100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (31 page)

ACT III

If you visit the Pré aux Clercs region of Paris today, you will find it a busy, well-built-up portion of the Left Bank with the Boulevard St. Germain as its principal thoroughfare. In the sixteenth century, however, there was still a large field, bordered by a church and some taverns, and it is here that the third act opens with a jolly chorus of townsmen enjoying a holiday. A group of Huguenots also renders an effective number, the
Rataplan Chorus
, in which they bid defiance to the Catholics and praise their distinguished leader, the Admiral Coligny. A third choral number follows—a chorus of nuns singing an
Ave Maria
, which precedes a premarital procession into the church. Raoul having refused Valentine, she has once more been betrothed to Nevers, and they are making arrangements for the wedding. When the party, which includes the bride, the groom, and the father of the bride, has passed into the church, Marcel asks rather disrespectfully for St. Bris, and violence is avoided only by the distraction of a group of gypsies, who perform for the townsfolk and the Huguenot soldiery.

The wedding arrangements having been made, the gentlemen of the party emerge, leaving Valentine inside to pray. Marcel takes this opportunity to deliver his message to St. Bris, which turns out be a challenge to a duel from Raoul. A friend of St. Bris’s, Maurevert, suggests that there are other ways than dangerous duels to handle such fellows as Raoul, and they retire to the church to discuss plans to ambush him.

When the sounding of the curfew has dispersed the crowd, the plotters leave the church, making final plans for their treachery, and a moment later Valentine, who has overheard everything, runs out distraught. It appears that she loves the man who has spurned her and wishes to warn him, but Marcel tells her it is too late: Raoul must already have left home. After a long duet on this theme, Valentine re-enters the church while Marcel stands guard, vowing to die with his master if necessary.

He does not have long to wait. The principals come, each with two seconds, and in a concerted number vow to abide strictly by the rules of honor in the ensuing duel. But Marcel knows that Maurevert and other Catholics are waiting just outside the field, and he knocks on the tavern door shouting, “Coligny!” Out come the Huguenot soldiers; out come many Catholic students; out come many women on each side to lend their voices to the general scene of confusion and incipient bloodshed.

Fortunately, Marguerite of Valois happens to be riding by at the time and once more puts a stop to all the violence. She denounces both sides for having broken their oaths. Marcel informs her that a veiled lady had told him that treachery was afoot, and when Valentine emerges from the church and St. Bris removes her veil, everyone is amazed—St. Bris that his daughter should have betrayed him, Raoul that this particular girl should have done him such a service. Once again he is in love with her.

But what of the bridegroom, Nevers? His prospective father-in-law, St. Bris, had carefully kept him uninformed of the dastardly plot, and, all smiling and unknowing, he now comes up the river Seine on a gaily decorated barge to claim his bride.
A wedding always brings out the more peaceful sentiments of human beings (or at least of opera choruses), and so the scene ends with general rejoicing among the populace, including those gypsies, who come back for a return engagement. The Huguenot soldiery, it is true, refuses to be caught up in the celebration but contents itself with mutters. The only outspokenly sad characters are the leading soprano and tenor: Valentine is heartbroken over having to marry a man she hates, while Raoul is now furious over losing her to his rival. All these different emotions supply fine material for the finale of the act.

ACT IV

It is now August 24, 1572, the day of the St. Bartholomew massacre. Valentine, in the home of her new husband, bewails her lost love in the aria
Parmi les pleurs
(“Bathed all in tears”), and then is startled to see Raoul himself enter the room. He has come to bid her a final farewell and then to die, if need be; but when she tells him that Nevers and St. Bris are expected any moment, he consents to hide behind a tapestry.

The Catholic noblemen now forgather and learn, from St. Bris, that Catherine de Médici, the Queen Mother, has decreed a general massacre of all Protestants for that very night. It will be made easier by the fact that many of the Huguenot leaders will be gathered together at the Hôtel de Nesle celebrating the marriage of Marguerite of Valois to Henry of Navarre. Nevers, one of the rarely honorable baritones of opera, declines to have anything to do with such infamy and dramatically breaks his sword. St. Bris orders him held in custody as a renegade from the Catholic cause, and a second impressive oath scene ensues, entitled the
Benediction of the Swords
. Toward its close St. Bris distributes white scarves, which have been brought in by three monks, to be worn as identifying arm bands during the holocaust.

Raoul has, of course, overheard all this. He has overheard St. Bris give the detailed instructions about assuming positions
at the sound of the first peal from the church of St, Germain and to strike at the sound of the second. He rushes forth from his hiding place as soon as the men have departed, but the door is locked. Valentine emerges from her own room, and there follows the long duet that moved even Richard Wagner. He wishes to warn his fellow-Protestants; she pleads on behalf of her relatives and the holy cause; he replies that it is a fine cause which demands the murder of brothers. But when she tells him of her love, he is moved to ask her to run away with him. It is the tolling of the bell, however, that brings him back to his sense of duty and of horror; and when it tolls for the second time, he drags Valentine to the window, where she may see the fearful acts commencing in the streets. Finally, praying for her protection, he jumps out of the window. Valentine faints.

ACT V

This is a very long opera, and many managements have simply omitted the three remaining scenes. They are needed, however, to wind up the details of the story, and they offer some fascinating moments.

Scene 1
The Huguenot notables are celebrating, with a ballet among other things, the marriage of Marguerite and Henry at the Hôtel de Nesle. Raoul, already wounded, interrupts the merriment with the frightful news of what is going on outside. Protestant churches are in flames; the Admiral Coligny has been murdered. After a rousing chorus the men draw their swords and follow Raoul into the streets to do battle.

Scene 2
In one of the beleaguered Protestant churches Raoul, Valentine, and Marcel are reunited, the last being badly wounded. Raoul wishes to return to the streets to fight, but Valentine urges safety on him. If he will wear a white scarf and go with her to the Louvre, they will have the protection of the Queen. But as this would mean becoming a Catholic, Raoul refuses. Even the report that Nevers has been killed in the fighting and that he may now marry Valentine
does not persuade him to save his life at the expense of his principles. Finally Valentine tells him that her love is so great that she will give up her own religion. The lovers kneel before Marcel to have their union blessed, and from within the church comes the sound of the choir singing
A Mighty Fortress
.

The sound is rudely interrupted by the violence of the Catholic forces breaking in on the other side of the church. The three principals kneel in prayer; Marcel eloquently describes the vision of paradise that he sees in his mind’s eye; and at the close of the trio their enemies break in. They refuse the alternative of recanting their religious heresies; they bravely sing the chorale; and they are dragged out into the streets by the soldiery.

Scene 3
Somehow, they have managed to escape their captors, and, amid the rushing soldiers, Valentine and Marcel are helping the mortally wounded Raoul along one of the quays of Paris. St. Bris appears at the head of a troop through the darkness and demands to know who they are. Despite Valentine’s frantic efforts to keep him quiet, Raoul shouts out, “Huguenots!” and St. Bris orders his men to fire. It is too late when he recognizes that one of the victims is his own daughter, and she dies breathing a prayer for him.

Once again Marguerite of Valois happens to pass by, and she is aghast when she recognizes the three fresh bodies before her. This time her efforts to bring peace to the scene are in vain. The soldiers are still swearing to wipe out all Protestants when the curtain falls.

JULIUS
CAESAR

(Giulio Cesare)

Opera in three acts by George Frederick Handel
with libretto in Italian by Nicola Francesco
Haym

Time: 48
B.C
.

Place: Alexandria

First performance at London, March 2, 1724

    “Handel,” said Samuel Butler in his
Note-Books
, “is so great and so simple that no one but a professional musician is unable to understand him.”

The typically Butlerian gibe is not really quite fair to professional musicians, for it is they who have valiantly and persistently tried to resuscitate Handel’s operas. Dr. Oskar Hagen, with Teutonic thoroughness, attempted, during the 1920’s, to revive thirty of them and succeeded with nine. Dr. Werner Josten, during the 1930’s, revived a few of them during his tenure as head of the Music Department at Smith College. Various concert and operatic societies in New York and elsewhere have mounted
Julius Caesar
as well as other Handelian operas in concert form, sometimes with great critical
acclaim. This same opera has had two different more or less complete productions on long-playing records, though they were soon withdrawn from the catalogues for lack of sales. The ventures will doubtless continue just as long as professional musicians continue to recognize the great qualities of these scores—and that should be, roughly guessing, forever.

Nevertheless, one seriously doubts that productions of Handel’s operas will ever attract the wide and devoted attendance they once enjoyed in London, where most of them first saw the light of candles. The hurdles for modern audiences are two—the type of leading singers for whom Handel composed and the nature of the librettos. At least one of the leading male roles in each of Handel’s operas (in this case, Julius Caesar himself) was written for a castrato, that is for a male singer who, through a barbarous operation followed by long and arduous training, had developed a soprano or alto voice of such exquisite virtuosity and (to judge from contemporary evidence) such thrilling qualities as to be virtually irresistible. Farinelli, who appeared in a number of Handel’s operas, through his singing gained such an ascendancy over two successive kings of Spain that he became one of the most important political figures in the land. In modern productions these roles are assigned usually to baritones or tenors or, occasionally, to countertenors. But modern singers have difficulty with them in any register.

As for the librettos, they are based on pseudohistory, classical mythology, or romantic subjects so badly out of tune with our own times that it is impossible to read them without smiles soon suffocated by boredom. They were conceived as vehicles for star singers; they were strait-jacketed by eighteenth-century ideas of classicism; and they seemed so preposterous to intelligent men of even their own day as to elicit one of the most delightful of all of Addison’s polite but devastatingly satirical essays. The following summary of the plot of
Julius Caesar
, based on the libretto of the Handel Society, illustrates the nature of these dramas; yet the reader should be reminded that the score of this opera, as well as those of several others
by Handel, contains some of the noblest and most moving pages ever composed for the stage.

ACT I

Scene 1
The overture, which consists of a formal introduction and allegro, leads directly into the welcoming chorus of Egyptians, who greet the conqueror, Julius Caesar, as he crosses a bridge. Caesar sings a dignified aria expressing satisfaction with his latest exploit, and his aide-de-camp, Curio, summarizes the situation with a bromidic quotation from his master’s collected literary works: “Caesar came, he saw, and he conquered.”

It is Pompey, Caesar’s erstwhile partner-in-government, who has suffered defeat and capture, and when Pompey’s wife and son, Cornelia and Sextus, appear on the scene, Caesar speaks magnanimously to them, proposing a reconciliation. The joyful occasion is utterly ruined, however, when Achillas brings in a gift. Achillas is the military leader and personal adviser to Ptolemy, Cleopatra’s somewhat degenerate younger brother, and the gift he has sent in a basket is the head of Pompey. Everyone is deeply shocked by this action excepting Achillas, who, in an aside, indicates that his first sight of Cornelia has utterly fascinated him. Caesar turns on Achillas and denounces him in a vigorous aria; Cornelia’s aria expresses her deep sorrow; while that of Sextus warns us that he means to have revenge. A more modern opera would have taken the occasion to develop these passions simultaneously in a finale; but this was a technique not yet developed, and the convention of arias following upon each other, between recitatives, is consistently followed.