100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (6 page)

Now the old man menacingly accuses Fiora of having been with a lover. Frightened but still in proud control of herself, she at first denies it. He takes hold of her, and in a powerful seizure of desperate pride she tells him yes, she does have a lover, and she taunts the old man with it. Repeatedly he demands his name; repeatedly she refuses it. Finally he pushes her back on a bench and, with cold hatred, chokes her to death.

Manfredo, who has seen the waving stop and fears that Fiora may have fallen from the parapet, returns a moment later. His father tells him what he has done and why; and Manfredo’s feeling is one of deep pity for a beautiful woman
who could feel such love, though not for him. Archibaldo picks up the body of Fiora, slings it over his still-powerful shoulders, and follows his grieving son off the stage.

ACT III

The body of Fiora has been laid in the crypt of the castle. Off-stage a choir is heard singing a dirge. On-stage is a group of Alturans, who bemoan the loss of their Princess and cry for vengeance on the murderer.

When Avito enters, they depart respectfully. He speaks to her; he weeps in despair; and finally he bends over to kiss her lips. A poison begins to overpower him, and Manfredo, coming in at that moment, tells him that her lips were a trap to catch the lover whose name she so well guarded. But Avito is happy to die for love of Fiora, while Manfredo again feels only sorrow that so great a love as hers could not have been for himself, who loved her equally well. He, too, bends over to drink from her lips the deadly poison.

When the blind Archibaldo gropes his way toward the bier and seizes on the man lying at his feet as the guilty lover, it is Manfredo whom he touches. From his dying son he learns how tragically his fatal plan has overwhelmed him.

ANDREA CHÉNIER

Opera in four acts by Umberto Giordano with
libretto in Italian by Luigi Illica based, roughly,
on the life of the poet André de Chénier

Time: Act I shortly before the French Revolution
Acts II-IV, 1794

Place: Paris

First performance at Milan, March 28, 1896

    The true story of André de Chénier might have furnished an operatic plot quite as romantic as the imaginary one provided by Luigi Illica. Chénier was born, of a French aristocrat and a Greek mother, in Constantinople. As a young man, he led a rather wild life in France, took early to writing verse, at one time began, in poetry, a whole encyclopedia of universal knowledge, had a brief career as a diplomat in England, espoused the ideals of the French Revolution, but became revolted at its excesses. He wrote bitter satires on the subject,
but was quite safe till one evening, when visiting an aristocratic friend in the country, he was picked up by the police, who were looking for someone else. It was not a case of mistaken identity: they just didn’t want to go back empty-handed. In the 140 days of his imprisonment he composed poetry of such magnificence that it earned him a permanent and important place in the history of French literature. In fact, it was only after his death that much of his earlier work, which had gone unpublished, was dug up here and there and became the subject of such serious study and criticism as is given only to great dead men.

His brother Joseph, the revolution’s leading dramatist, might have had the political influence to save him, but he thought that Andre’s best chance for coming out alive lay in remaining quietly in prison till he was forgotten. Joseph miscalculated. At the age of thirty-two André went to the guillotine. The last detail is almost the only one that Illica used accurately, though the general character of the young man would seem to be faithfully enough projected.

Andrea Chénier
was Giordano’s fourth operatic score. He composed it while still a comparatively obscure young man of twenty-seven, seated in a warehouse in Milan full of gravestones and other funeral statuary. (I mention this as an odd fact of no particular significance.) From the night of its premiere, March 28, 1896, he was a famous man, and remained one till he died in 1948 even though he never quite equaled that success. It was a career not dissimilar to those of his fellow “verists,” Mascagni and Leoncavallo, each of whom composed an extremely popular opera in his twenties but never managed to repeat.

ACT I

In the ballroom of the Countess de Coigny, some of the Parisian nobility is having its last fling before the tumbrels of the French Revolution begin to roll. Servants are moving the furniture preparatory to the big evening party. Among them is Gérard—the heavy baritone lead of this opera. In his opening
aria he expresses his hopeless love for Madeleine, the daughter of his mistress; he commiserates with his aged father for having to work so hard; and he predicts that one day his class will rise and ruin this house, which he hates. Then the Countess de Coigny comes in with her daughter, Madeleine, an excessively pretty blonde. She discusses dresses with her maid-in-waiting, Bersi, and the Countess makes sure that everything is ready for the party. Presently the guests arrive. There is a lot of frivolous talk about politics, and there is singing by professional entertainers.

Among the guests there comes the poet Andrea Chénier, and Madeleine lightly asks him to recite some verses. At first he refuses. Then, beginning with elaborate compliments to the lady, he ends his poem with a protest against the way the lower classes are treated in his beloved France. No upper-class lady like Madeleine, he concludes, could really understand love. It is quite a discourse—and quite a fine tenor aria, generally known as the
Improvviso
. Everyone at that aristocratic party is duly shocked, and, to cover the embarrassment, the Countess orders the musicians to begin the gavotte. But scarcely has the dancing begun when a chorus of paupers enters the room led by Gérard, who vigorously denounces his employers and symbolically tears the livery off his old father’s back. Quickly he and the paupers are hustled out, and Chénier follows them. Then, when peace and propriety are once more restored, the dancing can begin again. The aristocrats have clearly failed to see the handwriting on the wall.

ACT II

Several years have passed: the Bastille has been taken, and the revolution rules. One of its leaders is Gérard, the former lackey. The poet, Andrea Chénier, has also helped, but now he is under suspicion as a counterrevolutionary. As for the Coigny aristocrats, their château has been burned to the ground, and only Madeleine survives.

The act takes place outside a café in Paris. Bersi, Madeleine’s former maid and now a jolly revolutionary, is talking
with a man who boasts the incredible name of Incredibile. A spy for Gérard, he knows Bersi is still on intimate terms with an aristocratic lady (that’s Madeleine, of course) and asks whether she isn’t afraid. In a devil-may-care aria Bersi proclaims the happiness of being a revolutionary.

Now Roucher, a good friend of Chénier’s, meets him at the café. He has brought the poet a passport so that he may flee the country, but Chénier refuses. He has been receiving mysterious and anonymous letters from a lady, and like a true romantic poet, he has fallen in love with her. Then a crowd passes by with Gérard at their head. Still in love with Madeleine, he describes her to Incredibile, and the spy promises to find her that very night. Off he goes, with Bersi, but a little later he observes that young woman talking to Chénier. Bersi is telling him that the mysterious lady of the letters is about to meet him, and the spy is still lurking about when Madeleine comes in. A duet naturally develops at this point for tenor and soprano, and at its climax Chénier and Madeleine are pledged to each other. Incredibile has meantime run off to get his master, Gérard, and as the two men face each other, Roucher manages to spirit the lady away to safety. Gérard and Chénier draw swords, but the former lackey is no match for the former aristocrat, and the revolutionary leader falls, slightly wounded. Lying on the ground, Gérard recalls their earlier friendship and whispers to Chénier that his name is on the death list. As a crowd gathers, Chénier manages his escape.

ACT III

Act III takes place in the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, where so many men and women were hastily judged or misjudged. The ominous chords of the opening suggest the cruel heartlessness of the proceedings.

To begin the session, Mathieu (formerly a waiter) growlingly demands more funds from the crowds. He gets nothing. Gérard, the former lackey, tries next, and with an impassioned plea for France, he gets contributions of gold and jewels. A
blind old woman even offers up her fifteen-year-old grandson. His father had been killed storming the Bastille, she says; his elder brother at Valmy. And now her last support is gratefully accepted by the revolution. The crowd thereupon sings the
Carmagnole
—
the
revolutionary dance-song performed so often at jolly ceremonies, such as guillotinings.

Then, as the crowd disperses, in slinks the sinister figure of Incredibile, the spy. He reports to his employer, Gérard, that Chénier has been arrested and that Madeleine will doubtless follow him here at once, and he urges Gérard to write out a denunciation of Chénier. Now Gérard has his great
scena (Nemico della patria?
—“An enemy of the fatherland?”). He begins to pen the denunciation; he shrinks from so base an action against a patriot and former friend; he wonders at his own change from patriot to murderer; he bitterly acknowledges that love for Madeleine has led him to this; and he finally writes the fatal document and hands it to Incredibile.

When Madeleine arrives, Gérard tells her how he has had her lured there and urges on her his long-standing devotion and love. Madeleine tries to escape, and when Gérard blocks her path, she screams. But suddenly she is quiet again. In a moving aria
(La mamma morta
—“My mother dead”) she speaks of her mother’s terrible death by fire when her house was burned by the mob, and offers her own fair body in payment for Chénier’s life. Gérard is won over. He now says he will try to save Chénier; but it is too late. He receives the message that Chénier is already there and about to be tried. The court files in; several prisoners are quickly disposed of by the court; and finally Gérard’s recently penned denunciation of Chénier is brought against him. In vain Gérard tries to save him. He protests that his own denunciation is nothing but lies, but the court and the crowd believe he has been bribed. Chénier (unlike the others) is allowed to defend himself, and he sings a ringing aria
(Sì, fui soldato)
full of courage and patriotism.

But even Gérard’s attacking the justice of this court is no help. The jury files out, and during the brief wait Chénier is heartened by the sight of Madeleine. The verdict is, of course,
the one that crowd and court want to hear—
Guilty
, and the sentence is
Death
. As Madeleine despairingly cries out the name of Chénier, the poet is led off to his death cell.

ACT IV

The short last act takes place in the courtyard of St. Lazare Prison in Paris. Shortly before the dawn of the day he is to be executed, Chénier sits writing at a table. He is visited by his friend Roucher, and after the jailer has left, he reads Roucher what he has been writing. It is a beautiful set of verses—the farewell to life of a poet
(Come un bel dì di mag
gio—“Like a beautiful day in May”).

Now Roucher must leave, and as Chénier is led back to his cell, his old friend and rival Gérard comes in leading his beloved Madeleine. Madeleine bribes the jailer to let her take the place of a condemned woman named Idia Legray so that she may be with Chénier to the end. Deeply moved, Gérard leaves to try to appeal to Robespierre, the most powerful man in France at the moment. (The opera does not tell us this, but it is a fact that, three days after the death of Chénier, Robespierre himself was executed, and
then
Chénier might have been saved.)

The jailer brings back Chénier, and there follows the ecstatic, almost exultant, final love duet, as Madeleine and Chénier look forward to being united in death. At its close the guards come in; the names of Andrea Chénier and Idia Legray are called out; and, hand in hand, the lovers walk out for their appointment with the guillotine.

ARABELLA

Opera in three acts by Richard Strauss with
libretto in German by Hugo von Hofmannsthal