100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (43 page)

Obviously, Baba is much more put out than she would be by some innocent diversion of Toby’s. Monica has to comfort her with a long, soothing lullaby that develops into a duet, as Toby accompanies the melody on a tambourine (“O black swan, where oh where is my lover gone?”). Even at its close Baba is still nervous. She thinks she hears voices; she sends Toby downstairs to look; and when he reports, in sign language, that no one is there, Baba falls on her knees and prays.

ACT II

It is a few days later when Act II, like Act I, begins with Toby and Monica playing together. This time, however, the play is more extended and ends as the mute does a dance for the attractive girl. He is obviously in love with her.

When Madame Flora drags her tired body upstairs, Monica goes to her own room and the medium begins to question the boy about what happened the other day. Did he touch her on the throat? Repeatedly he denies it, and finally she picks up a whip and lashes him unmercifully.

But the Gobineaus and Mrs. Nolan arrive once more: it is the regular evening for a séance. Thoroughly unnerved, Baba tries to tell them that the séances were all faked. She shows them the props, she has Monica imitate the voices; but the believers will not be convinced and even refuse to have their money returned. Driven to fury, Baba virtually chases them downstairs and, despite Monica’s pleadings, sends Toby after them into permanent banishment.

She then locks Monica into her room, takes a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard, and sits soddenly by the table. She thinks she hears the voices once more; she thinks of all the dreadful experiences she has had during a hard life; she is overcome by nameless fears; she tries to allay them by singing the lullaby; she prays; and finally, emotionally and physically exhausted, she falls asleep. It is a powerful scene.

Toby steals upstairs, tries to get into the locked room, and hides behind the sofa when the sleeping Baba knocks over the bottle. Coming out once more, he looks for something in the prop trunk and wakes Baba by accidentally dropping the lid. Quickly he hides behind the curtain of the puppet theater and, naturally, cannot answer Baba’s shout of “Who’s there?” She takes a revolver from the drawer and shoots directly at the curtain. Blood begins to stain it, and it is torn down with the falling body of Toby.

As Monica frantically pounds on the door, Baba mutters, “I’ve killed the ghost.”

MEFISTOFELE

(Mephistopheles)

Opera in prologue, four acts, and epilogue by
Arrigo Boito with libretto in Italian by the
composer, based on the drama by Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe

Time: medieval and ancient

Places: Heaven, Germany, and Greece

First performance at Milan, March 5, 1868

    Of making
Fausts
there is no end. Between the time that Marlowe wrote his great play (itself based on a dubiously historical account of the medieval philosopher and probably on some lost stage pieces) and the time that Goethe’s masterpiece first saw the stage, some thirty German dramas on the subject are said to have been written and produced. And once Goethe’s work discouraged other dramatists from trying to surpass him, the operas began. Besides the three represented in this book (Boito’s, Gounod’s, and Berlioz’s), there have been operas on the subject by Spohr, Bertin, Brüggemann, Busoni, and Lutz. Beethoven considered an opera on the subject; Schumann composed some of the music for one; Wagner
got as far as an overture; Liszt wrote a
Faust Symphony
, some choruses, and a song; and many other composers have written cantatas, individual scenes, songs, and incidental music inspired by Goethe. One composer, Florimond Hervé, even wrote a highly successful French operetta called
Le petit Faust
, which held the stage in France, on and off, for sixty-five years and was exported to many European countries and New York.

Boito, who wrote his own libretto, was the highly literary composer who supplied the first-rate books for Verdi’s
Otello
and
Falstaff
, and the less literary but more popularly successful one for Ponchielli’s
La Gioconda
. He was one of the few composers to tackle the second as well as the first part of Goethe’s huge philosophical drama. As a result, the premiere in 1868 took six hours and was a failure—too much philosophy, not enough action. Boito, always a careful worker, took seven years to shorten and revise it for a new production, and then another year to work it into final shape. The following brief description is based on this final version.

PROLOGUE

As in Goethe, the prologue consists of a dialogue between Mephistopheles, who sticks his head through some stage clouds, and the hosts of Heaven, who don’t appear at all. Mephisto, with a kind of sardonic politeness, wagers that he will be able to tempt the renowned philosopher, Dr. Faustus, to sin. The mystic choirs, the cherubim, and others do not seem to be particularly concerned by this boast, but they sing some very impressive choruses.

ACT I

Scene 1
represents a lively Easter Sunday in medieval Frankfort am Main with students, burghers, children all joining in the merriment. The old philosopher, Johann Faustus, observes these goings-on with his favorite pupil, Wagner, and when the crowd disperses, they engage in brief philosophical colloquy. A strange Gray Friar passes, and Faust believes he
sees something supernatural about him. As the philosopher leaves the stage, the stranger follows him.

Scene 2
Alone in his study, Faust sings his beautiful aria
Dai campi, dai prati
in praise of natural goodness; and yet he is troubled. The mysterious Gray Friar, who has followed him into his study, suddenly doffs his cloak to reveal himself as Mephistopheles—the Devil himself. He sings what is aptly called the
Whistle Aria
and describes his own evil nature. Faust is not frightened; yet, before the scene is over, he has signed a contract with Mephisto. On earth Mephisto must serve Faust and show him some beauty. But below, in Hell, Mephisto will have the soul of the learned old gentleman.

ACT II

Scene 1
is the famous
Garden Scene
. In the evening, in Margherite’s garden, Faust (now a handsome young man by grace of the Prince of Darkness) is wooing that innocent young German girl. To help him out, Mephistopheles is, at the same time, wooing her mother, Martha. Naturally, the two males are entirely successful in their nefarious scheme, which is carried on in a highly melodious series of duets and quartets.

Scene 2
is the
Walpurgis Night
scene. Mephisto takes his protégé to the heights of the Brocken Peak high up in the Harz Mountains. The Devil leads a fiendish chorus of male and female witches, and they enact their satanic rites. Suddenly Faust sees a vision of Margherite. She is bound in chains, and there is a bloody line around her throat. But the fiendish chorus only goes on, and on.

ACT III

Margherite has poisoned her mother and drowned her illegitimate child. She is now insane and is soon to be taken from her prison cell to be executed. Pitifully she sings an aria about it, the expressive
L’altra notte
. Mephistopheles brings Faust to her, ready to help her escape. But poor, demented Margherite does not understand. She is comforted in again
seeing her old lover, and they sing a moving duet. But when Mephisto appears, she is frightened. She refuses to leave despite his urgings; she prays to Heaven; and in the last effort she dies. For a moment Mephisto thinks that he has won her soul for Hell, but from on high comes an angelic choir.
È salva
—“She is saved!” it sings; and both Mephisto and the executioner are cheated of their prey.

ACT IV

A complete change comes over the music in the final act. Hitherto we have been in medieval Germany; now we are in ancient Greece. Mephisto has transported Faust here—in time and space—in the philosopher’s search for beauty, and they have found the most beautiful woman of all—Helen of Troy. She sings ravishingly with her companion, Pantalis. Mephisto—strictly a medieval character—feels out of place here. He says so, and he retires before a ballet begins. The balance of the act is given over to a love duet between Faust and Helen while a chorus and a male attendant named Nereo comment admiringly on the high-class love affair that is going on before their eyes.

EPILOGUE

Faust, once again an aged philosopher, is seated in his study at night. Mephistopheles is still trying to win his soul, but Faust, repenting his ways, is no longer tempted. Even when the Devil fills the room with visions of sirens, the old philosopher only prays to God. From high above come the voices of the cherubim in answer. In vain Mephisto tries to work his magic. Faust now has a new idea of beauty: it is the vision of the celestial gates. And as, in an ecstasy, his earthly body expires, the cherubim send over it a shower of roses. He is forgiven forever—and the Devil has lost his wager.

DIE
MEISTERSINGER
VON NÜRNBERG
(The Mastersingers of Nuremberg)

Opera in three acts by Richard Wagner with
libretto in German by the composer

Time: middle of the 16th century

Place: Nuremberg

First performance at Munich, June 21, 1868

    Played without any intermission, a complete performance of
Die Meistersinger
would take just about four and a
half hours. Yet when, prompted by his reading of a history of German literature, Wagner first considered the subject of the mastersingers of Nuremberg, he planned a one-act comedy—a half-hour afterpiece to
Tannhäuser
. It was sixteen years before he again took up the subject and another six before he completed it. By that time the original plan had succumbed to Wagner’s penchant for giganticism, and the most endearing of his operas was produced. Paderewski called it “the greatest work of genius ever achieved by any artist in any field of human activity.” Very few other musicians would rate it quite that high, and even the most rabid Wagnerians might prefer to give the palm to the
Ring
or to
Tristan
. Yet there is little question that it ranks, along with Verdi’s
Falstaff
and Richard Strauss’s
Der Rosenkavalier
, as the best of the operatic comedies since Mozart; and in popularity it outranks the two later works.

PRELUDE

Wagner seems unwontedly modest in calling his introductory thoughts merely
Vorspiel
, or
Prelude
, equating it with, say, one of Chopin’s one-page poems. The very opening theme is that of the mastersingers, the sixteenth-century guild of vocalists, Nuremberg chapter. It is followed by each of the other principal themes of the opera—
Longing, Prize Song, Love Confessed, The Art of Brotherhood, Ridicule
, and others, which have been so labeled by leitmotiv detectives. In the development, two, three, and one time even four of these are juggled together with consummate skill. A tremendous climax is achieved with the reiteration of the opening theme; and (excepting in Wagner’s own concert arrangement) the
Prelude
leads directly into