100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (34 page)

Now Julien appears, too, to show a group of his Bohemian friends where Louise works. He tells them of his plan: if he finds that her parents have refused consent, he will simply carry the girl off. The romantic idea is thoroughly applauded, and one of the friends suggests that Louise should be crowned as their Muse.

Now, however, it is time for Louise’s mother to bring the girl to the dressmaking establishment, as she does every morning. Julien and his companions go off, still singing a serenade one of them has struck up, while Julien romantically avows that the medley of sounds he hears all about him is the voice of Paris itself, promising success in his amorous ambitions. Finally Louise shows up, and when the mother has left, Julien manages to intercept her. She tells him, at first, that she loves her parents too much to leave them, but she loves him, too. Julien becomes more and more ardent, and finally Louise gives in. She promises to go off with him soon, but as the scene closes, she goes into the building, into the dressmaking shop. In the distance is heard one more voice of the city–the pipe of a goatherd.

Scene 2
moves inside, into the place where girls are sewing dresses. Louise is teased by everyone for being in love. Soon a raucous band is heard outside, and then the voice of Julien, singing a serenade. All the girls admire him for his voice and his good looks, and as they stand at the window admiring, Louise falls once more under the spell of her lover. Quietly she leaves the room—to run off with Julien.

ACT III

After a prelude the third act begins with the opera’s most famous aria,
Depuis le jour
. Louise and Julien have eloped to a little cottage on the hill of Montmartre, overlooking the whole of Paris. In the aria she expresses her ecstatic happiness with her new existence and with her lover. The whole first part of the act is really a long love duet, for the two are not only completely in love with each other, but completely in love with Paris.

When the duet is over, a whole chorus of Bohemians enters. They have come to do honor to Julien and Louise and, at the height of the festivities, Louise herself is crowned Queen of Montmartre. The Noctambulist presides at this ceremony as the King of the Fools.

Suddenly the figure of Louise’s mother appears at the back of the scene and puts a quick ending to the gaiety. She has come to tell Louise of her father’s illness, of how he creeps sometimes at night into her old room even though they had agreed to regard her as dead. Even Julien is moved by the bitter old woman’s story, and he permits Louise to go home on the promise that she may return to him whenever she wishes.

ACT IV

As the act opens, the father seems to have regained his health and customary spirits. He is again working; and though he rails against poverty, he does accept it philosophically. The real reason, we may suppose, is that he has his beloved daughter with him again. He tries to be affectionate to her. He
takes her into his arms, and he sings a lullaby. But Louise refuses to be comforted. She longs to return to her lover, to her life of freedom on the heights of Montmartre. From the streets outside their tenement come the voices of merrymakers singing in a waltz rhythm, and Louise takes it up as she madly sings of a free life and a free love. Her parents are deeply shocked, and the father becomes more and more angry. Finally he shouts at his daughter, demanding that she leave. If
that
is what she wants, let her go, let her dance, let her laugh! He even begins to attack her, only her mother standing in the way. But Louise takes her father at his word—and she dashes from the room, to return to Julien.

Only then does the old man realize what he has done. “Louise, Louise!” he calls. But she is gone; and as the opera closes, he shakes his fist at the city that has stolen his daughter from him. “Paris!” he moans, full of hate.

THE LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES

(Lyubov k Trem Apelsinam)

Opera in prologue and four acts by Sergei
Prokofieff with libretto in Russian by the composer
based on a play by Carlo Gozzi which was
in turn based on an old legend

Time: once upon a

Place: Land of the King of Clubs

First performance (in French) at Chicago, December 30, 1921

    The opera was commissioned in 1919, when the composer was a visiting
enfant terrible
of music, by Cleofonte Campanini, musical director and principal conductor of the Chicago Opera Company. Prokofieff finished the complex
score in six months; the opera was placed in rehearsal; everyone found it extremely difficult to master; Campanini died; and the project was shelved for two years. Then, in 1921, Mary Garden became artistic director of the company (or “directa,” as she termed herself), and trotted the work out once more. Prokofieff was invited to conduct it himself; he did; and the result was financial and critical, if not necessarily artistic, disaster. The production survived only three performances—two in Chicago and one in New York. The story that this failure discouraged Prokofieff from making America his permanent home is probably apocryphal.

The opera was given in a number of European centers later on, but America did not hear it again until 1949 when, with a scenario revised by Theodore Komisarjevsky and Vladimir Rosing and in an English translation by Victor Seroff, it scored a great hit with the New York City Opera Company. The production became a big success for several years, both in New York and on the road, for it was played broadly for laughs and was a great attraction for juvenile audiences on Saturday matinees.

There is a certain irony in the fact that the opera’s late popularity should depend upon its appeal to children, for it is a work of the highest sophistication. The libretto is based on an eighteenth-century comedy by Carlo Gozzi, who had written it to win a bet showing that he could get a larger audience than his rivals by taking an old wives’ tale and dressing it in a fresh style. This style involved a satirical criticism of his competitors, Goldoni and Chiari, who were virtually driven into exile from Venice on account of Gozzi’s success. Prokofieff, well aware of this bit of literary history, satirized, with his score, such well-established opera composers as Massenet, Verdi, and Wagner. True, they were all dead by 1919, but their works lost no performances through the satirical musical comments of Prokofieff, for, apparently, no one understood these. At the time the work just seemed willfully obtuse and hence dull. Today Prokofieff’s “modernisms” sound familiar enough, and his satire is lost on a juvenile audience. But like
Gulliver’s Travels
, which has had an analogous history, it is just dandy for children.

PROLOGUE

Tragedians, Comedians, Lyricists, and Empty Heads quarrel, before the curtain, about what type of play should be performed. They are all chased out by another group, called “Reasonable Spectators,” who announce that something quite different from the customary fare is to be performed. Then a “trumpeter” (who performs on a bass trombone) announces the Herald, and he, in turn, announces that the theme of the play is to be the illness of the son of the King of Clubs, who is unable to laugh. In the New York City production, Komisarjevsky substituted a spoken prologue for most of this esoteric quarrel.

ACT I

Scene 1
In a room in the palace of the King of Clubs the monarch is advised by the royal medical staff that his son’s symptoms include pains all over, not to mention a cough, bad eyesight, anemia, biliousness, melancholia, and a few others. Diagnosis: hypochondria. Prognosis: incurable. The King’s adviser, Pantaloon, tries in vain to comfort him. Who shall inherit the kingdom if his son cannot rule? Will it be that cruel niece of his, Clarissa? The Reasonable Spectators (who, like the other personages from the prologue, occupy stage boxes and occasionally comment) help him to worry. If only the Prince can be made to laugh, there may be some hope yet. Pantaloon thinks that entertainment may turn the trick, and he shouts for Truffaldino, the court jester. Truffaldino is delighted with the assignment; but Leandro, the prime minister, who is also consulted, thinks such a program can only make the boy worse. However, as Leandro is a villain, one must suspect his motives. At least the King does, while Pantaloon calls him a traitor.

Scene 2
The stage darkens; a curtain decorated with cabalistic
signs descends; and before it is played a game of cards between the powerful witch Fata Morgana (who appears in a flash of lightning and represents the evil forces of Leandro) and the magician Celio (who represents the good forces of the King of Clubs). Three times Celio is defeated to the accompaniment of a chorus of little devils and the frightened cries of the Reasonable Spectators.

Scene 3
Back at the palace, Leandro, the prime minister, is visited by Clarissa, who has promised to marry him if he succeeds in encompassing the Prince’s death so that she may inherit. Leandro does not seem overly eager for this marriage; nevertheless, he feels sure that he will get rid of the heir apparent by boring him to death on a diet of tragic prose and dull verse. They shall be served up to him in his soup and on his bread. (At this point the Tragedians swarm enthusiastically onto the stage, but the Reasonable Spectators chase them off again.)

Now Smeraldina, a dark-faced servant of Fata Morgana’s, is discovered behind a huge vase, eavesdropping on the two conspirators. At first they threaten to kill her; but she assures them that her mistress is on their side, and that only the presence of this powerful witch at the coming festivities may prevent the Prince from laughing. They accept her advice and call on Fata Morgana for help.

ACT II

Scene 1
The Prince, bundled up in an outrageous assortment of garments, sits bored as Truffaldino tries out his best antics on him. Nothing will make him laugh. Instead, he coughs, and Truffaldino, holding a basin for him, notes in alarm that dull verses are coming up. He then asks the Prince to attend the festival to be held especially for the purpose of making him laugh. (Here, once again, there is an interruption: the Comedians rush onto the stage and have to be chased off by the Reasonable Spectators.)

The
March
from
The Love for Three Oranges
—the only portion of the score that has won wide popularity—is played
as Truffaldino almost forces the hypochondriac Prince to accompany him to the festival. The jester hurls all the boy’s medicines out of the window, throws a cape on his back, and literally carries him from the room.

Scene 2
In the courtyard of the palace, Truffaldino stages two comic acts for the Prince—a battle of monsters, and a milling crowd of drunkards and gluttons. He does not find these at all funny. But when Truffaldino finds Fata Morgana in the crowd, tries to throw her out, and accidentally makes her turn a somersault, the Prince suddenly starts laughing. In an exceptionally clever passage Prokofieff develops this laugh, starting gently with the solo tenor and continuing it,
crescendo
, till everyone on the stage is joining in excepting, of course, Fata Morgana, Leandro, and Clarissa.

Fata Morgana thereupon delivers a curse on the Prince. With the vocal assistance of a chorus of devils, she dooms him to being in love with three oranges whom he shall pursue to the very ends of the earth. In vain the King and his court try to dissuade him from this madness: he merely replies that he shall become melancholy all over again if he remains at home. A little devil named Farfarello appears with a pair of bellows to waft the Prince and Truffaldino on their way as the court, led by the King, joins in a mock tragic operatic finale.

ACT III

Scene 1
Farfarello, the devil, has been blowing the Prince and Truffaldino toward the palace of Creonte, the powerful witch who owns the three oranges. When Farfarello was called on an errand to hell, he had temporarily to leave his charges in the desert asleep; and as he returns, Celio stops him and tries to force him to stop all this dangerous fooling. Farfarello reminds the well-intentioned fellow that, since he lost at cards to Fata Morgana, he has no more power. But before the Prince and Truffaldino are wafted once more on their way, Celio has the opportunity to give them some practical advice. He warns them that the oranges are in the immediate possession of a massive cook with a copper ladle strong enough to
kill them both. In order to distract this cook Celio presents the voyagers with a pretty ribbon. Perhaps, he suggests, they may steal the oranges while Cook is admiring this offering. He also warns them that when they secure the oranges, they must cut them open only in the immediate neighborhood of water. The Prince pays no attention to all this practical advice but continues to sing of his love. Truffaldino accepts the ribbon, and Farfarello reappears to waft off the travelers with his bellows.