opera of any consequence (and some of none whatsoever) produced between the years 1597 and 1940.
La favola
d’Orfeo
is the sixth one listed, and in many histories of opera you may read that it really deserves first place. The reason given is that the earlier operas (two of which, by the way, also told the story of Orpheus) were not operas in a modern sense at all. They were imitation classical plays in which the idea was to present dramas similar to Greek tragedies in a way that the Italian litterateurs of the day fancied they were presented in ancient Athens. That is, the lines were to be recited in a musical fashion and set to unobtrusive musical accompaniment. The verses were the important thing, not the music.

Now, a casual modern listener to Monteverdi’s
Orfeo
who does not know the history of opera or the Italian language may soon come to the same conclusion about that great work. Most of its length of two hours or so is devoted to long, poetic laments set to a kind of melody (mostly in a minor key) that will strike the uninstructed ear as a somewhat elaborate chant. The accompaniment, varied as it is in instrumentation from number to number, remains very discreetly in the background; and the only tunes with an easily recognizable shape to them occur in the choruses (which sound like accompanied madrigals because that is virtually what they are) and in the orchestral introductions and interludes between vocal passages (called
ritornelli)
.

If, however, the listener either knows Italian or will take the trouble to follow a performance with a translation and the original in hand, he will undergo a thoroughly rewarding musical experience. For he will discover that the somewhat unfamiliar musical language is an extraordinarily eloquent one, that the melodic line is intimately wedded to both the meaning and the rhythms of the poetry, that the harmonies which at first may seem monotonously simple are in reality strangely modern-sounding, especially in their dissonances, and that the whole effect is at once deeply serious and passionately tragic. Even the unprepared listener will find considerable variety by virtue of the frequent choral comments, the introduction of occasional duets (the first time these were used in an opera), and the variety in the scoring for the orchestra.

This orchestration is an extraordinary thing. It calls for two
harpsichords, one double harp, two large lutes, two bass zithers (which might be described roughly as still-larger lutes), three bass gambas (ancestors of our bass fiddles), two organs with wood pipes and one with reeds, two small violins (smaller than modern ones), twelve viols of different sizes, four trombones, two cornets, two high recorders, one high trumpet (called a
clarino)
, and three muted trumpets. It would be difficult indeed to get a collection like this together today, let alone a group of forty musicians to handle them adequately. Modern performances of the work, of which there have been many, transcribe the score for mostly modern instruments. Similarly, modern vocal techniques are so different that the vocal lines also call for editing. For instance, the part of Orfeo is sometimes sung by a baritone (though seventeenth-century music had no exact analogue for a modern operatic baritone), sometimes by a tenor, and once, at least (at the Florence Festival of 1949), by the distinguished contralto Fedora Barbieri.

In short, we cannot today reproduce a performance that would sound very much like the ones heard by the composer, and I am not at all sure that we would like it if we could. Tastes, especially musical tastes, change enormously and quickly. No matter. So long as the performers are competent, so long as an understanding spirit is in it, so long as the audience will take the trouble to listen with understanding minds and hearts, the greatness of this work will be apparent.

PROLOGUE

After an overture characterized by what Monteverdi’s contemporaries, the Elizabethans, would have called “a tucket of trumpets,” a soprano or mezzo steps before the curtain and, in the character of Music, sings a prologue of six stanzas separated by brief
ritornelli
. She avows that she, Music, will tell the tale of Orpheus, and she commands silence even from nature while the beautiful sounds go on.

ACT I

Nymphs and shepherds, in solo song and in chorus, sing with a solemn happiness of their pleasure over the nuptials of Orpheus and Eurydice, to be celebrated this very day. The bride and groom also sing of their happiness, and the act ends with a fine, joyous contrapuntal chorus.

ACT II

In the absence of his bride, Orpheus sings of his happiness, likening her to the sun who turns his nights into days. The shepherds, singly, in duet, and in chorus, delight to hear of his pleasure and ask him to sing to them as he accompanies himself on his lute. This he does, in an aria of four stanzas, contrasting his former sorrow with his present wedded bliss.

The joy is all destroyed by a messenger, an attendant of Eurydice’s named Sylvia. In a long and pathetic narrative she slowly breaks the dreadful news: Eurydice has been bitten in the foot by a poisonous snake and has just died in Sylvia’s arms. Orpheus is at first struck speechless, and the shepherds sing of their horror. Then Orpheus speaks with tragic determination. He will take his songs to the King of Shadows and bring Eurydice back to see the stars once more. The brief aria ends on an exceptionally eloquent line that slowly rises and then falls: “Farewell to earth; farewell to sky and sun; farewell!”

The rest of the act is given over to the lamentations of the shepherds and the self-reproaches of the messenger for having brought the fearful news. She does not appear again in the opera, but her two passages in this act are enough to project a distinctively lovable and pathetic portrait of a minor character,

ACT III

Hope has brought Orpheus to the borders of Pluto’s realm, where he must cross the river Styx. He asks his guide for
further help, but she replies that he must go on alone; for there stands the solemn inscription: “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.” Then she departs.

The grim ferryman Charon demands to know what Orpheus is doing there. These realms are forbidden to all living men, and he suspects the musician of having designs on Pluto’s fierce dog, Cerberus. Alternately playing and singing (a solo violin part is used most effectively), Orpheus pleads his case. Charon admits that he finds this music pleasing and consoling, but as there is no pity in his breast, it will do him no good. Orpheus thereupon becomes even more eloquent, ending his plea with the repeated line, “Return to me my well beloved, O gods of Tartarus!” And though there is no pity in his breast, yet the sweetness of the music puts Charon to sleep. Repeating his eloquent line, Orpheus springs into the boat and rows himself across. A final chorus describes his trip over the stormy waters in his fragile bark.

ACT IV

In Hades, Proserpine pleads with her husband, Pluto, to return Eurydice to the unhappy man who wanders through the broad lands of death crying out her name. Pluto, moved by his beloved wife’s tears, agrees to grant her wish. However, if on the way back Orpheus should once look back, he shall lose her forever. He sends messengers to announce this decision to both Orpheus and Eurydice, and his court, consisting of a chorus of spirits, praises him for his generosity.

In a long scene, with considerable variety in the music, Orpheus leads Eurydice on the way, at first very happy, then growing depressed over being unable to see her. He fears that Pluto has forbidden him to look out of pure envy; and when he hears a threatening sound, he is sure that it must be the Furies come to snatch his wife from him. He turns around to look, and at once Eurydice begins to weaken. With a soft reproach, full of love, she dies, and a spirit comes to take her back again. Orpheus resolves to follow after her, but a mysterious force moves him in the other direction, toward the land
of the living. The act closes with a chorus of spirits, which moralizes on the fact that, though great Orpheus could vanquish Hell, yet he could not conquer himself.

ACT V

Wandering in the fields of Thrace, Orpheus sings a long lament; and twice his lines are repeated off-stage by Echo, a striking effect. Apollo, god of music, appears to him, addressing him as his son, and offers to take him to the skies, where he may trace the beauty of Eurydice in the sun and stars;. Together they ascend to heaven, singing an elaborately figured duet.

A happy shepherds’ chorus ends the opera, its nature suggested by its label in the score, which is
moresca
—that is a Moorish dance or (in its British form) a morris dance. Classical tragedies were always expected to end on a note of relief; and that, presumably, is why Monteverdi did not set music to the final scene in the original libretto. In this Orpheus was torn to pieces by Thracian women for lamenting his Eurydice too long. That is the ending to the story of Orpheus as you will find it in all the books on mythology.

^*
The tenor parts are often sung in modern performances by baritones and some of the mezzo-soprano parts by sopranos.

FIDELIO

(Fidelio)

Opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven
with libretto in German by Josef Sonnleithner,
based on a French libretto by Jean Nicolas
Bouilly. Sonnleithner’s libretto was revised by
Stefan von Breuning in 1806 and by Georg
Friedrich Treitschke in 1814

Time: 18th century

Place: Seville

First performance at Vienna, November 20, 1805

    On October 30, 1805, Napoleon’s armies crossed the border into Austria, and Marshal Bernadotte (later to become Charles XIV, King of Sweden and Norway) occupied Salzburg. Having no panzer divisions, the armies took weeks to reach an undefended Vienna; but after they got there, Napoleon himself occupied the imperial palace at Schönbrunn and instructed his soldiery to treat the citizens with a “correctness” like that exhibited in the following century in Paris by the occupation troops of Hitler. Included in this early-nineteenth-century version of correctness was polite attendance by a scattering of officers at the premiere of Beethoven’s
Fidelio
on
November 20. Napoleon himself very likely knew nothing of this important event; in any case, his taste was for lighter music.

The house was half full, the performance a failure. After two repetitions it was temporarily dropped from the repertoire. In March of the following year, after Beethoven had with difficulty been induced to make some cuts and other changes, it was tried again. Once more it failed. Still it was tried once more in the following season, but it attracted—like most of Beethoven’s so-called “difficult” music in those days—only the
cognoscenti
(i.e., those who could afford the best seats). The composer angrily withdrew the score, tinkered with it on and off, and completely revised it in 1814. Then, with the great Schroeder-Devrient in the title role, it was at last acclaimed.

Thirteen years later, near death, Beethoven presented the manuscript of his only opera to his close friend and biographer, Anton Schindler. “Of all my children,” said the dying man, “this is the one that cost me the worst birth-pangs and brought me the most sorrow; and for that reason it is the one most dear to me.”

It is an opera most dear, also, to many a music-lover, and it has had an honored place in the repertoire of most great opera houses. Nowadays, however, it is revived only sporadically, for it is seldom a great success at the box-office. Perhaps the reason lies in an odd inconsistency in style: the first scene is largely
Singspiel
, almost light opera, especially when given with the intended spoken dialogue instead of the recitatives usually supplied outside of Germany and Austria. Perhaps the reason lies in the naïveté of the plot and its contrast with the fierce idealism of the emotional music. But one thing is certainly true: few opera composers, if any, have ever written such powerfully expressive music as the
Prisoners’ Chorus
, the big arias of Leonora and of Florestan, or the overture known as
Leonora No. 3
.

OVERTURE

There are four overtures available to the producer. The one composed first, and played at the premiere in 1805, is now known as
Leonora No. 2. Leonora No. 3
was composed for the March 1806 revision. This one was somewhat simplified for a projected but unrealized performance in Prague the same year; the manuscript was lost until 1832; and when it was found, it was assumed to be the first one Beethoven wrote for the opera. It is therefore called, or miscalled,
Leonora No. 1
. The fourth overture, written for the 1814 performance, is called the
Fidelio Overture
. It is the one usually used nowadays before Act I and introduces the pleasant opening scene far more appropriately than any of the
Leonora
overtures would.