The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (55 page)

Juliette’s coloratura waltz song comes very early in the opera.
It contains trills, chromatic runs and a top D and
should brim with girlish verve and spontaneity – nervous sopranos find it difficult to sing before they have had a chance to warm up and settle down.
The poison scene requires a much heavier voice, and is sometimes cut to spare the lighter soprano’s cords.

Like so many French tenor roles, Roméo lies high for modern singers, and the aria ‘Ah!
lève-toi, soleil’ is often transposed down a semitone to help them negotiate it.
Stéphano offers a young mezzo-soprano a pretty aria, ‘Que fais-tu’, and the baritone singing Mercutio can take centre-stage in the virtuosic Queen Mab ballad.

In performance

Irretrievably a piece of its period, and not one which benefits from ambitious directorial interpretation.
The important thing is that the tenor looks good in tights and that Juliette makes a plausible object of amorous desire.
As with
Faust,
the complete score is too long for the taste of a modern audience, and it generally benefits from a few cuts.

Recording

CD: Roberto Alagna (Roméo); Angela Gheorghiu (Juliette); Michel Plasson (cond.).
EMI 5 56123 2

DVD: Roberto Alagna (Roméo); Charles Mackerras (cond.).
Covent Garden production.
Pioneer 425736 089 259

Ambroise Thomas

(1811–96)

Hamlet

Five acts. First performed Paris, 1868.

Libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré

Thomas was a successful composer of lighter works, who spent six years composing
Hamlet
in an attempt to rise to the grand style – with its spectacular processions and extended ballets – favoured by the Paris Opéra.
Fine roles for coloratura soprano (Ophelia) and baritone (Hamlet) have ensured the opera’s survival and in recent years the work’s considerable dramatic merits have been increasingly appreciated.

Plot

Broadly the same as Shakespeare’s play, allowing for an enlarged role for Ophelia, the elimination of Hamlet’s murder of Polonius and subsequent exile, and the deletion of minor characters such as Fortinbras, Osric and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The chief difference is the ending, in which Hamlet finally kills Claudius and is proclaimed King of Denmark.

What to listen for

Heavily sugared in terms of its harmonic and melodic style, this opera can none the less exert considerable dramatic impact when sung by artists of the calibre of Simon Keenlyside and Natalie Dessay.
The role of Hamlet is one of the first of several star parts which French opera offers to a high baritone rather than a tenor (who has to be content with the insignificant role of Laertes).
His vocal opportunities include a bravura drinking song, red-blooded duets and encounters with the Ghost, Ophelia and Gertrude.

The other first-rate role is that of Ophelia.
Her mad scene is among the most difficult in the repertory, with tricky intervals and chromatic scales.
The section which begins ‘Pâle et
blonde’ is based on a Swedish folk song and was introduced by the soprano Christine Nilsson, the first Ophelia.

In performance

There is no use in pretending that the opera is comparable in depth or complexity to Shakespeare’s play, as over-enthusiastic directors have occasionally tried to suggest.
Treating it as a romantic Victorian melodrama, with good special effects for the appearance of the Ghost, is a more satisfactory approach.

Recording

CD: Thomas Hampson (Hamlet); Antonio de Almeida (cond.).
EMI 7 54820 2

Georges Bizet

(1838–75)

Les Pêcheurs de Perles

Three acts. First performed Paris, 1863.

Libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carrè

Composed at great speed when Bizet was only twenty-four, this opera did not enjoy initial success and was only revived, in a tastelessly edited version, after his death.
Today, most of Bizet’s original intentions are honoured again, although the tenor–baritone duet ‘Au fond du temple saint’ continues to overshadow its other fragrant charms.

Plot

On a beach in Ceylon, the pearl fishers elect Zurga to be their king.
His friend Nadir returns from his wanderings, and the two young men recall how they once simultaneously set eyes on a beautiful girl in a Hindu temple and both fell in love with her.
But their friendship came first, and they vowed not to pursue her.

A veiled lady appears, accompanied by Nourabad, High Priest of Brahma.
She has been selected to protect and pray for the pearl fishers as they dive for their dangerous trade.
Nadir recognizes her as the beautiful girl from the temple.
Her name is Leïla, and she has taken a vow of chastity.
Nevertheless, she and Nadir fall deeply in love.

Nourabad spots this and denounces the lovers to the people. Zurga intervenes, but when he recognizes Leïla and realizes that Nadir has broken his oath of friendship, he orders their execution.
Later, Zurga is filled with remorse.
But when he sees how strong Leïla’s love for Nadir remains, he refuses her clemency.
As she leaves, Leïla asks a fisherman to take her necklace to her mother.
Zurga recognizes this necklace as the one he once gave to a young girl who had saved his life.

Before the sacrificial pyre, Leïla and Nadir await their death.
Just before the fatal moment, Zurga appears and distracts 
Nourabad and the bloodthirsty crowd with news that the camp which forms their home has been set on fire.
As they all rush off to save their possessions, Zurga frees Nadir and Leïla, explaining that he is the man whose life Leïla once saved and that he deliberately started the fire to save her life in return.
Nadir and Leïla flee, with Zurga’s blessing.

What to listen for

No less a personage than Berlioz thought that this opera contained ‘a considerable number of beautiful, expressive pieces full of fire and rich colouring’.
Today, it may seem dramatically pallid, and its pseudo-oriental harmonies and melisma merely quaint, but Berlioz was not wrong.
A well-cast performance reveals much more than one memorable duet (the central tune of which, ‘Oui, c’est elle, c’est la déesse’, makes a couple too many thumping appearances in the opera as a result of posthumous editing of the score).
Leïla is, like Gounod’s Juliette, a role which starts with high, fleet coloratura and then descends in the duet with Zurga (baritone) to more dramatic territory which leaves lighter voices gasping.
Bizet’s markings for Nadir’s evocatively orchestrated aria ‘Je crois entendre’ suggest that he intended Nadir to be sung by a sweet-voiced tenor with a clean, pure head voice.
Today, it has passed to coarser, chestier types, and the aria sometimes has to be transposed down to accommodate them.