100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (30 page)

Time: 18th century

Place: Toledo, Spain

First performance at Paris, May 19, 1911

    Maurice Ravel was just about as French a composer as any composer who ever lived. Yet he was born in the Pyrenees, his mother apparently was a Basque, and he liked to write about Spain—sometimes even with a Spanish accent in his music.
L’Heure espagnole
is, of course, about Spain. Its title means, quite literally, “The Spanish Hour,” but the word “hour” does not really mean a sixty-minute hour. The word is used, perhaps, as Longfellow used it, in the title of his famous poem
The Children’s Hour
. That poem says, in effect, “Now is the time to pay some attention to the children.” And the title of the opera suggests: “Let’s talk about the Spaniards … and what they do with time.” The libretto—a very French one—comes from a one-act play written by a Frenchman named Maurice Legrand. He further Frenchified it by using a
nom de plume
—Franc-Nohain.

The opera, first produced in 1911, still seems young and modern—partly, perhaps, because it is so very sophisticated—but its story goes back to eighteenth-century Toledo. It concerns a middle-aged clockmaker, Torquemada, and his young, pretty, and very sexy wife, Concepcion. One hears the tick-tocks of Torquemada’s clocks in the score almost from the beginning. Anyway, Torquemada, working in his shop one morning, gets a new customer—a big, handsome, muscular, good-natured, simple-minded muleteer named Ramiro. Keep your eye on Ramiro. Concepcion gets rid of her husband by reminding him that it is time to go and regulate the town clocks. That’s part of his job. Her reason for wanting to be rid of Torquemada is that she has a rendezvous with one Gonzalve, a romantic poet.

The story (which is as complicated as a French bedroom farce) has to do with Concepcion keeping her men separated. She rids herself of Ramiro, the muleteer, by getting him to carry a grandfather’s clock up to her bedroom. But that’s only temporary. Gonzalve is more interested in singing and reciting his verses than in making love, so Ramiro returns inconveniently. Concepcion then gets him to carry up another clock, and pretty soon she even gets him to carry up one of the clocks with her lover secretly inside it.

Then—further complications. Another lover—Inigo, the fat banker—appears. Between the two lovers hiding in clocks and Ramiro carrying them up and downstairs within those clocks and Concepcion’s growing admiration for Ramiro’s strength and good nature—well, there’s plenty of comedy. Finally, Concepcion invites Ramiro upstairs without
any
clock. While they are away, the poet finds the fat banker stuck inside a clock, unable to get out. In addition, Torquemada returns from his chores. No one is especially upset by all this, and Ramiro, always the good-natured strong man, pulls the poor banker out to safety.

And so they all join in a jolly quintet saying nothing of any importance at all. For in “the Spanish hour,” so to speak, nothing seems to matter but a bit of flirtation.

LES HUGUENOTS

Opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer with
libretto in French by Augustin Eugène Scribe,
revised by Émile Deschamps and the composer

Time: August 1572

Places: Touraine and Paris

First performance at Paris, February
29
, 1836

    It was
The Huguenots
that in 1836 made Meyerbeer the king of the opera not only in Paris but practically everywhere else. Not that he lacked detractors even in his own time. Richard Wagner described the typical Meyerbeer libretto as “a monstrous motley, historico-romantic, sacro-frivolous, mysterious-brazen, sentimental-humbugging dramatic hodge-podge” and, after Meyerbeer stopped being an easy touch, continually
attacked and denigrated him. (Yet, in a rare access of honesty, he once admitted that the fourth act of
The Huguenots
had deeply moved him.) It did not occur to Wagner that his descriptions of these librettos were not inapplicable, at least in part, to his own. Nor were Wagner’s librettos, however many detractors they too had in their own day, ever taken seriously enough to frighten those interesting weather vanes of political opinion, the official censors.
The Huguenots
can at least claim the distinction of having had its religious conflict disguised in a number of sensitively Catholic cities. In Vienna and St. Petersburg it was performed as
The Guelphs and the Ghibellines
, in Munich and Florence as
The Anglicans and the Puritans
, and in the last city also as
Renato di Croenwald
, whoever that was.

Today it is difficult to take the pseudo-history of Meyerbeer and Scribe seriously, and, more important, the musical effects seem to have lost much of their impact. The opera is still regularly performed in France, less regularly in Germany, and hardly ever in the United States, England, or Italy. Individual numbers are sometimes sung in concert, and recordings of arias by singers of the Golden Age are collectors’ items. Some of the music is therefore still current; but it appears unlikely that there will be a gala revival in an important American opera house before a genuine all-star cast can be assembled equal to the ones in the 1890’s at the Metropolitan when the price of seats was raised two dollars for the occasion. For such a “night of seven stars,” as it was publicized, the program listed Nordica, Melba, the two De Reszkes, Scalchi, Plançon, and Maurel. Even as late as 1905 one might have heard Caruso, Nordica, Sembrich, Scotti, Walker, Journet, and Plançon. But those days are gone forever, and perhaps
Les Huguenots
with them.

PRELUDE

The prelude consists of a series of repetitions (“variations” is too strong a word), with dramatic contrasts in dynamics, pitch, and orchestration, of the great Lutheran chorale
Ein
feste Burg
(“A Mighty Fortress”). This wonderful tune is used a number of times later in the opera for dramatic purposes.

ACT I

It was a time, in France, of the bloodiest work of religious fanaticism, and a series of civil wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots came to an uneasy pause when, in 1572, Marguerite of France married Henry of Bourbon, thus uniting the leading Catholic and Protestant families. But the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve put an end to the Huguenot hopes for domination. The opera opens not long before St. Bartholomew’s Eve, and the massacre closes it.

The Count de Nevers is one of the leading young Catholic noblemen, and in his castle in Touraine he is entertaining some of his boon companions, jolly blades all. Nevers himself is the only one among them who has some character, and he asks them to show a bit of tolerance toward an expected guest even though he is a Huguenot aristocrat. Nevertheless, when the handsome but distinctly provincial Raoul de Nangis is introduced, they utter some ungentlemanly asides about his looking like a Calvinist.

The banquet now begins, and a rousing chorus is sung in praise of good eating and the wines of Touraine. Next, a toast is proposed to everyone’s mistress, but Nevers admits that as he is about to be married, he must decline; in fact, he adds, he finds the circumstance rather embarrassing: the ladies seem to be pursuing him even more ardently than before his engagement became known. Raoul then obliges with an account of his own love—an unknown beauty whom he saved one day from a gang of rowdy students. This aria
(Plus blanche que la blanche hermine
—“Whiter than ermine”) features the obbligato of an obsolete instrument, the viola d’amore, which makes it especially effective. He has dedicated his heart to this unknown, a romantic gesture that wins only smiles of condescension from his worldly-wise auditors.

Raoul’s retainer, Marcel, a redoubtable old soldier, is completely
out of sympathy with his master’s making such acquaintances and tries to warn him. He boldly huffs out the Lutheran chorale,
A Mighty Fortress
, and proudly admits that it was he who, in battle, had administered the scar to the face of one of the guests, Cossé. Cossé good-naturedly invites the old soldier to drink. Being an unbending Calvinist, Marcel refuses, but he does substitute something better—the
Chanson huguenote
, a vigorous and brutal anti-papist battle song which features a refrain on the syllables
Piff, paff
denoting the damage inflicted on Catholics by Protestant bullets.

The merriment is interrupted when the host is called out to receive a message from a young lady in the garden. Everyone speculates on Nevers’ continuing intrigues even after his engagement, and Raoul is deeply shocked when, looking through a window with the others, he recognizes in Nevers’ visitor the unknown beauty he had vowed to love. He swears vengeance. But he does not overhear Nevers when, on his return, he says that his visitor was his fiancée, Valentine, a protégé of the Queen’s, who has asked to be released from her engagement. Nevers, though deeply chagrined, has acquiesced.

Another messenger from another lady again interrupts the party. This messenger is the page Urbain, so young a chap that his part is taken by a mezzo-soprano, and in a once-admired aria
(Une dame noble et sage
—“A wise and noble lady”) he announces that he bears a letter from an important personage. It turns out to be addressed not to Nevers, as everyone supposed, but to Raoul; and it asks that he permit himself to be blindfolded before going to a rendezvous. When Nevers sees the missive, he recognizes the seal as that of Marguerite of Valois, the King’s sister. This mark of esteem for the young Huguenot wins him the respect of all the Catholic gentry present, and they convey their politically motivated congratulations in the finale. Marcel, for his part, strikes in with a
Te Deum
and the observation that Samson has overcome the Philistines.

ACT II

In the garden of her castle of Chenonceaux, in Touraine, Marguerite of Valois is awaiting Raoul de Nangis. The ladies-in-waiting sing the praises of the countryside, as does the Queen herself. The Queen, it appears, has sent for Raoul so that he may become engaged to Valentine, the daughter of the Count de St. Bris, one of the leading Catholic noblemen. Such a marriage, rather than one with another Catholic, should help allay the civil strife. Valentine shows only a ladylike hesitation about being made a political pawn in this fashion: it was long the common fate of aristocratic girls.

The page Urbain is also present at the court, having been thrilled by leading the handsome, blindfolded cavalier through the streets. He is a Cherubino-like figure, in love with Valentine, with the Queen, and with the sex in general. But he is as much coarser in conception than Cherubino as Meyerbeer’s music was coarser than Mozart’s. The fascination women have for him is projected by his acting as a Peeping Tom when the girls of the court go bathing, which they do at the back of the stage within tantalizing half-sight of the audience. They also sing a bathers’ chorus.

When Raoul is finally led blindfolded into the presence of the Queen and left alone with her, he is permitted to take off the scarf and finds himself at once overpowered with the beauty of the young woman he sees. He does not know it is the Queen, and he vows gallantly to serve her. The Queen, for her part, assures him that there will be occasion for her to call upon him.

It is only when Urbain returns to announce that the whole court is about to arrive that Raoul learns whom he has been vowing to serve. And when the Queen tells him that this service must be his marrying the daughter of the Count de St. Bris for political reasons, he readily consents, even though he does not know he has ever seen the girl. The courtiers then enter to the tune of a minuet and range themselves on two sides of the stage, Catholic and Huguenots, with Nevers and
St. Bris heading the former. Some letters brought to the Queen demand, in the name of King Charles IX. the presence of the Catholics in Paris for some important but undisclosed project. Before they leave, however, the Queen demands and receives an oath from both sides pledging them to eternal peace. It is a most impressive chorus.

But now St. Bris brings in his daughter, Valentine, whom Raoul is supposed to marry. Recognizing with horror that this is the lady who called on Nevers during the banquet, he vigorously protests that he will never marry her. St. Bris and Nevers are outraged, and bloodshed is avoided only through the intercession of the Queen and her reminder that the gentlemen must hurry to Paris. In the grand finale, during which passions are heated rather than cooled, Raoul insists that he too shall go to Paris, Valentine faints, and Marcel sings
A Mighty Fortress
.