100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (69 page)

Just then Manrico receives a message from his Prince, urging him to help defend the castle of Castellor against the forces of Di Luna. He also learns that Leonora, thinking him slain, is about to take her vows as a nun in the convent at Castellor. Thrusting aside Azucena and her protestations, Manrico wildly rushes off to the rescue of his Prince and his beloved.

Scene 2
takes us outside the convent. Here we find the Count with his followers ready to abduct Leonora just as she is about to take her vows. While waiting, he sings of the tempest that is raging in his heart in the familiar aria
Il balen
.
An off-stage chorus of nuns tells us the ceremony is about to take place, and when the women come on, Count di Luna attempts to lead Leonora off. As if by magic, Manrico suddenly appears, to Leonora’s great joy and surprise, for she had thought him dead. A moment later Manrico’s followers also come on the stage. The Count di Luna is overcome, and the act ends with a great ensemble, led by the voice of Leonora expressing her happiness.

ACT III
(“
THE GYPSY’S SON”)

Scene 1
The third act leads us to the military camp of Count di Luna, who is laying siege to Castellor, where Manrico has taken Leonora, expecting to marry her. The soldiers sing a stirring march tune
(Squilli, e cheggi)
, and presently Azucena, who has been found wandering near the camp, is brought in. She denies her identity, but the old soldier, Ferrando, recognizes her as the mysterious woman who had burned the Count’s younger brother many years before. Desperately she calls on Manrico for help; and the Count, who now has two reasons for hating the old woman, swears a dire vengeance. The soldiers drag her off as the scene ends.

Scene 2
The brief second scene takes place inside the castle, where Manrico is preparing for two great events—the coming attack by Di Luna’s forces and his marriage to Leonora. In a soothing aria, he quiets his beloved’s fear. A moment later, just after the sound of the organ is heard, Ruiz bursts in. He is Manrico’s lieutenant, and he reports that the pyre on which Azucena is to be burned to death is already lighted. Immediately Manrico orders a sortie to rescue his mother, and he sings the stirring aria
Di quella pira
, usually translated, though not very accurately, as “Tremble, ye tyrants!”

ACT IV (“THE ORDEAL”)

Scene 1
Outside the prison tower of the palace of Aliaferia comes Leonora to bewail the loss of Manrico, who has been taken prisoner in battle and is soon to be beheaded. A chorus
of monks inside the prison tower intones the
Miserere
, a prayer for those about to depart this earth. Manrico sings his own farewell to life and Leonora, accompanying himself on his lute, and Leonora gives voice to her terror over the dreadful event about to take place. It is one of the most memorable—as well as one of the most hackneyed—numbers in all opera.

The Count now enters, and Leonora pleads for the life of her lover, even offering herself as a sacrifice for him. Overjoyed, the Count agrees to this bargain, but Leonora secretly takes poison from her ring so that she will not fall into the hands of the man she hates.

Scene 2
Inside the prison we find Azucena resting on a pallet of straw, while Manrico tries to comfort her, singing of the mountain home to which they shall return. This is the melodious duet
Ai nostri monti
—“Home to Our Mountains.” Now Leonora comes and urges him to flee by himself. Fearing that Leonora has made a dishonorable bargain with the Count, Manrico is at first terribly angry; but as the poison begins to take effect, he understands what has happened. During their duet, Azucena lies quietly on her pallet, half out of her mind, and continues to sing of their old mountain home.

Just as Leonora dies, the Count enters and sees at once that he has been tricked. He orders Manrico’s immediate execution and then pulls Azucena to the window to see the death of her supposed son. Turning violently on him, she now cries:
Egli era tuo fratello!
—“He was your brother!” And as she adds a triumphant cry of vengeance, the curtain descends to the crashing of tragic orchestral chords.

LES TROYENS

(The Trojans)

Opera in two parts and six acts (though sometimes
divided into seven or even eight) by Hector
Berlioz with libretto in French by the composer
based on Books I, II, and IV of Virgil’s
Aeneid

PART I
The Capture of Troy

PART II
—
The Trojans at Carthage

Time: Ancient Troy and Carthage

Places: Troy and Carthage

First performance, of Part II only, at Paris, November 4, 1863

First performance of both parts at Karlsruhe (in German) December
5
and 6, 1890

    One of the great enthusiasms of the French nineteenth-century romanticists was classical literature; and one of the greatest enthusiasms of Hector Berlioz, most romantic of the romanticists, was Virgil, the laureate of Augustan Rome. Accordingly, when the Princess Wittgenstein, mistress of his great and good friend Franz Liszt, suggested the
Aeneid
as the subject of an opera to Berlioz, he embraced it with all the enthusiasm of his romantic heart.

With infinite labor and affection he wrote a vast libretto based on Books I, II, and IV of the epic (with a telling passage from
The Merchant of Venice
thrown in for good measure) and composed a score of imposing dimensions. Then began the still more heartbreaking business of trying to wangle a production. That took five whole years; and even then he might not have succeeded had he accepted an invitation to visit the United States. He turned it down partly because the Civil War was going on, partly because he hated Americans, whom he knew only as tourists. We have—quite foolishly, I feel, but also quite unconsciously—evened the score, for so far as I know, the work has never been staged here in its entirety although concert versions have been given.

The French, however, were not a great deal more perspicacious. When the work was finally given in 1863, only the second half reached the stage-and that was remorselessly cut
after a while. Berlioz never lived to see the entire work done anywhere. He wrote bitterly about this defeat; and when, twenty-one years after his death, a complete performance of
Les troyens
was staged, it took place in Germany and in the German language.

When the entire work is given, two evenings must be devoted to it; and as the first part is comparatively static, it has become customary in France to give only the second part, under the title of
The Trojans at Carthage
. The first part is called, then,
The Capture of Troy
and the whole simply
The Trojans
.

Despite its comparatively few productions it is generally regarded as one of the few really great French operas. Even Donald Francis Tovey, one of the great critics of the twentieth century who had, generally, little good to say of Berlioz, wrote: “It is one of the most gigantic and convincing masterpieces of music-drama.”

PART I: LA PRISE DE TROIE
(The Capture of Troy)

ACT I

Scene 1
The Greeks have apparently abandoned the siege of Troy, and outside the walls of that fabled city, before the empty tent of the once-dreaded Achilles, the people of Troy are celebrating. News comes that the departed enemy has left behind, on the shore, a huge wooden horse as an offering to the goddess Pallas Athene, and they rush off to see the wonder. Only Cassandra is left behind—that beautiful daughter of King Priam who has been cursed by Apollo with the gift of uttering true prophecies which are never to be believed. She has seen the ghost of her brother Hector looking fearfully across the sea, and she knows that Priam is doomed. Yet no one will believe her, and even Coroebus, to whom she is engaged, believes her to be mad. Coroebus comes to her and tenderly asks her to rejoice with the others, but she is still
full of gloomy prophecies: the streets of Troy will be running with blood; its virgins will be violated; and Coroebus himself will be killed by a Grecian spear. She implores him to flee the place; but Coroebus
is
a hero, and in the duet that follows, she speaks lovingly and comfortingly to him. The gloomy girl promises to marry him, but adds that death is already preparing their bridal bed.

Scene 2
Before the citadel of Troy, King Priam and Queen Hecuba hold court, celebrating the victory and giving thanks to the protecting gods. Processions pass by, and a mimic battle is danced. At its close, Andromache comes in with little Astyanax. She is the widow of the great hero of Troy, Prince Hector, who had been slain by Achilles in single combat and dragged around the walls seven times. Mother and child are dressed in white, the symbol of mourning, and everyone receives them with solemn respect. At the back of the stage, however, Cassandra prophesies even greater disaster for Hecuba; and the ensemble develops as a solemn funeral march.

Aeneas, another son of Priam’s, comes rushing in with somber news. The priest Laocoön had shared some of Cassandra’s misgivings about the wooden horse. “I fear Greeks when they bear gifts,” he said, and hurled a javelin at the monster. Immediately two serpents had come across the waters and destroyed him and his sons. The news strikes honor into the Trojan hearts, and an impressive ensemble expresses it. Nevertheless, the advice of Aeneas prevails. He interprets the action of the serpents as revenge of the gods for an act of impiety and orders the horse to be drawn into the city. Only Cassandra warns against this foolhardy act, but no one, as usual, pays any attention to her.

An elaborate scene develops as night falls; off-stage the soldiers begin the
Trojan March of Triumph;
and chorus after chorus comes on. A few of the people are disquieted by a report that weapons have been heard clanking inside the horse, but when it is actually drawn across the scene, joy prevails again. As Cassandra sees it drawn into the city itself, she cries: “It is finished! Death has seized its prey!”

ACT II

Scene 1
Aeneas is asleep, and his little son, Ascanius, disquieted by the ominous sounds he has heard outside, steals in. He does not dare awaken his father, however, and leaves again. He is followed by a bolder and more sinister figure—the ghost of Hector. Hector warns his brother of Troy’s impending doom and tells him to save the household gods from the disaster. Then in a most solemn address (which is, musically, nothing but a slow descending chromatic octave) he tells him to seek out Italy and found an empire to rule the world. (This, of course, is to be Rome.)

Hector’s warning is already too late. Panthus, a priest, himself badly wounded, brings in the statuettes of the gods and tells Aeneas how Greek soldiers poured out of the wooden horse, slew the guards, and have already massacred many of the people and the King himself. Ascanius, Coroebus, and others follow, and Aeneas rushes out at their head, determined to make a last stand.

Scene 2
The women of Troy are gathered in the Temple of Vesta, which has a high gallery at its back. They sing a wailing prayer to the goddess Cybele (the mother of Zeus), and Cassandra joins them with the report that Aeneas and a band of followers have escaped, that they are on their way to Italy to found a greater Troy. But as for herself, there is nothing left: Coroebus has fallen. She urges all of them to escape a fate worse than death by hurling themselves from the gallery; but a few of the younger girls shrink from the sacrifice, and they are driven from the temple, presumably into the arms of the Greek rapists.