Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love 1443856665, 9781443856669

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
INTRODUCTION
1. THE ORIGINS
2. THE PLOT
3. THE SOURCES
4. THE RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM
5. THE DRAMATURGY
6. THE LEADING THEMES
7. INSTRUMENTAL WRITING
8. FORMAL INNOVATION
9. THE TREATMENT OF THE CHORUS
10. THE BLESSING OF THE DAGGERS
11. THE LOVE DUET
12. THE DRAMATIC FORM OF ACT 5
13. THE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
14. RECEPTION HISTORY
15. PERFORMING TRADITIONS
16. PERFORMANCE IN THE TWENTIETHCENTURY
17. THE ICONOGRAPHY
18. HISTORICAL APPENDICES
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL INDEX

Citation preview

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

By

Robert Ignatius Letellier

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love, by Robert Ignatius Letellier This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Robert Ignatius Letellier All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5666-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5666-9

Fig, 1 Giacomo Meyerbeer. Lithograph by Delpech after a drawing by Maurin (1835)

CONTENTS List of Figures............................................................................................. xi List of Musical Examples ........................................................................ xvii Introduction .............................................................................................. xix 1. The Origins .............................................................................................. 1 2. The Plot ................................................................................................. 11 3. The Sources ........................................................................................... 19 4. The Religious Symbolism ..................................................................... 31 5. The Dramaturgy..................................................................................... 43 Historical Music Drama ................................................................. 43 The Five-Act Structure ................................................................... 45 Couleur locale ................................................................................ 47 6. The Leading Themes ............................................................................. 51 Protestant Motifs .................................................................................. 51 The Curfew .......................................................................................... 57 Catholic Motifs .................................................................................... 57 7. Instrumental Writing.............................................................................. 63 “Plus blanche que la blanche hermine”........... ..................................... 64 The Nuptial Benediction ...................................................................... 65 8. Formal Innovation ................................................................................. 67 Melodic Pliability ................................................................................ 67 The Conception of Act 2 ...................................................................... 67 The Figure of Marcel ........................................................................... 70 The Chanson Huguenote...................................................................... 72 A Romantic Concern with Dramatic Impulse ...................................... 74 The Duel Septet ................................................................................... 74

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9. The Treatment of the Chorus ................................................................. 77 The Orgie ............................................................................................. 77 “Honneur au conquerant” .................................................................... 78 The Confrontation Scene ..................................................................... 79 10. The Blessing of the Daggers ................................................................ 81 Bellini and the Blessing of the Daggers ............................................... 84 11. The Love Duet ..................................................................................... 91 12. The Dramatic Form of Act 5 ............................................................. 103 13. The Orchestral Music ........................................................................ 109 1) The Ouverture ............................................................................... 109 2) The Entr’acte to Act 2 ................................................................... 110 3) The Entr’acte to Act 3 ................................................................... 112 4) The Entr’acte to Act 4 ................................................................... 112 5) The Entr’acte to Act 5 ................................................................... 112 6) The Danse bohémienne ................................................................. 113 14. Reception History .............................................................................. 117 15. Performing Traditions........................................................................ 129 Table of Major Performances in Paris, New York, London and Milan ..................................................................................... 132 16. Performance in the Twentieth Century .............................................. 143 17. The Iconography ................................................................................ 155 Les Beautés de l’Opéra ...................................................................... 155 The Frontispiece ................................................................................ 155 The Scenes from Act 1 ....................................................................... 157 The Scenes from Act 2 ....................................................................... 159 The Scenes from Act 3 ....................................................................... 161 The Scenes from Act 4 ....................................................................... 163 The Scenes from Act 5 ....................................................................... 165 Oeuvres Illustrées de Eugène Scribe ................................................. 168 Three Paintings by Contemporary Historial Artists ........................... 172 The Liebig Cards ............................................................................... 178

Contents

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18. Historical Appendices........................................................................ 185 Heinrich Laube .................................................................................. 185 Franz Liszt ......................................................................................... 186 George Sand ....................................................................................... 188 Notes........................................................................................................ 217 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 227 Giacomo Meyerbeer........................................................................... 227 General Studies ............................................................................ 227 Life ............................................................................................... 227 Bibliography ................................................................................. 228 Libretti .......................................................................................... 228 Augustin-Eugène Scribe .................................................................... 228 Émile Deschamps .............................................................................. 229 Les Huguenots.................................................................................... 229 Libretto ......................................................................................... 229 Scores ........................................................................................... 230 Modern Editions ........................................................................... 231 Separate Pieces ............................................................................. 231 Arrangements ............................................................................... 234 Discography and Bibliography ..................................................... 243 Discography ............................................................................ 244 Bibliography ........................................................................... 245 Reviews of 20th -century performances ........................................ 257 Index ........................................................................................................ 265

LIST OF FIGURES

Creators and Historical Background Fig. 1 (frontispiece) Giacomo Meyerbeer. Portrait by Jaeger...................... v Fig. 2 Augustin-Eugène Scribe ................................................................ xxii Fig. 3 The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day. Painting by François Dubois ............................................................................................... xxiv Fig. 4 Émile Deschamps .............................................................................. 5 Fig. 5 Prosper Mérimée. Engraving by Nargeot .......................................... 5 Fig. 6 Edmond Duponchel ........................................................................... 5 Fig. 7 George Sand ...................................................................................... 5 Fig. 8 The Paris Opéra, Rue Le Peletier ...................................................... 9 Fig. 9 External View.................................................................................... 9 Fig. 10 Internal View ................................................................................... 9 Fig. 11 Queen Catherine de Medici ........................................................... 10 Fig. 12 Queen Marguerite de Valois (Queen Margot) ............................... 10 Fig. 13 King Henry of Navarre .................................................................. 10 Fig. 14 The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day. Lithograph by A. Duruy after François Dubois (1878) .......................................... 10 Stage Designs Fig. 15 Act 1 Set design (coloured maquette) ........................................... 12 Fig. 16 Act 1 Raoul’s romance. Coloured postcard (Paris Opéra, c. 1900) .. 12 Fig. 17 Act 4 The love duet. Coloured postcard (Paris Opéra, c. 1900) .... 15 Fig. 18 Act 5 The marriage ceremony. Coloured postcard (Paris Opéra, c. 1900) ................................................................................................ 16 Fig. 19 Act 5 finale. Aquerelle, c. 1865..................................................... 16 Fig. 20 Act 2 Décor. Coloured lithograph by Deshaye.............................. 17 Fig. 21 Act 2 Stage design (Paris Opéra)................................................... 17 Fig. 22 Act 2 The great staircase at Chenonceaux ..................................... 18 Fig. 23 Act 2 Queen Marguerite and her Court (print, Académie Royale de Musique) ......................................................................................... 18 Fig. 24 The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day. Engraving from the 17th century ................................................................................... 26 Fig. 25 The murder of Admiral Coligny .................................................... 26 Fig. 26 Act 3 duet Valentine-Marcel. Pauline Viardot & Ignazio Marini (Engraving in The Illustrated London News, 1845) ............................ 36

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Fig. 27 Act 4 duet. The Parting (print, Académie Royale de Musique) .... 39 Fig. 28 Act 4 duet Design, Teatro Real Madrid......................................... 40 Fig. 29 Act 4 duet Opéra maquette ............................................................ 41 Fig. 30 Act 5 scene 1 Design for the Opéra ............................................... 44 Fig. 31 Act 5 scene 1 Design by Séchan ................................................... 45 Fig. 32 Act 3 the Pré aux clercs. Stage design (Teatro Apollo, Rome) ..... 50 Fig. 33 Act 5 scene 1 Set design (coloured maquette) ............................... 54 Fig. 34 Act 5 scene 2 trio Caricature: ‘Portrait-charge de F. Niel’ ............ 54 Fig. 35 Act 5 scene 2 Le Grand Trio à Opéra de Paris, 1878. Engraving by J. R. Mitchell ................................................................................... 55 Fig. 36 Act 5 scene 2 The Nuptial Blessing (print, Académie Royale de Musique) ......................................................................................... 55 Fig. 37 Act 5 scene 2 The Nuptial Blessing (coloured chocolate card) ..... 56 Fig. 38 Antonio Scotti as Nevers ............................................................... 61 Fig. 39 Mario as Raoul .............................................................................. 65 Fig. 40 Act 5 scene 2 trio. Engraving by Deveria...................................... 66 Fig. 41 Marcel Journet as Marcel .............................................................. 73 Fig. 42a Enrico Caruso as Raoul (Duel Septet, New York) ...................... 75 Fig. 42b Enrico Caruso as Raoul (Duel Septet, London) .......................... 76 Fig. 43 Jean Noté as Nevers ...................................................................... 78 Fig, 44 Pol Plançon as Saint-Bris .............................................................. 84 Fig. 45 Pierre Gailhard as Saint-Bris ......................................................... 90 Fig. 46 Act 4 duet. Lithograph of Giulia Grisi & Mario at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 1858 ............................................................. 101 Fig. 47 Act 5 scene 2 trio. Décor by Philippe Chaperon. Engraving by A. Deveria ..................................................................................... 108 Fig. 48 The printed full score of Les Huguenots, overture ...................... 111 Fig. 49 Act 5 scene 3 Finale à Opéra de Paris (Engraving by P. Jelly. Lithograph by M. Massone Toulon) .................................................. 115 Singers The Role Creators Fig. 50 & 51 Julie Dorus-Gras (Marguerite de Valois) ........................... 118 Fig. 52 & 53 Cornélie Falcon (Valentine) ............................................... 118 Fig. 54 Maria Flécheux (Urbain) ............................................................. 119 Fig. 55 Montessu (A Gypsy) ................................................................... 119 Fig. 56 & 57 Adolphe Nourrit (Raoul) .................................................... 119 Fig. 58 Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur (Marcel) ........................................... 120 Fig. 59 Jacques-Émile Serda (Saint-Bris) ................................................ 120 Fig. 60 Prosper Dérivis (Nevers) ............................................................. 120

List of Figures

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Interpreters Before 1940 Fig. 61 Godfrey, Les Huguenots. Selection [for military band] (London: Chappell’s Army Journal, 1911) ........................................................ 123 Fig. 62 Marie Sass (Valentine) ................................................................ 124 Fig. 63 Pauline Viardot & Marietta Alboni (Valentine & Urbain) .......... 124 Fig. 64 Caroline Duprez (Marguerite de Valois) ..................................... 124 Fig. 65 Colin (Raoul) ............................................................................... 124 Fig. 66 Gabrielle Krauss (Valentine) ....................................................... 127 Fig. 67 Adelina Patti (Valentine) ............................................................. 127 Fig. 68 Agustarello Affre & Louise Grandjean (Raoul & Valentine)...... 127 Fig. 69 Jean Alchewsky (Raoul) .............................................................. 127 Fig. 70 Florencio Constantino (Raoul) .................................................... 131 Fig. 71 Albert Alvazrez (Raoul) .............................................................. 131 Fig. 72 Lucienne Bréval (Valentine) ....................................................... 131 Fig. 73 Jean de Reszke (Raoul) ............................................................... 131 Fig. 74 Émile Scaramberg (Raoul) .......................................................... 134 Fig. 75 Emma Eames (Valentine) ............................................................ 134 Fig. 76 Nellie Melba (Marguerite de Valois) .......................................... 134 Fig. 77 Marie Treillet-Nathan (Valentine) ............................................... 134 Fig. 78 Enrico Caruso (Raoul) ................................................................. 137 Fig. 79 Christine Nilsson (Valentine) ...................................................... 137 Fig. 80 Emmy Destinn & Leo Slezak (Valentine & Raoul) .................... 137 Fig. 81 Emmy Destinn (Valentine) .......................................................... 140 Fig. 82 Lilian Nordica (Valentine) .......................................................... 140 Fig. 83 Sigrid Arnoldson (Marguerite de Valois) .................................... 140 Fig. 84 Frieda Hempel (Marguerite de Valois)........................................ 140 Fig. 85 Marcel Journet (Marcel) .............................................................. 142 Fig. 86 Mabel Garrison (Urbain) ............................................................. 142 Fig. 87 Lotte Schöne (Urbain) ................................................................. 142 Fig. 88 André Pernet (Saint-Bris) ............................................................ 145 Fig. 89 John O’Sullivan (Raoul).............................................................. 145 Fig. 90 José Palet (Raoul) ........................................................................ 145 Fig. 91 Giacomo Lauri-Volpi (Raoul) ..................................................... 145 After 1940 Fig. 92 Franco Corelli (Raoul) ................................................................ 150 Fig. 93 Joan Sutherland & Giulietta Simonato (The Queen & Valentine) . 150 Fig. 94 Joan Sutherland (Marguerite de Valois) ..................................... 150 Fig. 95 Nicolai Ghiaurov (Marcel) .......................................................... 150 Fig. 96 Tony Poncet (Raoul) ................................................................... 153 Fig. 97 Nicolai Gedda (Raoul) ................................................................ 153

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Fig. 99 Richard Leech (Raoul) ................................................................ 153 Fig. 99 Pilar Lorengar (Valentine)........................................................... 153 Iconography From Les Beautés de l’Opéra Fig. 100 Les Beautés de l’Opéra, cover .................................................. 156 Fig. 101 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 1 Frontispiece ...................................... 156 Fig. 102 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 2 Act 1 The Orgie ............................... 158 Fig. 103 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 3 Act 1 The Oriel Window .................. 158 Fig. 104 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 4 Act 2 The Blindfold ......................... 160 Fig. 105 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 5 Act 2 The Vow ................................. 160 Fig. 106 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 6 Act 3 The Tavern (Rataplan)............ 162 Fig. 107 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 7 Act 3 The Warning........................... 162 Fig. 108 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 8 Act 4 The Blessing of the Daggers .. 164 Fig. 109 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 9 Act 4 The Tocsin .............................. 164 Fig. 110 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 10 Act 4 The Parting ........................... 165 Fig. 111 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 11 Act 5 The Ball ................................ 166 Fig. 112 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 12 Act 5 The Nuptial Benediction ...... 167 Fig. 113 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 13 Act 5 The Finale............................. 167 From the Oeuvres Illustrées de Eugène Scribe Fig. 114 Act 2 The Queen and Valentine ................................................ 169 Fig. 115 Act 4 scene 1 Valentine alone ................................................... 169 Fig. 116 Act 4 scene 7 Valentine & Raoul .............................................. 170 Fig. 117 Act 5 scene 2 trio Marcel-Raoul-Valentine ............................... 170 Paintings by Roqueplan, Lemud and Dodge Fig. 118 Act 4 duet Roqueplan (6 variants) ............................................. 173 Fig. 119 Act 4 duet Lamud ...................................................................... 175 Fig. 120 Act 4 duet Dodge....................................................................... 177 The Liebig Cards Fig. 121 The Liebig Cards 1 Act 1 The Party .......................................... 179 Fig. 122 The Liebig Cards 2 Act 2 Chenonceaux.................................... 179 Fig. 123 The Liebig Cards 3 Act 3 The Duel .......................................... 181 Fig. 124 The Liebig Cards 4 Act 4 The Blessing of the Daggers ............ 181 Fig. 125 The Liebig Cards 5 Act 4 The Love Duet ................................. 183 Fig. 126 The Liebig Cards 6 Act 5 The Massacre ................................... 183 Appendices Fig. 127 Heinrich Laube .......................................................................... 186 Fig. 128 Franz Liszt ................................................................................. 186

List of Figures

xv

Modern Productions Fig. 129 Paris Opéra 1936 Act 2 (The Queen and Urbain)...................... 189 Fig. 130 Paris Opéra 1936 Act 2 (The Vow) ........................................... 189 Fig. 131 Hamburg 1958 Act 2 (The Assembly) ...................................... 191 Fig. 132 Hamburg 1958 Act 2 (The Vow)............................................... 191 Fig. 133 Hamburg 1958 Act 4 (Raoul & Valentine) ............................... 191 Fig. 134 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 2 (The Court of Love)....................... 194 Fig. 135 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 2 (The Queen & Raoul) .................... 194 Fig. 136 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 3 (Sutherland as the Queen) ............. 195 Fig. 137 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 4 (Raoul & Valentine) ...................... 195 Fig. 138 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 4 (Corelli as Raoul) ............................ 195 Fig. 139 Leipzig 1974 Act 2 (The Queen and Valentine)........................ 198 Fig. 140 Leipzig 1974 Act 5 (The Grand Trio) ....................................... 198 Fig. 141 Los Angeles 1976 Act 2 (The Vow).......................................... 201 Fig. 142 Australian Opera 1991 Sutherland (The Queen) ....................... 201 Fig. 143 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 5 The Wall (DVD cover)........ 204 Fig. 144 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 2 (Angela Denning as the Queen) ..................................................................................... 204 Fig. 145 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 4 (The Conspiracy)................ 205 Fig. 146 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 4 (The Love Duet) .................. 205 Fig. 147 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 5 (The Massacre) .................... 208 Fig. 148 Liège 2005 Act 2 (The Queen, Valentine and Raoul) ............... 209 Fig. 149 Liège 2005 Act 2 (Finale) ......................................................... 209 Fig. 150 Bard College 2009 (mp3 cover) ................................................ 211 Fig. 151 Bard College 2009 Act 5 (The Massacre) ................................. 211 Fig. 152 Brussels 2011 (poster) ............................................................... 213 Fig. 153 Brussels 2011 Act 1 (Marcel) .................................................... 213 Fig. 154 Brussels 2011 Act 4 (The Conspiracy) ...................................... 213 Fig. 155 Les Huguenots. Original costume designs................................. 215 Fig. 156 Les Huguenots. Playbill for the Royal Opera House, 1927 ....... 215 Fig. 157 Gustave Roger as Raoul ........................................................... 216

LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES

Valentine and Marcel 1a Valentine’s Larghetto in the act 3 duet (Marcel-Valentine) ................. 34 1b Marcel’s Blessing of Valentine (Allegro moderato) in the act 3 duet .. 34 Protestant Themes 2a Overture “Ein’ feste Burg” ................................................................... 53 2b Marcel’s recitative, act 1 ...................................................................... 53 2c Entry of Marcel, act 1 ........................................................................... 53 Catholic Themes 3a Litany of Catholic Ladies, act 3 ............................................................ 58 3b The Blessing of the Daggers, ensemble act 4 ....................................... 58 3c Entry of the Court, act 2........................................................................ 58 3d Conspiracy, ensemble act 4 .................................................................. 58 The Comte de Nevers 4a Nevers’s recitative in act 1.................................................................... 60 4b Nevers’s demur in the Blessing of the Daggers, act 4 .......................... 60 Raoul de Nangis 5a Raoul’s Romance in act 1 ..................................................................... 64 5b Raoul in the act 2 duet (Marguerite de Valois-Raoul) .......................... 68 5c “Casta diva” from act 1 of Bellini’s Norma .......................................... 69 The Act 2 Finale 6a The Vow in the act 2 finale ................................................................... 71 6b. Unison of dismay, act 2 finale ............................................................. 71 6c. Valentine’s solo in the act 2 finale ....................................................... 71 The Blessing of the Daggers 7a Stretta in the Blessing of the Daggers, ensemble act 4 ......................... 85 7b Stretta in the “Guerra” Chorus, act 2, Bellini’s Norma ........................ 86 8a Diminuendo in the conclusion of the Blessing of the Daggers ............. 88 8b Hushed conclusion of the “Guerra” Chorus, Bellini’s Norma .............. 88

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The Love Duet 9a Andante amoroso of the act 4 Love Duet (Valentine-Raoul)................ 94 9b Valentine and Raoul a due in the Andante amoroso............................. 96 9c Stretta of the act 4 Love Duet ............................................................... 97 9d Valentine’s arioso (un peu mois vite) in stretta .............................. 99-100 Themes from Act 5 10a Nuptial Benediction in the act 5 trio (Marcel, Raoul, Valentine) ..... 104 10b Conclusion of the Interrogatoire ...................................................... 104 11 Trumpets in the Chorus of Assassins, act 5 finale .............................. 106

INTRODUCTION

Les Huguenots Opéra en Cinq Actes Paroles de Eugène Scribe et Emile Deschamps [Augustin-Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps (with additional ideas, revisions and words by Gaetano Rossi, Adolphe Nourrit and Giacomo Meyerbeer)] Musique de Giacomo Meyerbeer

World Première 29 February 1836 Paris, Académie Royale de Musique [L’Opéra, Salle de la rue Le Peletier] Marguerite de Valois .......................................................... Julie Dorus-Gras Valentine .............................................................................. Cornélie Falcon Urbain ........................................................................Louise Marie Flécheux Raoul de Nangis .................................................................. Adolphe Nourrit Marcel .................................................................. Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur Le Comte de Saint-Bris ................................................ Jacques-Émile Serda Le Comte de Nevers ..............................................................Prosper Dérivis Bois-Rosé .................................................................. Pierre-François Wartel François-Antoine Habeneck (conductor)

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

On 29 February 1836 Les Huguenots, a grand opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer (then aged 44), with words by Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) and Émile Deschamps (1791-1871), was performed for the first time, at the Paris Opéra. It was to be one of the most successful productions ever staged at the Opéra with 1,126 performances in Paris over the next hundred years, in the process breaking all box office records.1 In the audience were Hector Berlioz and Harriet Smithson. It would become Meyerbeer’s most performed work, with thousands of performances throughout the world. Berlioz called Les Huguenots a musical encyclopaedia with material enough for twenty ordinary operas.2 It has been likened to a cathedral; it has been called “an evangel of religion and love” (by George Sand). It has been said to be “the most vivid chapter of French history ever penned”. F. Stoepel, writing in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (20 June 1836, 269) observed that “the opera is one of the most admirable creations of the human spirit. It depicts the fine arts of poetry, music and of painting in enchanting effects with the rich life of scenic presentation, enhanced by the fairy play of the dance and the dazzling finery of the costumes, all in the powerful process of seductive illusion”. Les Huguenots is a huge exploration of faith, tolerance, hatred, extermination, love, loyalty, self-sacrifice and hope in despair, the first panel of a central diptych on the Reformation, and the heart of the wider tetralogy of Meyerbeer’s grand operas, where issues of power, religion and love are examined in a variety of modes. For five years after the sensational premiere of Robert le Diable, Meyerbeer was thought to be resting on his laurels. Instead, he was drudging over a gigantic drama, partly adapted by Scribe from Prosper Mérimée’s Chronique de Charles IX. It was hardly believed possible that the earlier success could be repeated. Most of the vivid details, gleaned from every available document related to the time, were the composer’s contribution to Les Huguenots. “Apart from his outstanding musical gifts, Meyerbeer possesses to the highest degree an instinct for the theatre. He is pervaded by the plot, he identifies himself with the meaning of the words, he adheres to the historic and local colour of the subject” (Théophile Gautier).3

All the features of Meyerbeer’s art are illustrated definitively in his most famous score, Les Huguenots. As historical pivot Scribe used the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Night (24 August 1572). Around this he wove a story concerning a Catholic noblewoman, Valentine Saint-Bris, and a Protestant scion, Raoul de Nangis, who become key figures in Queen

Introduction

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Marguerite de Valois’s plans for ending religious strife by arranging marriages between leading families of the opposing religious factions. By various misunderstandings, Valentine and Raoul, who love each other, are separated, and Valentine marries the honourable Catholic aristocrat Count de Nevers. However, Raoul learns of his mistake and comes to seek Valentine’s pardon. In this way he unwittingly overhears the Catholic conspiracy to massacre the Huguenots gathered in the capital for the marriage of Henry of Navarre to Marguerite de Valois. When he seeks to warn his friends, Valentine tries to stop him from going to certain death by revealing her love. Their idyll of mutual recognition is broken in upon by the tocsin, and Raoul flees to warn his friends. In the last act, Valentine, after Nevers’s murder, seeks union with Raoul in marriage, faith and death, amidst the carnage of the massacre. Meyerbeer matches the text in drama, splendour and ceremony: it combines theatricalism with profound depths of feeling. Its gorgeous colouring, intense passion, consistency of dramatic treatment, and careful delineation of character, secured for this work vast fame and influence. It was an epoch-making opera, an enduring monument to Meyerbeer’s fame. As Hans von Bülow said, “I consider Les Huguenots one of the greatest moments of my life.” The music for this sombre tapestry of the Saint Bartholomew Massacre springs from the core of the vivid action, and creates a panoramic alternation of moods, that capture the tragedy of religious intolerance and personal anguish in one of the most fraught events in history when some 30,000 French Protestants were murdered during the night of 24 August 1574. Meyerbeer’s music rises to the occasion, and reaches sublime heights of music drama, especially in the fourth and fifth acts, with the Blessing of the Daggers—one of the most electrical scenes in all opera - the more powerful Love Duet, and the Trio of Martyrdom in the last moments of the opera. Spectacle was incorporated in the plot, in Meyerbeer’s concern to conjure up the couleur locale of those heroic times. The evocation of Marguerite de Valois’s court at Chenonceaux, the recreation of late Medieval Parisian life with its Gypsy revels and the religionists’ riots in the Pre-aux-Clercs, the wedding fête in the Hotel de Nêsle, all grow out of the central idea. Meyerbeer was also very successful in his characterizations of individuals: the dreamy idealist Raoul, the passionate and self-sacrificing Valentine, the fanatical and implacable St. Bris, the rough stolid Marcel, the elegant and capricious queen, the somewhat flamboyant but always honorable Nevers. All come to life in this score. The opera became enormously popular, its various arias a touchstone of operatic lyricism, and by 1936 it had been performed 1126 times at the

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Paris Opera alone. In spite of its overwhelming dramatic power and the instrumental riches of the score, the most significant aspect of the work came to be regarded as the supremacy of the vocal parts. Performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York during the 1890s were among the most famous in operatic history. Here performances attained a legendary status, as in the so-called nuits des sept etoiles (“the Nights of the Seven Stars”), 1894 with Nellie Melba, Lillian Nordica, Sofia Scalchi, Jean de Reszke, Edouard de Reszke, Pol Plançon, and Victor Maurel.

Fig. 2 Augustin-Eugène Scribe

Introduction

xxiii

Once again George Sand summed up, with incomparable insight, the essence of Meyerbeer’s musico-dramatic achievement. “From stone floors that no Protestant knee ever warms, solemn voices seemed to resound, the tones of a calm, secure triumph and the expiring sighs and murmurings of a tranquil end, resigned, confident, without death-rattle or lamentation. It was the voice of Calvinist martyrdom, a martyrdom without ecstasy or delirium, a torment where suffering is stifled by austere pride and august certainty...These imaginary hymns naturally assumed in my mind the form of that fine canticle in your opera, The Huguenots; and, while I dreamt I heard the cries of Catholic indignation and a sharp volley of musketry outside, a tall figure passed before my eyes, one of the noblest dramatic figures, one of the loveliest personifications of the idea of faith that art has ever produced in our time: Meyerbeer’s Marcel. And I saw that bronze statue standing clothed in buffalo hide, quickened by the divine fire the composer had brought down upon him. I saw him, Maestro, forgive me my presumption, just as he must have appeared to you when you sought him at the uncompromising and steadfast hour of noon under the glowing arches of some Protestant church, vast and luminous as this one. Though you are a musician, you are more a poet than any of us! In what secret recess of your soul, in what hidden treasury of your mind did you find those clear, pure features, that concept, simple as antiquity, true as history, lucid as conscience, strong as faith?...”4 The facsimile edition of the manuscript of this famous work, for so long kept private and then thought lost after the Second World War, enables lovers of opera to examine for themselves the compositional procedure of its great and often misunderstood creator. One can see the extent to which curtailment of the original conception was needed on the eve of the premiere: in the ensembles of both acts 1 and 3 Meyerbeer’s complex developments had to be reduced. The ever present problem of censorship also meant that the original idea of depicting Catherine de’ Medici on stage as the instigator of the massacre had to be radically altered and her role substituted by the Comte de Saint Bris. The famous viola d’amore accompaniment to Raoul’s rhapsodic act 1 romance (“Plus blanche que la blanche hermine”) was originally conceived for the cello. The extraordinary Andante amoroso for the central part of the love duet also indicates Meyerbeer’s preparedness to act on a good idea: in this case, Adolphe Nourrit’s suggestion that the cantabile be expanded. To see the MS of such a famous opera is both a moving and stimulating experience.5

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Fig. 3 The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day

1. THE ORIGINS

Soon after Robert le Diable (1831) Meyerbeer turned to his next operatic project. Several plans were considered and rejected, among them Le Brigand (text by Alexandre Dumas and Scribe), and Le Portefaix (Scribe). Eventually plans for a five-act grand opéra focused on the historical events surrounding the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Night: Léonore ou La St. Barthélemy, the first panel of Meyerbeer’s Reformation diptych, again by Scribe. The first mention of what would become Meyerbeer’s most famous opera is in a letter to his wife Minna dated 10 October 1832: Scribe has finished the first act: it is gracieuse and ingenious, but what he always misses, and this time particularly so, consens of the chosen epoch, is completely lacking.6

Meyerbeer had suddenly turned into a legend, and he was expected to demonstrate extraordinary powers in creating something new. Given his modesty and earnestness, the pressure entailed much suffering for him.7 He was eager to merit the admiration lavished on him, and became increasingly painstaking, and even sceptical of his own ability. For five years after the première of Robert le Diable, he appeared to be basking in the fame of this opera. In fact he was earnestly applying himself to a great drama of the French Wars of Religion that Scribe was writing for him (Léonore, ou La St Barthélemy), partly adapted from ideas in the novel by Prosper Mérimée, the Chronique du règne de Charles IX (1829), already the basis of Hérold’s opéra comique Le Pré aux clercs (1832).8 A contract was signed with the director of the Opéra, Louis-Désiré Véron on 23 October 1832, with production scheduled for the beginning of 1834. In 1832 the composer had visited London and Berlin to attend productions of Robert le Diable which had begun its triumphant round of the world stages. In early March 1833 his brother Michael Beer died tragically in Munich; he was in Berlin to comfort his mother, then in Dresden, in Frankfurt, and in September back in Paris to further his consultations with Scribe on the new opera Les Huguenots which was slowly taking shape. After reading act 1, Meyerbeer raised objections to the text, on the grounds that it lacked the evocation of the authentic atmosphere of the

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

chosen epoch9. Already at the planning stage he had begun textual and musical studies of the historical milieu, an indication of the new qualitative way in which he intended to realize a historical opera. In the certainty that Scribe’s text did not offer the requested options, he decided to break the composition, incurring thereby the financial penalty stipulated in the contract, and in October 1833 travelled to Italy. The events of St. Bartholomew’s Day had received several literary treatments over the centuries. In these earlier presentations, interest was focussed on the psychology of the characters, but, later, concern for the social and political constellation of the conflict came more to the fore. During the 1820s, the topic became almost a literary fashion. Novels, dramas, and essays were written about the event as an example in the controversy about the nature of the state and the issue of religious tolerance, so characteristic of the last days of the Restoration. Neither Scribe nor Meyerbeer made any precise allusion to the origin of the material. Scribe certainly used historical presentations as sources.10 Typical of the contemporary practice of librettists, he also drew inspiration for certain characters and situations, as well as ideas for the couleur of the epoch, from literary sources, most especially Prosper Mérimée’s novel Chronique du règne de Charles IX (which first appeared anonymously in 1829). The complex process of revision, however, increasingly distanced the opera from any historical and literary models, characterizing it as a deeply individual work of art in its own right. Contemporary political events had furthermore made the religious issue topical. The strongly pro-clerical policies under Charles X in the 1820s had led to the backlash of the 1830 Revolution, and resulted in parallels being drawn with the great power granted to the Church under Charles IX in the late sixteenth century. By the mid-1830s, under the more liberal regime of Louis-Philippe, criticism of fervent Catholicism could now be read as a concern about the political power of the Jesuits and any tendency towards the fusion of state and religion. It had become popular to associate the Huguenots’ battle for religious freedom with the French Revolution’s struggle for political and social freedom.11 Meyerbeer’s relationship with Scribe in this matter reveals important aspects of what was a highly important and effective operatic working partnership. Scribe suited Meyerbeer as no other librettist could. But this was not, as with Scribe’s partnership with Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, a marriage of true complementary minds from the same family. It was more in the nature of that between producer and consumer. Filled with poetic instincts himself, the composer needed a gifted technician who could give the ideas he came up with the power of situation in the language of the

1. The Origins

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operatic stage. Scribe did not always grasp these ideas, or necessarily accept them: he might even have blunted their originality in his instinctively bourgeois perception. It was up to Meyerbeer, when he took over these ideas, to infuse them with his own particular energy.12 This was very much the case in the famous Ballet of the Nuns in Robert where Scribe had originally proposed a formal classical idea, and was prompted into the famous Gothic scenario by the ideas of the composer and designers. Meyerbeer took new notions of psychology further than Scribe in his adaptation of the Waverley hero. Certainly it is too facile to see Raoul as simply passive, and another instance of an indecisive and irresolute type of hero common in grand opéra since La Muette de Portici.13 And before the composer attempted to embody this psychology in music, he made exhaustive researches into the historical period to be presented. Integral to this process was an involvement and experimentation with unfamiliar musical sounds and devices. Hence a comparison of Scribe’s original text, preserved in his Oeuvres complètes, with the final version of the text used by Meyerbeer, shows that most of the vivid details, gleaned from many documents related to the time in question, were the composer’s own contribution to Les Huguenots. The manuscript of the libretto retained among Meyerbeer’s papers is 117 pages with intercalated rough pages. These contain alterations and new versions of individual passages and whole scenes in Meyerbeer’s own hand, and especially that of the second librettist, Émile Deschamps, whom he employed to versify these new ideas.14 This was with Scribe’s full agreement. Metastasio, who had been the most influential librettist of his time, had given all his attention to the form, the plasticity of the poem which was the frame or scaffolding of the composer’s art. But with Scribe it was different. Here the situation dominates the form. The work sometimes appears to be minimal when it comes to style and color, but exceptional in apposite or stimulating situations, in providing material for contrasts, like a programme for the music. It is only to be understood what a stimulus to Meyerbeer’s imagination such material could be. Scribe was an ideal collaborator for the composer’s particular creative instincts. The whole compositional process was interrupted in late 1833 by the illness of Minna Meyerbeer with a chest complaint following on her grief at her father’s death. A visit to warmer southern climes was called for, and the composer paid the fine of 30,000 francs to Véron, the director of the Opéra, for violation of his contract. He took his wife over the Alps to Milan and Nice. In Milan he met up with his old friend and colleague the librettist Gaetano Rossi (who had provided three/four of Meyerbeer’s six

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

Italian libretti15), in order to think through the whole project very thoroughly. During November of 1833 and in early 1834 he worked assiduously on the opera, and availed himself of the services of Rossi in developing his new ideas for the Huguenots scenario. The most important result of their common deliberations was the transformation of the role of Marcel, whom Meyerbeer raised to the actual protagonist and idealist of the action. In this context, he decided to employ Martin Luther’s famous Reformation chorale Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (1528) as the musical emblem of the epoch and its religious issues.16 On Meyerbeer’s return to Paris at the end of September 1834, he was silent about Rossi’s collaboration, and had the new Italian passages (which he presented as his own) translated into French. His friend and confidant the postal official Gouin put him in touch with the poet Émile Deschamps, who, on the basis of Robert, regarded Meyerbeer as a leading figure of French Romanticism.17 He met with Scribe and Deschamps on 1 November 1834, presumably to discuss his wishes for the libretto. Scribe, who was working on La Juive with Halévy, presumably gave the goahead, and the composer’s diary for the month records 11 further meetings with Deschamps, during which the latter attended to the changes and the new versification required. These included Raoul’s romance in act 1, Marcel’s duet with Valentine in act 3, parts of the Blessing of the Daggers and the love duet in act 4, and the trio in act 5. Of particular importance were the new ideas for the great scenes in act 4, where Meyerbeer was influenced by the “Guerra” chorus in Bellini’s Norma, and he responded to the tenor Adolphe Nourrit’s ideas about additions to the famous love scene, changes that would result in the middle andante amoroso section, possibly the most famous music that Meyerbeer ever wrote. The final form of the libretto is thus by Scribe, with additions and alterations by Deschamps after ideas by Meyerbeer, Rossi and Nourrit. Meyerbeer continued to work further on the text with Deschamps, and an extant copy from the middle of 1834 indicates the composer’s many changes, insertions and comments. Act 3 received a new first scene (that would be cut later) set in Saint-Bris’s Paris hotel from which Valentine observes an attempted assassination of Admiral Coligny in the streets.18 After signing a new contract with the Opéra on 29 September 1834, other alterations were made in response to suggestions from Edmond Duponchel who was to be responsible for the mise en scène. Because of the length of the work, Meyerbeer was obliged to cut out some three-quarters of an hour’s music from three acts (cuts reflected in the autograph). Other changes were necessitated by the objections of the censor, and the suggestions of Adolphe Nourrit, the creator of Raoul, for the duet in act 4.

1. The Origins

Fig. 4 Émile Deschamps

Fig. 5 Prosper Mérimée.

Fig. 6 Edmond Duponchel

Fig. 7 George Sand

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While Meyerbeer, after initial hesitation, went along with Nourrit’s suggestion for a new version of the middle part of the duet, thereby deepening important musical and dramatic elements, he saw the intervention of the censor as threatening to the work. After wearying discussions, the censor insisted on a change of title and on cutting Catherine de Medici’s part in the Blessing of the Daggers. Meyerbeer was obliged to redraft the role for a bass voice (Saint-Bris).19 The figure of the old retainer Marcel was particularly his concern, and with Rossi, he re-conceived the dramatic nature of this character completely. In a letter to Scribe (2 July 1834) he wrote that the librettist’s idea of the role had not agreed with the composer’s musical conception of it, and that he (Meyerbeer) had “rewritten the whole of Marcel’s part for my musical needs”.20 The character as he emerged in this new guise presents one of the composer’s most deeply felt dramatic creations, one, who in dramatic and musical conception, exemplifies an extraordinary political and religious engagement.21

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

It is interesting to see when the composer has required new words, or adjustment to the librettist’s text. At the beginning of act 4, for example, Meyerbeer has used completely new words by Deschamps for Valentine’s aria, presumably wishing for a more subtle pathos in Valentine’s situation. Sometimes musical exigencies seem to need an expansion of the situation provided. Scribe’s words for Raoul in the cabaletta of his act 2 duet with the Queen express his determination to be avenged on Valentine’s apparent perfidy, and suggest an erotic charge in his reaction to Marguerite de Valois. Scribe: Oui, cette conquête Va par sa défaite Punir la coquette Qui trahit ma foi. Une ardeur nouvelle M’enflamme pour elle. Et mon coeur fidèle Vivre sous sa loi.22

Yes, this conquest will, by her defeat, punish the coquette who betrayed my trust. A new ardour inflames me for her and my faithful heart lives under her law.

Meyerbeer has had new words written for the first part. These provide opportunity for the musical conception of Raoul’s response—which is not simply a melodic reprise, but a development of character. The words remove any sense of personal revenge and diminish sexual implication in Raoul’s response; they also present him as nobler, more idealistic: Deschamps: À vous et ma vie et mon âme! À vous mon épée et mon bras! À vous et ma vie et mon âme mon épée et tout mon sang Pour l’honneur; pour son Dieu, pour sa dame Trop heureux de braver le trépas!23

For you my life and my soul! For you my sword and my arms! For you my life and my soul, my sword and my blood. For his honour, for his God, for his lady More than happily to brave death.

Only in the repeat, when singing with Marguerite (and hence less audibly), does the erotic charge of the situation emerge in the resumption of Scribe’s words. The aggrieved situation with Valentine is consigned to the end, and lost in the music. Une ardeur nouvelle M’enflamme à jamais pour elle. Et mon coeur fidèle Vivra sous sa loi, oui, sous sa loi!

A new passion now inflames me for her, and my faithful heart will live subject to her, yes to her!

1. The Origins Toujours mon coeur fidèle Vivra sous sa loi; Punissons la coquette qui trahit sa foi!

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My faithful heart will live for ever subject to her! Let us punish the flirt who betrayed her faith!

The change of words can also reflect a more specific focus on the underlying theme. In Valentine’s words of distress in the closing movement of her act 3 duet with Marcel Scribe focuses on the pull between love and duty. Scribe: Ah! Tu ne peux éprouver ni comprendre Ces tourments, ces combats, que nul mot ne sait rendre, Ou tour à tour triomphe où l’amour où l’honneur! Ah, you cannot feel nor understand these sorrows, this struggle no word can describe, where turn by turn either love or honour vie!

The adjustment the composer has required is small, but in seeking to expand the wording for his melodic structure, brings in the all-important concept of faith. Deschamps: Ah! Tu ne peux éprouver ni comprendre Ces tourments, ces combats, que nul mot ne sait rendre, ces combats où la foi, l’amour tender le devoir, tour à tour sont vainqueurs! Ah, you cannot feel nor understand these sorrows, this struggle no word can describe, this struggle where faith, tender love, duty in turn seek to vanquish one another!

In Marcel’s response, the thematic adjustment is even more subtle. His age is given greater prominence, and this is associated with a certain spiritual dynamic, a patriarchy, a power of intercession. There is specific reference to salvation and direct allusion to the divinity.

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

Scribe: Ne pleure pas; Marcel, ma fille, Te bénit du fond du coeur. Oui, pour toi, qui je révère, Je prirai ma vie entière: Et d’un vieillard la prière A toujours porté bonheur.

Do not weep; Marcel, my child blesses you from his heart Yes, for you whom I admire I will pray all my life: And the prayers of an old man Have always brought blessing.

Deschamps: Ne pleure pas; Marcel, ma fille, Te bénit du fond du coeur. D’un vieillard l’humble prière est un baume salutaire; Dieu m’exaucera, j’espère. En te versant sa faveur!

Do not weep; Marcel, my child, Blesses you from deepest heart. The humble prayer of an old man is a healing balm; And God, will hear me I hope In showing you his favour.

In the case of the famous act 4 love duet, Scribe’s words present the situation exactly, with some poetic intensity, but the exigencies of the prolonged dream of rhapsodic celebration needed further verbal scaffolding for its musical development: Oui, tu l’as dit...oui, tu m’aimes. C’est le jour qui renaît, c’est l’air pur des cieux mêmes! Auprès de toi que tout soit oublié! Parle encore et prolonge De mon coeur le doux sommeil!

Yes, you said...yes, that you love me. The day is reborn, this is the pure air of heaven itself! Close to you all is forgotten! Speak again and prolong this gentle dream in my heart!...

By 5 May 1835 the composer could deliver the score to the solicitors for formalization of the contract; by 2 June rehearsals began. The première took place on 29 February 1836: after initial surprise at the difference from Robert, it fired the public imagination even more than its predecessor, was seen to exist on a different artistic level, and achieved over two hundred performances within two years.24 It became Meyerbeer’s most popular opera, not only in France, but throughout the world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By 1936 it had been performed 1126 times at the Paris Opéra alone. The principal protagonists, Nourrit (Raoul), Falcon (Valentine), and Levasseur (Marcel) constituted an almost unprecedented trio of vocal prowess, and one that Meyerbeer himself thought would never be repeated. Indeed Falcon was soon to lose her voice, while Nourrit, filled with despair at the changing style of singing, would soon take his own life in Naples.25

1. The Origins

Fig. 8 The Paris Opéra, Rue Le Peletier

Fig. 9 External View

Fig. 10 Internal View

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

Fig. 11 Queen Catherine de Medici

Fig. 12 Queen Marguerite de Valois

. Fig. 13 King Henry of Navarre

Fig. 14 The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day. Lithograph by A. Duruy after François Dubois (1878)

2. THE PLOT

Touraine and Paris, August 1572. Act 1. A hall in the chateau of the Comte de Nevers in Touraine. In the background a view of the gardens. The count has invited a group of friendly nobles to a banquet on the eve of his marriage. Among the guests still expected, is a young Huguenot, Raoul de Nangis. In response to sceptical questions from the Catholic gentlemen, Nevers tells them that this invitation is intended as sign of reconciliation, echoing what is happening at the highest level with the forthcoming marriage between Marguerite de Valois and Henry of Navarre. The gentlemen remain doubtful of any peace. Raoul enters, full of admiration for the splendid assembly. The party then repairs to the table. As an entertainment, it is decided that each of the guests should speak of their love experiences, beginning with Raoul. He tells of his meeting with an unknown beauty whom he defended from the unwanted attentions of some unruly students. He has never been able to forget her. Raoul’s old servant Marcel now appears, and upbraids his young master for consorting with the enemy. The stern old soldier takes exception to the loose talk of the hedonistic revellers, and seeks comfort in prayer, intoning Luther’s hymn as a statement of faith. He then provocatively sings an old Huguenot battle song about the siege of La Rochelle to the amusement of the guests. Nevers is called away to see a veiled lady, while the gentlemen secretly observe the meeting through an oriel window. Raoul in consternation recognizes her as the mysterious lady of his adventure. All presume her to be Nevers’ latest mistress. In a soliloquy, Nevers reveals the actual situation: she is his betrothed, the noblewoman Valentine de Saint-Bris, lady-in-waiting to Marguerite de Valois, who has asked him to release her from their engagement so that she can assist in the royal plan for national reconciliation. Although in chagrin, he has magnanimously agreed, being a man of honour. He returns to his guests who congratulate him on his new “conquest”. The page Urbain now enters, with a message from a noble lady for one of the guests. To everyone’s surprise, it turns out to be Raoul, who is invited to attend a secret meeting blindfolded. The knights have recognized the queen’s seal, and suddenly become obsequious and deferential

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

Fig. 15 Act 1 Set design (coloured maquette)

Fig. 16 Act 1 Raoul’s romance. Coloured postcard (Paris Opéra, c. 1900)

2. The Plot

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towards Raoul, who is more mystified than ever. They send him on his way joyfully, assuring him that honours and riches await him. Act 2. The chateau and gardens of Chenonceaux near Ambroise. On the right a broad staircase leads to the chateau. The gardens lead down to the River Loire. Marguerite de Valois with her ladies celebrates the idyllic beauty of the place, and prays that all religious hatred be kept away. The queen receives Valentine who tells her of the positive outcome of her visit to Nevers. Marguerite, notorious for the amorous pleasures of her court, but politically concerned with finding compromise, is pursuing a plan to further reconciliation by arranging a marriage between scions of leading families from the rival parties: in this case the Catholic Valentine and the Protestant Raoul. This is in accord with Valentine’s wish since she has loved Raoul since their first meeting. Marguerite reveals that she has summoned him here in pursuance of her plan. Raoul approaches, led blindfolded through the garden. When he meets Marguerite he is entranced by her beauty and places himself at her service. Although the queen is herself attracted to Raoul, and would not be averse to a little amorous adventure, she has pledged him to marriage with Valentine. When the Court and various Catholic and Protestant notabilities have assembled, she puts the proposal of marriage to him, and all swear a vow of peace. Marguerite’s attempted compromise is however doomed to failure: when Valentine is brought out, Raoul recognizes his unknown beauty, and the apparent mistress of Nevers. To Valentine’s consternation, Raoul, feeling dishonoured, insultingly rejects her hand, fervently supported by Marcel. A confrontation ensues, and only Marguerite’s presence prevents an open battle between the parties. Act 3. Paris, the famous Pré-aux-Clercs (meadow of the clerks) on the banks of the Seine. On the right is an inn, on the left is another inn, with a chapel. It is approaching evening. People are still promenading in their Sunday best. The Huguenot soldiery in Paris with Admiral Coligny enjoy a drink in their inn. A cortège of young Catholic women conduct Valentine to the chapel where she wishes to spend the evening in prayer after her marriage to Nevers who had renewed his betrothal with her after her rejection by Raoul. When the drunken Protestant soldiery mock the Marian hymn of the Catholics, a street confrontation develops, and violence is again circumvented only by the distraction of a group of Gypsies who tell fortunes and dance. Raoul and Marcel are now retained in the service of the queen. Marcel appears to deliver a challenge to St. Bris for the insult Raoul has sustained. St. Bris conspires with Maurevert

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

to have his opponent killed by an ambush. Valentine, hidden in the chapel, has overheard the plot, and in order to warn Raoul whom she still loves, overcoming her family and party loyalties, she approaches Marcel who is keeping vigil outside the chapel until the duel, and warns him of the plot. He is initially inimical, but is so moved by Valentine’s goodness, that he blesses her. She disappears back into the chapel, and the contestants, each with two seconds, enter and confront each other. As the duel begins, Marcel is able to summon help from the Huguenots in the inn. The tumult brings out the Catholics in the other inn, and a street brawl ensues. Only the return of Marguerite to the Louvre stops the uproar. Both Raoul and St. Bris accuse each other of treachery, but Marcel’s account of the strange woman’s warning solves the dilemma. St. Bris pulls off her veil to reveal his daughter. Only now does Raoul realize the mistake he has made. Nevers arrives on the Seine, in a festive barque, to conduct his wife home. Under cover of the general nuptial celebrations, the Catholics and Protestants menace each other. Act 4. A room in the city palace of the Count of Nevers. Family portraits hang on the walls. In the background is a door and a Gothic window. To the left is the door to Valentine’s room, to the right a fireplace and tapestry. Valentine grieves about her arranged marriage and her sorrow over Raoul whom she still loves. He comes secretly to seek her out and beg her forgiveness. They hear steps, and she hides him behind the Gobelin. St. Bris enters with great authority, accompanied by prominent members of the Catholic party. He is enjoined on command of the king and his mother to present a plan for the salvation of the land—the extirpation of the Huguenots—and to receive their vow of complicity. Only Nevers refuses to join the conspiracy and is taken away under arrest. St. Bris explains the details of the plot: at midnight the bell of St Germain Auxerrois will be the signal for the Catholics to begin a massacre of the Protestants. Monks enter and solemnly bless the weapons of murder, while identifying white scarves are distributed. After the conspirators have departed, Raoul, having overheard all the details, comes out of his hiding, determined to warn his co-religionists. Valentine is determined to hold him back from death, and reveals the depth of her love. Raoul is caught up in ecstasy, and for a moment forgets his duty in the fervour of their mutual confession. Only the tolling bell brings him back to reality. They see the carnage beginning in the street, and despite Valentine’s desperate pleading, he leaps from the window into the night.

2. The Plot

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Fig. 17 Act 4 The love duet. Coloured postcard (Paris Opéra, c. 1900)

Act 5. Scene 1. A brilliant ballroom in the Hôtel Nesle where the marriage of Marguerite de Valois and Henri of Navarre is being celebrated. The dancing is interrupted by distant pealing of bells, but resumed. Raoul, covered in blood, appears. He tells the shocked assembly of the massacre, and urges the Huguenots present to avenge the murder of Coligny. Aghast, the guests hurry from the hall. Scene 2. A cemetery adjoining a Protestant church, with the entry to the left, and a grill on the right, looking on to the street. It is in the early hours. Raoul and Marcel enter in the wake of a crowd of fleeing women and children who seek sanctuary in the church. Valentine soon follows them, looking for her beloved. She is free, since Nevers has been murdered by his own party. She urges Raoul to take a white scarf and flee with her to Marguerite who will protect them if he changes his faith. After a brief struggle, Raoul rejects this escape. Valentine in despair says she will become a Protestant out of her love for him. In the hour of death Marcel blesses their union against the hushed prayers of the refugees. A group of Catholic assassins break into church and begin shooting the women and children. Marcel, Valentine and Raoul decide to prepare for death as martyrs, and are wounded in volley of shots.

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

Scene 3. A Parisian street with starlit sky. Marcel and Valentine support the wounded Raoul, but are challenged by another party of assassins led by Saint-Bris. They declare themselves Huguenots, and are shot down. St. Bris recognizes his own daughter who in dying forgives her father. Queen Marguerite, returning to the Louvre in her litter, tries in vain to stop the horror.

Fig. 18 Act 5 The marriage ceremony. Coloured postcard (Paris Opéra, c. 1900)

Fig. 19 Act 5 finale. Aquerelle, c. 1865

2. The Plot

Fig. 20 Act 2 Décor. Coloured lithograph by Deshaye

Fig. 21 Act 2 Stage design (Paris Opéra)

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

Fig. 22 Act 2 The great staircase at Chenonceaux

Fig. 23 Act 2 Queen Marguerite and her Court (print, Académie Royale de Musique)

3. THE SOURCES

Scribe’s story is indeed an enthralling one, and the opera is full of great moments. The backdrop of the action is the Wars of Religion in France during the second half of the sixteenth century, a period of historical trauma that found its horrific highpoint in the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Night on 24 August 1572 when some 30,000 Huguenots were murdered by Catholics in Paris, Orleans, and other French towns. Catherine de’ Medici and the Guise family had persuaded Charles IX to consent to it. In the operatic scenario, Marguerite de Valois, the king’s sister, is to be married to the Protestant leader, Henry of Navarre, as part of a grand plan for peace. She tries to affect further reconciliation among the warring Catholic and Protestant parties by arranging a politically expedient union between scions of the respective leading families. She has chosen for this purpose, the young Raoul de Nangis, a Protestant nobleman, and Valentine, daughter of the Comte de Saint-Bris, a prominent Catholic. The work portrays religious fanaticism, too strong to be quelled even by royal intervention, and intensified by tragic personal misunderstanding. A complex dramatic nexus of religion, politics, honor, love and betrayal develops to a tragic highpoint that culminates in the massacre which is brutally depicted in the last act. Liszt observed of Scribe. “If one continually reproaches the poet for striving after dramatic effects, it would be unjust not to acknowledge how thrilling these can often be.”26 The characters are also well-drawn, and the combination of Scribe and Meyerbeer’s concern for a psychological realism works most effectively. Meyerbeer was very successful in his characterizations of individuals: the dreamy idealist Raoul, the passionate and self-sacrificing Valentine, the fanatical and implacable Saint-Bris, the rough stolid Marcel, the elegant and capricious queen, the somewhat flamboyant but always honorable Nevers. Speaking of this gift, Ernest Newman observed that, “In each of his operas Meyerbeer gave his audiences the delighted feeling that they were being brought into touch with real life, and that the characters they saw on the boards were men and women such as they might meet any day themselves....”27 The great challenge for Meyerbeer had been in producing another work after Robert le Diable that could reasonably hold its own in the public affection. The use of the supernatural, the polarized concepts of good and

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

evil, had worked overwhelmingly. Now the same interest had to be sustained using another register of images altogether, the hard cold world of human intrigue and religious intolerance. In Les Huguenots we see both composer and poet in a new sphere of action. Meyerbeer’s response to the text led to the enrichment of tonal art with the power of expressing something totally new. Gluck and Spontini had already depicted in dramatic music the contrast between the religious rites of barbarians and the services of civilized nations: Gluck in Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) illustrates the ceremonies of the Scythians and the Greeks, and Spontini in Fernand Cortez (1809) the difference in religious rites between the Mexicans and the Spaniards. No one before though had attempted to portray the persecution of one half of a nation by the other professing a different creed. Meyerbeer and Scribe were the first to paint religious fanaticism, that terrible madness in human nature which respects neither relationship, ties of nationality, nor the common values of fundamental faith. Others had treated the subject of the St Bartholomew’s Massacre in plays and novels, but it was up to Scribe to treat it with all the heat, passion and color of melodrama and tragedy. His plastic handling of the form, his innovative restructuring of the scene, is preeminently evident in act 4 where the prolonged ensemble of the Blessing of the Daggers is a constantly shifting vortex of intrigue, conspiracy, prayer and fanaticism. Here the human personalities and personal commitments and destinies are subjected to every kind of trial and betrayal in the onward rush of communal intent. The chilling imagery of the poet’s words capture the mass intoxication of religious fanaticism and murderous intent. It is interesting to see how Scribe has transformed a literary source for his own dramatic purposes. The duet in act 4 is based on an idea borrowed from Mérimée’s Chronique de Charles IX. Here the young Huguenot nobleman Bernard de Mergy is with his mistress, Diane, the countess of Turgis, a good Catholic, at the beginning of the massacre. “You—all of you who are infected with poison of heresy—are a people hardened in head and heart, and you shut your eyes and ears to the truth lest you should see and hear with them. Well, the time has come when you shall neither hear nor see. There was but one means left to cauterize this wound in the Church, and that means is to be employed.” She paced the chamber with a troubled mien and then went on: “In less than an hour the seven heads of the dragon of heresy will be lopped off. The sword is sharpened, the faithful are ready, the infidels shall be swept from the face of earth!” Then, stretching her finger to the clock in the corner of the room—“See!” she said, “you have still a quarter of an hour repentance. When the hand reaches that figure your fate will be sealed!”

3. The Sources She was still speaking, when a dull sound like to that of a crowd hovering round a mighty fire began to make itself heard, at first indistinctly; but it seemed to grow quickly, and after a very few minutes the tolling of bells and the report of firearms were heard afar off . “What hideous news is this?” cried Mergy. But the countess had darted to the window and had opened it. Then the noise, hitherto muffled by the glass and the curtains, came in more clearly. Shrieks of pain and yells of joy seemed to be distinguishable in it. A crimson smoke rose to the sky, and appeared to hang over every part of the city as far as the eye could reach. It would have seemed a vast conflagration, if a smell of resin, which could only have been produced by thousands of lighted torches, had not quickly filled the chamber. At the same time the flash of a musket which seemed to have been discharged in the street itself lit up for a moment the windows of an adjoining house. “The massacre has begun!” cried the countess, putting her hands in horror to her head. “What massacre? What do you mean!” “To-night all the Huguenots are to be slain by the King’s orders. All Catholics are under arms, and not a heretic is to be spared. France and the Church are saved. But you—you are lost if you do not abjure your false belief.” Mergy felt all his limbs covered with cold sweat. He stared with haggard eyes at Diane de Turgis, whose features expressed a singular mixture of anguish and triumph. The hideous din which echoed in his ears, and filled all the town, sufficiently attested the truth of the appalling news he had just heard. For some moments the countess remained motionless, her eyes fixed speechlessly on him, her finger still stretched towards the window. She seemed to appeal to Mergy’s fancy to show him the bloody scenes, as of a cannibal feast, which the howlings and torchlights suggested. By degrees her expression softened, its savage joy passed, the horror in it remained. At last, falling on her knees, and with an imploring voice, “Bernard!” she cried, “I conjure you, save your life! Be converted! Save your life, save mine, which is bound up in yours!” Mergy glared fiercely at her as she followed him, still on her knees and with outstretched arms, through the chamber. Answering never a word, he rushed to the end of the oratory and seized his sword, which at his entrance he had placed on a chair. “Miserable man!” cried the countess, hastening to him, “what would you do?” “Defend myself,” he answered. “They will not kill me like a sheep!” “Madman! A thousand swords could not save you. The whole town is in arms. The King’s Guards, the Swiss, the citizens, the populace, all are engaged in the massacre; and not a Huguenot but has at this moment a dozen daggers at his breast. There is one only means of rescue from death. Become a Catholic!” Mergy was a brave man; but as he thought of the dangers which the

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love night seemed to threaten, he felt, for a moment, base fear thrilling to the bottom of his heart, and even the notion of saving himself by apostasy flashed like lightning across his mind. “I can answer for your life if you abjure!” said Diane, clasping her hands. “If I do so,” thought he, “I shall despise myself for the rest of it.” And the thought restored his courage, which was doubled by very shame at his own momentary wavering. He crushed his hat on his head, drew his belt tight, and rolling his cloak round his left arm buckler-wise, he made a steady stride towards the door. “Where are you going, wretch?” cried she. “Into the street. I should not like you to have the grief of seeing me butchered under your eyes and in your house.” There was so deep a tone of contempt in his voice that the countess was overwhelmed. She had thrown herself in his way, and he repulsed her roughly enough. But she seized the skirt of his doublet, and dragged herself on her knees behind him. “Unhand me!” he cried. “Would you deliver me yourself to the assassins’ daggers? A Huguenot’s mistress can ransom her sins by sacrificing her lover’s blood to her Deity!” “Stay, Bernard, I implore you! It is only your soul’s health I desire. Live for me, dear angel! Save yourself in the name of our love—consent to pronounce a single word, and I swear you are safe!” “What? I accept the faith of brigands and of murderers! Holy martyrs of the Gospel, I come to join you!” And he tore himself so fiercely from her that the countess fell sharply on the floor. He was about to open the door and depart, when Diane, rising with the agility of a tigress, sprang upon him and clasped him in her arms and with a grip stronger than that of a strong man. “Bernard!” she cried in a transport, and with streaming eyes, “I love you more than if you had abjured!” and dragging him to the couch, she flung herself and him upon it, and covered him with kisses and with tears. “Stay here, my only love! Stay with me, my brave Bernard!” she said, hugging him, and twining her body round him like a serpent enlacing its prey. “They will not seek you here: not in my arms: and did they so, they must kill me to reach your breast. Pardon me, dear love! I could not warn you sooner of the danger which threatened: I was bound by a terrible oath, but I will save you now or perish with you!” . At this moment a loud knock at the street gate was heard. The countess uttered a piercing shriek, and Mergy, disengaging himself from her embrace, with his cloak still wrapped round his left arm, felt so full of strength and resolution, that he would have plunged headlong on a band of a hundred assassins if they had showed themselves. (Chapter 21)28

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Scribe gives this situation greater dramatic character and emotional focus by supposing that Raoul, hidden in Valentine’s apartment shortly after her marriage to Nevers, has just heard her father confirming the details of the plot to eliminate the Protestants. Scribe invests the whole situation with greater urgency and loftier emotion. There is real poetry in the feeling between Raoul and Valentine, which is of the high order of Romantic love, intensified by the powerful altruism of the conflicting call of duty. Raoul seeks to warn his brethren, but Valentine reveals her love for him. It is a moment of rapture when Raoul forgets the whole world, his duty, and even the imminent massacre. Only the tocsin breaks in to wake him to reality, so he rushes to join his friends as they are being massacred. The extended duet, occupying half an act, in its variety and changing moods, colors, and structural fluidity, is an effort that represents dramatic and formal innovation of the highest order. The situations are all Scribe’s, although the words at the heart of the duet were inspired by Nourrit and penned by Deschamps: Tu l’as dit: oui tu m’aimes! Dans ma nuit quelle étoile a brillé? Je renais, c’est l’air pur des cieux mêmes! La, toujours, oubliant, oublié! Tu l’as dit: oui, tu m’aimes.

You said it: yes, you love me! What star has lit up my dark night? I’m reborn, it is the pure air of heaven itself! There, always, forgetting, forgotten! You said it: yes, you love me!29

The mystery of love celebrated in danger and rapture, the intimate association with night and death itself, are realized in terms that are unsurpassed until the second act of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (1865). RAOUL Parle encore, et prolonge De mon coeur l’ineffable sommeil! Si l’extase où je suis est un songe, Que jamais je n’arrive au réveil!

RAOUL Speak again, and prolong inexpressible tranquillity of my heart! If my ecstasy is but a dream, Then let me never wake!

VALENTINE (à part) Qu’ai-je fait? Quel danger!

VALENTINE (aside) What have I done? What danger!

RAOUL Parle encore, et prolonge De mon coeur le sommeil!

RAOUL Speak again, and prolong My heart’s tranquillity!

VALENTINE (à part) O mon Dieu!

VALENTINE (aside) Oh, my God!

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Voici l’heure! C’est la mort! Il n’est plus d’avenir!... Ah!

The moment has come! It’s death! There is no more future!... Ah!

RAOUL Si ma joie est un songe, Que jamais je n’arrive au réveil!...

RAOUL If my joy is but a dream, Then let me never wake!...

VALENTINE C’est la mort!

VALENTINE It’s death!

RAOUL Tu l’as dit!

RAOUL You said it!

VALENTINE Voici l’heure!

VALENTINE The moment has come!

RAOUL Oui, tu m’aimes!

RAOUL Yes, you love me!

VALENTINE Il n’est plus d’avenir!...

VALENTINE There is no more future!

RAOUL Nuit d’amour!...

RAOUL Night of love!...

VALENTINE Nuit funeste!

VALENTINE Night of terror!30

Scribe also borrowed from Mérimée the tragic motif of inadvertently killing a member of one’s own family. In the novel Bernard escapes the carnage in Paris disguised as a monk, and during the siege of La Rochelle strikes down one of the besiegers, only to discover that he has killed his Catholic brother Georges. “The horsemen were not twenty paces off, and their leader, turning to his men, seemed about to give an order, when Mergy, rising suddenly, shouted “Fire!” “The captain with the red plume turned his head, and Mergy recognized his brother. He darted his hand towards his neighbour’s piece to strike it aside; but before he touched it the shot sped. The horsemen, startled at the unexpected volley, fled in different directions over the plain: but Captain Georges fell pierced with two bullets.”31

In the libretto Saint-Bris, directing a killing party during the massacre, finds he has murdered his own daughter, unaware that she has become a

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Protestant. Scribe’s additional use of Ludovic Vitet’s (1802-73) Scènes historiques, and the influence of the Huguenot ideal of martyrdom as embodied in the writing of Théodore-Agrippa d’Aubigné (1551-1630), were powerful imaginative stimuli. D’Aubigné’s great ideological poem Les Tragiques (1616) is the fighting epic of French Protestantism: Les Feux describes the sufferings of the Protestant martyrs; Les Fers gives an account of the Wars of Religion, with a tremendous evocation of the St Bartholomew’s Night Massacre.32 These are vital elements in Scribe’s poetic consideration of commitment, humanity, faith, and death, and are preeminently embodied in act 5 when Valentine and Raoul are married amidst darkness and desolation in the cemetery of a church where the Huguenot women and children are seeking refuge, and about to be murdered before their very eyes. With Marcel, they begin to share a new perception of the metaphysical mystery of martyrdom. Their approach to life and death shares deeply in the spiritual vision of D’Aubigné: Mais quoi! serai-je esteint devant ma vie esteinte? Ne luira plus sur moi la flamme vive et sainte, Le zèle flamboyant de la sainte maison? Je fais aux saints autels holocausts des restes, De glace aux feux impurs, et de naphte aux celestes: Clair et sacré flambeau, non funebre tison!33 But what? Should I fail before my fading life? Will the glowing zeal of my heavenly home No longer light in me the holy and living flame? I make holocausts of the rest of it on holy altars, Ice on impure fires, but naphtha on the celestial ones: This a clear sacred flame, no half-burned funerary brand!

Marcel’s catechesis and blessing of the lovers in their mortal hour are deeply impressive. The minimal words have a high seriousness and dark sublimity all of their own. Savez-vous qu’en joignant vos mains dans ces ténèbres Je consacre et bénis Le banquet des adieux et des noces funèbres? Avez-vous rejeté toute chaîne mortelle, Tous espoir d’ici-bas? Et la foi seulement dans vos coeurs survit-elle?

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Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love

Fig. 24 The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Night. Engraving from the 17th century

Fig. 25 The murder of Admiral Coligny

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Verriez-vous sans trembler le fer, la flamme luire? Et la foi d’un seul jour, La renierez-vous pas en face du martyre? Do you know that in joining your hands in this darkness I am consecrating and blessing The farewell feast and a marriage of death? Have you cast aside all mortal chains, All earthly hope? And does faith alone remain in your hearts? Can you behold the sword and fire gleam without recoiling? And will you steadfastly maintain Your faith in the face of martyrdom?34

The composer’s genius for enhancing effects through the music is especially evident in the construction of the crowd scenes: the Catholic gentlemen of Nevers’s party, the Catholic ladies of the queen’s court, the subtle gallantry and hidden treachery of the Court, the massed groups of Catholic and Protestant townspeople, soldiers, courtiers and partisans. All bring alive on the stage the harsh realities of religious bigotry, the frightening unpredictability of people swayed by murderous ideology. The implications of the action are further reinforced by recurrent motifs of watching and overhearing, of recounting and warning, as in the manner of a Greek tragedy, where decisive events happen offstage and are lived vicariously (often in ironical or fateful illusion of the truth) in the actual time of the drama. This is bound up with seeing and deception, concealing and revealing, and eventually with confusion and illumination of mind and heart. Secret windows and hidden vantages, blindfolds, veils, and night, are used in hiding and laying bare truth and motivation in a process of mystery and revelation. Thus in act 1: - Raoul is observed coming through the gardens of Nevers’s chateau by the Catholic guests: he does not conform to the received expectation of a grim Calvinist, and turns out to be a dynamic idealist; - Raoul tells of his rescuing of a mysterious and beautiful veiled stranger, who showed herself to be of great beauty, and lives in his heart as an ideal of loveliness; - Nevers is observed through an oriel window in colloquy with a mysterious and striking lady visitor. She turns out to be Raoul’s distant beloved, but is thought to be another of Nevers’s mistresses.

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- Nevers is seen alone and tells the truth of the situation, how his fiancée has broken off her engagement to help the Queen farther political plans for peace. The guests are ignorant of this, and of Nevers’s honorable nature beneath his gallant posturing. - The Queen’s page enters with a secret assignation of adventure for Raoul; the Catholic nobles recognize the Queen’s signet, but Raoul remains ignorant of the true situation as he is led away blindfolded. In act 2: - The page Urbain spies on the ladies of Queen Marguerite’s Court as they disport in the Loire at Chenonceaux, a frivolous amorousness counterpointing the issues of true love being explored in the central relationship between Valentine and Raoul; - In the same vein, the ladies then watch and comment approvingly as Raoul is led blindfolded through the gardens into the presence of the Queen; he is not, however, another of her erotic conquests, but a vital player in her plans for peace. - Raoul, his blindfold removed, is entranced by this beautiful, unknown woman, as she is by him, but he does not recognize yet that she is the Queen, who wishes him to participate in her plan of political rapprochement; - Raoul is then brought face to face with his bride-to-be, and finds her not only to be the mysterious stranger of his encounter, but also the suspect subject of the meeting with Nevers. True love and idealism seem to be betrayed. In act 3: - In the original scenario, Valentine, from her window, observes an assassination attempt on the life of Admiral Coligny in the streets of Paris. - Valentine, in vigil in a chapel at the Pré-aux-Clercs on the eve of her marriage to Nevers, overhears Saint-Bris and Maurevert conspiring to murder Raoul during the forthcoming duel to vindicate her honor; - Valentine overcomes her personal affront and pain to approach Marcel in the night, and wearing a veil, to warn him of Raoul’s danger. Marcel finds his religious and sexual prejudices challenged, and, overwhelmed by the young woman’s generosity of soul, experiences a change of heart, and blesses her; - When the Queen prevents bloodshed between the religious parties, Valentine is unveiled and revealed in her true identity. Her actions seem to have betrayed her father’s cause.

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In act 4: - Raoul comes in the night to Valentine’s house, to beg her pardon for his injustice to her, born of his ignorance of her heart and motives. - He is forced to hide in an adjoining chamber, and overhears SaintBris unfold the plot of St Bartholomew’s Eve; - Nevers refuses to participate in the plot, and reveals his true noble self, to the surprise of all; - In order to hold back Raoul from mortal danger, Valentine admits her true love for him, to Raoul’s enraptured surprise; - Later, from the casement, Raoul and Valentine observe the beginning of the massacre in the streets. The horror precipitates a crisis between love and duty. In act 5: - Raoul bursts into the wedding celebration of the King and Queen of Navarre to warn the Huguenot guests of their danger, and report on the massacre he has observed in the streets. - In the hour of death, and after their marriage blessing in a churchyard, Raoul, Valentine and Marcel observe the Huguenot women and children being murdered in the adjacent chapel. The sight steels them to accept death as martyrdom. - In the closing moments of the opera, Saint-Bris and his death squad see a party of Huguenots and fire on them, unaware that he is killing his own child. - The Queen appears with her train, observing the massacre in mute and helpless horror in the face of the violent and irresistible passage of history.

4. THE RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM

“What I mean is that each one of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’ or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Is Christ divided?” (I Corinthians 1:12-13)

Robert le Diable is an opera written in the romance mode that summons up a Medieval world of faith where belief is monolithic in its corporate unity, and challenged by forces outside itself. While the world may seem to be equally divided between forces of good and evil, the Manichean universe is avoided by the providence of grace which in the end is determinative and all-pervasive. There is an almost scholastic adherence to orthodoxy. The situation is radically challenged in Les Huguenots. In Les Huguenots the world has changed. A world of fairy-tale princesses, demons and angels has given way to one of historical realities, a Renaissance world where kings and queens still hold sway, but supernatural realities have disappeared in the cold light of reason, and the realm of action is confined to the ordinary lives of men and women—even if many of them are nobles. Matters of faith are still determinative, but they are the consequence of individual choice, unaided by the manifestation, let alone incarnation, of any spiritual reality. Men and women are born into, or choose to align themselves by, preference of faith (or politics), with a persuasion or party. Rational man has come into his own and must now make his own choices—if he can. But man being a social animal is the product of his age, class and society. One believes in what one is born into, and only the rare soul has the innate power or gift to rise above this and question the fundamentals of life and belief. Faith is still absolutely determinative but the vibrant heart of human feelings and thought is conjured up in a manner inconceivable to the absolute certainties of an age of faith. Protestantism has arrived, and again George Sand was so precise and accurate in calling this a “Protestant” opera. The one proviso, however, is that this should be Protestantism with a small p. In Les Huguenots Meyerbeer is as careful and assiduous as in Robert le Diable in creating a world of polarities. Here, though, the poles are not two distinct worlds apart, but a Christianity divided against itself. We have, on the one hand, the Catholics, arrogant, collectively self-assured

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and ruthless; on the other, there are the Huguenots, presented (until act 3) as brave individuals (Raoul and Marcel) standing boldly and nobly against their flippant and intransigent opponents. An ideal of faithful and uncompromising witness is delivered firstly by Marcel, whose hymn is both a prayer and a pious testimony in the face of a hedonistic, and probably godless, collective opponent. Similarly Raoul’s public rejection of Valentine in act 2 is based on strict Calvinistic principles of honour and probity. His dreamy, ingenuous and idealistic nature is established in act 1, especially in his romance “Plus blanche que la blanche hermine”. His Pauline chastity and old-fashioned knightly code is amply demonstrated in his interview with the capricious and licentious Queen.35 Later he does not hesitate to consider the political consequences, or personal implications for Valentine, of his public actions. He, like Marcel, must learn the powerful and humbling witness of self-sacrifice—even of personal pride in oneself and one’s cherished (religious) principles through the self-effacing witness of Valentine. She is the innocent victim, the pole of integrity and the catalyst for change throughout the opera. In spite of her public humiliation by Raoul, whose morality has been based on self-righteous perceptions of honour, her love and her principles are strong enough to rise above offended pride and arrogance of party affiliation or formal religion. She is able to break with these restricting codes in order to warn the gruff and idiosyncratic Marcel of Raoul’s danger from ambush. Indeed her duet with Marcel in act 3 is the spiritual heart of Les Huguenots, perhaps even more than her love duet with Raoul. The depth of her self-sacrificing love is manifested here, and its power is overwhelming in its transforming effects, since Marcel himself, the religious zealot, is moved beyond pride and prejudice to bless the former object of his chauvinism and challenge to his immovable principles: a Catholic woman. But it is at such moments of the intensest emotion that Meyerbeer shows himself a master of the sustained lyrical outpouring. The middle section of the act 3 duet for Valentine and Marcel (No.10b “Dans la nuit”) is in fact the emotional/symbolic heart of Les Huguenots. In it, the great issues at stake in this story of prejudice, intolerance and murderous hatred, are confronted, and by the enlightened and self-sacrificial attitude of a brave young woman, the seeds are sown for a different view of love and life. The cantabile melody, which represents the grace of forgiveness working in Valentine’s heart, is of a noble simplicity, characterized by rising fourths and descending semitones (the notes di-dii-ai are the points of the unresolved arc) (A). The doubling horn, and echoing cello, add a sense of poignant solemnity to this cry from the heart. On its repeat, strengthened by a little orchestral figure of resolution in parallel thirds, the

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melody (A-B1-B2-C) ascends in ecstasy from ai to gii, a dramatic interval that leads to a long, sweet gradual descent through the scale by semitones, fourths, thirds and sixths to the home di, and the resolution of the arc (AD) [Ex. 1a]. The middle section sees the melody varied, and kept aloft by the strings playing in alt, with Marcel’s anxious ruminations providing a staccato bass counterpoint to the floating legato treble, before shifting into the relative minor, and a long transition, where fear and uncertainty lead to agitated broken phrases, then smoothing into the modulations back to the reprise. This sees the melody A-D repeated by both voices in unison, with enriched accompaniment, leading to an impassioned double cadenza and a wistful postlude played by the horns in thirds. It is one of the most sustained melodic episodes in Meyerbeer’s works, and a moment of sacramental beauty, well worthy of Bellini’s famed melodic outpouring.36 Marcel’s benediction of Valentine represents the triumph of a chastened and enlightened humanity over the unthinking demands and intransigent conditioning of race, clan, creed, class and politics [Ex. 1b]. Marcel, ma fille, te bénit du fond du coeur. D’un vieillard l’humble prière est un baume salutaire .... Marcel, my daughter, blesses you from his deepest heart And the humble prayer of an old man is a saving balm.

This duet stands at the heart of Les Huguenots and enshrines not only the theme of this opera, but whatever message Meyerbeer had for the world. Valentine, and also Marcel, are thus open to change. Raoul is noble and unchanging in his love, but he is not capable of radical alteration of belief. He is honourable enough to come at great personal danger to himself to seek Valentine’s pardon, but his duet with her is again the product of her initiative - in trying to prevent his departure, in declaring her love, in attempting to hold him back. He too celebrates this love ecstatically, but once again sacrifices her and his love for the principle of honour to friends and creed. The acute dilemma of Raoul’s position must not be underestimated though, nor yet the deep love in his preparedness to die for his friends. Even in act 5 when Valentine comes to seek him out and save him, he cannot cope with the challenge and must turn to Marcel for reassurance so that it is yet again Valentine who must sweep away convention, even the sacrosanct principles of family and faith—in order to hold on to what for her is the true meaning of life, the love that offers itself even unto and beyond death.

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Ex. 1a Valentine’s Larghetto in the act 3 duet (Marcel-Valentine)

Ex. 1b Marcel’s Blessing of Valentine (Allegro moderato) in the act 3 duet

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Ainsi je te verrai périr? Je subirai sans toi l’exile sur cette terre, où nous avons souffert, où nous avons aimé? Sans toi? tu crois cela! Mon Dieu, vous autres hommes, au véritable amour votre coeur est fermé. Eh bien! tu connaîtras tout l’amour d’une femme! Tu veux, quand tous nous joint, me fuir par le trépas? Non, non, non! Je ne sais pas s’il faut risquer mon âme, enfer ou paradis, je ne te quitte plus! Oui, cette âme en tumulte, cette âme ne reconnâit plus rien! Toi, tu maudis mon culte, moi j’adopte le tien! Dieu maintenant peut faire selon sa volonté: Ensemble sur la terre et dans l’éternité! Réunis pour toujours et dans l’éternité! So I am to see you perish and survive without you, an exile on this earth where we have suffered, where we have loved? Without you! You really think so? My God, you men are something different, Your hearts closed to true love. So, you will know the depth of a woman’s love! When all has united us, you think to flee from me in death? No, no, no! I do not know if I am risking my soul, but, heaven or hell, I am not going to leave you. Yes, this soul in anguish, This soul does not acknowledge anything anymore! You curse my religion, so I will adopt yours! Let God now do whatever, According to his will. Together on earth and in eternity! Reunited forever in eternity!

Her marriage to Raoul blessed by Marcel in the hour of death is a deeply solemn celebration of profound truth that puts love and human worth above and beyond human pride, prejudice, and even principle. What are the causes men and women die for? Is heroism valid in itself? Should religion have this hold on the human heart and system of values? In the

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face of death, the great leveller, what is true worth? When two parties who both uphold a Gospel of love and forgiveness are able to kill each other, what is the role of faith?

Fig. 26 Act 3 duet Valentine-Marcel. Pauline Viardot & Ignazio Marini (Engraving in The Illustrated London News, 1845)

Who will arbitrate with the truth? The futile appearance of Queen Marguerite de Valois at the high point of the horror of waste and loss is no decoration but a profoundly sad observation of helplessness in the face of brutish and atavistic human behaviour. The mystery is why worship of God should be a locus of human hatred, the adherence to principle be the reason for the death of compassion. These themes are again explored at various levels in the opera. If Valentine is the embodiment of exploratory and compassionate humanity, then Queen Marguerite is the catalyst for political change and shares much in common with Valentine. She is prepared to rise above party and religion in the interests of peace, and indeed much of the action of the plot is precipitated by her plan for peace. She is to marry a Protestant, and is happy to receive Raoul and even Marcel at her court. Only her presence prevents the outbreak of party violence at Chenonceaux and outside the Louvre. But her efforts are swept away in futility on St. Bartholomew’s Eve. It is Marguerite who most clearly and precisely repudiates the futility

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of religious partisanship when she wishes the debates and bloodshed precipitated by Luther and Calvin far from her Court which is a place of love and peace. Her court at Chenonceaux is idyllic, and becomes a symbol of a bygone age of innocence, a paradise lost by partisan hatred. The celebrations of her would-be reconciliatory marriage with Henry of Navarre are similarly the re-creation of a courtly idyll which is broken in upon by sin and bloodshed. Thus both Valentine and Marguerite are instruments for peace and change of heart, even if both seem doomed to failure. Queen Marguerite is allied in her plan to the Comte de Nevers, a truly noble Catholic who is naturally happy to co-operate with the Queen, but has already shown his disdain of senseless social prejudice by inviting a Protestant to join in his all-Catholic gathering at his country estate in act I. When asked, and to his great personal cost, he gives up his cherished engagement to Valentine in the interests of peace and reconciliation. In this he is ironically the true partner of Valentine who later marries him out of duty. His supreme moment of testing comes in the conspiracy of St Bartholomew’s Eve when he declines to participate in the massacre, despite the royal decree. He thus joins the company of the secular saints with Valentine, Raoul and Marcel (and the Queen too). But his association is particularly with his wife, because, like her, he is one of the few persons in the opera who uses noble reason to rise above the automatic and categorical dictates of class and belief. Neither king, country nor the Catholic Church can persuade him to compromise or extirpate his humanity. Il me commande en vain de flétrir de mon sang l’honneur et la vaillance. Et parmi ces illustres aieux dont la gloire ici m’environne, je compte des soldats, et pas un assassin!

In vain you command me to sully my blood, honour and valour. Among my ancestors, whose glory surrounds us here, there have been soldiers, but never an assassin!

It is only then that Valentine becomes fully aware of his noble nature beneath his gentlemanly, sometimes gallantly exaggerated, manners. Nevers becomes a true hero who is prepared to die for the truth, but a truth that puts people before ideas. He is a genuine man of peace, who, like the Queen, would generate reconciliation and harmony. The party at his chateau in act I celebrates youth, conviviality and peace (“Des beaux jours de la jeunesse”) (happy days of youth). His wedding procession at the end of act 3 becomes a type of urban idyll in which the traditional symbols of

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the pastoral—marriage, dancing and festivity—provide an alternative to the hatred of the religious factions who mutter at and menace each other under the joy of the celebration, subjecting its happy theme to chromatic disfigurement. But the epitome of pride, prejudice and bigotry is Valentine’s father, the Comte de Saint-Bris. He personifies the intransigent and destructive nature of the unyielding spirit who identifies completely with the given factors of his birth, and elevates his country and religion into unalterable absolutes that determine life and even death itself. This is not to say that this character is conceived as an unthinking monolith anymore than Bertram is totally demonic. He sweeps aside all personal preference and sympathy, so that it is poetic justice when he inadvertently murders his own daughter in the massacre; perhaps he would have, anyway, had he known of her change of faith. So he becomes the voice of every superego, the blindly obedient fanatic who will suppress his humanity and his reason, if his ideal, principles or ideology demand it. In doing so he becomes the patron of all implementors of “final solutions”. Meyerbeer was indeed a prophet in his own right. Pour cette cause sainte j’obéirai sans crainte à mon Dieu, à mon roi!

For this sacred cause I will fearlessly obey My God and my king!

George Sand was correct in understanding Les Huguenots as a Protestant opera in opposition to the Catholicism of Robert le Diable—but this opera is in no way a glorification of Calvinism. It is true that Meyerbeer achieved one of his masterpieces of characterization in the figure of Marcel, but then Saint-Bris is also delineated in masterly fashion. In fact the composer re-creates both religions in depth and with persuasive effectiveness. Both are depicted in both positive and negative light. The best of the Catholic spirit, the purity and vulnerability of gentle devotion, is perfectly captured in the Litany of the ladies who accompany Valentine to her vigil in the chapel before her marriage to Nevers. The tenderness of devotion for the Mother of God is enshrined in the gentle style and pellucid woodwind harmonies. Similarly, in act 5, when the Huguenot women and children seek refuge in their church from the massacre in the streets, the ethereal arrangement of Luther’s hymn perfectly portrays the best of their faith and the heroic calling of their imminent martyrdom, a situation already prefigured in Marcel’s rendition of the hymn in act 1 (“Seigneur, rampart et seul soutien”) (O Lord, our fortress and sole support) which Meyerbeer consciously used als Anklang aus einer bessern Welt (harmonies from a better world). Marcel himself reflects the ambiguity

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of religious depiction in the opera: his prayer represents the best of the Reformed tradition, a countersign to worldliness, whereas his Battle Song (the famous “Piff Paff”) shows the opposite side, the arrogant prejudices and hatred which express themselves in militarism, fanaticism and chauvinism. This crude aspect of the Huguenot mentality finds further expression in the Rataplan chorus of the Protestant soldiers in act 3, and their brutish attempts to drown out the Marian litany. This spirit of vengefulness, hatred and aggression first bursts out in the act 2 confrontation at court, and is seen pulling the people apart in the great quarrel scenes of act 3 when the Catholic ambuscade is prevented by Marcel’s summons to arms. Catholic treachery immediately undercuts the purity of the litany in Saint-Bris’s conspiracy to murder Raoul, while all the fatal spirit of partisan hatred and its consequent militarism is captured in the monumental Blessing of the Daggers where fanaticism is triumphant, the clergy betray their calling of love in blessing weapons, and the people are caught up in a paroxysm of destructive hatred. In Robert le Diable the monks are custodians of a redeeming and ennobling way of life; here they have become purveyors of intolerance and even death.

Fig. 27 Act 4 duet. The Parting (print, Académie Royale de Musique)

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Fig. 28 Act 4 duet Design, Teatro Real Madrid p. 31 Fig. 28 Act 4 duet Opéra maquette

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Fig. 29 Act 4 duet Opéra maquette

It follows with supreme appropriateness that the duet which comes next between Valentine and Raoul should celebrate in almost incomparable terms the transforming rapture of love which defies the barriers of sectarianism and hatred, and proposes the only healing alternative to the deformation of faith and hope. Valentine and Raoul’s Romeo and Juliet situation underlines the tragedy of human worth betrayed for an idea, ideal or preferred principle. The real tragedy of this story, however, is that the sacrifice of the lovers and their mentor Marcel does not bring about reconciliation (as between the Montagues and Capulets), but is swept away in the flood of destruction. They do become martyrs, and their witness carries a message of love beyond the deforming consequences of ruthless politics and the mutually destructive implications of religious “conviction” which is so easily corrupted into intransigent fanaticism. Men and women need not be the slaves or victims of any determinism, be it of birth, class, nation or creed.

5. THE DRAMATURGY

Historical Music Drama With Les Huguenots, a new historicizing tendency received its major realization on the operatic stage. The sources show that it was Meyerbeer and not Scribe who must be regarded as the creator of such an historical opera. His participation in the shaping of the libretto aimed purposefully at the restructuring of the play of intrigue, as Scribe had originally planned it, into a historical drama of ideas. This method of structuring a musicodramatic context according to an idea, had already been developed to a degree of some perfection by Meyerbeer in Robert le Diable. But while the intrigue in Robert depends on a traditional sense of dramatic structure, the parallel action in Huguenots necessitates a structural mix of drama and epic. Meyerbeer’s textual interference especially in the first three acts, lays the ground for a new dramaturgy. The illustrative genre scenes as Scribe had originally conceived them become broad historical panoramas that provide a differentiated picture of social life in France on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s Night in which the forthcoming catastrophe is sketched and prefigured in threatening shadows.37 Private action (Queen Marguerite’s failed marriage plan) is motivated by the historical conflict, and not the other way round. In the acts 2 and 3 finales, where the political and private spheres first collide, the assumptions of the historical events are exposed, and their consequences explored in the last two acts. In order to finalize his conceptions, Meyerbeer did not hesitate to push back the private dimension of the action in the first three acts, something that must have rubbed against the grain of the theatrical conventions of the time. This is particularly noticeable in the role of Valentine. In Scribe’s draft she was to have been introduced by a romance in act 1 and part of a trio in act 2. In the final version she enters silently in the first, and has only a short recitative in the second until the finale when she comes into her own (“Et comment ai-je donc mérité tant d’outrage?”) (how have I deserved such outrage?). Apart from her supple and beautiful romance at the beginning of act 4 (“Parmi les pleures”) (amidst my tears), which was not always part of the conception of the work, Valentine does not have her own solo number. The need for abridgements just before the première encouraged

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Meyerbeer to strengthen this approach. Eventually in the first three acts alone he cut prominent solo and ensemble passages, as for example, in the third finale which was reduced by a third of its original dimension. All parts of the work are related to the historical-philosophical idea. So the knightly and courtly scenes of the first two acts unfold with colour and brilliance the splendid spectacle of a feudal society doomed to perish.38 From the “Court of Love” at Chenonceaux, Queen Marguerite spins out her plan of marriage and reconciliation: its failure exposes it as the enlightened liberal Utopia of a repressive society. The process of dissolution is mirrored in the dwindling vocal presence of Queen Marguerite. Her role is pared away, from the coloratura poise of her entrance aria (“O beau pays de la Touraine”) (O beautiful land of Touraine) with echo effects that affirm a romantic and mannered world of artifice in act 2, through the words of admonitory recitative and her fraught participation in the finales of acts 2 and 3, to her silent appearance in act 5, first in the deluded celebration of the ball, and then finally as the stricken and helpless witness of the bodies of the murdered Raoul and Valentine. The fortunes of the lovers parallel this retreat from the idyll of Chenonceau. Raoul’s act 1 account of his first meeting with Valentine (the romance “Plus blanche que la blanche hermine”) (whiter than the whitest ermine), to which the viola d’amore imparts an unusual, sensuous timbre, conjuring up the genre and sound world of the Troubadours, and his chivalrous, bel canto courting of the Queen in act 2 (the duet “Beauté divine, enchanteresse”) (divine beauty, enchantress), reveal his idealistic and gentlemanly nature.

Fig. 30 Act 5 scene 1 Design for the Opéra

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Fig. 31 Act 5 scene 1 Design by Séchan

The Five-Act Structure Scribe’s 5-act construction is put to superb dramaturgical use. The first act is all sunshine and laughter, in the depiction of the matinée at the chateau of the Comte de Nevers. The cast is all male until the arrival of the Page (en travestie). Underneath all the fun and games, the serious purposes are all revealed: the religio-political crisis, the role and identities of all the characters, the world of passion and intrigue. In act 2 the mood is still idyllic (initially, anyway), the atmosphere still irradiated, and this time full of the feminine badinage of the court of Marguerite de Valois.39 There is a vivid picture of the sensualism and coquetry of this society, an impression of the elegant, easy life under the clear sky of Touraine. Once again the apparently frivolous action is the means of carrying the action forward, as the daylight and course of events begin to wane with the revelation of the Queen’s sentimental political plans, and the entry of all the parties to her strategies. The collapse of trust and the brutal advent of confrontation suddenly plunge one into actual terror of the religious conflict. In act 3 the initial idyll is even further truncated. The afternoon urban happiness of the Parisian crowds is soon pulled apart by partisan conflict, and with the fall of night, the horrible truth of betrayal and planned murder comes to the fore. At the heart of this act, and the whole action of the opera, is the decision of a brave young woman to defy religious affiliation and family loyalty in the interest of truth, justice and love. Valentine’s

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approach in the night to Marcel as he keeps watch is an exploration of the deepest issues of human commitment and spiritual liberty as pride and ideology are vanquished, and hearts transformed. When the crisis arrives in the foiled assassination of Raoul, the extent of unfolding tragedy is couched in irony. Act 4, the conspiracy, the planning and advent of ideological hatred, takes place in secretive interiors in the darkness of the eve of St Bartholomew. The denouement is reached with this hatred in action, in the context of the ironic foiling of true love, as the fatal bell breaks into the lovers’ reverie and the massacre becomes reality. In act 5 the darkness thickens even more as the whole of society is seen to be unraveling in hatred, murder and chaos. The only light is spiritual illumination which chooses self-sacrifice and love, even to death itself, above hatred and vengeance. Resolution comes in true enlightenment of mind and heart. Ah voyez! Le ciel s’oeuvre et rayonne! Gloire a Dieu! Le divin clairon sonne! Ah look! Heaven opens wide and shines! Glory to God! The divine clarion sounds!40 George Sand, indeed, called this opera “an evangel of religion and love”.41 The plot has followed an inexorable course, intensified in terms of broadness, light, time, speed and compression, as leisured life, freedom of mind and action, are funneled into a vortex of constriction: action becomes narrower, darker, faster and inescapable in the realization of a fatal course of tragic events. The broad bright vistas of the opening acts pass through the dark and twisting streets of Paris and the secret chambers of conspiracy, to end up in the gutters of city. Eventually the only authentic action left is the freedom to die for the truth. In Les Huguenots Meyerbeer showed himself the master of narrative pacing and symbolic color. He emerges as the historical novelist of dramatic music, using sophisticated orchestral and choral mixtures and powerful characterization to unfold both relaxed and vibrant narration. The apprehension of historical detail, the bold confrontation of themes of profound importance to human self-determination and liberty, established him as a great composer of serious opera. The engagement of poet and composer transcended historical limitations, and between them, by

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avoiding sentimentality in the main characters, they “created a masterpiece of Romantic tragedy.” 42 For Verdi Les Huguenots was true theater, and acts 2 and 4 especially, stupendo (magnificent).43 Edouard Hanslick observed that a person unable to appreciate the dramatic power of this opera must be lacking in certain elements of the critical faculty. Even in 1891, fifty-five years after its première, he wrote that he found “the dazzlingly new and entirely unique impression it made unforgettable”.44 As for Hans von Bülow: “I consider Les Huguenots one of the greatest moments of my life.”45

Couleur locale “...The fable is almost invented, and only the epoch and the actual conclusion of the piece are historical.” Meyerbeer’s description of the material on the basis of the first draft of the libretto (see his letter of 10 October 1832) characterizes the contemporary principles used in constructing historical novels and dramas. The factual elements of history lend poetic fiction the appearance of authenticity, and in this way raise their effectiveness. Mérimée’s Chronique, as do other novels and dramas of the period, illustrates the point that the historical in a literary context had achieved a wider, enriching function. The reconstruction of a past epoch was no longer only the means, but the very aim of literary presentation. No longer, as previously, was the fictional moment avoided, but on the whole had become more empirical, more scientific. The historical medium is moreover the context for a more specific, if tacit, discourse on faith that is the consistent sub-text to the surface action. In Les Huguenots the Romantic simplicity of Robert le Diable is lost in the turmoil of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Internal division and conflict has compromised the ability of the Christian faith to confront evil and has made it a source of many wicked acts. It has been left to the actions of individuals to overcome prejudice and division—in this case the figure of the heroine Valentine, who is vital in bringing about a change of heart in key figures. Ultimately, however, even the noble and good individuals are swept up in the tide of hatred spawned by bigotry, and are killed in its violent consequences. Thus, religion in its organised expression, has become a source of evil and the destruction of good rather than a means of grace as in Robert le Diable. This is conveyed powerfully by the contrasting use of the bell motif in the two operas. In Robert the tolling of the church bell is a sign of the breaking of enchantment and a source of grace for both the hero and those around him. In Les Huguenots the church bells have been transformed into a grotesque contradiction of

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their holy use in Robert: here they signal the start of the massacre of the Protestants. The particularly Romantic elements of the stirring story are distilled in the attention to color and atmosphere on the part of both librettist and composer. Starting with his own early operas (1812-13), and then with the example of Der Freischütz (1821), Meyerbeer had increasingly concerned himself with the color of times and places. This was by developing the picturesque elements where convivial choruses, courtly processions and gypsy dances serve as both frame and diversion for the depiction of great social history and intense personal passion. Meyerbeer’s sense of background colour and psychological atmosphere was highly developed: many of the beauties of his scores are depictions of conditions of the mind and evocations of the outside world. In Les Huguenots these include: —the severity and rudeness of the martial Calvinist Marcel in the midst of a lighthearted, hedonistic morning party of Catholic nobles; —the idyllic Court of Queen Marguerite, bathed in the radiance of nature and characterized by feminine badinage and courtly intrigue; —popular Parisian life in the midst of amity and partisan strife; —the plotting and fanaticism of conspirators in the encroaching gloom of twilight and night; —the passionate dialogue of the lovers while the tocsin is booming; —the sombre solitary marriage service amidst the horrors of St Bartholomew’s Night; —the anguished, ethereal prayer of the Protestant refugees opposed to the bloodthirsty intent of the inhuman murderers. In Les Huguenots the fabulous color of time and place plays a central role. In this Meyerbeer seemed to realize a Romantic ideal proposed by Victor Hugo in his preface to Cromwell (1827), in which he advocated the introduction of couleur locale into drama.46 The five acts of the opera present contrasts in large blocks: the first two acts are solar, joyful and idyllic, the other three nocturnal, serious and eventually tragic. The happy salon of the Comte de Nevers, the delightful gardens of Chenonceaux and the rituals of courtly formality are contrasted with the busy chaos of medieval Paris, with crisscrossing narrow streets, chapels and bawdy taverns, swarming with strolling citizens, students and pugnacious customers, feasting, playing, dancing, provoking religious controversy. There are altercations between the Catholics, disturbed in their religious services, and the mocking Huguenots who intone a bellicose rataplan. This

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is in turn interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the gypsies, alien pagans detached from the religious controversies, whose fortune telling and dances distract the contenders. The atmosphere is reminiscent of Villon’s “Ballade des Pendus”, and of Hugo’s Court of Miracles from Notre Dame de Paris. Light gives way to darkness, with flickering torches picking out sinister details, as appalling plots and sublime self-offering unfold. The gathering darkness, the solitary cry of the archer announcing the curfew, the brief hushed answers from the chorus, the first mysterious signs of intrigue among Saint-Bris and his followers, secretly overheard, the orchestral measures accompanying the entry of Valentine, fill the air with murmurs, and the tremble of anxiety. The duet with Marcel, at the center of the opera, with Valentine’s affecting Larghetto intersected by the troubled throbbing of Marcel’s concern, creates a melancholic lament unfolding in an atmosphere full of ambush and menace. The fusion of characters and setting and plot is superbly achieved, with melodic cues, the disposition of voices, orchestral timbres, and the variety of rhythms combining to create an inspired dramaturgy. The darkness is etched by torches and the air filled with chivalrous pride and ominous warnings in the septet of protagonists, a comment on the rituals of duelling on the Pré-aux-Clercs, as the River Seine flows silent and sinisterly at the feet of the contestants. The irruption of the ambuscade, the swelling of the Huguenot chorale as the alarm is given over the tumult of the confrontation, the rushing of soldiers and students, the shrill insulting disputes between the Catholic and Protestant women, the pacifying entry of the Queen and her retinue, and finally the arrival of the illuminated wedding barque with the joyful guests, the celebration riding over the murderous mutterings and menacings of the populace, provide a vivid scenario governed by chiaroscuro, decrescendo and crescendo. *** The monumental act 4 which follows depends not so much on local color, as on huge musical structures and variety, the tumultuous Catholic plot and blessing of the daggers, where a tale of conspiracy rises to the structured solemnity of the great historical fact. The play of contrasts reaches its climax in the celebrated love duet, where, confiding their love to each other, borne on the wings of endless melody, they forget the tragedy which is about to overtake the Huguenots, and are roused only by the eerie ringing of bells in the dead of night, inciting the Catholics to the slaughter. The pattern of surface contrasts reflects the deep structural theme of

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ideological opposition, the incurable variance between religious fanaticism on the one hand, and the human aspiration to freedom of worship and prayer, indeed to liberty of the spirit, on the other. The motif was already present in Il Crociato in Egitto. *** Stage design for act 3 of Les Huguenots (the Pré aux Clercs) (modello scenico for the Teatro Apollo in Rome, 1875). This depiction of peace and conflict in the streets of Paris during the Wars of Religion established an important aspect of Scribe and Meyerbeer’s dramaturgical praxis—the epic presentation of a moment in time that captures the mood and implications of a particular historical period. The movement from daylight and peace to darkness and conflict carries its obvious scenic-dramatic implications. Here we see the famous square and duelling ground at night: some lonely lanterns glow murkily through swathes of mist that have risen from the River Seine flowing on the left. The chapel where Valentine overhears the conspiracy to murder Raoul is at the centre back, and the inn where the Huguenots soldiers are resting is to the right foreground. Marcel will call on them to rescue Raoul when the ambush is revealed.

Fig. 32 Act 3 the Pré aux clercs. Stage design (Teatro Apollo, Rome)

6. THE LEADING THEMES

Meyerbeer succeeded decisively in this work in fusing the different traditions of the three great operatic lands of Europe. His style is strikingly defined by Italianate melody, a French sense of rhythm, and a Germanic richness of harmony. The vivid color of the score is characterized by these stylistic and formal influences: romance mingles with scenes of celebration and conflict shaped by massive choruses; a consistently appealing melos is illumined by a brilliant, inventive sense of instrumental tincture.

Protestant Motifs Meyerbeer’s rigorous formal training gives the work a classical beauty of expression in the intellectual polyphony of the orchestra and ensembles, the greater harmonic richness of the score, the vigorous and various structures of the second and third finales, and in the monumental formal control of the conspiracy scene and extended love duet; in the detailed and sustained use of recurring motif. Meyerbeer’s ability to unify his score by patterns of motive and sound is particularly evident in this work. The most obvious recurrent theme is that of Luther’s chorale, “Ein’ feste Burg” [Ex. 2a]. It is subjected to numerous moments of recall and development, and in depicting the unyielding strength of a cause, of religious fervour, lends the opera a monolithic grandeur. The composer’s response rises to the librettist’s dramatic vision in his use of this Reformation hymn as the theme of spiritual idealism. While the hymn was used often by other composers in symphonies and sacred works, it remains a prosaic and formal reminiscence. Meyerbeer turns it into a fully developed Leitmotif, and succeeds in transforming it into something deeply poetical and even mystical. In the overture it is presented in many different guises, to represent the spirit of religion in all its forms: solemn, loving, tender, inflamed, militant, deformed, rendered grotesque in militancy. In Marcel’s singing of it in act 1 it is a beautiful expression of faith, full of power and exquisite aspiration. In the second finale it provides a cantus firmus, expressing Huguenot resolution and strength in the face of deception and danger. In act 3 it is a stirring call to arms in the midst of ambush and betrayal. In act 5 it becomes the hushed and remote prayer in the moment

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of imminent death, and finally the triumphant cry of martyrdom accepted.47 Meyerbeer was indeed accused of something approaching blasphemy for using this venerated chorale in an operatic context, and in 1837 he wrote to his friend Gottfried Weber, editor of the journal Cäcilia defending himself against such charges: ...the chorale is always treated in a severe and ecclesiastical style, as a contrast to the secular music; it is always heard as an emanation from a better world, as a symbol of faith and hope, and always as a rallying call at times of danger or in moments of the highest exaltation....When a hymn is treated like that, it is my belief that it deserves to be called a consecration rather than a desecration.48

It is announced immediately in the overture, a fine example of Meyerbeer’s orchestral style and handling of motive. The single theme of Luther’s hymn is subjected to a series of brief, melodic, rhythmic and orchestral variations that depict the varying characteristics of the Huguenots: from dignified religious solemnity, through tender moods of love, devotion and sadness, to furious, almost deforming bellicosity. It illustrates several orchestral traits: rich brass and woodwind writings in which the low pitches of clarinet and bassoon and the warm tones of the cor anglais are prominent; high pitched divided violin figurations, the division of each string part into two sections, the one playing pizzicato, the other arco. The final part of the overture subjects the theme to acceleration of time and tempo, with the orchestra playing a brassy tutti. The theme is often given to Marcel, the embodiment of religious commitment and idealism, as in act 1 where his intoning of the hymn in the midst of the party of Catholic nobles is in almost violent musical distinction from the suave, communal music of the bon vivants. The ethereal woodwinds link this music to a visionary ideal. In Marcel’s vocabulary the chorale becomes a true Leitmotif, and all his utterances colored by the chorale modality. In act 1, for example, when Nevers, showing off before his guests, says he would not be drawn away from his guests even for the King of the Universe, Marcel mutters darkly to himself about his profanity. The orchestra comments supportively with a brief hint of the chorale, transmuted through flattened sixths into something faraway and hushed [Ex.2b]. But all his utterances have the modal solemnity of ancient religious song. David Charlton has pointed out how Meyerbeer has allowed this motive to permeate the very scalic structures of his melodic inspiration, as in the famous melody of the love duet sung by the idealistic young Raoul where the semitonal descent of the melisma is exactly analogous

6. The Leading Themes

Ex. 2a Overture “Ein’ feste Burg” Ex. 2b Marcel’s recitative, act 1 Ex. 2c Entry of Marcel, act 1

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Fig. 33 Act 5 scene 1 Set design (coloured maquette)

Fig. 34 Act 5 scene 2 trio Caricature: ‘Portrait-charge de F. Niel’

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Fig. 35 Act 5 scene 2 Le Grand Trio à Opéra de Paris, 1878. Engraving by J. R. Mitchell

Fig. 36 Act 5 scene 2 The Nuptial Blessing (print, Académie Royale de Musique)

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Fig. 37 Act 5 scene 2 The Nuptial Blessing (coloured chocolate card)

to that of the chorale.49 The same melodic descent, this time in thirds, is also found in the theme of Marcel’s Vision in act 5, at the words “le ciel s’oeuvre”. Indeed, as Marcel, Valentine and Raoul prepare to confront death in the religious massacres, they hear the Huguenot women and children praying in the church to hushed and distant a cappella arrangement of the chorale. When the murders begin, the chorale is almost shouted out in octaves by the terrified victims as they are being mown down, their deaths reflected in the fragmenting of the theme, dying away in the orchestral postlude. During the religious fervour of Marcel’s Vision, he and the young couple repudiate the calls of the assassins to abjure their faith, welcoming death by intoning the chorale ecstatically, the intensifying fervour and emotional tension reflected in the rising of pitch at each repetition (E-flat-FG-A), “turning the screw in pitch”, as Anselm Gerhard observes.50 The high seriousness of Marcel’s depiction touches on all his musical personification. He further has his own particular tone-colour, all his entries and recitatives being accompanied by a triple-stopped cello with double-bass, sustaining the antique effect. Meyerbeer was one of the first composers to conduct musicological research that he incorporated into his

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compositions. His study of Maraut’s Psalter and French sixteenth-century instrumental music is clear from the ritornello at Marcel’s entrance in act 1, and the first words of his following admonition to Raoul [Ex. 2c]. This was part of his overall concern for the creation of couleur locale, as in the highly atmospheric call of the Nightwatchman in act 3, where a feeling of antique times is sustained by the use of a genuine melody from the synagogue, the Yigdal, the Jewish hymn of thanksgiving on the eve of the Sabbath.51

No. 11 Couvre feu: “Rentrez, habitants de Paris” (return to your homes, citizens of Paris) The curfew is a beautiful tone poem of falling night and emptying streets as the citywatch urges the Parisian populace to return home, and the streets are left deserted for the menacing conspirators. The chiming bell and hushed observations of the people create a nuanced transition from busy diurnal activities to the lonely, sinister shadows of plotting and betrayal. The recreation of this ancient Medieval custom conjures up a vivid sense of long past times and heroic deeds.

Catholic Motifs The other major religious party, the Catholics, is also characterized by its own special sound. There is no unique motive, but an association of rich chordal harmonies that lends a unique aura to the most solemn rituals of Catholic self-expression. The religious preparations for Valentine’s wedding are led by a litany of Catholic women, whose prayer to the Virgin is accompanied by ethereal chords on the flutes, oboes and clarinets. These are rooted on the submediant (flat VI to tonic, G-flat to B-flat) in an expanding and contracting progression, like inhaling and exhaling [Ex. 3a]. The same pattern will return later at the frightening but stupendous Blessing of the Daggers, where the monks, in a travesty of prayer, invoke benediction on weapons of murder, accompanied by the similarly solemn but alienating harmonies for horns: bassoon, trombones and ophicleide (the harmonic sequence, a reflection, from submediant to tonic, E to Aflat). The prayer of blessing has in fact been reversed to its dark side of malediction. The thematic purposefulness of the tonal integration is clear when the Benediction in A-flat is seen at the heart of the encapsulating E major tonic of the whole Conspiracy Scene, the ‘blessing’ growing organically out of the murderous plot [Ex. 3b].

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Ex. 3a Litany of Catholic Ladies, act 3 Ex. 3b The Blessing of the Daggers, ensemble act 4 Ex. 3c Entry of the Court, act 2 Ex. 3d Conspiracy, ensemble act 4

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This thematic integration through harmony is further strengthened by rhythmic devices. When the Catholic Court enter to the summons of the Queen in act 2, it is to the portentous, strutting dotted rhythms of a stately procession (Tempo di minuetto, maestoso, C major, 3/4), first quietly in the bass, then grandly, with treble octaves overlapping and unifying with double octaves in the bass [Ex. 3c]. This same descending figure reappears in act 4 during the Conspiracy, when the doors open to admit the three monks who perform the blessing of the weapons (Poco andante, Aflat major, 3/4). The double octaves in the bass are now thickened by the same treble figure in thirds, the muted cornets and trumpets adding a fleeting, muffled and eerie quality to the glorification of swords and vengeance. The courtly splendour of the Catholic nobility has been turned into something dangerous and mortal, transmuted into a false path, the impulse to peace now rechannelled into a rhythm of deadly hatred [Ex. 3d]. The same applies to the use of the bell. The sacred call to worship and right order is deformed into a tocsin, a summons to murder, a violation of the divine law and a sacrilegious misuse of divine symbols. The Catholic nobleman Nevers, like Marcel, has his own tonal motive. His serious appearances and utterances are heralded by a brief triplet figure that is first heard when he shows off in front of his guests in act 1, then when he privately soliloquizes about the termination of his engagement to Valentine [Ex. 4a]. Later, in act 3 when he arrives to fetch her home, now his wife, his gallant words have the punctuating figure. Finally, in his supreme moment of noble idealism, he refuses to participate in the massacre of the Protestants. He affirms the principles of chivalry to the familiar triplets [Ex. 4b].

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Ex. 4a Nevers’s recitative in act 1 Ex. 4b Nevers’s demur in the Blessing of the Daggers, act 4

6. The Leading Themes

Fig. 38 Antonio Scotti as Nevers

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7. INSTRUMENTAL WRITING (VOCAL AND ORCHESTRAL)

In this opera Meyerbeer’s instrumental sensitivity is at its most innovative. The hero Raoul is associated with the high strings. In the overture the first theme is immediately followed by a filigree figure for the violins (con delicatezza) that emerges out of the chorale, and continues to counterpoint the gentle variants of the hymn that follow. When Raoul is seen approaching Nevers’s morning levée through the garden, the same delicate figure appears as the guests discuss Raoul’s appearance and religious affiliations. The tonal-instrumental association is reinforced in his act 2 duet with the Queen, where their colloquy is preluded by sinuous and cascading violin triplets (très doux) that smooth into the rocking arpeggios of Raoul’s admiring apostrophe. The violins capture something of his idealistic and chivalrous nature. For the tenor romance in act 1 the composer employed the archaic viola d’amore. The aria epitomizes the bel canto style of singing, a mellifluous, delicately decorated lyric line handled with the restraint, steadiness and clarity of line associated with instrumental writing. The mood of the romance, and the nature of this style of writing, are underscored by the accompaniment: the rich and haunting strains of this unusual instrument with its resonant understrings. The piece requires very considerable artistry in sustaining a sense of simplicity, the singer needing a dramatic style in the exciting preliminary narrative, followed by mastery of the florid technique in the ensuing hushed recall and mezza voce pean of love, with an ability to float a series of high B-flats and negotiate the challenging tessitura of the accompanied cadenza.52 The same style of singing is preeminently required for Raoul’s duet with the Queen. Clive Brown explains the vocal tradition of bel canto in this opera. Les Huguenots “requires singers of the very highest calibre; this has hindered its production during the 20th century, especially since the types of voice and vocal technique that Meyerbeer required are scarcely to be found today. The modern singer’s pitch vibrato, so different from the vibrato of intensity in the bel canto tradition, is not suited to his kind of writing. Marguerite’s air, ‘O beau pays de la Touraine’, and her duet with Raoul, ‘Beauté divine’, are outstanding examples of this style.”53

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Although a great innovator and lover of the orchestra and all its potential, Meyerbeer never allowed it to swamp his vocal line. Often indeed he would write an aria of suave melody and tender vocalism accompanied by only one or two instruments, so creating the most delicate, chamber effects of vocal and instrumental colour [Ex. 5a].

Ex. 5a Raoul’s Romance in act 1

No. 2: Romance: “Plus blanche que la blanche hermine” (whiter than the white ermine) A famous example is Raoul’s romance from act 1 of Les Huguenots where the tenor, recalling his rescue of a beautiful stranger, is accompanied by a solo viola d’amore. The delicate vocal writing is in dialogue with a stringed instrument related to the ancient viol family; in its sympathetic under-strings, it provides a resonating timbre that is both exotic and warmly romantic. The orchestra comes in only to gently support the tender climax where the tenor, singing mezza voce, must float a series of high Bflats, and sing a florid cadenza, also accompanied by the viola, that must emphasize the passion of recollection, and eschew any loud or vulgar exhibitionism. When Raoul is married to his beloved, it is in ironically tragic and bleak circumstances. For this extraordinary situation, of marriage on the brink of death, Meyerbeer produced music that is not only visionary, but futuristic. He employed for the first time in the symphony orchestra the bass clarinet, invented in the late eighteenth century, but now brought into prominence and developed by Adolphe Sax.54 Meyerbeer introduces it as a solo obbligato to the wedding ceremony presided over by Marcel: he catechizes the betrothed whose nuptials are also the prelude to martyrdom, his words underscored and punctuated by its sepulchral chalumeau.

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No. 27a Trio—Bénédiction nuptiale: “Savez-vous qu’enjoignant vos mains dans ces ténèbres” (Do you know, that in joining your hands in these shadows...) The bass clarinet is used as the sole accompaniment of the nuptial benediction in act 5 where its deep, gloomy register creates the required atmosphere of darkness and tragedy, as the lovers are married in the hour of death, and the Protestant women seeking refuge in the church pray for strength. Luther’s hymn is treated dramatically, the sturdy chorale transmuted by suffering into something remote and ethereal.

Fig. 39 Mario as Raoul

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Fig. 40 Act 5 scene 3 finale. Her Majesty’s Theatre, London (Engraving in The Illustrated London News, 1859)

8. FORMAL INNOVATION

Melodic Pliability The melodic concept is rich and constantly adapted to the dramatic exigencies. Act 2 presents the hedonistic luxury of the Bathers’ Chorus (“Jeunes beautés, sous ce feuillage”) (young beauties, under this leafy bower), on the one hand, with its voluptuous writing for the harp, bassoon runs, and long sensuous melody, and the stark propulsion of Valentine’s fraught reaction to her rejection by Raoul (“Et comment ai-je donc mérité tant d’outrage?”) (and what have I done to deserve such an insult?), on the other. This launches the finale of the second act, dominated by this dramatic melodic cell, with its stream of scales over a series of diminished sevenths and its enharmonic modulations, further counterpointed by Marcel’s variation of Luther’s chorale in the bass. The complex music requires flawless intonation and a clarity of detail which extend to the obscurest subsidiary part. The rapid runs, the antiphonal double choruses, the entries in imitation, the sudden transitions from the forte to the piano and all the gradations, emphasize the monumental musical concept. The sublime tragedy of the last act is captured by the bleak wistfulness of the orchestral melody and following oboe solo, fraught with tragic intimation, that opens the last scene and binds the action together. The declamatory fervour of Valentine’s self-offering (“Ainsi je te verrai périr?”) (must I then see you perish?), the ethereal choral writing for the Huguenot women and children awaiting death, the tight glittering harp arpeggios of the martyrdom trio, the harsh theme of the Catholic assassins and its intransigent trumpet accompaniment, show the composer using all the various and flexible musical resources of a great musical tragedian.

The Musico-Dramatic Conception of Act 2 Perhaps the most obvious tribute Meyerbeer ever paid the younger composer Bellini is in act 2 of Les Huguenots where the duet No.10 for Raoul and Queen Marguerite de Valois opens with a pure imitation of the Sicilian master of melody.55 The rocking, sinuous accompaniment resting on long, sustained triadic chords, the enthralled languour of Raoul’s apostrophe to the Queen with its initial sweet upward slide by semitones

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on the first syllable to instant repose on a lengthened fii (“Beau-té”), the immediate repetition of the phrase (“di-vine”), and its delicate descent through thirds down to fi (“enchanteresse”), create a mellifluous, faraway mood intensified by the semitonal progression of the unfolding sections, until the melody finds its climax in the upward rise through lengthened quarter notes (dii-eii-fii-gii) to the very long, sustained pianissimo flattened aii, before descending in a gentle cascade of eighth and sixteenth notes to the home fi [Ex. 5b].

Ex. 5b Raoul in the act 2 duet (Marguerite de Valois-Raoul)

The relationship of Raoul’s song to Bellini’s most famous melody can hardly be incidental. Norma’s apostrophe to the moon goddess is in the same key of F major, has the same time signature of 12/8, with identical arpeggio accompaniment.56 The melody itself has a kinship born of inversion (Bellini’s long initial ai followed by three short notes descending to gi, mirror-imaged by Meyerbeer into three short notes rising from ai to repose in the lengthened fii) [Ex. 5c]. Both melodies recreate the entranced mood of adoration, with the “cool sacral flute” of Bellini’s introduction57 replaced by the rising and falling cascades of Meyerbeer’s solo violin reverie.

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Ex. 5c “Casta diva” from act 1 of Bellini’s Norma

The serendipital atmosphere of the duet is sustained by the Queen’s reprise of the same 12-bar melodic arch, with oboes echoing the vital questions. The dreamy state of mind is continued though, not by spinning the line out again as Bellini does (with rising embellished crescendi and extended floating melismas), but by a new section of puckish badinage, where a mercurial vocal figure passes in imitative exchange between the two, with pizzicato and staccato woodwind chords marking the rhythm (andantino scherzoso), before the voices fuse in languid unisons.58 Indeed the whole of the opening scene of act 2 of Les Huguenots develops and sustains this idyllic mood, through orchestral colours and recurrence of long sensuous melodies, as in the Queen’s opening aria (No.7a “O beau pays de la Touraine”) and the Bathers’ Chorus (No.8 “Jeunes beautés”). Of this scene in which Marguerite de Valois first appears, Meyerbeer made a “Court of Love”. From the first notes of the introduction— initiated by the violoncellos, taken up by the flute—one is enveloped in an atmosphere of feminine charm; and when the delightful phrase apostrophe to Touraine unfolds itself, accompanied by the harps, one is transported into a world of amorous elegance unknown elsewhere.59 Meyerbeer’s scenic dialectic and use of irony as a shaping aesthetic are very much in evidence in the act 2 finale when attention moves from the

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almost hidden Court of Love to the public domain of national politics with the unfolding of the Queen’s plans for reconciliation. The Court enter, sweeping down the great staircase of the gardens to a grandiose tempo di minuetto, with Marguerite stepping forward as the chivalrous portentousness is succeeded by another ceremonial theme, elegant and yet showy. This is the kind of brilliant public music that looks forward to Meyerbeer’s essays in Court ritual and protocol embodied in his four Fackeltänze for the Prussian Royal family. In retrospect one will realize that these same tones and rhythms of Courtly deportment become the métier of murderous intent in act 4. The mood of expansive gesture continues but in a more restrained vein in the ensuing vow of friendship. All attempts at peace were doomed in this period, and it is significant that the promise is couched in a modality that belies its professed optimism. The c-minor timpani rolls that sound in hollow dullness, and the great solemn chords on the horns, pertain more to the funeral march. The voices are initially joined in a sign of unanimity, with the orchestra silent: but the words “éternelle amitié” (eternal friendship) are uttered almost menacingly, descending as they do by an octave to the lower notes to settle on the dominant [Ex. 6a]. The form belies the content. It is hardly surprising when disillusionment and outrage take the place of optimistic endeavour. When Raoul rejects Valentine the whole orchestra holds a note of G fortissimo, before the chorus, soloists and orchestra whisper a chilling unison that is anything but unifying [Ex. 6b]. The huge fast-moving ensemble that follows, generated from the melodic cell of Valentine’s despair [Ex. 6c], is a frozen moment of contemplated fury, the concerted rage of the Catholic party opposed to the solo Schadenfreude of the gleeful Marcel with his cantus firmus variations on Luther’s hymn. “No musician can fail to remember the grand effects Meyerbeer produces at the close of the second act of Les Huguenots; the music is genuine, powerful, and dramatic in the highest degree, and exactly suited to the exciting situation” (William Spark, Musical Memories, 1888).60

The Figure of Marcel Although Meyerbeer never expressed himself systematically about the creative process, several of his private statements about his ästhetische point de vue and his dramatisches System indicate that he was conscious in this work of having created a new conception of opera. At the heart of it stands the development of the chorale Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott and its relation to the character of Marcel. Meyerbeer was well aware of the historical inaccuracy of using this Lutheran hymn as means of identifying

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Ex. 6a The Vow in the act 2 finale Ex. 6b. Unison of dismay, act 2 finale Ex. 6c. Valentine’s solo in the act 2 finale

a Calvinist movement, but this consideration seemed less important than the symbolic power of this melody to represent the spirit of militant faith in the century of religious wars (“I went into the Protestant church and listened to the canticles, the noble anthems, the simple and valiant hymns, half-martial and half- mystical, sacred relics from the heroic days of a faith already as old and as waning as our own,” is how George Sand expressed it in the eleventh of the Lettres d’un voyageur, 1837). When the Chorale is first sung by Marcel at Nevers’ banquet in act 1, it appears, especially in relation to the subsequent Chanson huguenote, as part of the banner of religious fanaticism. This is equally true of acts 2 and 3 where the melody functions as Marcel’s battle cry. Only in act 5, when the fate of the Huguenots is sealed, and Valentine, Raoul and Marcel have opted for martyrdom, does it take on new meaning which in the light of its textual and musical shape can be understood in terms of a progressive sacralization. This process takes place in the Grand trio which becomes the dramatic summa of the work. The chorale assumes a new dimension as a dirge, a prayer in the hour of death, sung by the women who have sought refuge in the church, and as the scene develops, and the murderers break into the sanctuary, it is deformed, with the melody alienated and broken. The last section of this development is the Vision, the final part of the trio,

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where, in the coda, the opening of the chorale is transformed in ever briefer sections like a montage through sequencing, diminution, contraction, and splitting into a crisp and affecting phrase (“Je ne crains rien de vous”) (I fear nothing from you). This three-tone fragment becomes a motif integrating the Assassins’ Chorus into the whole musical fabric (“Oui, renégrats, abjurez ou mourez”) (yes, renegades, abjure or die). This compositional procedure, dramatizing the technique of motival variation, gives the musical process a symbolic dimension. That new interpretation of the sacred citation relates to the central idea of the work is indicated in the overture where just such variations on the chorale encrypt this process proleptically. The determined use of the chorale as a coded critique of religion emerges in the treatment of Marcel. Meyerbeer was aware of the unsettling novelty of this character: “Marcel’s role is worth more than all the other music that I composed in my life, including Robert. Whether he will be understood I do not know, I fear that initially he will not be” (letter of 15 September 1835). Marcel’s first entry characterizes him as a fanatical soldier of deep religious conviction, who rises to demonic greatness in the bizarre expression of the act 1 Chanson huguenote (“Pour les couvents c’est fini”) (all is finished for the convents).

No. 4: The Chanson Huguenot: “Piff, paff” Marcel’s Battle Song is a musical picture of populist bigotry. It is a type of soldier’s ballad, with deliberately ludicrous effect achieved by extreme intervals, alienating harmonies, and weird accompaniment (a grotesque combination of piccolo, bassoon and bass drum.) In the preceding recitative, the chords in the lower strings serve as a musical identification of Marcel throughout the opera, a purposeful evocation of ‘antique’ sound. Marcel’s display of brash bravado is preceded by the very different Hymne de Luther (“Seigneur rampart et seul soutien”) which is really a soliloquy, a prayer made in a moment of awkwardness and social duress, and presents a very different aspect of his character. Luther’s hymn is presented directly, but is bathed in a variety of different and sumptuous orchestral sounds, overpowering and dark to begin with, but softening into high, bright, heavenly woodwind harmonies. The two different pieces present vivid, precise and effective characterization of Marcel, the uncomfortable mixture of true devotion and intransigent militarism summing up much of the dilemma of the scenario.

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Fig. 41 Marcel Journet as Marcel

A similarly rough profile marks his entry in acts 2 and 3: his triumphant glee at the failure of Queen Marguerite’s plan of reconciliation, and his refusal to show reverence to the Marian procession, stirs up the latent tension between Catholics and Protestants to simmering open conflict. Only in the course of act 3 does the character assume some nobility. Fear for Raoul’s safety breaks open the carapace of hatred, and allows paternal love to characterize his nature (“Ah! quel chagrin pour ma vieillesse”) (ah, what worry for my age). This moment of spiritual transformation was originally planned by Meyerbeer as a big monologue (“Je veux ici l’attendre”) (I want to wait for him here), and after its withdrawal, was transferred to the duet with Valentine (“Dans la nuit où seul je veille”) (in the dark where I watch alone). Finally in act 5 every dogmatic-aggressive attitude falls away from Marcel. His solemn questioning of Valentine and Raoul binds them to humane love that transcends martyrdom and death (“Dieu nous donne le courage en donnant

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l’amour”) (in giving us love God gives us courage). This trio, the Interrogatoire (three questions by Marcel, three unison answers from the couple), raises the proceedings from a sacred-Christian sphere to one of magic ritual. The whole is accompanied by the dirge-like tones of a bassclarinet, which heard for the first time in the opera orchestra, must have exerted a powerful effect on contemporary audiences, and invests Marcel with the aura of an Old Testament seer and prophet. Only from here on does the refashioning of the textual and musical structure of the Lutheran chorale acquire its purpose, not so much as a critique of the Christian religion itself, but rather its historical perversion, characterized by its subjection to the politics of power. For Meyerbeer this self-imposed problem of religion manifests itself in the historical role of Christianity, with the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion providing a bloody example.

A Romantic Concern with Dramatic Impulse The Romantic pull in Meyerbeer’s works comes into play when one considers the composer’s essentially dramatic concern, a concern that modifies the Classical aspects of his approach. The fervent onrush of the stories emphasize the situation, both the drama and the historical background against which the personal fate of the characters unfolds. This dramatic thrust is essentially one of movement, action, bold and gripping strokes. This emphasizes strong contrasts of light and darkness, loudness and softness, and is antithetical to the stasis in music demanded by too many arias and static ensembles of characterization that are such essential features of the Classical opera, say of Mozart, as in the sextet in Don Giovanni (and also in numbers like the canon quartet in Fidelio, and the quintet in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg). Here the singing does not develop the situation, but is devoted to contemplation and adumbration of character. The duets and trios in Les Huguenots are largely of this type.

No. 19 Duel Septet: “En mon bon droit j’ai confiance” (I am confident of the justice of my cause) A fine example of Meyerbeer’s dramatic ensembles of situation rather than characterization is the famous Duel Septet: here the emphasis falls on the action—the duel about to be fought—rather than on the depiction of personality. The antagonists divide into two parties of six each. The principal motive is bold and martial, excepting a few disjointed phrases, occurring in the trilling details of the parts for the seconds. The secondary motive is seven-part vocal writing wrought to a grand and thrilling climax.

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A passage energetically delivered by all the combatants (“Chacun pour soi”) (everyone for himself) is affectingly and ironically contrasted with a pious appeal (“Et Dieu pour tous”) (and God for all of us)in a subdued tone rich in modulation, the distinction successfully underscored by the composer without distorting the dominating rhythm. Nourrit, the creator of Raoul, surpassed himself in the animated execution of the rich phrase towards the end (“et bonne épée et bon courage, chacun pour soi”) (a trusty sword and good courage, everyone for himself) where the instruction is con molto portamento di voce, and the tenor required to rise to high C. The corporate divisi exchanges and unison statements of the combatants express common intention. Only Marcel, the bystander, is an individual, a voice of solemn warning and tragic intimation (“Ah! Quel chagrin pour ma vieillesse...Pauvre Raoul, ils l’ont trahi!”) (Ah, what vexation at my age...Poor Raoul, they have betrayed him). Suave sonority and contrasting sections, changing tempi and orchestral colours reflect the drama of the piece.61

Fig. 42a Enrico Caruso as Raoul (Duel Septet, New York)

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Fig. 42b Enrico Caruso as Raoul (Duel Septet, London)

9. THE TREATMENT OF THE CHORUS

The chorus assumes new importance in Meyerbeer’s operas. It is no longer there to provide harmonic backing, nor to relieve the monotony of solo scenes. Rather, building on the developments in the grands opéras of Auber and Rossini, the chorus becomes a vital participant in the drama—a formidable protagonist, a ‘corporate individual’, at one moment representing the Catholic nobles (in act 1), at others members of the Court (in act 2), Protestant soldiers, Parisian townspeople (in act 3), the collective conspirators (in act 4), the Protestant victims and their Catholic oppressors (in act 5). The power and variety of the choral writing is striking, and made a deep impression, like the Orgie in act 1, the Choeur des baigneuses in act 2, and the Rataplan of the Huguenot Soldiers in act 3. The widespread popularity of the Orgie established itself as something of a folk melody.62

No. 1e Orgie: “Bonheur de la table” (joys of the table) This is a huge chorus (Allegro) for Nevers, the six Catholic noblemen (Cossé, Thoré, Tavennes, De Retz, and Méru) and the gentlemen guests. It celebrates life, joy, and pleasure as they all move to enjoy their refreshment. Glittering, reiterated orchestral figures, with very prominent string writing, whip up an atmosphere of great excitement that launches itself into a highly rhythmical common-time theme, resembling a march or walking song in its broad, homophonic progress. Voices and orchestra are caught up in a brilliant onward rush of sound. Soon there are divisions between the tenors and basses, with interjections from the soloists. Patter-writing is breathlessly counterpointed as lines are overlaid and tossed between the individuals (alone and in groups) and the divided chorus. The binary structure moves towards resolution, when it is suddenly interrupted by a fresh spiky episode in 3/8 rhythm (Allegro con spirito), which, in alternating answering parts, rises to an unresolved highpoint. The coda is then initiated by a precipitate change in tempo (Presto), reaching a splendid highpoint, as the orchestra, plunging down through three octaves, and with rhythmic changes to 6/8 and 9/8, carries the chorus to a tumultuous tutta forza climax. Throughout, the male voices are combined and divided in a variety of sonorities, while all is carried on a surging

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instrumental current, as the orchestra constantly changes color and timbre in a torrential commentary of resonant, sparkling sound. The theme of this chorus, celebrating life and joy so exuberantly, returns most purposefully at the end of act 1, transposed from C into D major, as Raoul is led away blindfolded to meet his strange destiny with the Queen, a situation so full of hopeful promise. But a choral engagement with the drama and its inexorable progression are most clearly illustrated by Meyerbeer’s total dedication to a vigorous rhythmic praxis. His predilection was for a basic dotted motif (staccatosemiquaver staccato-quaver) that recurs in his music in ways both obvious and subtle. This is one of his individual hallmarks as a composer, giving the music propulsion and again contributing to a certain military formalism.

Fig. 43 Jean Noté as Nevers

No. 5a Chorus: “Honneur au conquérant” (all honour to the conqueror) The rhythmic fervour is heard most exuberantly in the chorus of Catholic noblemen who hail what they surmise to be another instance of Never’s success with the ladies.The accompaniment, staccato reiterations in great double octave triads, with a recurrent swooping effect of a bass triplet appogiatura, becomes a torrential ostinato, giving the brash sentiments of the Catholic gentlemen an irresistible élan. The effect is intensified by the ternary format, with a suave middle section (“Il règne en tous les coeurs”) (he reigns in all hearts). The whole is an exercise in dramatic irony since the news Nevers has just heard in private is anything but happy for him.

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Powerful rhythmic conception is most obvious in the choruses and large ensembles, and these also provide interesting examples of Meyerbeer’s harmonic characteristics. He had a penchant for enharmonic modulation, and experimented with unusual harmonies and chord combinations. Extension of the role of the orchestra led on to general enrichment of the harmonic fabric of the writing. But even as there is no time to linger over long arcs of melody, there is rarely the kind of frozen moment of stasis that lends itself to extended passages of counterpoint. In concerted passages Meyerbeer preferred to use contrapuntal effects more sparingly. Considerations of dramatic progression and sonority meant that he frequently employed great blocks of unison sound, homophonic effects of octaves and double octaves, but Les Huguenots provides fine examples of his thematic use of counterpoint.

No. 20a Confrontation Scene: “Arrêtez! Entendez-vous ces pas?” (stop, do you hear those footsteps) This scene is a great double chorus preceded by an incident in which Marcel uncovers the Catholic plot to assassinate Raoul. He calls the Huguenots to arms by intoning Luther’s hymn while the orchestra seethes with the incandescent drama. The opposing parties rush on to the stage, and the Catholics and Protestants are frozen contrapuntally in the mutual hate of confrontation, and shower abuse at each other. The static scene and complicated web of sound soon impels itself into the unison of a common destructive intention as the two parties approach violence which only the entry of the Queen prevents. But Meyerbeer adds further dimension to the function of the chorus. As a subject of history, not only the leaders but also the followers play their part. By this is meant not the people (peuple/Volk) as ideal community of individuals, but rather the mass (foule/Masse) as an anonymous collectively destructive whole. In the social and artistic sphere of experience, the masses entered with the French Revolution, and thereafter functioned in opera as the recurrent model for great choral scenes, from Le Sueur’s La Caverne (1793), through Spontini’s Fernand Cortez (1809) and Auber’s La Muette de Portici (1828) to Halévy’s La Juive (1835). In these works the chorus remain bound up with a dramaturgy determined by private conflict. In Les Huguenots, however, they first appear as representatives of social forces and parties, whereby the religio-political antagonisms of the historical process are viewed almost as from beneath. The action realizes this to perfection in the Préaux-Clercs scene where the very generic conventions which demanded an

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act 3 ballet are harnessed to the new dramaturgy: thus when the pagan Gypsy troupe suddenly burst on to the scene, the danced interlude postpones the conflict temporarily by functioning as a distraction remote from all religious controversies for the hostile parties. Sieghard Döhring has pointed out that long before Gustav Le Bon’s analysis of crowd mentality (La Psychologie des foules, 1895), the big choral scenes of Les Huguenots explained a psychology of the masses as a manipulable but in the last degree unaccountable force.63 For the loyal Jew Meyerbeer, opinions were expressed in reserved private ways, but the collective racial memories are revealed in their true and diabolical character by the unpredictable masses, and implemented in the pogrom. This is what determined the key dramatic function of the great Conspiracy Scene of act 4 (the Blessing of the Daggers). Saint-Bris’s murderous words uttered privately in the name of the Royal house (“Pour cette cause sainte”) (for this holy cause) release a bloodthirsty fanaticism of horrifying blasphemy. The demands of Realpolitik show themselves as a black Mass in which the demonic forces of history celebrate their mastery. The destruction of the individual through the masses inflamed into violence is precisely interpreted by the musical form, its principle realized in a successive series of aria-and ensemble-constructions until finally exploding in the huge, cumulative unison chorus.

10. THE BLESSING OF THE DAGGERS

Formally this opera shows great originality. The famous act 4 is made up of two great blocks, the Blessing of the Daggers, and the Love Duet. Both unfold as closely integrated wholes, in which the various individual numbers are carefully slotted into one another so as to form a virtually continuous musical drama, bound together by tonal relationships, melodic variation and orchestral timbres. The Bénédiction des Poignards is divided into four distinct musical blocks dominated by the tonal nexus of E major, with a key middle section in A-flat major: 1) the summons (Allegro moderato, e minor 4/4: “Des troubles renaissants”, moving into Andantino, E major 4/4: “Pour cette cause sainte”) 2) the plot (Allegro, c-sharp minor 4/4: “Qu’en ce riche quartier”) 3) the blessing of the weapons (Poco andante, A-flat major 3/4: “Gloire au grand Dieu vengeur”) 4) the vow (Allegro furioso: c-sharp minor-E major 6/8: “Dieu le veut”). The whole scene is dominated by the great bass role of the Comte de Saint-Bris. He enters, with great authority, as the appointed spokesman of the secret royal decree, and with great solemnity asks the assembled participants if they are prepared to act unconditionally for king and country in this time of resurgent national-political crisis? They answer with fervor, and his impassioned conviction in the rightness of the cause finds expression in a noble and beautiful melody, solemn, lyrical, but chilling in its espousal of fanatical allegiance. The bold refusal of Nevers to take part in murder, and his immediate arrest, as well as the anguished asides of Valentine, who realizes that Raoul is overhearing everything, add drama and variety to the scene. Saint-Bris then moves into the details of the plot. In cold eerie music, with creeping syncopations, he unfolds the plan of the massacre, revealing the all important signal of the bell. The darkness and fearfulness are conveyed in the sinister and edgy rhythms, the cold woodwind interjections, the strident orchestral conjuring up of the fatal tocsin. Monks enter to

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strange, edgy, fleeting, muffled orchestral figures, and bless the swords of the conspirators to great chords, solemn, but distant and remote. The zeal of the plotters grows in intensity, and eventually bursts into a huge communal utterance of joint conviction and resolve, savage in its drive and sonority. Amidst numerous injunctions to secrecy, emotion reaches a pitch in the vast adoption of Saint-Bris’s patriotic plea, the resolve carried on a torrent of orchestral forces that crash and surge around their words. Silence suddenly descends as the conspirators tiptoe to the door to leave, only suddenly to turn with swords aloft to reaffirm God’s will, fortissimo, before slipping out into the night to the dying strains of their vow. The use of the tonic major-minor relationships develops the basic decorum of each block: Saint-Bris challenges his audience to confront the difficult problem of religious and political dissent (e minor), and proposes a response with a fervent idealism that seems noble, even radiant or rapturous (E major). It is only a slight adjustment of attitude that is needed to shift from the one mind frame into the other. When the nature of the plot is revealed in murderous conspiracy, however, one has entered the dark underside of this same public respectability, a situation expressed by the relative minor (the extreme c-sharp minor), a brutal, sombre, even sinister key. When the instruments of death are ‘blessed’ in a parody of the truth of benediction, it is with a religious fervour (the mystical A-flat major) which grows organically out of the original intention, but is somehow not quite right (the subdominant A-flat major rather than the dominant). The same pull between the nefarious and secret undertaking of murder (c-sharp minor), and the noble aspiration of public orthodoxy and patriotism that fuels it (E major), also tonally controls the great communal vow that concludes the piece. The monks (a tenor and two basses), in a solemn and impressive manner, execute a stern religious piece (andante, A-flat, 3/4), repeated in full chorus of male and female voices, with grand effect. The subject is at first instrumented for three trombones with the voices piano, swelling to crescendo, the basses joining at the climax with a pedal, the violins in two parts descending alternately in thirds and sixths, and each phrase terminating sotto voce. In the midst of this imposing ceremony, the chiefs hold out their swords and daggers, when the priests and Saint-Bris, slowly advancing, in one energetic unison, ‘consecrate’ the deadly weapons by their ‘benediction’ (really a malediction). This unison is supported by two chords only, fortissimo and pianissimo, sustained principally by trombones: the harmonies, through the force of the unison on particular intervals, imparting a unique atmosphere. It begins with a burst on E-flat

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major, succeeded by a major chord on A-flat; the first ff, the second pp, and the benediction delivered on the third of each chord. The orchestral treatment avoids the potential shock of this transition, the progression both rising and falling to major triads. The Bénédiction des Poignards is followed by an allegro furioso (Gsharp minor, 6/8), a chorus indicative of the ferocity of the multitude, incited by the leaders of the ostensibly ‘holy’ cause. The harmonies of this chorus are occasionally harsh, with vocal parts in syncopations, and fragments of intricate intervals, difficult to execute, but well suited to express the inflamed bigotry, and immensely overpowering. When “all push forward” and with their upraised fists threaten “Dieu le veut! Dieu l’ordonne” (God wants it. God orders it) fear-inspiring music is unleashed, which bears down on all resistance and carries all before it. Mass hysteria and fanaticism are conceptualized with frightening power, into which Meyerbeer adds the striking observation that brutality is often mixed with self-righteousness and sentimentality. Only twenty-two bars into this pogrom-inciting music appears the sudden softened and unctuous turn: “et la palme immortelle dans le ciel vous attend” (the immortal palm awaits us). Since 1789 the new historical experience that the masses could be manipulated and induced to act as a single motivated social group, be it as the people, a party, a religious or social grouping, was part of the ongoing social discourse in the light of the immediate historical past. There was something seductive in bringing the destructively blind power of the frenzied masses on to the stage, as happened at the Opéra. Les Huguenots was singular for pursuing this theme in terms of religious fanaticism and intransigence to its bloody end. In the crescendo of this final chorus the allegro merges into common time with an emphatic unison on the dominant note to the tonic (E major), in crotchets, accompanied by quavers in triplets. Then follows in unison (ff, by all the voices, probably 90 in the original production) the resumption of the melody “Pour cette cause sainte.” Here the canto is delivered with increased energy (avec exaltation), with two-thirds of the power of the orchestra employed, slowly, majestically. The accompaniment is in full harmony, with the remaining instruments (the ponderous basses, wind and strings) ascending chromatically, in triplets, on each alternate bar, with a crescendo, the power of which is assisted by the trills of a side drum in powerful and rapid articulation, at the third crotchet of each bar. The climax is reached by the addition of cymbals and large drum con tutta forza. The impression of the action is correspondingly striking: having knelt down to receive their benediction, the people, seconded by the monks and chiefs, rush forward to the front of the stage, at the moment of

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each crescendo, brandishing their poniards with savage gesticulation. The whole movement terminates with a diminuendo, the people retiring, all the voices exclaiming ff—“Dieu le veut,” the basses ending pp on the dominant, falling to the E (“à minuit.”). This concludes a most striking scene. Maria Malibran declared it made more impression upon her than any dramatic exhibition she had ever witnessed.

Fig. 44 Pol Plançon as Saint-Bris

Bellini and the Blessing of the Daggers This conception of the drama of mass resolve in Les Huguenots relates directly to Meyerbeer’s high regard for Bellini’s Norma, and not one usually associated with the Sicilian composer’s gentle and elegiac style, as it has been popularly perceived. It had an indirect bearing on the composition of Les Huguenots. On 1 October 1833 Meyerbeer left Paris for Italy. In November he began a four-month sojourn in Nice where he wrote much of the new opera.64 By 13 March 1834 he was in Milan, and

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Ex. 7a Stretta in the Blessing of the Daggers, ensemble act 4

on 25 April wrote to his wife Minna from Modena, having just left Bologna: I stayed here in Modena last night so as not to miss the whole point of my trip....In both places I heard Norma which has affected me greatly. I only wish you had been here to hear it with me, so that you will not reproach me for being the old pessimist when I say that I tremble and shake at the thought of my new opera being directly compared with this Norma, since it is apparently to be given in Paris at almost the same time as my new opera. All the same, I am really grateful to this work which has provided me with two wonderfully enjoyable evenings, and has stimulated my work...65

Meyerbeer thus fostered a deep admiration for Bellini’s opera, and as much as admits the role it played in the gestation of parts of his own most famous work. It is certainly in Les Huguenots that one discerns the most obvious influence of Bellini on Meyerbeer, and of Meyerbeer’s reactions to the power and beauty of Bellini’s chef d’oeuvre.

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Ex. 7b Stretta in the “Guerra” Chorus, act 2, Bellini’s Norma

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The great War Hymn of the Gauls in act 2 (“Guerra, guerra!”), the warriors incited by Norma to take up arms against the Romans, was clearly a thrilling episode for Meyerbeer. His treatment of aspects of the Blessing of the Daggers in act 4 of Les Huguenots is another gesture of admiration for Bellini. The whole concept of this vast tableau of conspiracy, malediction, perverted blessings and fanatical allegiance, is on a very grand scale, bigger than anything in Norma.66 But the stretta (Allegro furioso, E-major, 6/8) (“Dieu le veut”)67 which represents the overflowing of feeling, the pitch of frenzy, takes Bellini’s chorus as its model (Allegro feroce, A-minor, 2/4)68. The similarity of design is evident from the opening hammering out of the reiterated eighth note chords with their blaring trumpets, and the massed choruses of common fanatical intent [Ex. 7a & 7b]. Each chorus is determined by its own melodic Gestalt, with Meyerbeer’s more prolonged, more harmonically various, with a much larger range and palette of orchestral writing. Bellini’s remains essentially a monolithic block in one great surge of sound; Meyerbeer provides elaborate sonorities, although both are similar in the use of pauses in the vocal line to muster more propulsion from orchestral figures, generating moments when potential energy is transformed into kinetic release. Meyerbeer has his stretta heading inexorably for the climactic reprise of Saint-Bris’s theme of fanatical commitment (“Pour cette cause sainte”), with unison singing over huge unleashings of orchestral forces in pulsating eighth note chords that thunder out inexorable floods of sound in surging bursts of crescendo. Bellini’s chorus rushes on like a great tidal surge, to achieve a resolving cadence, but then offers surprise in a sudden change of mood. A hushed, prayerlike G major postlude unfolds, in which the warlike imprecations are repeated in the trancelike tones of prophecy, with rustling bass and serene treble figures (trilled strings and woodwind), as though the fruits of warfare are envisioned in a promise of peace through hard-won self-determination.69 The music, first heard in the overture, ends quietly, almost idyllically.70 Resemblance with the Bellini model is again evident in the treatment of the closing moments of the Huguenots piece. Here too the chorus suddenly falls silent, although without cadential resolution. To the accompaniment of gentle syncopated rhythms and chromatic harmonies, with cold eerie trills in the lower strings and woodwind, the chorus, now singing divisi, tiptoe to the doors, suddenly turn to raise their weapons and voices in a last show of unison fortissimo resolution (“Dieu le veut, oui!”), before slipping out into the darkness, to the sinister sound of low tremolo strings, and the bleak and broken descending reminiscence of the theme of

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Saint-Bris’s invitation to legitimized massacre. The postlude, as in Norma, is a meditative reflection, but the purpose changed from an ideal of hope to the cold reality of inflexible hatred [Ex. 8a & b]. Thus in both lyrical and dramatic terms, Meyerbeer expressed his awareness of Bellini’s achievement in Norma. Already in his Italian period he showed his ability to create long melodies and sustain them in specific forms when this was required by the dramatic exigencies. But there can be no doubt that in some scenes of Les Huguenots Meyerbeer offered Bellini a special tribute of admiration.

Ex. 8a Diminuendo in the conclusion of the Blessing of the Daggers

Ex. 8b Hushed conclusion of the “Guerra” Chorus, Bellini’s Norma

The fame of the act is reflected in its appearance in popular literature and music of the later nineteenth century. Jules Verne, the master of the fantastical and utopian novel, describes in his story Une fantaisie du docteur Ox (1872) a special performance of this act, full of detailed knowledge and with much insightful humour. Verne entitled this the ‘Seventh Chapter, in which the Andante turns into Allegro, and the Allegro becomes Vivace’. He depicts the vital energy of Meyerbeer’s music as an elemental force, capable of galvanizing even the most lethargic of audiences. “Quiquendone, the provenance of bold and enterprising inventor Dr Ox, is a small, sleepy and forgotten town in Flanders. The citizens are peaceful and somewhat phlegmatic, and even in their theatre, things are rather slower than elsewhere. It has never been possible in the course of an

10. The Blessing of the Daggers evening to put on more than two acts of an opera, since each performance lasts six hours. Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots or William Tell usually take up three evenings each. But one evening the famous fourth act of Les Huguenots wrenched the citizens out of their lethargy... The closing stretta [of the ensemble], in its unrestrained prestissimo stormed to and fro like a passing express train. Everything had begun with such magisterial slowness, quite alien to the famous Meyerbeer. But soon the conductor no longer had the singers and musicians under his control, and they began to rush, giving way, and surging ahead into a tumultuous tempo. Tenors and basses attacked the Allegro furioso of the Blessing of the Daggers, transforming its dramatic 6/8 time into 6/8 quadrille, and shouting on leaving the stage, ‘Only peace will see an end to this’. The public could no longer keep to their seats: it seemed as though all the spectators, with the mayor of Tricasse to the fore, rushed on to the stage to unite themselves with the Conspirators and to destroy the Huguenots—whose religious convictions they otherwise espoused! The great duet became a galopade that Offenbach would have loved—so much so that at the end Valentine fell into a total faint, and Raoul leapt out of the actual window. The orchestra, seized by incomprehensible fervour, could play no more...The fourth act of Les Huguenots, which the Quiquendonarians usually needed six excruciating hours to perform, had lasted a mere eighteen minutes”.71

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Fig. 45 Pierre Gailhard as Saint-Bris

11. THE LOVE DUET

The Grand Duo is also constructed on the largest scale, and falls into eight parts, focused on the nexus of f minor-F major, with the key middle section in G-flat major: 1) the agitation (Allegro vivace, A-flat major 4/4: “O ciel! où courez vous?”); 2) the pleading (Allegro moderato, f minor-F major-f minor 2/4: “Le danger presse”); 3) the declaration (Récitatif: f minor-F major 4/4: “Non, par toi le seuil redoutable”); 4) the celebration (Andante amoroso, G-flat major-C major-G-flat major 3/4: “Tu l’as dit”); 5) the catastrophe (Maestoso, a minor 3/4: “Entends-tu ce sons funèbres?”) moving to 6) the stretta (Allegro con moto, f minor 6/8: “Plus d’amour”) 7) the supplication (Un peu moins vite, F major 2/4: “Quoi! Raoul”); 8) the resolution (Pressez un peu, f minor- F major 4/4: “C’en est fait, voici l’heure!”). Decisive cadential closure is consistently avoided so that each section flows effortlessly into the next despite the obvious stages and sections of the evolving piece. After the conspirators have left, Raoul rushes out of his hiding place, determined to go out into the night to warn his confreres. Valentine seeks desperately to detain him, remonstrating that they arm at the command of heaven. Raoul contemptuously replies that they are assassins. The music is full of frenzied impatience and ironic commentary. But he relents of his brusqueness with Valentine, and begs her to let him go at this pressing hour. She continues urgently to detain him, to keep him with her, and finally admits frankly that she loves him. The music begins with a soothing lyrical line, but soon becomes impassioned, resolving itself into fervent recitative for the actual declaration. Raoul is overwhelmed at this revelation, and, forgetting everything, falls at her feet to declare his own love. This initiates a gloriously sustained love scene, in which, borne on the wings of rapture,

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the lovers celebrate their brief moment of bliss. The soaring vocal line is held aloft by a murmuring, shimmering web of sound, their declarations echoed by an obbligato cello, first separately, then with the vocal lines eventually intertwining. The rapture is rudely broken by the distant and lugubrious tolling of the bell of St Germain Auxrois, signalling the commencement of the massacre. Love now seems like a fading dream as the love theme is wistfully recalled, and the situation plunges into the nervously fraught agitation of the stretta. Raoul has to go and die with his friends. In impassioned arioso, Valentine beseeches him to stay, clarinet and horn echoing her melting pleas. Raoul drags her to the window to see the scenes of horror already unfolding in the street. The music rises to a brutal and discordant highpoint. The sight is too much for Valentine, and she sinks in a faint to the floor, as the theme of her pleading is sadly recalled. Raoul tries to revive her, but torn with guilt between his love for her and his duty to his friends, he forces himself to jump from the parapet into the night, commending Valentine to God’s providence. The music reflects the rapture and distress with overwhelming force and passion.72 In the course of the action, and finally after the Blessing of the Daggers to which Valentine and Raoul become unwilling witnesses, the couple are plunged into a tension between feeling and reality, the waking dream of the fulfilled moment (erfüllte Augenblick) where the longing of love and the intimation of death are equally present, and are subjected to the most extreme intensification. In the awkward situation of the lovers, the unison bel canto of thirds and sixths, the traditional hallmark of the love duet, is no longer possible. The couple express themselves in declamatory durchkomponiert exchanges and objections, while inarticulate masses and meshes of sound likewise sweep away the Classical melodic-harmonic structures. If the act 2 Raoul-Marguerite de Valois duet is an imitation of Bellini in binary form, and the act 3 Valentine-Marcel duet a Bellinian appropriation in ternary movement, it is the famous act 4 of Les Huguenots that provides what is probably Meyerbeer’s most original contribution to the whole idea of the melodia, lunga, lunga, lunga (to adapt Verdi’s famous description).73 This is all the more remarkable since the episode in question uses the ligne brisée, but transformed and fused into the sustained Belliniesque block of sound.

The Introduction When Raoul and Valentine are left alone, he is full of outrage, but Valentine is still inclined to think of the conspiracy as something ordained

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from on high (“armés au nom des cieux!”): we hark back to the A-flat major of the blessing of the weapons. As danger presses ever closer, Raoul and Valentine are full of the urgency of the situation, but also in love with each other. The love, however, is technically illicit and restrained in its open expression (f minor, a morose if energetic key), although the truth of their warm inner feelings is constantly breaking through in the tonic F major, a consoling, almost pastoral tonality. It is just a step from the daring declaration to the exultant celebration of love, a mere semitone away from the daily realities, but in a special private realm in the remote, calming and rhapsodic G-flat major. Central to this almost sacramental sharing, however, is the heart of this encounter, in the simple, naive and frank C major, the dominant of F, controlling the melody and harmony, the inevitable truth of this love in its overlapping and repetitious ecstasy.

The Andante amoroso The unreal circumstances of Raoul’s famous Andante amoroso cavatina that follows on Valentine’s declaration of her love are characterized by an harmonious, otherworldly musical phantasmagoria [Ex. 9a]. Meyerbeer weaves his Italianate melos into a dream of love and bliss. No part of this duet has a regular closure through cadence, the endings subsumed into ostinato figures, musical synonyms for the inescapability of the lovers’ situation. The dominant melodic pattern is appropriately adapted, with lines of recurrent and slowly rising efflorescence followed by a steep descent. The latent danger is conjured up in different ways: through disruption of the melting melodic flow, through affecting dynamic contrast of the moment, where Valentine takes over Raoul’s phrases of love while giving them another meaning, expressing the intensity of her fear of death. The passage “Tu l’as dit” has been called “Meyerbeer’s immortal melody” and “the melody of the century”, and constitutes the centrepiece of the Grand Duo. Through loosening the traditional forms of the duet in a series of free episodes in dialogue, this piece authoritatively influenced the development of this form up to the big duets of Wagner (Tristan und Isolde, 1865) and Verdi (Otello, 1887). This G-flat major Andante amoroso section of No.24 (Grand Duo) is the fourth episode in a very large architectural unit. It is a moment when love is ecstatically recognized, after much disturbed confrontation, pleading, and a desperate declaration of love. The haste, the anxiety, the emotional tumult, realized in arioso, recitative, and durchkomponiert lyricism, give way to a moment of extraordinary passion, a bliss realized in sustained melodic extension. The melody itself is in two brief units: a

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Ex. 9a Andante amoroso of the act 4 Love Duet (Valentine-Raoul)

gentle semitonal descent from a lengthened gii through fii-eii-dii, to a quarter note in dii (“Tu l’as dit”) (A), followed by a two beat pause before an ascent from bi through cii back to dii and a sudden ecstatic melismatic leap of a sixth to bii and ciii, down a fifth to fii and then imperceptibly up to gii (“oui, je t’aimes”) (B). The first part is immediately repeated, but the second unit becomes a variant that eschews the climactic rise in alt (C), and passes on to a D section, a flurry of sixteenth notes moving in semitonal steps twice repeated, before mounting slowly by way of

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chromatic rise (always in semitones) to the reprise of the full melody. The voice is constantly echoed by the cello, with a rich and subtle combination of cor anglais, clarinets and horns over tremolo basses. The effect is one of a seamless web of shimmering, mysteriously flattened sound, enmeshing the melody in dense harmonic textures [Ex. 9a]. The central section in C major provides a long variant on the melody before beginning a series of rapidly repeated short phrases in alternation with the soprano, all above passionate arpeggios that become trills, and then rapidly beating figures over a series of bass triplets, growing in cumulative sonorous force until the enharmonic reprise of the G-flat major melody. This time the melody is taken by the soprano, but overlapped and echoed by the tenor, the line always doubled by the cello, before lapsing into murmured monotonal terms of endearment, with the tenor finally twice recalling a dreamy, truncated variant of the melody. The murmured monotones then resume as the variant is floated in descending woodwind and brass phrases (flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon). The whole is concluded with Raoul’s passionate cadenza, rising in triplets to d-flat in alt, before descending by quarter notes in intervals of thirds to the sustained home gi.74 The melody has recurred four times without modulation, “unchanging, profound, and still. Its deep and passionate solemnity anticipates, in many details the melodies written by Wagner at a later date.”75 The development of the melody from small phrases into a long expressive span, the consistent use of semitone sliding in the vocal line, the avoidance of accented harmonic cadences, the complex play of overlapping, echoing and madrigalian repetitions, the sustained and rapturous unfolding of sonorities provide a complex mesh of sound, a vision of love unsurpassed until act 2 of Tristan und Isolde (1865), and as sustained an exercise in endless melody as Bellini ever achieved.76 The love duet itself is a supreme expression of the highest emotion and noblest ideals. Meyerbeer’s melodic and harmonic inspiration was in flood at this declaration of love in the moment of greatest peril. Raoul is entranced in the night by this ecstasy, while Valentine perceives the fated inevitability of love and death. The interlocking melodic arches are borne aloft on a mesh of flattened harmonies and plunging echoing figures [Ex.9b].77 The melody clearly affected Wagner enduringly.78

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Ex. 9b Valentine and Raoul a due in the Andante amoroso

The Stretta As the catastrophe breaks, heralded by the dull tolling bell that summons back to reality, the A-flat of the blessed weapons has now shifted to its tonic A minor: benediction and intention give way to hatred and the imminence of actual murder. This is the harsh reality that shatters the dream of love: the inverse, the relative minor of the C major at the heart of the lovers’ secret celebration. In the stretta, Raoul and Valentine confront the demands of duty and the anguish of love in the interplay between the public and energetic F minor and the private and consoling F major. Raoul must be away to warn his friends in F minor, but Valentine’s

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desperate pleading, and his fraught offering of his personal happiness, are in F major, the true métier of their relationship. Both tonalities are integral aspects of the same whole of this loving scenario; but in their public and personal demands, love and duty exact contradictory, categorical, and costly imperatives of sacrifice. In the stretta the typical rising-falling melodic gesture dominating this duet is rushed to death [Ex. 9c]. The tempo allegro con moto finds its origins in the luxurious type of Italian cantilena, entirely inappropriate to the situation. But it is exactly the tension generated between the lyrical theme and the breathless tempo, underscored by the reiterative obsessive falling staccato quaver ostinato of the accompaniment, that lends the stretta its unsettling greatness. There is a sense of entrapment, of running on the spot without being able to move. The stretta also replaces the tolling of the bells with alienating imitation by the horns and ophicleide. This recurrence and iteration of the tolling motif, the symbol of the approaching disaster, adds to the emotional heightening of the stretta, paralleling and sharpening the dramatic situation with boding menace, constantly constricting the space left to the couple for articulation, until only cries and exclamations remain. Again, their exchange, the melodic discourse, is broken off, without cadence, by a harsh diminished chord for the whole

Ex. 9c Stretta of the act 4 Love Duet

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orchestra, as Valentine, overcome by the horror of the massacre seen through the open casement, faints, and Raoul must face his agonizing decision alone, the love exchanged now only a broken phrase of memory. The stretta contains other musical ideas that were also of enduring influence. The downward scale that initiates “Tu l’as dit”, and is organically related to the scalic descent in the Luther Chorale, later became a potent influence on Tchaikovsky’s quintessential self-expression in works like Eugène Onegin (1877-78) where the climax of Tatyana’s Letter Scene, and Lensky’s Aria before his fateful duel, both bear this imprint. The flattened sixth colouring these works is another feature of Meyerbeer’s style that was a deep psychological influence on the Russian composer. Valentine’s F-major arioso that disrupts the frenetic pace and rhythm of the stretta is remarkable for its plangeant beauty (“Quoi! Raoul, ma douleur ne peut donc toucher ton coeur?”) (what Raoul, so my grief does not touch your heart?). The gentle arpeggio string accompaniment (thirds and octaves, B and F) contracts and opens under words, the last phrases of which are echoed in variation by clarinets and then horns, and then doubled in treble octave by the strings, eventually becoming little orchestral surges of emotion, leading to the downward octave scale aii to ai (“pour courir pour courir au trépas!”) (to run, to run towards death). At this point the little semiquaver phrase (ai-dii-cii-cii) on the violins and cellos, growing out of the arpeggiated bass, and imitated immediately by Valentine (“tu le peux”) in unison with the horn (g-di-ci), recurs twice more, before leading directly into the emotional highpoint of her arching and aching phrase (“en passant sur mon corps expirant!”) (passing by my dying body) (instructed to be sung en pleurant). The horn phrase with its rising fifth and falling semitone, is so simple, but its effect in this context is overwhelming in underscoring Valentine’s desperate feeling. The nature of her purity and honour is something that Tchaikovsky intuited unforgettably: he found in it the perfect expression of the more sublime expression of love vested in Tatyana, and one that he would make the motto-theme of his lyric masterpiece [Ex. 9d]. The three-note horn phrase that forms the emotional climax of the Letter Scene in Eugène Onegin and becomes the motto-theme of the whole opera, representing a pure honourable self-sacrificing love, is borrowed directly from Valentine’s impassioned plea to Raoul, even down to the use of the horn that doubles Valentine’s words “Tu le peux, en passant”.79

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Ex. 9d Valentine’s arioso (un peu mois vite) in stretta

*** The love duet in act 4 scene 4 of Les Huguenots, depicting Giulia Grisi and Mario di Candia (drawing, London 1849). The scene shows the dramatic climax when Raoul rushes away from the pleading Valentine to warn his friends of the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Night. He leaps into the street where the carnage has already begun, although it means leaving his beloved who has revealed her love for him, and has fainted in the horror of the moment. This sustained and gripping depiction of human commitment and self-sacrifice, born out of tragic misunderstanding and in the shadow of conspiracy, represents the highpoint of Meyerbeer’s art as a dramatic lyricist. The role of Valentine was created by Cornelie Falcon (1812-1897), one of the great singing actresses in the history of song, and Adolphe Nourrit (1802-1839), the star of the Paris Opera, a supreme stylist and dramatic artist, another legend of operatic history. He had already created Robert for Meyerbeer, Masaniello for Auber, Arnold for Rossini and Eleazar for Halévy. Giovanni Mario di Candia (1810-1883) was, from 1838 until his retirement in 1871, one of the most popular singers of the age. His elegantly handsome appearance, glamorous stage presence and sweet toned voice won him a huge following, and his partnership with the beautiful and gifted Giulia Grisi (1811-1869) (who created Elvira in I Puritani and Norina in Don Pasquale), became one of the most successful in operatic history. In his Musical Memoirs (1888) William Spark recalled: “I confess to have experienced some of the happiest most musically sensational hours of life listening to Meyerbeer’s operas Les Huguenots and Robert le Diable, at Covent Garden theatre, with Grisi and Mario as the principal artistes....Never can I forget their singing and acting in the Huguenots; it was as near perfection as any artistic performance can be.

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Fig. 46 Act 4 duet. Lithograph of Giulia Grisi & Mario at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 1858

Everything seemed so natural, and yet so finished and refined; their grace and ease of manner were only equalled by their lovely voices and their delightful singing [..] there was a combination of the very highest power, exciting admiration and enthusiasm of the warmest and most genuine kind”.80 ***

12. THE DRAMATIC FORM OF ACT 5

Nothing exemplifies Meyerbeer’s and Scribe’s shaping of the historical scenario more than the treatment of act 5. The entr’acte to act 5 (a gloomy 6/8 allegro in F minor) takes up the stretta and bell motifs of the Grand Duo, depicting Raoul’s fraught passage through the bloody streets. At the rising of the curtain, the Huguenot nobility are dancing a minuetto maestoso in honour of the marriage of Marguerite de Valois and Henry of Navarre. The triviality of the dance is synonymous with the carefree unsuspecting mood of the Huguenots, a foil to the seriousness of the situation. The progress of this dance is suddenly arrested by the alarm-bell, to which all present listen with surprise, but unconscious of its import; the minuet is resumed, finally leading to a gavotte. The repetition of the bell, striking the bar with the dominant sound, naturally leads one to expect an inquiry, but again the cause goes unheeded, and the gaieties resumed with the utmost unconcern. Meyerbeer has conjured up the dignified character of the age in these courtly dances. At the final cadence of the gavotte, Raoul rushes into the ballroom, his garments stained with blood and in a recitative, informs the affrighted nobles now crowding around him of the massacre (“Des assassins gagés; les hordes meurtrières,/Seront ici dans un instant!”) (the hired assassins, the murderous hordes will be here any minute). Raoul calls vengeance over a flurry of diminished sevenths, and in an air, with an intermediate pedal dominant, the bass and melody moving in octaves, he describes in a sombre and suppressed tone of voice, the attack of the assassins, the death of Coligny (“A la lueuer de leur torches funèbres”) (by the light of their funereal torches). The music is dramatic in accompaniment and tone, with the gloominess reflected in the melodic astringency. Raoul then launches into an energetic allegro, the nobles joining as chorus (“Aux armes! à la vengeance!”) (to arms, for vengeance).The women pale with fright, the men exasperated, and with swords drawn, now quit the apartment in the greatest disorder as the music dies away into silence. The scene is remarkable for its dramatic pacing—a careful transition from the party mood to military frenzy through hushed reactions to Raoul’s description of the horror and the evidence of his own wounds. The scene changes to a view of the cloisters leading to a church in the background, to which Protestant women and children are running in great

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consternation to seek refuge. An appropriate ritornello (an agitated 6/8, in A minor) is played until the arrival of Marcel, exhausted, followed by Raoul and Valentine. The three stanzas of Marcel’s solemn blessing of the couple are sung in E-flat minor, common time, Marcel’s bass, beginning with a solo d’ voix grave et et sévère, seconded by the other voices in a lovely phrase in the major tonic, expressive of pure love and religious humility [Ex. 10a]. The termination of the third stanza is interrupted by a beautiful effect: the chorale is heard pp, sung by the sopranos in the church in B major, the three soloists sustaining throughout the primal key E-flat (becoming a major third, D-sharp), the basses in the orchestra having the tonic B, tremolando, pp. This disposition occasions an enharmonic transition grateful to the ear and, at same the time, strikingly new in treatment, and distilling a poetry of faith [Ex. 10b].

Ex. 10a Nuptial Benediction in the act 5 trio (Marcel, Raoul, Valentine) Ex. 10b Conclusion of the Interrogatoire

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Now the work of slaughter proceeds with redoubled zeal. The Catholics launch an allegro feroce, with four crotchets in each bar strongly accented, addressed to the affrighted people in the church, “Abjurez, Huguenots, ou mourez!” (abjure, Huguenots, or die). The people still chant, the attacks continue, and after a mélange of fragments of the Catholic chorus with the chorale, the sounds die away, and the three Protestants in the cloisters mutter to each other with despair, “Ils ne chantent plus” (they no longer sing). A profound silence now succeeds, which is broken by the declaration of Marcel’s faith in the protection of Heaven. A grand allegro in E-flat terminates this trio, which Marcel opens with enthusiasm, expressive of the security of his faith; the other voices join in unison. The melody is flowing, and continued with increased interest, with modulations both effective and natural, four harps employed in the orchestra, intended to enforce the impression of celestial sounds alluded to in the poetry. In the progress of this trio, the assassins are heard to attack the grille leading to the cloisters, and on forcing their entrance, address their chorus “Abjurez” in discords to each of the three Protestants, offering the Cross of Lorraine and white scarf, which are scornfully rejected. The soldiers become more infuriated, the Protestants more firm; and in reply to bursts of fury on a succession of discords, the Protestants boldly offer their lives, singing “Dieu nous guide et marche avec nous” (God will guide us and walk with us) on the first two bars of the chorale ff, modulating half a note higher at each repetition. They are finally overpowered and dragged through the grille, when reports of firing are heard in rapid succession. The Catholic Chorus is concocted with trumpets supported by abrupt harmonies, crude and novel, depicting the savage ferocity of the assassins, beautifully contrasted by the zealous fervour expressed in the flowing canto of the Protestants. The melody, if that is what one can call this fanfare swinging between the tonic and the dominant, is like a breathless scream while running. The accompaniment is made up of a fundamental chord in a-minor and the augmented subdominant, with recurrent augmentation of the submediant. There is no trace here of modulation in the Classical sense. The determinative interval in this chord is a—d-sharp, a tritone, not found in the usual major and minor tone scales. Harmonically this contradictory interval signifies the biggest distance between the two key signatures in the major-minor system used by Meyerbeer [Ex. 11]. Berlioz was particularly struck by this passage, the augmenting of the sixth note in the minor scale (F) chiefly responsible for its gruesome effect, and “a new proof of the decisive character of combinations, the occasion to which this note can give rise to, with and without alteration” (Journal des Débats, 10 Nov. and 10 Dec. 1836).

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Ex. 11 Trumpets in the Chorus of Assassins, act 5 finale

The whole opera spirals down in a process of growing negativity. The contrasts become sharper all the time. The warring parties are at first easily separated, then with difficulty, and finally not at all. Individuals can no longer control the situation: the Catholic leaders themselves can no longer prevent the bloodbath, even if they wanted to. This is symbolized by the helpless and speechless appearance of Marguerite de Valois at the end of the opera. The great emotional swings of the first two acts must give way to a hardening, even brutalizing of the musical parameters that finally culminates in the Chorus of Murderers.

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The opera ends in a roaring A-major chord which drowns out the cries of the victims. A tragic opera closes without transfiguration. Valentine, Raoul and Marcel die, not as heroes in battle, but shot by an anonymous murder squad, like any other victims of this night. For the first time in the history of the French theatre, the creators, Meyerbeer and Scribe, dared to cast a critical view on the deformation of the person, brought up in the bourgeois world, but disposed to mass murder with its calculated bureaucratic preparations in act 4. This scene indicates what care this entailed for Meyerbeer. The genesis of the work cannot be ascribed to laziness or lack of inspiration, but to the minute calculation of all scenic and musical details. Meyerbeer’s motto could have been: first think, then compose. The Blessing of the Daggers, and indeed act 5, is a paradigm of his high dramaturgical intelligence, for which Scribe had provided a text that had correspondingly stimulated his compositional fantasy.81 *** The trio finale, act 5 of Les Huguenots (lithograph by Achille Deveria, Paris 1836). As in Robert le Diable, the resolution of all the action and its consequences takes place in the great trio in the last moments of the opera. Here in darkness broken by flickering torches, amidst scenes of horror, Valentine, Marcel and Raoul, who have thrashed through the issues of honor and betrayal, loyalty and commitment, religion and love, confront the assassins of St Bartholomew’s Night and prepare to die as martyrs. Behind them is the chapel where Huguenot women and children have just been murdered. The death squad is commanded by St Bris who will find that he has murdered his own daughter. Falcon, Levasseur and Nourrit once again carried dramatic singing to new heights of attainment. ***

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Fig. 47 Act 5 scene 2 trio. Décor by Philippe Chaperon. Engraving by A. Deveria (1)

13. THE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

To provide a suitable dramatic pulse for the great scenes, Meyerbeer developed the orchestra to new heights. With him the orchestra is never simply an accompaniment, it is a vital element in the whole conception. However, it is significant that his preoccupation with the dramatic propulsion of the story meant that he rarely allowed the flow of action to be interrupted by the lengthy orchestral pieces. The spring of his inspiration was always some moving or exciting human situation finding full expression in the human voice. Even the formal overture was dispensed with for a shorter dramatic prelude. Meyerbeer increased the size of the orchestra greatly, and would frequently enlist huge masses of orchestral sound. His innovations, are now a staple part of orchestral technique, as, for example, his use of the brass. To increase dramatic sonority, and to achieve rich and flexible sound, he liberated the brass instruments from their servile role of providing harmony: they are brought into the melodic line as well. Indeed his fondness for them lends a firm, martial character to much of his music.

1) Overture (Poco andante, E-flat major, 4/4; Allegro con spirito, alla breve) Like Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots has a short overture, more a brief prelude based on a single theme that captures the essence of the story. Meyerbeer responded to the librettist Eugène Scribe’s dramatic vision of this tale of religious conflict in his use of Martin Luther’s Reformation hymn (“Ein’feste Burg is unser Gott”) as the theme of spiritual idealism. While the hymn was used by other composers in sacred works (Bach) and symphonies (Mendelssohn), it usually remains a prosaic and formal reminiscence. Meyerbeer turns it into a fully developed Leitmotif used throughout the opera, and succeeds in transforming it into something deeply poetical and even mystical. In the overture it is presented in many different guises, to represent the spirit of religion in all its forms: solemn, loving, tender, inflamed, militant, deformed, rendered grotesque in militancy. It is announced immediately with organ-like richness and sonority, a fine example of Meyerbeer’s orchestral style and handling of

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motif. The theme of the hymn is subjected to a series of brief, melodic, rhythmic and orchestral variations that depict the varying characteristics of the Huguenots: from dignified religious solemnity, through tender moods of love, devotion and sadness, to furious, almost deforming bellicosity. It illustrates several orchestral traits: rich brass and woodwind writings in which the low pitches of clarinet and bassoon and the warm tones of the cor anglais are prominent; high pitched divided violin figurations, the division of each string part into two sections, the one playing pizzicato, the other arco. The final part of the overture subjects the theme to acceleration of time and tempo, with the orchestra playing a brassy tutti. The hero Raoul de Nangis makes his appearance in the overture by Klangmotif: in the opera he is associated with the high strings, and in the overture the first theme is immediately followed by a filigree figure for the violins (con delicatezza) that emerges out of the chorale, and continues to counterpoint the gentle variants of the hymn that follow, an aural image of Raoul’s idealistic nature in both religion and love. Each act of Les Huguenots is introduced by a short but thematically pointed prelude that captures the essential elements of the action.

2) Entr’acte to act 2 (Andante cantabile, G major, 12/8) This provides a tone picture of the idyllic beauty and peace of the Chateau and gardens of Chenonceaux where Queen Marguerite de Valois hopes to initiate plans for peace in the religious conflicts tearing France apart. The prelude is dominated by a rising bass semiquaver figure for the violas and cellos, which is answered and then counterpointed by a motif for the woodwind (flutes and clarinets in parallel thirds with oboes). The sinuous string figure captures the rippling of water (the palace is built over the Loire River), the legato stasis of the second subject a sense of summer serenity and warmth. The pastoral mood is further underlined by the solo flute which takes over the upward-turning string figure and extends it into a long elaborate cadenza that is like the twitter of birdsong, a cypher for the pastoral. Both the woodwind melody and then the string motif are brought into the postlude in variation, with the rising string figure now reversed into a gentle descending cascade. The stylized emblems turn Chenonceaux into a Virgilian locus amoenus (place of safety and delight) surrounded by danger, a situation underlined by the decorative writing of Marguerite’s big scene and aria with prominent harp obligato (“Ô beau pays de la Touraine”) which consolidates the delicate otherworldliness, the atmosphere established by the instrumental prelude.

13. The Orchestral Music

Fig. 48 The printed full score of Les Huguenots, overture

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3) Entr’acte to act 3 (Allegro vivace, D major, alla breve) The introduction to act 3 is very different, loud and boisterous. It sets the scene for the depiction of the busy streets of the Pré aux clercs in late Medieval Paris, where the busy crowds in holiday mood on a Sunday afternoon will soon be caught up in the partisan hatred and confrontation of the Wars of Religion. Four appoggiated minims in octaves of A for the whole orchestra capture attention, and are followed by a bright high quaver figure for woodwind and strings (leggiermente) that whips up a sense of excitement, this mood intensified after a repeat of the opening sequence by rushing strings rising in semiquaver phrases over the bassi and trombones (that move into powerful chromatic octaves), to A in alt, with the whole then dissolving into a rising quaver figure that leads into the opening chorus (C’est le jour du dimanche”).

4) Entr’acte to act 4 (Allegro appassionato, F-sharp minor, 4/4) This brief prelude of only 17 bars nevertheless captures the mood of growing anguish and crisis that will break in act 4. Reiterated quaver notes on f for the violas establish an ostinato for 8 bars (then changing to an octave higher) that is broken into by small barely rising figures (quaversemiquaver-crotchet) characterized by an augmented fourth that on the third repetition rises by way of crotchet chords to another augmented triad. The pattern is repeated, with the triple note figure taking over the line in rapid and rising iteration, with growing chromatic pointing, until it resolves itself in a series of parallel dotted octaves on the dominant, to make way for Valentine’s recitative, where it forms the commentary to her agitated concerns. Exactly the same idea and practice can be seen in the prelude and opening scene of Act 2 of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame.

5) Entr’acte to act 5 and the Ball (Allegro, F minor, 6/8) This gloomily takes up the stretta and bell motifs of the Grand Duo in act 4, and depicts Raoul’s fraught passage from the heights of romantic love through the bloody streets where the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve has begun. Another ostinato is set in motion (low staccato quaver octaves on C with strong pause of two fermate), with the signal bell of the massacre ringing at the beginning of every fourth bar. Over this shuddering moto perpetuo the theme of the stretta of the act 4 duet is mournfully unfolded, the love union it represented reflected in the

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unbroken thirds of the melody. With the end of the ostinato the thirds, reflected in the bass line, eventually take on a life of their own, and become part of a rising pattern of reiterative excitement leading straight into the ball depicted at the beginning of the new act. At the rising of the curtain, the Huguenot nobility are dancing a minuetto maestoso (F major, 3/4) of splendid dignity (with its skip on the first beat, rich chordal writing and emotional rise on the second bar, ff pesante, and for full orchestra). All is in honour of the marriage of Marguerite de Valois and Henry of Navarre. The triviality of the dance after the music of the massacre is synonymous with the carefree unsuspecting mood of the Huguenots, a foil to the seriousness of the situation. The progress of this dance is twice arrested by the forceful fourfold ringing of the alarm-bell with the whole orchestra, to which all present listen with surprise, but unconscious of its import. The repetition of the bell, striking the ear with the dominant sound, naturally leads one to expect an inquiry, but again it is unheeded, and the gaieties resume with the utmost unconcern. The minuet is resumed, finally leading to a gavotte (Allegro con spirito, B-flat major, 2/4), with skip on the second beat, the brisk theme on oboes and clarinets repeated on the trumpets, with a middle section where the melody moves into the bass and the treble is given to reiterated high graced octaves on D. The pattern is reversed before the repeat of the opening section leggiermente. A stretta (Più mosso) sees the melody played in thirds and octaves over powerful octaves in the bass. A sense of strain and tension begins to emerge in the iterative nature of the writing, the treble line moving into upward chromatic runs over great repetitive chords in the bass. All suddenly breaks off with the bell ringing on D over deep timpani rolls and the crash of the tamtam. Meyerbeer has conjured up the dignified character of the age in these courtly dances, while subtly using the dance music to depict the growing crisis outside.

6) Danse bohemienne (Gypsy Dance) (act 3) (Allegretto moderato, C major, 4/4; Allegro con moto, A major—C major—A major; Coda: Allegro, A major, 2/4—Allegro moderato, C major 6/8—Allegro, A major, 2/4) The act 5 ballet had shown the creators using a convention of danced divertissement for dramatic ends (as in act 3 of Robert le Diable). But ballet in its more conventional application is also used in Les Huguenots, when the Gypsies dance in act 3. However, even here, ballet becomes

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more than just another divertissement. In grand opéra the chorus had remained bound up with a dramaturgy determined by private conflict. In Les Huguenots, however, the chorus appear for the first time as representatives of social forces and parties, whereby the religio-political antagonisms of the historical process are viewed socially, almost as from beneath. This attractive ballet from the middle of the Pré-aux-clercs scene in act 3 presents a suite of dances for a group of travelling Gypsies who distract the angry crowds from their partisan disputes. It is a cheerful melodic piece in an introduction and four parts and a coda. After the brisk introduction, the main rondo theme (five crotchet notes on a`` followed by a double quaver triplet) resembles the tapping and shaking of a tambourine. This is the principal recurring theme varied in the second subject, and then followed by the third melody, a measured motif in staccato crotchets with a quaver skip on the second beat, in bass octaves, which serves as a bonding device that rounds off each section. Each section presents suitably varied ideas, with the most startling change of mood reserved for the ternary coda: a strongly rhythmical figure for the trombones and horns (semiquaver-demisemiquaver double crotchet with a tiny pause between beats) provides the bass for a bold trumpet melody, ben marcato. The middle section contrasts in its light staccato semiquaver figurations for woodwind and strings, followed by the violins alone, before the resumption of the trumpet theme and its exciting peroration.

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Fig. 49 Act 5 scene 3 Finale à Opéra de Paris (Engraving by P. Jelly. Lithograph by M. Massone Toulon)

14. RECEPTION HISTORY

Les Huguenots became a cultural event that influenced the discussion of artistic theories for years. More comprehensive than Robert le Diable because of its perception of history, people saw in this work the realization of the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, so favoured in contemporary philosophical and literary discourse. In words unpublished in his lifetime, Wagner summed up the tenor of this reaction: “Meyerbeer wrote world history, the history of heart and feeling; he burst the bounds of national prejudice in writing deeds of music” (“Über Meyerbeers Hugenotten”). The actual historico-philosophical message of the work remained largely uncomprehended, and Meyerbeer himself did nothing to repudiate the erroneous perception of his opera as the apotheosis of Protestantism, which privately he found quaint. Misunderstanding of the central religious concern meant that people did not grasp the deep pessimism Meyerbeer manifested in depicting the destruction of the idealistic idyll and the negation of any liberating role for the masses. The première, surrounded by huge expectation, aroused a restrained approval, but no great enthusiasm. The public had expected a second Robert le Diable, and was somewhat disappointed with this completely different, new dramatic concept. Only the last two acts decided the success of the evening. But during the succeeding performances, growing enthusiasm prepared the way for a triumph that would prove to be one of the greatest and most significant of the nineteenth century. The reaction of the press was not unanimous. Mingled in the chorus of eulogistic approval were some dissenting voices, particularly among the representatives of the Italian party who had already raised criticism over Robert, Meyerbeer’s compositional style and apparently flawed dramaturgy, which they, on the basis of the official authorship of the work, ascribed to Scribe. Meyerbeer, nevertheless, must have found some consolation in the fact that “even the opponents of this opera speak of it as one of the most important musical manifestations of the times” (letter of 6 March 1836). Meyerbeer’s position as the leading opera composer received its definitive confirmation with Les Huguenots, and Heinrich Heine’s prediction that every dramatic composer would have to study this work carefully would be proved prophetic.

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Fig. 50 & 51 Julie Dorus-Gras (Marguerite de Valois)

Fig. 52 & 53 Cornélie Falcon (Valentine)

14. Reception History

Fig. 54 Maria Flécheux (Urbain)

Fig. 55 Montessu (A Gypsy)

Fig. 56 & 57 Adolphe Nourrit (Raoul)

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Fig. 58 Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur (Marcel)

Fig. 59 Jacques-Émile Serda (Saint-Bris)

Fig. 60 Prosper Dérivis (Nevers)

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For a long time the mounting of the opera, in the stage designs of Charles-Polycarpe Séchan (1803-1874), Léon Feuchère (1804-1857), JulesPierre-Michel Diéterle (1811-1889) and Edouard-Désiré-Joseph Déspléchin (1802-1871)82, prepared over months of rehearsals, would also become the prototype. Under the musical direction of François-Antoine Habeneck (1781-1849), the ensemble of performers showed themselves familiar with Meyerbeer’s vocal style and able to fulfill to perfection the immense vocal and dramatic demands of the work: Julie Dorus-Gras (1805-1896) as Queen Marguerite de Valois, Marie-Cornélie Falcon (1812-1897) as Valentine de Saint-Bris, Louise-Marie Flécheux (1813-1842) as the page Urbain, Adolphe Nourrit (1802-1839) as Raoul de Nangis, NicolasProsper Levasseur (1791-1871) as Marcel, Jean-Jacques-Émile Serda (1804-1863) as Le Comte de Saint-Bris, Prosper Dérivis (1808-1880) as Le Comte de Nevers.83 Meyerbeer attached huge importance to the stage production, the richness of spectacle, precision of detail, quality of interpretation. He tried to cleanse performance of long-established bad habits, and in addition to scenic truth, demanded psychological veracity, sobriety and verisimilitude of acting, with truthfulness and simplicity of declamation. The skill of the singer was of preeminent importance. The roles in Les Huguenots became touchstones in the art of operatic singing— in vocal projection, quality of timbre and dramatic impersonation. Raoul has become known as the archetype of the ténor demi-caractère (spinto), but this role is actually not for the relentlessly loud heroic tenor hurling out top C’s: the role demands suppleness and legato (with a high C in the act-1 romance, C-sharp in the act-3 septet, and D-flat in the act-4 love duet). Valentine is the prototype of the soprano dramatique or Falcon soprano, requiring dramatic pathos, power, brilliance and a profusion of high C’s (sustained twice for many bars in the act-2 finale and in the act-3 duet with Marcel). Marguerite de Valois is the soprano légère needing a full-bodied middle range (to dominate the act finale) and a coloratura agility rising to high C in her duet with Raoul. Saint-Bris is the basse chantante (or basso cantante), a role requiring great dramatic authority and also lyricism, and can be taken on by gifted baritone. Marcel is the deepest role in the repertory, with the famously cavernous long note and trill held at the end of the act-1 Chorale. The role of Nevers requires a suave noble baritone, with a lighter texture to distinguish him effectively from Saint-Bris, and a dramatic lyricism for his famous profession of nobility in act 4. The performance history of Les Huguenots at the Opéra developed into a success story almost without parallel (the first work there to achieve 1000 performances), a figure surpassed only by Gounod’s Faust (1859).

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Among the singers at the Opéra who interpreted the leading role in the first decades were: Maria Nau, Claire Dobré (Marguerite); Mlle. TreilletNathan, Rosine Stoltz, Kathinka Heinefetter, Dejean Jullienne (Valentine); Gilbert Duprez, Félix Mécène Marié de l’Isle, Fort-Arthur Espinasse, Gustave-Hippolyte Roger (Raoul); Dérivis (Nevers), Serda (Saint-Bris), Luciano Bouché (Marcel). For the revival in 1853 (with Rosalie-Henriette Laborde, Mlle. Poinsot, Louis Gueymard, Louis-Henri Obin) Meyerbeer agreed to a series of cuts and expanded the ballet in act 3 with some new numbers (choreographer Joseph Mazilier). The opera featured in the opening year of the Salle Garnier (1875) in a new production (with Caroline Carvalho, Gabrielle Krauss, Pierre-François Villaret, Belval). Another fresh staging was in 1897 (with Lucy Berthet, Lucienne Bréval, Albert-Raymond Alvarez, Léon Gresse). Meyerbeer’s most popular opera was performed 1,120 times at the Paris Opera between 29 February 1836 and 22 November 1936.84 Only Gounod’s Faust has been given there more often (2,336 times by 1959). It became Meyerbeer’s most performed work: 459 times in Hamburg (1959), 394 times in Brussels (-1935), 385 times in Berlin (-1932), 249 times in Covent Garden (-1927), 247 times in Vienna (-1911), over 200 times in New Orleans (-1919),118 times in Linz, 108 times in Milan (1962), 75 times in Parma (-1927), and 66 times in New York (-1915). It soon spread all over the world: In the 1830s: Cologne, 1837; The Hague, 1837; Brussels, 1837; Munich, 1838; Basle, 1839; Geneva, 1839; Budapest, 1839; New Orleans, 1839; Vienna 1839. In the 1840s: Lemberg 1840; Prague 1840; Florence 1841; Zürich, 1841; Dresden, 1841; Berlin,1842; Stockholm, 1842; London 1842, 1845, 1848, 1849; Odessa, 1843; New York, 1845; Copenhagen 1844; Prague 1848; Vienna 1847; Brussels, 1848; Cologne, 1848; Aachen, 1848; Havana, 1849. In the 1850s: Prague 1850; Helsinki, 1850, 1876; St. Petersburg, 1850; Stettin, 1850; Bamberg, 1850; New York 1850; Havana, 1850; Riga, 1850; Stuttgart, 1851; Trieste, 1851; Batavia, 1851; Budapest 1852; Clermont-Ferrand, 1853; Lisbon, 1854; Lemberg 1854; Prague 1854; Hanover, 1855; Venice, 1856; Barcelona, 1856; Genoa, 1857; Dublin, 1857; Nice, 1857; Milan 1857;Warsaw, 1858; Algiers, 1858. In the 1860s: St Petersburg 1862; Oporto, 1863; Sydney, 1863; Milan, 1864; Rome 1864; Florence 1864; Milan 1865; Mexico, 1865; New York 1866; Constantinople, 1866; Soerabaya (Dutch East Indies) 1866; Milan 1869; Malta, 1869; New York, 1869.

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Fig. 61 Godfrey, Les Huguenots. Selection [for military band] (London: Chappell’s Army Journal, 1911).

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Fig. 62 Marie Sass (Valentine)

Fig. 64 Caroline Duprez (Marguerite de Valois)

Fig. 63 Pauline Viardot & Marietta Alboni (Valentine & Urbain)

Fig. 65 Colin (Raoul)

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In the 1870s: Cairo, 1870; Buenos Aires, 1870; Rio de Janeiro, 1870; Milan 1870; Vienna 1876; Helsinki 1876; Christiana 1876; Bucharest, 1876; Milan 1877; Zagreb, 1878; In the 1880s: Milan 1882, 1884; New York: 1884, 1889; London: 1888 In the 1890s: Naples 1890; London 1891; Catania 1891; Bologna 1892; Milan 1892; Naples 1892; Chieti 1895; New York 1896; Parma 1896; Genoa 1898; Roma 1898; Milan 1899; Naples 1899; Roma 1899; Trieste 1899. In the 1900s: Alessandria (Italy) 1901; Crema 1902; Genoa 1902; Modena 1902; Bari 1903; Bologna 1903; Milan (Carcano) 1903; Naples (Bellini) 1903; Carrara 1904; Naples 1904; Parma 1904; Rome 1904; Ljubljana, 1904; New York 1905; London 1905; Sassari 1906; Ancona 1908; Naples (Bellini)1908; Trapani 1908. In the 1910s: Cremona 1909; Alessandria 1910; Trieste 1910; Syracuse 1911; New York 1912; Naples 1912; Venice 1913; Philadelphia 1913; Genoa 1914; Lecce 1914; Naples 1914; Palermo 1914; New York 1914; Turin 1915; In the 1920s: Genoa 1920; Milan 1920; Buenos Aires 1921; Bologna 1922; Sofia, 1922; Parma 1923; Piacenza 1923; Roma 1923; Riga 1923; Naples 1924; Tallinn, 1924; Brescia 1925; Catania 1926; Venice 1926; Jerusalem, 1926; London 1927. In the 1930s: Naples 1931; Berlin 1932; Kaunas, 1932; Verona 1933; Brussels 1934; Moscow 1934. Post-war performances: In the 1950s: Leningrad 1951; Birmingham 1951; Vienna 1951 (concert); Milan 1955 (concert); Hamburg 1958. In the 1960s: London (Scala) 1960, Milan 1962; Lille 1964; Rouen 1964; Verviers 1964; Chelyabinsk 1964; Ghent 1964; Marseille 1967; Verviers 1967; Dijon 1967; Toulon 1967; Nimes 1967; St Etienne 1967; London 1968 (concert); New York 1969 (concert). In the 1970s: Vienna 1971 (concert); Barcelona 1971; Toulouse 1972; Los Angeles 1973; Leipzig 1974; Kiev 1974; Gelsenkirchen 1974; New Orleans 1975; Paris 1976 (concert). In the 1980s: Sydney 1981; Berlin 1987, 1988; Montpellier 1988. In the 1990s: Sydney 1990; San Francisco 1990; Montpellier 1990; London 1991; Berlin 1991; Novara 1993; Ljubljana 1997; Dubrovnik 1998; Litomysl (Czech Republic) 1998; Berlin 1998; Bilbao 1999. In the 2000s: New York 2001 (concert); Martina Franca 2002; Regensburg 2002 (concert) ; Frankfurt 2002 (concert); Metz 2004; Liège 2005; Bard College, New York: 2009; Madrid 2011 (concert); Brussels

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2011; Strasbourg 2012. The vast fame of this opera is reflected in over two hundred arrangements, transcriptions and paraphrases, from 1836 to the present, by Adam, Alvars, Antonio; Baugniet, Bellak, Berg, Bertrand, Beyer, Billet, Blagrove, Bochsa, Brissac, Brissler, Brunner, Calcott, Caldini, Chatterton, Clodomir, Colville, Cramer, Cunio, Czerny, Daussoigne, Dorn, De Bois de Fiennes, Döhler; Dubois; Duvernoy, Favager, Filby, Glover; Hartmann, Hawkes, Herz, Hoechst, Hume, Hundt; Jullien, Kappey, Ketterer, Korbach, Kuhe, Laurent, Le Carpentier, Legarde; Lickl, Liebich, Liebling, Liszt, Marseille, Méliot, Millars, Musard, Napoleon, Nelson, Oberthür; Oesten, Osborne, Pixis, Praeger, Pratten, Prudent, Raff, Ralph, Rea, Rémusat, Richards, Rimbault, Rivière, Rockstro, Roe, Roehner, Rosen, Schloesser, Schuncke, Schwencke, Schubert, Servais, Sloper, Smith, Spieker, Sprenger, Stein, Stone, Johann Strauss (Vater), Steabbog, Thalberg, Tolbecque, Vaughan Williams, Vimeux, Weippert, Werter, West, Zardo, among others. Johann Strauss the Elder provided three pieces on themes from the opera. The first two followed closely on the premiere. Cotillions über Themes aus Hugenotten (Op. 92) is based on lighter melodies from act 2; the Hugenotten-Galopp (Op. 93) chose more bellicose motifs from the Blessing of the Daggers and act 5 for this vivacious piece. The third, the Gibellinen-Galopp (Op. 114), which was written later for the Hyacinth Ball at Sperl’s in 1840, alludes to the title used in the first Viennese production of the opera where from reasons of censorship it was called Die Gibellen in Pisa. Franz Liszt’s arrangement is of particular interest (Réminiscences des ‘Huguenots’ [Grande fantaisie sur ‘Les Huguenots’] S.412, 1837, rev. 1839, rev. 1842). Written a year after the première of the opera, and dedicated to his beloved Marie d’Agoult, this huge meditation on the act 4 love duet remained a constant concern to Liszt. He revised it twice, in 1839 and again in 1842, before being convinced he had produced an effective concert piece.

14. Reception History

Fig. 66 Gabrielle Krauss (Valentine)

Fig. 68 Agustarello Affre & Louise Grandjean (Raoul & Valentine)

Fig. 67 Adelina Patti (Valentine)

Fig. 69 Jean Alchewsky (Raoul)

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The enduring popularity of the work could not prevent a rapidly diminishing understanding of the composer’s intentions. Robert Schumann’s and Richard Wagner’s polemic against the cosmopolitan nature of grand opéra had developed in a few decades from an outsider position to the ruling opinion. Added to this, the routine of the theatre which sought refuge from the technical challenges of production in senseless cuts, encouraged a misconception of Les Huguenots as a spectacular show and singers’ opera. Apart from Paris where the authentic working concept of the opera was maintained for a relatively long time, in practice on most stages the historical opera had been transformed into a romantic drama. Extensive cuts of dispensable genre scenes in acts 2 and 3, the omission of act 5 scene 1, and then the whole of act 5, reduced the political action to the barest scaffolding for a tragic love story whereby the manipulation of the conclusion of the act 4 duet (with Raoul jumping from the window to his death) provided a superficially effective end to the opera. Since the dramatic system of the historical opera is determined in act 5, this amputation irrevocably falsified the vision of the work. Added to this were innumerable other abridgements that damaged, if not destroyed, the subtly balanced musical-dramatic tableau structures. Further hindrance to the understanding of the actual aesthetic dimensions of the opera came from the interference of the censor in many places. This meant that in Catholic countries performances were, for many years, allowed, if at all, only in arrangements which eliminated, or at least dulled, the religious-political themes. Thus the work appeared in Munich in 1838 as Die Anglikaner und die Puritaner in a textual adaptation by Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer which shifted the action to England in the time of Oliver Cromwell. This text was also used for the first Italian production in Florence in 1841, as Gli Anglicani (translated by Franceso Guidi). An even freer arrangement, with massive consequences for the musical structures, was prepared by Georg Ott for the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna in 1839 as Die Gibellinen in Pisa; later in the same year this version was given at the Kärntnertor-theater (with Jenny Lutzer, Wilhelmine van Hasselt-Barth, Joseph Erl, Joseph Staudigl). This bowdlerization into a chivalric drama from the times of the Northern Italian War of the Leagues of the twelfth century remained obligatory in

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the Habsburg lands until 1848 (Pest and Brünn 1839, Prag 1840), and was also played in other cities (Cassel 1839, St Petersburg 1850, where it was called I Guelfi ed i Ghibellini in the translation of Calisto Bassi). The Protestant parts of Europe in general kept to the original form: Leipzig 1837 (in the German translation of Ignaz Franz Castelli), Dresden 1838 (in German, with Maschinka Schubert, Wilhelmine SchröderDevrient, Joseph Tichatschek, Carl Risse), Stockholm 1842 (in the Swedish translation of Pehr Westerstrand, with Mathilda Gelhaar, Julius Günther, Giovanni Belletti), Copenhagen 1844 (in the Danish translation of Thomas Overskou). But the reception of Les Huguenots was also not without problems in these countries as well. Militant Protestantism (which took exception to the use of Luther’s Chorale), and latent anti-Semitism, banded together in resentment against the successful opera. In Berlin it came to production only in 1842 when Meyerbeer, as a sign of the liberalization of the cultural climate in the wake of the accession of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, was made Generalmusikdirektor (the cast featured Leopoldine Tuczek, Schröder-Devrient, Eduard Mantius, August Zchiesse). In Covent Garden in London the work was performed by the guest artists of German (1842) and French ensembles (1845), and in a house production only in 1848 (in the Italian translation of Manfredo Maggioni, with Jeanne-Anaïs Castellan, Pauline Garcia-Viardot, Mario di Candida, Ignazio Marini). For this production Meyerbeer transposed the role of Urbain for the contralto Marietta Alboni, and provided her with a new rondo for insertion into act 2, and later known in its French translation (“Non...vous n’avez jamais, j’gage”) (no, you have never, I wager). In the middle of the century, and partly because of a relaxation of censorship, reception was in full flood, with Les Huguenots now regarded as a model for the modern music drama. In Prague, Vienna, and Munich, the opera could now be performed in its original form for the first time (1848). The great stages of Italy followed: Teatro Canobbiana in Milan 1855, Venice 1856 (with Joséphine Médori as Valentine, and Emilio Pancani as Raoul), Genoa 1857 and finally, also in 1857 La Scala (with Giuditta Beltramelli, Maria Spezia Aldighieri, Antonio Giuglini, Alfredo Didot). Of the plethora of productions at this time, some were remarkable for their casting: London 1858 (with Albine Maray, Giulia Grisi, Mario and Henri-Charles-Joseph Zelger, with the local practice of Urbain as a contralto—Constance Nantier-Didiée, and later Sofia Scalchi). Later London performances saw the first assumption of Valentine by Therese Tietjens (1860), Pauline Lucca (1863), and Adelina Patti (1863). Another important performing tradition was established in Russia. The first production there (in the translation by Pjotr Kalasnikov) was at the Maryinski Theatre

15. Performing Traditions

Fig. 70 Florencio Constantino (Raoul)

Fig. 71 Albert Alvazrez (Raoul)

Fig. 72 Lucienne Bréval (Valentine) Fig. 73 Jean de Reszke (Raoul)

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in St Petersburg in 1862 (with Iossif Setov as Raoul and Ossip Petrov as Saint-Bris). It was given at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1879 (with Anton Barzal as Raoul) and in 1895 (with Mariya Deischa-Sionizkaya as Valentine and Lawrenti Donskoi as Raoul). There were new productions in Vienna in 1869 (with Rabatinsky, Amalie Materna, Gustav Walter, Hans von Rokitansky), as well as 1876 in the new house on the Ringstrasse (with Emilia Tagliana, Marie Wilt, Georg Müller, Rokitansky). In Prague the work appeared in 1891 as part of Angelo Neumann’s Meyerbeer Centenary Cycle (with Leonore Better as Valentine, Sarolta von Rettich-Pirk as Urbain, Johannes Elmblad as Marcel). With the ongoing specialization characteristic of this development of the vocal types during the later nineteenth century, there was a simplification of the complex role profiles and their adaptation to new types that had in the meantime emerged. This was the case with many operas of the Italian and French repertoires, and particularly so with Les Huguenots. Marguerite became a coloratura soprano, Valentine a dramatic soprano, Urbain a soubrette (occasionally a mezzo-soprano), Raoul a dramatic tenor, Marcel a deep and Saint-Bris a high bass, Nevers a baritone. With this type of vocal distribution, at the turn of the century the opera (as with Gounod’s Faust) settled into a singers’ opera par excellence, particularly at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Here performances attained a legendary status as “the Nights of the Seven Stars”: in 1894 with Lillian Nordica as Valentine, Nellie Melba as Marguerite de Valois, Sofia Scalchi as Urbain, Jean de Reszke as Raoul, Edouard de Reszke as Marcel, Pol Plançon as Saint-Bris, Victor Maurel as Nevers; in 1905 with Marcella Sembrich, Nordica, Edyth Walker, Enrico Caruso, Marcel Journet, Plançon, Antonio Scotti.

Table of Major Performances in Paris, London, New York, and Milan (The casting is in the order Valentine, Marguerite de Valois, Urbain, Raoul, Marcel, Saint-Bris, Nevers, conductor). The Paris Opéra85 Performed in 1836, 1837, 1838, 1839, 1842, 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1868, 1869, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1897, 1898, 1899, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1920, 1921, 1930, 1936

15. Performing Traditions

133

10 July 1839 (100th) (Stoltz, Dorus-Gras, Elian, Duprez, Levasseur, Serda, Derivis, cond. Habeneck) 13 November 1868 (427th) (Sass, Battu. Levielli, Villaret, Belval, David, Faure, cond. Hainl) 24 April 1874 (500th) (Gueymard, Thibault, Arnaud, Villaret, Ponsard, Gailhard, Caron, cond. Deldevez) 26 October 1874 (533rd) (Patti, Belval, Arnaud, Villaret, Belval, Gailhard, Lassalle, cond. Deldevez) 26 April 1875 (588th, the first at the Palais Garnier) (Krauss, Carvalho, Daram, Villaret, Belval, Gailhard, Faure, cond. Deldevez) 6 June 1897 (903rd) (Bréval, Berthet, Carrière, Alvarez, L. Gresse, Delmas, Renaud, cond.Taffanel) 21 March 1903 (1000th) (Bréval, Dereims, Agussol, Affre, Chambon, A. Gresse, Noté, cond. Taffanel) [1909 new Théâtre Lyrique, 6 performances] 18 July 1913 (reprise 1072nd) (La Senne, B. Mendes, Laute-Brun, Altechewsky, Paty, Laskin, Roselly, cond. P. Vidal) 10 September 1920 (1079th) (Gozatégui, Alexandrowicz, Laute-Brun, O’Sullivan, A. Huberty, A. Gresse, Teissie, cond. Busser) 21 January 1930 (1093rd) (Y. Gall, E. Norena, Laval, O’Sullivan, A. Huberty, A. Pernet, Rouard, cond. Ruhlmann) 23 March 1936 (1109th) (G. Hoerner, S. Delmas, S. Renaux, G. Thill, A. Huberty, A. Pernet, M. Singher, cond. F Ruhlmann) 23 November 1936 (1120th) (G. Hoerner, S.Delmas, R. Mahé, R. Jobin, A. Hubert, Etcheverry. Endrèze, cond. F. Ruhlmann) The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London86 There was an average of five performances per season. Grisi and Mario, together or alone, effectively dominated the productions for twenty years, 1848-68. 20 July 1848, (Viardot, Castellan, Alboni, Mario/Roger, Marini, Tagliafico, Tamburini, cond. M. Costa) 24 May 1849 (Grisi, Dorus-Gras, Angri, Mario, Tagliafico, Marini, Massol) 2 May 1850 (Grisi, Castellan, de Méric, Mario, Formes, Tagliafico, Massol) 22 April 1851 (Grisi, Castellan, Bertrandi/Angri, Mario, Tagliafico, Formes, Tamburini) 1 May 1852 (Grisi, Castellan/Bosio, Seguin, Mario, Formes, —, Polonini) 2 June 1853 (Grisi, Castellan, Didiée, Mario, Formes, —, Tagliafico)

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Fig. 74 Émile Scaramberg (Raoul)

Fig. 76 Nellie Melba (Marguerite de Valois)

Fig. 75 Emma Eames (Valentine)

Fig. 77 Marie Treillet-Nathan (Valentine)

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24 June 1854 (Grisi, Marai, Didiée, Mario, Zelger, —, Tagliafico) 7 June 1855 (Grisi, Marai, Didiée, Mario, Formes, —, Tagliafico) 1856/7 Covent Garden closed 15 May 1858 (Grisi, Marai, Didiée, Mario, Zelger, —, Tagliafico, cond. M. Costa) 7 May 1859 (Grisi, Marai, Didiée, Mario, Zelger, —, Tagliafico) 5 June 1860 (Grisi, Carvalho, Didiée, Mario, Zelger, —, Faure) 11 June 1861 (Grisi, Carvalho/Tiberini, Didiée Mario, Zelger, —, Faure) 1861 (Grisi, Carvalho/Tiberini, Didiée, Mario, Faure, Zelger, —, cond. M. Costa) 31 May 1862 (Fricci, Carvalho/Battu, Didiée Mario, Zelger, —, Faure) 18 July 1863 (Lucca, Battu, Didiée, Mario, Formes, —, Faure) 12 May 1864 (Lucca, Battu, Didiée, Mario, Attri, —, Faure) 27 May 1865 (Lucca, Lieberhardt, Honoré, Mario, Schmid, —, Gassier/Graziani) 24 May 1866 (Lucca, Sherrington, Morensi, Mario, Attri, —, Faure) 29 May 1868 (Lucca/Balla, Sherrington, Grossi, Mario/Naudin, Petiti, —, Cotogni, cond. L. Arditi) Autumn 1868 (Tietjens, Sinico/Di Murska, —, Mongini, Tagliafico, —, Santley) April 1869 (Tietjens, Di Murska/Sinico, Vanzini, Mongini, Bagagiolo, —, Santley/Cotogni) Autumn 1869 (Tietjens, Di Murska, Scalchi, Mongini, Antonucci, —, Santley/Cotogni) 2 May 1870 (Tietjens/Lucca, Vanzini/Sessi, Scalchi, Wachtel/Mario, Petiti, —, Cotogni) 25 November 1870 (Tietjens, Sinico, Trebelli, Bettini/Vizzani, Antonucci, —, Cotogni) 25 April 1871 (Lucca/Patti, Carvalho, Scalchi, Mongini/Mario, Bagagiolo, —, Cotogni/ Faure, cond. A. Vianesi) 25 November 1871 (Tietjens, Colombo, Trebelli, Fancelli, Agnesi, Antonucci, Mendioroz) 11 April 1872 (Lucca/Patti, Sinico/Sessi, De Méric-Lablache/Scalchi, Nicolini) Koehler/Bagagiolo, —, Cotogni/Faure) 17 June 1873 (D’Angeri/Patti, Sinico, Scalchi, Nicolini, —, —, Faure/Cotogni) 17 April 1874 (D’Angeri/Vilda, Marimon, Scalchi, Nicolini/Bolis, Bagagiolo, —, Cotogni/Faure) 16 April 1875 (Vilda/Patti, Bianchi/Marimon, Scalchi, Naudin/Nicolini, Ciampi, —, Maurel/Cotogni) 3 April 1876 (D’Angeri, Bianchi, Scalchi, Carpi, Bagagiolo, —, Cotogni)

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22 June 1878 (Cepada, Smeroschi, de Belocca, Gayarré, Capponi, —, Cotogni) 15 April 1879 (Cepada, Schou, Scalchi, Gayarré, Silvestri, —, Cotogni) 26 April 1880 (Turolla/Verni, Schou/Sembrich, Scalchi, Gayarré/de Villiers, Vidal, —, Cotogni) 5 May 1881 (Fuesch-Madi, Sembrich/Warnots, Scalchi, Mierzwinski, E. de Reszke, —, Cotogni) 18 April 1882 (Fursch-Madi, Valleria, Trebelli, Mierzwinski, E. de Reszke, —, Cotogni) 7 May 1883 (Fursch-Madi/Durand, Repetto, Stahl/Scalchi, Mierzwinski, E. de Reszke, —, Cotogni/Devoyod) 3 May 1884 (Marion/Durand, Sembrich/Leria, Trebelli/Scalchi, Mierzwinski, E. de Reszke, —, Devoyod/Cotogni) 3 June 1886 (Teodorini, Russell, Scalchi, Gayarré, Pinto, —, Pandolfini) 25 June 1887 (Sandra, Russell, Scalchi, Gayarré, Lorrain, —, Devoyod) Spring 1888 (Nordica/Fursch-Madi, Russell, Scalchi, J. de Reszke, E. de Reszke, —, del Puente, cond. L. Mancinelli) 15 June 1889 (Schlaeger, Russell, Scalchi, J. de Reszke, E. de Reszke, —, d’Andrade) 27 May 1890 (Tetrazzini/Nordica/Russell, Russell/Pinkert, Scalchi, Ibos/Ravelli, E.de Reszke, Dufriche/Lassalle, d’Andrade) 20 October 1890 (Peri/Albani, Stromfeld, Ravogli, Perotti, Meroles, Galassi, Padilla) 20 May 1891 (Albani, Mravina, Ravogli, J. de Reszke/Ravelli, E. de Reszke, Lassalle, Maurel) 26 October 1891 (Martini/Petrina, Bresolles, de Spagni, Cossira, Castelmary, Lorrain, Bouvet/Tyssiere) 10 June 1892 (MacIntyre, Mravina, Ravogli, Montariol, Plançon, E. de Reszke, Tzchernov) 8 July 1893 (Albani, Arnoldson/Hill, Ravogli, J. de Reszke, E. de Reszke, Lassalle/Plançon, Ancona/Dufriche) 31 May 1894 (Adini, Simmonet, Olitzka, Cossira, Plançon, Dufriche, Albers) 29 June 1895 (Albani, Melba, Ravogli, Tamagno, Plançon, Arimondi, Ancona) 18 July 1896 (Albani, Melba/Engle, Brazzi, Lucignani, Plançon, Bispham, Ancona) 14 May 1897 (Pacary/MacIntyre, Engle/Saville, Brazzi/Meisslinger) Dupeyron/Ceppi/Alvarez/Scaremberg, Journet/E.de Reszke, Plançon, Noté/Ancona/Renaud)

15. Performing Traditions

Fig. 78 Enrico Caruso (Raoul)

Fig. 79 Christine Nilsson (Valentine)

Fig. 80 Emmy Destinn & Leo Slezak (Valentine & Raoul)

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16 June 1899 (Litvinne/Bréval, Adams/Engle, Olitzka/Leclerc, Saléza, Journet/E. de Reszke Plançon/E. de Reszke, Albers/Renaud, cond. P. Flon) 3 June 1904 (E. Destinn, S. Kurz, Alten, Caruso, Journet, Whitehall, Scotti, cond. L. Mancinelli) 11 July 1908 (E. Destinn, L. Tetrazzini, Dereyne, Zanatello, V.-Marcoux, Nivette, Scotti, cond. C. Campanini) 30 May/ 2 June 1927 (249th) (B. Scacciatti, Guglielmenti, A. Dal Monte, O’Sullivan, A. Kipnis, Stabile, Autori, cond. V. Bellezza)87 15 November 1991 (255th) (Nelly Miriciou, Judith Howarth, Jennifer Lamore, Richard Leech, Gwynne Howell, Richard van Allen, Jeffrey Black, cond. David Atherton; this production imported from the Deutsche Oper, Berlin) The Metropolitan Opera, New York 1884 (C. Nilsson, M. Sembrich, S. Salchi, I. Campanini, G. Mirabella, G. Kaschmann, G. Del Puente, cond. A. Vianesi) (in Italian) 1889 (L. Lehmann, M. Schröder-Hanfstängel, F. Karshowska, J. Perotti. E. Fischer, J. Beck, A. Grienauer, cond.. A. Seidl) (in German) 1891-92 (L. Nordica/E. Albani, M. Pettigiani, J. de Vigne/ S. Scalchi, J. de Reszke/F. Valero, E. de Reszke, A. Magini-Coletti, E. Serbolini/J. Lassalle, cond. A. Vianesi) (in Italian) 1894-95 (L. Nordica, N. Melda, S. Scalchi, J. de Reszke, E. de Reszke, P. Plançon, V. Maurel/M. Ancona, cond. E. Bevignani) (in Italian) 1898-99 (L. Lehmann/L. Nordica, S. Adams/M. Sembrich, E. Mantelli, J. de Reszke/A. Saléza, E. de Reszke, P. Plançon/H,.Devries, V. Maurel/H. Albers, cond. L. Mancinelli) (in French) 1902 (L. Bréval/J. Gadski, S. Adams/E. Liebling, C. Seygard/L. Homer, E. de Marchi/ A. Alvarez, E. de Reszke, M. Journet/A. Scotti, M. Declaery, cond. P.Flon) (in French) 1905 (L. Nordica/M. De Macchi, M. Sembrich, E. Walker, E. Caruso, M. Journet, P. Plançon, A. Scotti, cond. A. Vigna) (in Italian) 27 December 1912 (Destinn, Hempel, Alten, Caruso, Didur, Rothier, Scotti) 1914-15 (E. Destinn, F. Hempel, M. Garrison, E. Caruso, C. Braun. L. Rothier, A. Scotti, cond. G. Polacco) (in Italian) La Scala, Milan 15 February 1856 (Spezia, Beltramelli, —, Giuglini, Didot, Bianchi, Cresci, cond.—)

15. Performing Traditions

139

24 November 1858 (Poinsot, Ortolani, Pessina, Tiberini, Echeverria, Ferrara, Crivelli, cond. —) 23 February 1863 (Joung, Corani, Feltri, Bertolini, Marini, Capponi, Coltone, cond. —) 16 February 1869 (Sass, Rey, Corsi, Mongini, Medini, Raguer, Storti, cond. —) 26 December 1875 (Fossa, Fendi, Devère, Gayarré, Merly/Atry, Hodezénne/Zezevitch, Bonelli/Lalloni, cond. —) 15 January 1882 (Teodorini, Buireo, —, Devilliers, Nannetti, Vacchioni, Ciampi, cond. —) 29 January 1883 (Turconi-Bruni, Pantaleone, —, Tamagno, Silvestri, Navarrini, Lhérie, cond. —) 12 March 1891 (Darclée, Stehle, Zawner, Mariacher, Boudouresque, Silvestri, Moro, cond. —) 9 February 1898 (Darclée/De Lerma, Padovani, Degli Abbati, De Marchi, Navarrini, Lorrain, Scotti/Buti, cond. Toscanni) 28 May 1962 (Simionato, Sutherland, Cossotto, Corelli, Ghiaurov, Tozzi, Ganzarolli, cond. Gavazzeni) Casting of Major Performances in Other Italian Houses and in Brussels Milan (Canobbiana) Autumn 1855 (Boccherini, Viola, Villa, Giuglini, Marini, Llorens Nolasco, Zacchi) Venice 7 August 1856 (Medori, Chiaramonte, Viale, Pancani, Vialetti, Nolasco, Steller) Genoa (Carlo Felice) 14 February 1857 (De Roissi, Bottaro, —, Pancani, Zacchi, Atry, Brémond) Genoa 26 December 1860 (Gianoli Galetti, Derly, Acs, Squarcia, Atry, Sassaroli, Ronconi) Bologna 16 November 1862 (Barbot, De Joly, Berti, Bertolini, Junca, Rossi-Galli, Pandolfini) Parma 25 December 1861 (Weiser, Peroni, Agliati, Bertolini, Carnago, Ghini, Storti Gaggi) Naples 21 January 1862 (Lotti, Garolta, Tiberini, Aldighieri, Arati, Bisaccia, Laterza) Roma (Apollo) 19 November 1865 (Moro, Lanzi, Trebelli, Bettini, De Capellio, Brémond, Rossi-Galli, Storti) Bologna 9 November 1869 (Berini, Leonardi, Lamaire, Carpi, Pandolfini, Maffei) Parma 17 April 1870 (Neri-Baraldi, Pozzi Branzanti, Hommey, Carpi, Junca, Nanetti, Moriani)

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Fig. 81 Emmy Destinn (Valentine)

Fig. 83 Sigrid Arnoldson (Marguerite de Valois)

Fig. 82 Lilian Nordica (Valentine)

Fig. 84 Frieda Hempel (Marguerite de Valois)

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Venice 4 March 1871 (Contarini, Stolz, Bordato, Fancelli, Cotogni, Nanetti, Angelini) Rome (Apollo) 27 December 1875 (Wiziak, Perrini, Braccialini, Nicolini, Castelmary, Alzina, Viganotti) Genoa (Carlo Felice) 26 December 1876 (Berini-Maini, Gherster, —, Deliliers, Maini, Padovani, Tagliapietra) Venice 26 December 1876 (Moisset, Borsi de Giuli, De Claus, Monti. Tansini, Sani, Vaselli) Rome (Apollo) 14 March 1886 (Pantaleoni, Torressella, Mariani-De Angelis, Marconi, Nannetti, Dado, Lalloni) Rome (Costanzo) 4 October 1888 (Litvinne, Pettigiani, Paolicchi Mugnone, Massart, De Vries, Cherubini, Navarrini) Venice 13 January 1889 (Litvinne, Van Cauteren, De Vita, Cherubini, Monchero, Anton, Bortolomasi) Rome (Apollo) 21 January 1889 (Theodorini, Torresella, Mantelli, Marconi, Blanchart, Mariani, Boudouresque) Catania 27 February 1891 (Borelli, Cappellaro, Angeli, Cardinoli, Trombetto, De Bernis, Tamburini) Bologna 29 November 1892 (Bulicioff, Parodi Rastelli, Monteleone, Lucignani, Rossi, De Grazia, Moro) Genoa (Politeama) 31 October 1898 (Spagna, Cavallini, Salto, Tansini, Arcangeli, Cromberg) Brussels 11 October 1905 (Lafitte, Alda, Eyreams, Lafitte, Paty. D’Assy, Albers) Brussels 31 October 1913 (Panis, Pornot, Callemieu, Darmel, Grommen, Laskin, Rouard) Bologna 8 November 1922 (Poli Randaccio, Sari, A. Dal Monte, O’Sullivan, Manfrini, Torres De Luna, Bonini) Parma 25 December 1922 (Camignia Alcaraz, Pasini, A. Dal Monte, O’Sullivan, Manfrini, Dentale, Bonini) Venice 26 January 1926 (Borghi Zerni, Carrara, Ticozzi, O’Sullivan, Manfrini, Autori. Togliani) Verona (Arena) 29 July 1933 (Raisa, Saraceni, Pederzini, Lauri Volpi, Pasero, Di Lelio, Rimini) Brussels 1934-1935 (394th)

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Fig. 85 Marcel Journet (Marcel)

Fig. 87 Lotte Schöne (Urbain)

Fig. 86 Mabel Garrison (Urbain)

16. PERFORMANCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Until the Second World War The decisive consequence of this modern development of the vocal types and its effect on the stage history of this opera related to the penetrating power and mobility of the voice required for the part of Raoul. The tendency to cast this role for a heavy tenor schooled in Wagner and the verismo school guaranteed the first of the conditions, but led to the cutting of the leggiero passages in acts 1 and 2, as well as to transpositions and the omission of high notes in the other acts. Thus in the twentieth century the casting of this role was the biggest problem for any production. Even with the most important tenors there was omission of the virtuoso passages, papered over by the necessary cuts. Nevertheless, the prevalence of tenors able to sing Raoul meant that the twentieth century up to the Second World War was a popular period for the opera, especially in the provincial houses of South America and France: —with Enrico Caruso: New York 1905; London 1905; New York 1912; Philadelphia 1913; New York 1914;88 —with José Palet: 1911:Valencia, Bergamo, Madrid; 1912: Barcelona; 1914: Buenos Aires, Rosario, Cordoba, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Montevideo; 1915: Turin, Barcelona, Madrid; 1916: Madrid, Santiago; 1918: Havana, San Juan, Ponce, Caracas, Lima, Valparaiso; 1919: Mexico City; 1920: Genoa; 1922: San José, Bogota; probably also Quito and Guayaquil; 1923: Medellin; 1928: Amsterdam; probably also The Hague and Rotterdam; 1929: Budapest —with Giovanni Martinelli: 1915: Atlanta; 1916: Buenos Aires, Montevideo; 1921: Buenos Aires —with Hipolito Lazaro: 1922: Barcelona; 1923 Havana; 1932: Barcelona.

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Some exceptional voices, with a characteristic ‘ring’ or squillo, determined by a steely power in the high register, were to be found in John O’Sullivan and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi. The Irish tenor, whose voice found a literary echo in the work of his admirer James Joyce, counted Raoul as his speciality and sang the role during the 1920s and 1930s on many European and international stages: —with John O’Sullivan: 1910: Grenoble; 1911, 1912: Geneva;1914: Paris; 1918, 1920: Rouen; 1920: Paris (with Josefa Gozatégui as Valentine, and Albert Huberty as Marcel); 1922: Lisbon, Milan, Bologna, Parma; 1923: Piacenza, Rome; 1924: Trieste, Madrid, Barcelona; 1925: Brescia, Cairo, Alexandria, Rosario, Cordoba, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Barcelona; 1926: Venice, Seville; 1927: London, Covent Garden (with Bianca Scacciati and Alexander Kipnis); 1929, 1930: Paris, Algiers, Marseilles; 1931: Naples, Toulouse, Perpignan, Montpellier, Marseilles, Toulon; 1932: Nice, Algiers, Vichy, Bordeaux, Rouen, Nantes; 1933: Toulouse; 1934: Lyons, Grenoble; 1936: Paris, Nancy, Nice. Giacomo Lauri-Volpi’s interpretation, described as phenomenal, was the vocal crown of the legendary performance at the Verona Arena in 1933 (with Adelaide Saraceni, Rosa Raisa, Gianna Pederzini, Tancredi Pasero, Giacomo Rimini; Antonino Votto conducting, and the production directed by Pericle Ansaldo). In older age he participated in a studio performance by Radiotelevisione Italiana Milan (3 June 1956) (with Anna De Cavalieri, Antonietta Pastori, Jolanda Gardino, Nicola Zaccaria, Giorgi Tozzi, Giuseppe Taddei, and Tullio Serafin conducting). Despite the diminution of his gifts, it remains a valuable document. However, some attempts were also made to free this much performed work from the conventions of the singers’ opera, and to rediscover its musico-dramatic qualities lost in theatrical routine. Arturo Toscanni succeeded in doing this spectacularly in a model production at La Scala Milan in 1899 (with Adelina Padovani, Hariclea Darclée, Emilio De Marchi, Franceso Navarrini), when he opened innumerable cuts and also restored a great part of act 5. The Court Opera in Vienna staged the work in 1902 as a testament to a nostalgically affirmed tradition (with Frances Saville, Sophie Sedlmair, Selma Kurz, Leo Slezak, Vilém Hes), and it was given in Berlin in 1908 (with Frieda Hempel, Emmy Destinn, Karl Jörn, Paul Knüpfer). Both productions were of the highest quality, musically as well as scenically, and set a standard for the interpretation of Meyerbeer in

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Fig. 88 André Pernet (Saint-Bris)

Fig. 89 John O’Sullivan (Raoul)

Fig. 90 José Palet (Raoul)

Fig. 91 Giacomo Lauri-Volpi (Raoul)

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the German-speaking countries for years. These productions received special attention because of the outstanding personalities of their conductors: in Vienna Gustav Mahler, in Berlin Leo Blech. The latter established himself as Meyerbeer’s advocate in the following years, the one who really understood his effectiveness. Indeed the first attempt to produce Les Huguenots with all the means of a modern theatre of movement was undertaken by the Berlin Staatsoper in 1932, with musical direction again by Blech. Gustaf Gründgens was the producer and choreographer, assisted by the endowment of Rochus Gliese. Blech presided over an outstanding ensemble: Margherita Perras, Anny Konetzni, Marcel Wittrisch, Emanuel List. Despite distorting interference in the working material by the musicologist Julius Kapp, who was anxious to cover over the features of grand opéra, the production as a whole left behind a deep impression, according to the critics, and strengthened the cautious tendency discernible since the 1920s to correct the received image of Meyerbeer. If in Germany, after the shift in the paradigm from music drama back to opera, attention had been focussed particularly on the musical qualities of these works that had been underestimated for so long, so in early years of the young Soviet Union interest was manifested in the revolutionary flair of the opera. It appeared in the leading houses in ambitious new productions: at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1925 (with Xenia Derschinskaya as Valentine, Nikolai Oserow as Raoul, Vassili Nebolsin conducting and staging by Vladimir Losski), and at the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad in 1935 (with Valentina Pavlovskaya as Valentine, Georgl Nelepp as Raoul, Vladimir Kastorski as Marcel, Vladimir Dranischnikov conducting, staging by Nikolai Smolitsch). Following from this, it was proposed to devise a new text called Dekabristi which was not realized. Another production of great historical interest, and committed to dramatic realization of the opera was undertaken by the Palestine Opera Company in Jerusalem, 1926-27 (with L. Golinkin as Valentine, S. Krieger as Urbain, G. Giorini as Raoul, M. Konstantinovsky, J. HarMelach and M. Ernstein). The last performance at the Paris Opéra (the1,120th) took place on 22 November 1936 (with Germaine Hoerner as Valentine, Solange Delmas as Marguerite de Valois, Renée Mahe as Urbain, Raoul Jobin as Raoul, Albert Huberty as Marcel, Henri Etcheverry as Saint-Bris, Arthur Endreze as Nevers; conducted by François Ruhlmann).

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Since the Second World War If the production history of the opera can be seen as a pull between the poles of a lyric presentation and dramatic concept, then things took a new turn with the revival of old singing techniques and voice types which made it possible to achieve a more appropriate casting and a narrowing of the opposing positions. Even if Meyerbeerian grand opéra was not created for vocal exhibitionism, it is nevertheless true that without the cooperation of singers qualified technically as well as stylistically, the opera cannot be convincingly realized. Les Huguenots, as a singers’ opera, with the usual big cuts, and sometimes a fragmentary act 5, made several appearances after the Second World War: In the 1950s: Leningrad 1951; Birmingham 1951; Paris Théâtre de l’Apollo 1953 (version anthologique, with Renée Doria as Marguerite de Valois, Jane Rinella as Valentine, Simone Couderc as Urbain, Guy Fouché as Raoul, Henri Médus as Marcel, Adrien Legros as Saint-Bris, Charles Cambon as Nevers; conducted by Jean Allain, recorded on LP, and reissued on CD 2005); Vienna December 1955 (concert, in German) (with Valerie Bak as Marguerite de Valois, Maud Cunitz as Valentine, Eta Köhrer as Urbain, Karl Terkal as Raoul, Gottlob Frick as Marcel, Walter Berry as Saint-Bris, Franz Fuchs as Nevers; conducted by Robert Heger, issued on CD 2006); Ghent 1955 (with Huberte Vécray as Valentine, Guy Fouché as Raoul); Milan 3 June 1956 (studio concert, in Italian) (with Antonietta Pastori as Marguerie de Valois, Anna de Cavalieri as Valentine, Jolanda Jardino as Urbain, Nicola Zaccaria as Marcel, Giorgio Tozzi as Saint-Bris, Giuseppe Taddei as Nevers; the special feature was the aging Giacomo Lauri-Volpi as Raoul, conducted by the veteran Tullio Serafin, issued on LP 1980 and CD 1994); Hamburg 1958 (with S. Ericdotter as Valentine, Clara Ebers, E. M. Duske as Urbain, Kurt Ruesche as Raoul, E. Wiemann as Marcel, Sigmund Roth as Saint-Bris, W. Ruzdak; conducted by A. Bittner), a remarkably successful production. While Lauri-Volpi was long past his prime, something of the resplendent lyricism and power of his assumption of Raoul can be gleaned from the performance. Karl Terkal provided the lighter vocal assumption, while Guy Fouché typified the heavier heroic realization of the role that had become the standard expectation. In the 1960s: London Scala Theatre 1960, Milan La Scala 28 May 1962 (in Italian, with Joan Sutherland as Marguerite de Valois, Giulietta Simionato

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as Valentine, Fiorenza Cossotto as Urbain, Franco Corelli as Raoul, Nicolai Ghiaurov as Marcel, Giorgio Tozzi as Saint-Bris, Wladimiro Ganzarolli as Nevers; conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni); Lille 1964; Rouen 1964; Verviers 1964; Chelyabinsk 1964; Ghent 1964; Marseille 5 May 1967 (with Géry Brunin as Valentine, Andrée Esposito as Marguerite de Valois, Edmée Sabran as Urbain, Tony Poncet as Raoul, Boris Carmeli as Marcel, José van Dam as Saint-Bris, Julien Haas as Nevers; conducted by Jean Trik; Verviers 21 December 1967 (Sylvia Valot as Valentine, Diane Dorian as Marguerite de Valois, Jany Christian as Urbain, Tony Poncet as Raoul, Taddeusz Wierzbicky as Marcel, Pierre Fischer as Saint-Bris; Gilbert Dubuc as Nevers; conducted by Guy Lajoinie); Dijon 1967; Toulon 1967; Nîmes 1967; St Etienne 1967; London 7 January 1968 (concert in the Royal Albert Hall, with Martina Arroyo as Valentine, Joan Sutherland as Marguerite de Valois, Huguette Tourangeau as Urbain, Anastasion Vrenios as Raoul, Nicola Ghuiselev as Marcel, Robert El Hage as Saint-Bris, Dominic Cossa as Nevers; conducted by Rochard Bonynge); New York 14 May 1969 (concert) (with Beverley Sills as Marguerite de Valois, Angeles Gulin as Valentine, Kay Cred as Urbain, Tony Poncet as Raoul, Justino Diaz as Marcel, Joshua Hecht as Saint-Bris, Thomas Jamerson as Nevers; conducted by Reynald Giovaninetti, heavily cut, issed on CD). The most important were the legendary production at La Scala Milan 1962 (issued on several versions of LP and CD), and the concert performance in the Royal Albert Hall London 1968 which led to the first proper recording of the whole opera by Decca (on LP 1970 and CD 1991); the score is uncut, and the recording remains definitive (with Joan Sutherland as Marguerite de Valois, Martina Arroyo as Valentine, Huguette Tourangeau as Urbain, Anastasios Vrenios as Raoul, Nicolai Ghiuselev as Marcel, Gabriel Bacquier as Saint-Bris, Dominic Cossa as Nevers; conducted by Richard Bonynge). Franco Corelli and Tony Poncet were the significant singers most associated with Raoul in this period. Corelli’s heroic tenor won him a great following, but he was not able to manage the more florid dimension of the role, and left Sutherland to sing solo in Raoul’s duet with the Queen. Poncet’s vocal attributes were unrelentlingly sterling and heroic, but with knowledge and experience of the French traditions associated with the role. His power and evenness of tone were indisputable. The choice of Anastasios Vrenios to sing Raoul has remained controversial, but Bonynge more than any other conductor understands the bel canto heritage, and Vrenios, even if not a heroic voice, at least had the ability to sing all the notes with extensive use of head voice, voix mixte and falsetto.

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In the 1970s: Vienna 17 February 1971 (concert) (with Rita Shane as Marguerite de Valois, Enriqueta Tarrès as Valentine, Jeanette Scovotti as Urbain, Nicolai Gedda as Raoul, Justino Diaz as Marcel, Dimiter Petkov as SaintBris, Pedro Farres as Nevers; conducted by Ernst Märzendorfer, heavily cut and issued both on LP and various CD versions); Barcelona 25 November 1971 (with Enriqueta Tarrès as Valentine; Christine Eda-Pierre as Marguerite de Valois, Angeles Chamorro as Urbain, Barnabé Marti/Angelo Lo Forese as Raoul, Justino Diaz as Marcel, Manfred Schenk as Saint-Bris, Mario D’Anna as Nevers; conducted by Ino Savini); Toulouse 1972; Los Angeles 1973; Leipzig 1974; Kiev 1974; Gelsenkirchen 1974; New Orleans 25 November 1975 (with Rita Shane as Marguerite de Valois, Marisa Galvany as Valentine, Susanne Marsee as Urbain, Enrico Di Giuseppe as Raoul, Paul Plishka as Marcel, Dominic Cossa as Nevers, Claude Corbeil as Saint-Bris; conducted by Knud Andersson); Paris 1 December 1976 (studio concert, with Louise Lebrun as Marguerite de Valois, Kathie Clarke as Valentine, Della Jones as Urbain, Alain Vanzo as Raoul, Will Roy as Marcel, Jules Bastin as SaintBris, Robert Massard as Nevers; conducted by Henri Gallois, issued on CD). Alain Vanzo, associated particularly with the lighter, more lyrical aspects of the French vocal tradition, lacked a certain heroic resolve, but with Nicolai Gedda, the supreme lyrical stylist, provided a pleasing and informed interpretation of Raoul. Hitherto the most fundamental scenic exposition of the intellectual context of the historical opera was the production by Joachim Herz for Leipzig in 1974. The singers’ contribution here did not match the scenic realization, however (with Jika Kovariková as Valentine, Hildegard Bondzio as Marguerite de Valois, Ruth Asmus as Urbain, Armin Ude as Raoul, Paul Glahn as Marcel, Rolf Tomaszewski as Saint-Bris and Achim Wichert as Nevers; conducted by H. J. Leipold)). The production was based on a new German translation and edition undertaken by Böhmel and Zimmermann, including material not published by Meyerbeer (including the cut first scene of act 3 and Marcel’s Monologue at the centre of act 3). The same edition was used at Gelsenkirchen in 1976 (with Sabine Hass as Valentine, and Ljubomir Romansky conducting). In the 1980s: Another attempt at realizing the preeminent theatricality of this work was made by John Dew for the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 14 May1987, although the drastic cuts to act 3 meant that this production was seriously flawed (with Pilar Lorengar as Valentine, Angela Denning as

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Fig. 92 Franco Corelli (Raoul) Fig. 93 Joan Sutherland & Giulietta Simonato (The Queen & Valentine)

Fig. 94 Joan Sutherland (Marguerite de Valois)

Fig. 95 Nicolai Ghiaurov (Marcel)

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Marguerite de Valois, Andrea Andonian as Urbain, Richard Leech as Raoul, Jan-Hendrik Rootering as Marcel, Victor von Halem as Saint-Bris, Lenus Carlson as Nevers; conducted by Jesus Lopez Cobos). It was revived in 1991 and 998. This Berlin Opera production thoroughly embedded the narrative into an indeterminate, condensed twentieth-century setting, focusing particularly on the divided Berlin and the Wall as the principal symbolic vectors. While this approach has its own pitfalls, such as the silent “pre-overture” which proposes an unsubtle comparison between the oppression of the Catholics and the persecution of the Jews in wartime Germany, it did not detract from what was a robust, memorable and surprisingly popular production (as testified by the 2001 and 2011 DVD reissues of the 1991 tape). Richard Leech, after the peerless Nicolai Gedda, emerged at this time as the tenor best suited vocally for Raoul, with a pleasing timbre, a certain heroic strength of projection, and a fine understanding of the correct singing traditions. Other performances were in Sydney 24 July/5 August 1981 (with Marilyn Zschau as Valentine, Joan Sutherland as Marguerite de Valois, Anne-Maree McDonald as Urbain, Anson Austin/Richard Greager as Raoul, Clifford Grant as Marcel, Bruce Martin as Saint-Bris, John Pringle as Nevers; conducted by Richard Bonynge); Essen 18 June 1988 (with Gabriele Lechner as Valentine, Jane Giering-de Haan as Marguerite de Valois, Melody Arist-Kielisch as Urbain, Robert Durné as Raoul, Joachim Maaß-Geiger as Marcel, Hans Nowack as Saint-Bris, Tord Wallström as Nevers; conducted by Robert Maxym); Montpellier October 1988 (with Françoise Pollet as Valentine, Ghylaine Raphanel as Marguerite de Valois, Danielle Borst as Urbain, Richard Leech as Raoul, Nicola Ghiuselev as Marcel, Boris Martinovich as Saint-Bris, Gilles Cachemaille as Nevers; conducted by Cyril Diederich; this performance to open the new Théâtre Berlioz, was recorded by the Erato label on CD 1988 and re-issued 2013). In the 1990s: Sydney 1990 (Joan Sutherland as Marguerite de Valois, Amanda Thane as Valentine, Suzanne Johnson as Urbain, Anson Austin as Raoul, Clifford Grant as Marcel, John Wegner as Saint-Bris, John Pringle as Nevers; produced by Lofti Mansouri, conducted by Richard Bonynge; the performance, commemorating the retirement of Sutherland from the stage, was issued on VHS 1991, CD 2011 and DVD 2013); Montpellier 27 November 1990 (with Nelly Miricioiu as Valentine, Ghylaine Raphanel as Marguerite de Valois, Danielle Borst as Urbain, Gregory Kunde as Raoul, John Macurdy as Marcel, Jean-Philippe Courtis as Saint-Bris, Marc Barrard as Nevers; conducted by Cyril Diederich); London Royal Opera

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House November 1991 (with Nelly Miricioiu as Valentine, Judith Howarth as Marguerite de Valois, Richard Leech/Bonaventura Bottone as Raoul, Gwynne Howell as Marcel, Richard van Allen as Saint-Bris; conducted by David Atherton); Berlin Deutsche Oper September 1991 (with Lucy Peacock as Valentine, Angela Denning as Marguerite de Valois, Camille Capasso as Urbain, Richard Leech as Raoul, Martin Blasius as Marcel, Hartmut Welker as Saint-Bris; with Stefan Soltesz conducting); Novara 26 February 1993 (with Alida Barbasini as Marguerite de Valois, Katia Ricciarelli as Valentine, Franziska Severin as Urbain, Giuseppe Morino as Raoul, Nicola Ghiuselev as Marcel, Maurizio Muraro as Saint-Bris, Giovanni Meoni as Nevers; conducted by Marcello Rota) for the reopening of the elegantly restored Teatro Coccia, Les Huguenots being the same opera which inaugurated the theatre under Toscanini; Ljubljana 1997; Dubrovnik 1998; Litomysl (Czech Republic) 1998; Berlin 1998 (with Elisabeth-Maria Wachutka as Valentine, Alexandra von der Wett as Marguerite de Valois, Ulrike Helzel as Urbain, Chris Merritt as Raoul, Reinhard Hagen as Marcel, Friedmann Kunder as Saint-Bris, Lenus Carlson as Nevers; conducted by Stefan Soltesz); Bilbão 1999 (with Ana Maria Sanchez as Valentine, Tatiana Davidova as Marguerite de Valois, Vivica Genaux as Urbain, Marcello Giordani as Raoul, Philippe Kahn as Marcel, Giacomo Prestia as Saint-Bris, Jean-Luc Chaignaud as Nevers; conducted by Antenello Allemandi, for the inauguration of the new opera house). In the 2000s: New York, Carnegie Hall, 23 April 2001 (concert) (with Krassimira Stoyanova as Valentine, Olga Makarina as Marguerite de Valois, Maria Zifchak as Urbain, Marcello Giordani as Raoul, Luiz-Ottavio Farina as Marcel, Gary Simpson as Saint-Bris, Kamel Boutros as Nevers; conducted by Eve Queler); Martina Franca Festival della Valle d’Istria February 2002 (with Annalisa Raspagliosi as Valentine, Désirée Rancatore as Marguerite de Valois, Sara Allegretta as Urbain, Warren Mok as Raoul, Seun Won Kang as Marcel, Luca Grassi as Saint-Bris, Marcin Bronikowski as Nevers; conducted by Renato Palumbo, recorded by Dynamic), a production that again likened the religious intolerance of the sixteenth century to Nazi persecution of the Jews; Regensburg 2002 (concert); Frankfurt Alte Oper 26 November 2002 (concert, with Annalisa Raspagliosi as Valentine, Diana Damrau as Marguerite de Valois, Sara Allegretta as Urbain, Marcello Giordani as Raoul, Seun Won Kang as Marcel, Frode Olsen as Saint-Bris, Zeljko Lucic as Nevers; conducted by Guido Johannes Rumstadt); Metz Opéra-Théâtre 26 June

16. Performance in the Twentieth Century

Fig. 96 Tony Poncet (Raoul)

Fig. 98 Richard Leech (Raoul)

Fig. 97 Nicolai Gedda (Raoul)

Fig. 99 Pilar Lorengar (Valentine)

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2004 (with Aleka Cela as Valentine, Sally Silver as Marguerite de Valois, Hjödis Thebault as Urbain, Rockwell Blake as Raoul, Philippe Kahn as Marcel, Jean-Philippe Marlière as Saint-Bris, Ivan Ludlow as Nevers; conducted by Jeremy Silver); Liège Opéra Royal de Wallonie 28 June 2005 (with Barbara Ducret as Valentine, Annick Massis as Marguerite de Valois, Marie-Belle Sandis as Urbain, Gilles Ragon as Raoul, Branislav Jatic as Marcel, Philippe Rouillon as Saint-Bris, Patrice Berger as Nevers; conducted by Jacques Lacombe); Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson (New York), 31 July, 2,5,7August 2009 (with Alexandra Deshorties as Valentine, Erin Morley as Marguerite de Valois, Marie Lenormand as Urbain, Michael Spyres as Raoul, Peter Volpe as Marcel, John Marcus Bindel as Saint-Bris, Andrew Schroeder as Nevers; conducted by Leon Botstein), a remarkably integrated production; In the 2010s: Madrid Teatro Real 1 March 2011 (concert, with Annick Massis as Marguerite de Valois, Juliana Di Giacomo as Valentine, Karine Deshayes as Urbain, Eric Cutler as Raoul, Dmitry Ulyanov as Marcel, Marco Spotti as Saint-Bris, Dimitris Tiliakos as Nevers; conduced by Renato Palumbo; Brussels La Monnaie, June 2011 (with Marlis Petersen as Marguerite de Valois, Mireille Delunsch as Valentine, Yulia Lezhneva as Urbain, Eric Cutler as Raoul, Jérôme Varnier as Marcel, Philippe Rouillon as Saint-Bris, Jean-François Lapointe as Nevers; produced by Olivier Py, conducted by Marc Minkowski ), a vivid and sometimes controversial production, using original elements from the critical edition of the score, and securing for La Monnaie the Opernwelt Prize as the best production of the year; Strasbourg Opéra National du Rhin, March 2012 (with Laura Aikin as Marguerite de Valois, Mireille Delunsch as Valentine, Karine Deshayes as Urbain, Gregory Kunde as Raoul, Wojtek Smilek as Marcel, Philippe Rouillon as Saint-Bris, Marc Barrard as Nevers; produced by Olivier Py, conducted by Daniele Callegari). Marcello Giordani’s assumption of Raoul saw a return to a more robust vocal quality and spinto projection in the Lauri-Volpi/Corelli mould. Gregory Kunde and Eric Cutler, more in the manner of Gedda/Leech, have emerged as the most prominent protagonists of this very special and demanding role.

17. THE ICONOGRAPHY

Les Beautés de l’Opéra The most famous illustrations for Les Huguenots are associated with the fame and mystique generated by the opera in the years immediately after its premiere. It became synonymous with the power and beauty of the repertoire and presentation of the Paris Opéra, especially in a series of line drawings prepared for the publication of Théophile Gautier’s Les Beautés de l’Opéra (Paris, 1845). These simple sketches present a foreground of some detail with a background more delicately etched but most evocative and atmospheric in carefully chosen perspective.

The Frontispiece The romance of past times, and the more sobering elements of the brutal realism of the age and narrative, are captured in the decorative frontispiece. The arching design presents a suit of armour (a full cuirass surmounted by a plumed helmet) to the left and a collection of arms to the right (an elongated musket with crossed sword and pike). The design frames a solid rock as centrepiece, that bears the synonymous title of the religious movement and the opera, a symbol of their immovable faith in their cause. The armour hangs over the rock, its shadow covering the first letters of Huguenots in an almost possessive collocation. The very nature of armour is defensive, protective. It is immediately adjoined by an ornate powder loader, lying on the ground, pointing away from the rock. The top of the rock is arched over by a great gnarled and knotted branch that tapers away to the right where it links the armour with the arms, as the musket is tied to the branch by a thick frayed rope. The antique detail of the weapons, especially the ornately carved butt that fans out to form the right hand strut of the design, parallelling the angle of the armour to the upper left, constitutes a register of images speaking of former warfare and violence. The nature of the arms is aggressive, an image of war.Now they are frozen in time, the hushed stillness and inertia a memento of former days, olden times of great trouble. The armour lying diagonally on the rocks is also astride a pike that points transversely, almost accusingly, across to the collection of weapons. Its deadly sharpened point is at the very centre of the

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Fig. 100 Les Beautés de l’Opéra, cover

Fig. 101 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 1 Frontispiece

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design. The buoyant plume decorating the helmet and the sash swirling around the sword with its rich plaited chords and fulsome tassels, adds sense of movement and decorative richness to the scene. It is perhaps an icon of the Wars of Religion, with the defensive Huguenot armour, mute and empty, a metonym of the heroic resistance to the murderous Catholic onslaught of arms on St Bartholomew’s Eve. Another central detail remains to be considered. At the upper centre right, emerging from behind the great Huguenot rock, and under the dead branch, grow some flowers, like great lilies. If the unity of faith depicted in the withered limb is dead, some new life and hope is nevertheless in evidence. Perhaps this is an emblem of the love of Valentine and Raoul that rises above partisan hatred and strife, and affirms a better future? Each act of the opera is represented in the sequence of illustrations: two scenes each from acts 1-3, and three scenes each from acts 4-5.

The Scenes from Act 1 The moment featured from Scene 1 is Marcel’s Battle Song. It takes place in the Comte de Nevers’s chateau in Touraine during a morning party for his friends. At the back can be seen the open balcony leading to his garden. The scene should be suffused in the bright morning light of late summer. The party of noble and somewhat cynical gallants is seated at two tables where they have just sung their great Orgie, celebrating the joys of the table and the excitement of companionship. They are all turned, with a lazy nonchalance to look at Marcel performing his provocative song glorifying Protestant prowess and disdain of the superstitious Catholics. His sober dress and big wide-brimmed Puritan hat distinguishes him from the elegant feathered caps of the nobles, legs carelessly extended and holding their filled goblets. Raoul, mortified by his retainer’s social gaucherie, sits apart on the right, his back to the gathering in embarrassed disassociation. The second scene shows Raoul’s distressed amazement at espying the mysterious lady of his romantic encounter, in secret colloquy with Nevers in the adjoining chapel of the chateau. An oriel window opens from the salon to provide a private perspective into the oratory, its secret nature emphasized by the curtain that has been pulled aside to reveal the lozenge panes of the window vantage. Raoul’s surprise and agitation at seeing his muse in apparent intimate involvement with the worldly Count are conveyed in his arms flung back, and his legs akimbo. The amused and indifferent Catholic bonviveurs are conveyed in the central grouping. Once again Protestant individualism is projected iconographically against the communal grouping of the Catholics.

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Fig. 102 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 2 Act 1 The Orgie

Fig. 103 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 3 Act 1 The Oriel Window

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The Scenes from Act 2 The scenes from this act are dominated by the stately and very romantic images of the famous Chateau of Chenonceaux on the River Loire. This becomes the symbol of the search for reconciliation and peace by Marguerite de Valois, the daughter of Catherine de Medici, who is herself to marry the Huguenot scion Henri of Navarre. The first illustration shows the famous Scène de Bandeau, when Raoul is brought blindfolded to an interview with the Queen so that she can discuss her plan of reconciliation with him. Marguerite dominates the left foreground in her long beautiful dress, on two raised steps, her gaze directed quizzically at the new arrival escorted into her presence by the young page Urbain who, holding Raoul’s left arm, makes up the righthand focus of the grouping. Raoul is captured in the moment when the blindfold is lifted, and he is bedazzled by the unexpected mystery and beauty of the scene that greets him. His posture is similar to that in act 1 when astonished as he looked through the oriel window: legs slightly splayed, arms opened in amazement. Marguerite is overshadowed by a huge imposing tree, its size and foliage depicted in rich detail. It is a symbol of stateliness, age, tradition and natural vitality. When the tree is coupled with the pot of blooming flowers just behind the Queen, she is identified as the sovereign of a pastoral realm bespeaking peace, freshness, and the forces of replenishment and growth. The whole is dominated by the backdrop depicting the roofs, chimneys, turrets and pinnacles of the royal Chateau of Chenonceaux. This symbol of monarchical power and prestige rises gloriously above a rich foreground of massed trees and shrubs, and reinforces the pastoral emphasis of the scene, and hence the beneficent intentions of the Queen as an agent of peace and reconciliation. The second illustration provides a much wider and more dramatic perspective, moving from the intimate colloquy between the Queen and Raoul to the great public ceremony of the Vow undertaken by both parties in cooperation with the Queen’s plans for peace. It captures the epic qualities of this dramatic act that begins in idyll and ends in bellicose confrontation. The whole is dominated by the grandiose staircase to the right, sweeping in a great curve from the heights on the right, in a monumental curve down to the level foreground, linking the regal fairytale chateau in the background, to the idyllic garden below. This pastoral retreat is now the plying field of harsh political realities. Descending the stairs, and largely assembled at the base, are the congregated majesty of the most important nobility of the land, the arbiters of its fate. On the left we see again the Queen standing on her dais, this time with her throne behind

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Fig. 104 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 4 Act 2 The Blindfold

Fig. 105 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 5 Act 2 The Vow

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her, a metonym of her royal authority. The female members of the Court are gathered to her left, with Valentine, the Catholic kingpin of her great matrimonial plan of peace, to the fore. In the centre is the dynamic trio of the Comte de Saint Bris, Raoul, and the Comte de Nevers. Their arms are raised in affirming the promise of peace and cooperation, the Huguenot Raoul’s (in the middle) the highest in his idealism. This will all soon be shattered when Raoul rejects Valentine as a marriage partner, because of his misapprehensions about her probity. The vast ensemble of confrontation and stress will shatter Marguerite de Valois’s idyll for ever.

The Scenes from Act 3 The two illustrations from Act 3 capture the febrile atmosphere of the growing religio-political crisis. Both have a more concentrated focus. The first is from the opening moments of the act which depict the busy scenes on the Pré-aux-Clercs on a Sunday afternoon. A cross-section of the Parisian public is presented in the innocent pursuits of pleasure. Among them are a group of Huguenot soldiers who have escorted Admiral Coligny to Paris. They sit drinking outside a tavern, a counterpart to the Orgie for the Catholic noblemen in act 1. But whereas that is a genuine hedonism, a celebration of bacchic pleasures, the Huguenot drinking song is an altogether different affair. The curse of ideological intransigence taints even the joys of this happy occasion, and like Marcel’s reproving presence at the Catholic party in act 1, so here the pleasures of the table are turned into an opportunity for religious provocation and bellicose defiance. The drinking song becomes a military tattoo, the Rataplan of the Huguenot soldiery. The picture presents a close, packed group, reminiscent of the Nightwatch by Rembrandt. To the left their officer Bois-Rose, standing erect, waves his cap. The far right of the grouping is shaped by the elongated tavern table at which two figures are seated. In the centre is the bold sergeant, defiantly akimbo, his right arm holding the goblet aloft. The background is formed by the clustered figures of at least twelve of the company in attentive attendance. The helmet and plumed breastplate of the sergeant remind one of the frontispiece, where the empty armour forms a vital element of the iconography of defence and violence. Here it is decisively linked to the Huguenot cause. This pictorial element is further strengthened by the broad-brimmed hats of Puritanical preference. The second image shows the incremental growth of the partisanship, conspiracy and violence. The depiction is of the famous Duel Septet, where Raoul and his two seconds engage with Saint-Bris and his supporters, while Marcel watches on. Marcel has been secretly warned by Valentine

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of the treacherous attempt that will be made on Raoul’s life by ambush. The shadowy, noctural scene presents the confusion and chaos of the internecine tragedy: amidst the bobbing plumes and swirling cloaks, with the crossed swords of the duel mirroring above the criss-crossing of the postured legs beneath, the two parties are indistinguishable in their allegiance. Only the presence of a broad-brimmed hat suggests the Protestants to the right. Marcel with his warning admonitions, is not depicted. Only the lightly sketched figure on the far right suggests the approach of the ambuscade intended to murder Raoul. All is set for the major confrontation of the warring factions.

Fig. 106 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 6 Act 3 The Tavern (Rataplan)

Fig. 107 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 7 Act 3 The Duel

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The Scenes from Act 4 Acts 4 & 5 that see the crisis carried to its tragic denouement and conclusion have three vignettes apiece. Those from act 4 depict the Conspiracy and Blessing of the Daggers: at the right three figures form an aggressive grouping, swords drawn and pointing aloft, reminiscent of the hopeful scene of the Vow in act 2. Now the vow is turned on its head in the murderous plot of St Bartholomew’s Eve. The acquiescent followers are grouped around the edges of the picture, arms raised in frenzy and weapons aloft. In the centre is another group of three figures, this time in the robes of the clergy. The dominant figure holds out his arms in a gesture usually associated with consecration. Here, however, it is chillingly applied to the blessing of weapons to be used in a murderous cause, a profane, even blasphemous, perversion of the meaning of prayer and blessing. The other two pictures illustrate the stretta of the famous Love Duet. Valentine, having declared her love for Raoul despite its adulterous implication, tries to detain him from the violence breaking out in the nocturnal streets. As Raoul looks out of the window on the horror unfolding below, Valentine tries to hold him back, his arms raised (as in acts 1 and 2), but now in incredulity and grief. His posture, falling on his right knee, intensifies his supreme distress. The last scene follows on almost immediately: Valentine has fallen faint, and lies prostrate against a low chair, mute and crushed. Raoul, his arms now raised to his eyes and his head flung back, his body lurching forwards in convulsive movement, his elegant cap fallen to the floor, must tear himself from her to go and warn his coreligionists of the horror breaking around them. The higher voice of his public duty must take precedence over the intense passion and anguish of his private love. The scene depicts the rich furnishings and enclosed beauty of the room in Valentine’s home—an image of the private world of the lovers as opposed to the open and public one of the world outside where society is reverting to barbarism in the name of faith and allegiance, where ideas are more important than other human beings.

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Fig. 108 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 8 Act 4 The Blessing of the Daggers

Fig. 109 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 9 Act 4 The Tocsin

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Fig. 110 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 10 Act 4 The Parting

The Scenes from Act 5 The vignettes from act 5 capture the tragic sorrow and sublime grandeur of the drama in its last terrible stages. The first scene presents a scene of breadth, life and light, in the depiction of the marriage festivities of Marguerite de Valois and Henri of Navarre. The foreground shows the guests in the gracious swirling movements of a dance, the bridal couple elegant and authoritative in the centre, the other guests in various postures of the courtly ritual. Along the back, forming the upper panel of the illustration, are the numerous pillars and perspective of the salon in the Hôtel de Nesle, the central chandeliers eliciting a image of light and brilliance. This is the urban counterpart of the rural idyll of Chenonceaux, the dance integrating the diverse assembly and consecrating the celebration of marriage, the perfect symbol of the pastoral and its implications of unity and peace. All will again be torn asunder by the bells announcing the massacre in the streets. The second scene presents the same theme, but in inverse. It is shows the marriage of Valentine and Raoul, not in festive splendour, but secretly in the dead of night, and in the face of impending doom. The wider beautiful space of the Hotel is now constricted to a churchyard, narrow

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with the looming pillars and fan-vaulting of a cemetery with its fallen gravestones. The centre is filled with the triplex image of Marcel tall, dark, erect, his black hat in place, his right arm magisterially extended as he witnesses the vows and imparts a nuptial blessing on the couple giving themselves to each other. Valentine is on the left, on her knees in attitude of prayer as she murmurs her assent and receives the benediction. Raoul on the right, alert to danger on one knee, is bareheaded and wrapped in this solemn moment of assent and defiance in the face of death. The last scene is the mute desolate moment of tragedy and death in a vast empty space. In the right foreground Valentine, Raoul and Marcel lie dying, shot down by the Catholic assassins headed by Saint-Bris who discovers he has killed his own child. Valentine lies across the prone body of Raoul, whose arms are stretched out in cruciform, underscoring associations with the martyrdom espoused in the Grand Trio after the wedding in extremis. Marcel lies further away, his sword raised in a last defiant gesture. He is in the centre, his left arm raised in parallel with the musket he holds in his right hand, his fellow murderers behind him, still pursuing their victims in the distance. The iconography of the frontispiece is again brought into play and assumes a new symbolic pertinence. The whole of Paris seems to look on silently, as indicated in the lightly sketched view of the city. This is fraught with tragic irony as the towers of Notre Dame and the spires of other churches are depicted—all signs of worship and dedication, places of refuge and promises of peace now defiled. To the far left the Queen appears with her Page, helpless onlookers as the carnage unfolds, all goodness disregarded, the quest for peace destroyed. Only love and sacrifice remain as countersigns of human nobility and hope.

Fig. 111 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 11 Act 5 The Ball

17. The Iconography

Fig. 112 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 12 Act 5 The Nuptial Benediction

Fig. 113 Les Beautés de l’Opéra 13 Act 5 The Finale

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Oeuvres Illustrées de Eugène Scribe The collected editions of Scribe’s works that appeared during his lifetime are characterized by sequences of striking illustrations. 1) In the first set of illustrations for the 1841 edition of Scribe’s works, Tony Johannot’s pictures capture something of the drama of the scenes and their implications. (Lithographie de Blanchard, d’après les dessins de Tony Johannot, éxécuté pour l’édition des Oeuvres Complètes d’Eugène Scribe [Paris: Furne, A. Andre, 1840-1841].) 2) The later versions of the same scenes for the 1854 edition of Scribe’s works have modifications of the images, presumably Alfred Johannot’s adaptation of Tony’s 1840 drawings. These are stipple etchings. (Lithographie de C. Roux et G. Maurand d’après les dessins de Tony et Alfred Johannot pour l’édition des Oeuvres Illustrées de Eugène Scribe [Paris: Vialat et Cie, Editeurs, Maresq et Cie, Libraires, 1854] 129, 137.)

A Valentine Cycle The series of four stipple drawings done for Scribe’s illustrated works shows an interesting unity of technique and theme, featuring as they do Valentine in all of the scenes. They effectively constitute a small cycle depicting the dramatic experience from the heroine’s perspective. The illustration for Act 2 Scene 2 presents Queen Marguerite de Valois and Valentine in their brief colloquy before the advent of Raoul. The Queen encourages Valentine as the time approaches for the unveiling of her bold plan of reconciliation. This is the first time Valentine is seen in the story, and the picture, a full length presentation of the two women, captures the diffident elegance of the moment. The Queen on the left gazes solicitously at the young Catholic noblewoman on the right, her eyes turned down meekly. Both women are presented in the flowing finery of their beautiful gowns, with their full skirts, voluminous puffed sleeves, and cascading veils, the Queen’s discreetly surmounted by a small crown. The serene picture has a tender delicacy, and captures something of the loving-kindness represented in the royal plan for peace and the sacrifice that Valentine is prepared to embark upon in her cooperation.

17. The Iconography

Fig. 114 Act 2 The Queen and Valentine

Fig. 115 Act 4 scene 1 Valentine alone

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Fig. 116 Act 4 scene 7 Valentine & Raoul

Fig. 117 Act 5 scene 2 trio Marcel-Raoul-Valentine

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The next scene, for Act 4 scene 1, shows the cost that Valentine has had to pay. She is seen alone in her new husband’s house, after her marriage that has followed on her public humiliation in being rejected by Raoul. The contrast between the two pictures captures this change in fortune and hope. The full courtly splendour of Valentine’s attire has given way to a simple dress without headdress and veil. Valentine’s bare head with its plain combed back hair creates a simplicity and unadorned directness, a vulnerability emphasized by a sense of forlornness and sadness. She is seated with her hands folded on her lap, her head bowed forward in an attitude of mute sorrow. The richness of her surroundings is suggested by the ornate chair, the rich folds of overhanging drapery and the heavy cushions behind her back and supporting her feet. They all provide a foil to the sad hopelessness of her disappointment and new life. The last images focus on the two most inconographical moments of the opera—the act 4 love duet and the trio of the last scene of the opera. The moment of the massacre in the streets, with Raoul looking out of the window in horror, and Valentine trying to detain him, is the single most famous scene in Les Huguenots. In this cycle it is more static than the other depictions: Raoul stands at the centre in his dark clothes, his right arm extended as he points out of the tall casement to the terrible events in the street. In his left hand he holds his sword at the ready, a symbol of his call to action and growing resolution. Valentine’s depiction carries the series of depictions further forward: The stately poise of act 2 has moved through the seated figure of loneliness and loss in early act 4 until now she is on her knees at Raoul’s side, as she desperately tries to hold him back, one hand holding his left wrist, the other stretching up to pull at his shoulder. Her head is tilted back in anxious pleading, the white dress torn from her shoulder in the force of her actions, her neatly arranged hair now falling as long tresses in disarray down her back, with the folds of her gown now emphasizing the physical effort of her kneeling posture, as if she has been pulled along by her efforts to hold him back. The furnishings of the room again mutely frame the fervent scene of human passion, the exquisitely carved furniture a correlative of static indifference, with the rich curtains almost shielding, blocking from view the terrible scenes Raoul is witnessing, and the music is describing for us. The last scene in this Valentine Cycle is the hallowed moment of the nuptial benediction in act 5 scene 3. The scene is grandiose and pathetic in conception: the background this time is powerfully depicted and overwhelming in impact. The wall of the church with its oriel buttress and arched stained glass windows looms over the whole scene, to emphasize the deeply religious theme of the story. The arched entrance to the right

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and the wooden gate to the left perhaps suggest the different denominational paths of the protagonists, who have nonetheless been led to the same position in life, the same moment in time. This is a moment of reconciliation, and moment of unity and peace, a countersign to the conflict, division and mayhem of St Bartholomew’s Eve and the Wars of Religion generally. The evocative background frames the centrepiece, the focus of human interest: the marriage of Valentine and Raoul in the hour of death. The grouping is for the three participants, the consenting couple and the witness. In the foreground is Valentine to the left and Raoul to the right: she in her white dress, on her knees, her head bowed, her hair loose and flowing down her back, just as she was in the duet; he in his dark clothes, half draped in a cloak, half alert to the present danger, on his left knee, supporting Valentine’s extended right hand in union. They are presided over by Marcel who stands behind them, one hand on the shoulders of each, a strong looming figure in his severe clothes, his grey hair and beard emphasizing his age, but more his venerableness and the dignity of his officiating function. He looms over them strongly, an embodiment of a religious ideal, his figure in fact forming the central focus and axis of the design, filling the exact centre of the picture, binding the figures in a pyramidal pattern that has trinitarian resonance. The image becomes an icon of peace and devotion, a moment of dedication and blessing, an affirmation of love and devotion in the moment of approaching death, of light and life amidst darkness and death.

Three Paintings by Contemporary Historical Artists Camille Roqueplan The fame of the act 4 love duet inspired pictorial response from two artists working at the same period. The first of these “Valentine et Raoul”, by Camille Roqueplan (1803-1855), thought to date from Paris in the year of the premiere, is done in oils (275 x 195 cm), and hangs in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. It has become, more than any other artefact, the iconic metonym for the opera and its message. Valentine, and Raoul, in the delusory dream of their mutual confession, have expressed their love in the extended moving duet. The alarm bells of Paris, the arranged signal of the Catholic attack on the Protestants, have now announced the horror of St Bartholomew’s Night. The gleam of flames penetrates the darkness, glimmering through the casement of the small room in Nevers’s house.

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Fig. 118 Act 4 duet Roqueplan (6 variants)

Despairingly, Valentine seeks to detain Raoul who wants to rush away to warn those in danger. Valentine is shown collapsing from the tension and distress as her beloved seeks to leap from the window to fight for his faith. The picture is focused in the central grouping of the lovers, Raoul solidly at the centre, strong and dominating, solemn in his dark garments, his

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shaded gaze fixed intransigently in profile on the distant flames gleaming through the window. His left arm and leg are extended outwards in parallel, tense with kinetic energy, frozen in a moment of propulsion, his left hand clutching his sword drawn for combat, at the ready, his leather boot reinforcing the strength of his decision. His right arm pulls back the rich cascading folds of the dark blue curtain, his cloak slipping as he moves impulsively. Raoul’s central dominance and moral strength is reinforced by the architectural device of the pillar at the far left of the painting, ornately beautiful and but very strong in the fivefold segmentation and plinthing of its structure. This central axis and left border frame a longitudinal rectangle full of a mollient angularity, as the falling folds of the curtain extend downwards and flow into the fainting form of Valentine. She fills the lower left foreground of the design, growing out of the drapery that she is trying to hold back with her extended right arm. Her left arm is held up above her head, and towards Raoul, in a gesture of flailing detainment, her attempts to stop him falling away in her faint. Her collapsing left leg shapes the rich plenitude of her beautiful dress in its rich satin folds, extending the folds of the curtain to curve and flow out into the centre foreground of the picture, a fluid emblem of Valentine’s weakness and vulnerability. This is emphasized in her upturned face, already falling backwards as she gazes imploringly at her beloved. The whole scene is an exercise in chiaroscuro, with the darkness of the night framing the dull colours of the curtains and Raoul’s dark clothes, and splashing into light on Valentine’s ensemble with its orange shades and rich embroideries, its exquisite cut revealing her white and exposed chest, open throat and pleading half face thrown back. The fullness of the design, the colours, the profiles and gestures, clothing and demeanour of the figures, tell a tale of deep emotion couched in a moral emblematicism.

François-Joseph-Aimé de Lemud While Roqueplan’s painting is characterized by a serene statuesque symbolism, the same scene rendered in watercolours by François-JosephAimé de Lemud (1817-1887) is very different. Lemud was famous for his illustrations for literary works, like Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris and lithographs of national events, like “The Return to France” [of Napoleon’s body] (1841). Lamud’s response to Les Huguenots was the aquarelle “Duo Valentine et Raoul à l’acte IV”. The mood and style are quite different from the Baroque sumptuousness of Roqueplan. The rectangular scene is dominated centre to left by the familiar coupling of Raoul

17. The Iconography

Fig. 119 Act 4 duet Lamud

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seeking to flee and Valentine trying to detain him. The casement is much more prominent, a large lozenge rectangle within the overall design, through which can be seen not only the gleam of fire, but the dark rooftops of Paris and the sinister scudding clouds of the nocturnal skyscape etched by moonlight. This perspective on the far left is hauntingly oppressive, and immediately captures the eye even more than the central figures. This is tragedy about the city, the nation, more than the individuals. Raoul in his dark clothes, framed by the long open window, has his right hand upon the sill as he looks out into the night of horror. As with Roqueplan, Raoul is seen in strong profile, bent determinedly towards the casement, clutching his sword at the ready in his left hand, his cloak cradled as he readies himself to jump. Valentine is on her knees before him, her dress in folds on the harsh stone flagstones of the floor, and completely occupying the centre of the design. The image she conveys is very different from the earlier Roqueplan design. Valentine’s dress is white and bright and she has her back to the viewer, holding on to Raoul with her left hand, while her right arm and pointing finger gesture diagonally upwards, through the darkness to a niched statue above, at the very top of the picture, hardly noticed at first, but in fact dominating the scene. The longitudinal window and shutter at the left is reflected in the two oblong doors of this shrine holding the Madonna and Child, traditional images of the Catholic faith. The shrine is delicately illumined from the light coming in through the window, and is given extra strength by its plinth and the vaulting below that, and discernible through the gloom. Significantly, Raoul has his back to the sacred image, while Valentine tries to bring him back to the old values. While she is seen as vulnerable and pleading, she remains a strong and independently forceful moral emblem. The picture lacks the sumptuous sophistication and colour of the more resplendent oils used by Roqueplan, but in its more basic designs and cartoon- like effects, conveys a strength and integrity all its own.

William de Leftwich Dodge Dating from the end of the century is a large coloured lithograph, taken from a vivid painting by the American mural artist William de Leftwich Dodge (1867-1935), “ Les Huguenots, Act III scene v”, an illustration for The Great Operas edited by James W. Buel (Société Universelle Lyrique, 1905). The scene has a smooth directness of design and brilliance of colour that is cartoonesque, with the lilac of Valentine’s dress, and the brilliant oranges, ochres and tans of Raoul’s clothes capturing the focus of attention, and throwing into relief the dulls browns and olives greens of the

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Fig. 120 Act 4 duet Dodge

surrounding interior of Valentine’s chamber. The picture is in two panels, a narrower left-hand section, dominated by a large recessed portrait hanging from the wall—the honourable ancestor of the Comte de Nevers referred to by Valentine’s husband when he rejects any participation in the St Bartholemew’s Day conspiracy. The portrait provides a mute and silent commentary on the frenzy of the main action, and the human folly that has caused it. This frenzy is taking place in the second panel, which takes up the right-hand two-thirds of the design, and is dominated by the huge open window, bordered by the richly draped shutters and ornate casement at the centre. This feature frames the key figures of Valentine and Raoul, captured in a moment of frozen energy. Raoul has his right knee on the broad sill, and his right hand clutches the casement, as he readies himself to jump into the street. His left arm embraces Valentine, and his face in profile is turned lovingly to her. Valentine is depicted standing, her right arm extended upwards to hold Raoul’s neck, her half-profile head thrown back, her body beginning to fail in the drama. The overturned chair in the background suggests the agitation of the fraught situation; the crumpled drapery on the chair parallelling the busy furls of Raoul’s cloak as he prepares to leap. Through the open window the indigo night sky is

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sprinkled with stars, shining on in mute elemental indifference to the human excitement and tragedy below.

The Liebig Cards The other famous set of illustrations for Les Huguenots comes from the well-known sets published in the compendious Liebig Card series. The opera series came in groups of six, with all four of Meyerbeer’s grands opéras represented. The set devoted to Les Huguenots shows all the series’ usual concern for clarity of design and brilliance of colour. They make a fascinating comparison with the illustrations for the Beautés de l’Opéra. These line drawings are very sober by comparison, but have an astonishing dynamism of action and atmosphere, despite the medium and its highly focused and selected perspectives, the interplay of detail and impression. The Liebig pictures have a jewel like intensity in the completeness of each vignette. Each scene presents a panorama complete and consistent in size, focus and every detail. The first card shows Raoul presented to the Comte de Nevers, the entrance of Raoul (“Sous le beau ciel”). Nevers is at the centre, the gracious host, and Raoul to the immediate left, bows deferentially. Two groups of Catholic gentlemen look quizzically from both sides, the group at the right already seated at the banqueting table. The scene has a sense of equanimity engendered by the controlling symmetry. The whole is dominated by three big equally spaced arches, the central one of which looks out beyond the salon into the garden beyond where a ball game is being played on the lawns. No fewer than seven recessing perspectives great depth to the scene. The second image presents the Scène de Bandeau, as Raoul is brought blindfolded to Marguerite de Valois. The picture coveys a tremendous sense of space. A great staircase dominates the right hand, sweeping down from a double-arched retaining wall in the upper background to the midforeground, the size and imposing splendour emphasized by the fanning out of the broad balustrades which contain the descending stairs where Raoul can be seen guided by his escorts. The Queen herself is to the left of centre, her arms graciously extended as she attempts her generous plan of peace. The page Urbain and Valentine are diagonally behind her. The focal point of the picture is really the Chateau of Chenonceaux which is in the background, immediately behind the Queen’s head. This symbol of beauty and power is projected in all its glory, dimensions and details clear for all the miniaturization, as its rises effortlessly above the river on its seven

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Fig. 121 The Liebig Cards 1 Act 1 The Party

Fig. 122 The Liebig Cards 2 Act 2 Chenonceaux

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famous arches. Above the castle are the clear skies of the “beau pays de la Touraine”. The pastoral emphasis is strengthened by the ladies and the dog in the front right, by the cascading pots of flowers on each side of the staircase, and most especially by the trees clustered densely around the staircase on the right, along the distant banks of the Loire to overhang the group of ladies on the left. The sense of light and peace is palpable. Nothing could be more different in mood than the scene from act 3, the Duel Septet. Here a nocturnal urban scenario contrasts with the sunlit pursuits, idyll and promises of the first two acts. The great central tree just off centre divides the picture in two, with the Catholic sphere to the left, dominated by the church from where Valentine overhears the plot against Raoul (with its beautiful rose window); and on the right is the Huguenots’ zone, overlooked by the tavern where the Protestant soldiers are lodged (with its lovely timber struts). In the background the River Seine flows silently by, and beyond that can be seen the night silhouette of the Parisian skyline, with its ecclesial spires. The nocturnal mystery is delicatedly etched by the hazy moon just emerging from behind the tavern, and casting shadows in the night light. The human activity seems almost incidental to the scene: the three Catholic contenders stand on their side of the tree, against the chapel; the Huguenots before their tavern, with Raoul under the tree, his arm raised. But it is Marcel in his dark clothes who is the focal point. He is positioned to the right, warning Raoul of the danger that threatens, informed as he has been by “an angel”. The scene captures the thickening textures of treachery and nascent conspiracy. The fourth act has two illustrations like a diptych, one for each of its two key scene complexes. The first depicts the Blessing of the Daggers, with the design conveying the monumentality of conception and inspiration. The imposing interior of the Palais of the Comte de Nevers is recreated in three dimensions, with richly carved pannelling, ceiling rafters, widows and niches all conveying wealth and splendour in the intricacy and detail of the symmetrical designs and geometrical patterning. Two off centre statues are flanked by others to the left and right, the ancestors of the Count whom he refers to in refusing to be a part of the conspiracy to murder. A group of three robed religious dominates the left centre, their arms extended in benediction. They are flanked by groups of conspirators, the larger to the right, all lowering their bared swords downwards in the blessing of weapons. The background presents a serried rank of armed men, with pikes and swords raised before the venerable statuary. The sense of mass resolve and explosive power is palpably conveyed in the design.

17. The Iconography

Fig. 123 The Liebig Cards 3 Act 3 The Duel

Fig. 124 The Liebig Cards 4 Act 4 The Blessing of the Daggers

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The illustrious love duet forms the second wing of the diptych. The panoramic entity of the conspiracy is now focused on the right hand of the bigger scene. The sense of vastness and vulnerability is captured by the rich detail of the great chamber with its ornate hearth, rich pannelling, portraits and gleaming patterned floor. Attention is riveted to the right, where the open window, its glass in rich detailed lozenges, and surrounded by heavy curtains, opens out to a glimpse of the Parisian skyline with a fire blazing. Raoul, his left hand raised to his head in bewildered horror, his legs astride, looks out on the carnage in the streets, as he seeks to disengage himself from the desperate Valentine, white robes flowing, who is on her knees before him, her arm extended up to detain him from his dangerous mission in this archetypal wrenching moment of love versus duty. The last act features the finale, the deaths of Raoul, Valentine and Marcel. We see the three of them in their moment of death at the far left, Raoul on the end, Valentine’s arm stretched out to protect him and support him. Marcel at the right is on the ground, his right leg extended, his right arm raised defiantly. They stand on the threshold of a church, a Huguenot chapel, with its beautiful arched window, filling the left hand foreground like the “safe stronghold” of Luther’s hymn. Dead bodies from the massacre lie in the widening space that separates the two halves of the picture. To the right is the party of Catholic assassins, led by the imposing figure of Saint-Bris, his sword defiantly drawn. The soldiers shoulder their weapons, having discharged them at the Protestant trio, and look on with a phalanxed solidity, as their leader comes to realize he has killed his own daughter. In the background the strikingly white palace of the Louvre, the symbol of the royal and aristocratic power, bears silent witness to the shameful acts.

17. The Iconography

Fig. 125 The Liebig Cards 5 Act 4 The Love Duet

Fig. 126 The Liebig Cards 6 Act 5 The Massacre

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Heinrich Laube Meeting Meyerbeer “Meyerbeer: So who was he?” In his Erinnerungen, 1841-1881 (1882) (reprinted in Gesammelte Werke in 50 Banden, ed. Hubert Houben and Albert Hanel [Leipzig: Max Hesse, n.d.]), Heinrich Laube, the German political writer, dramatist, novelist and theatre-director, later recalled this meeting and left a vivid and thoughtful description of the composer: “ ... I was sitting and reading one afternoon ... when a small man came into the room. He was dressed very simply but tastefully, and inclined his head a little to one side. In a soft voice he asked if it was I: I replied in the affirmative, whereupon we spoke German .... He was overwhelmingly courteous, even though he had the performance of his new opera ahead of him, and a return journey to the home country to face, and invited me to dinner in the Hôtel de Paris in the rue Richelieu where he was staying. He was a very astute man, with unbelievable industry, and took unbelievable care of his work and its publication. Artistically he was convinced that opera must have interest as a dramatic process, and that the indifference of German opera composers to the theatrical effectiveness of the text has had deadly consequences. He studied the theatre like a dramatic poet, and turned to the most gifted of Frenchmen, Scribe, for his texts .... Meyerbeer was wealthy and, again, used his wealth carefully for his artistic and practical ends: he never used it sparingly. Nor did he save on time. The artistic aim had to be fully realized, fully worked out, even if this meant many changes or even rewriting. So what did he make of life and all his many worries, in spite of all his wealth? It is difficult to say. He was a thinking person and had his opinions on everything. At the end of the day he was a Jew, and as a Jew remained doubtful about the durability of emancipation, this being why he favoured the French. They are not suspicious of the Jew; to them he is a man like any other, he maintained. This is why he took part in all questions of liberalism, both small and great, but remained cautious, like a badger in his warren, preferring to question rather than talk himself.

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Fig. 127 Heinrich Laube

Fig. 128 Franz Liszt

Who was he actually? An artist, and one of great abilities. Of what kind? From where? His origins, his education, the religion of his fathers, are clearly discernible at the heart of his operas. The synagogue with its songs, which penetrate to the core, is clearly heard as soon as serious matters arise. The orchestral accompaniment of the wicked Bertram in Robert, Marcel and the fourth act of the Huguenots, the song of the Anabaptists in the Prophet, all spring from the synagogue. And this does not contradict what one calls Protestant in Marcel; a Lutheran, after all, holds fast to his Bible, and the Bible is of Jewish origin ...” (pp. 399-400, translated by R. I. Letellier).

Franz Liszt On Meyerbeer’s Huguenots (1937) “Über Meyerbeers Hugenotten” (1837) in Gesammelte Schriften von Franz Liszt. 10 vols. Ed. L. Ramann. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1881), 2: 64. The success of Les Huguenots in Paris belongs to the most brilliant in the annals of opera. From the composer of Robert the public had the right to expect something great, but for him it was no small task to attain the level

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honourably which public opinion expected of him after the production of this opera. But the acclamation of the crowd did not turn his head: he continued along his own path with sure and powerful steps, and achieved a height reached by few of those who struggled along side him. Let us say without hesitation: Meyerbeer’s new work, if not as popular as its predecessor, nonetheless far surpasses it. Robert le Diable, this great and beautiful creation, in spite of its outstanding qualities and all the accorded admiration, is imperfect and deficient, as is typical of any product of a period of transition. With this work one senses a certain vacillating between Italian and German forms, the uncertainty of a potently electric spirit who is not yet conscious of his own individuality, and therefore hesitates to give himself over freely to his own instincts. Robert reminds us of those architectural monuments of the Middle Ages, that were begun in one century and completed in another. Its appearance is vast and powerful, and its lack of unity and harmony does not strike the ordinary spectator: but the artist soon discovers two contradictory suggestions, two thoughts that are virtually in conflict and mitigate against a homogeneous whole. On the other hand the score of Les Huguenots, even though created in the same way as that of Robert, is freer, more complete and more dramatic in a higher sense. If it is possible, the instrumentation is even better planned, the effects just as artistically calculated and just as abundant, so that at every new production we are struck by a new feeling of amazement and admiration for the art of the master who has known how to enhance the rich texture of his composition with a thousand barely discernible subtleties. The part of Marcel, the purest type of plebeian pride and religious selfsacrifice, appears to us to be the most complete and vivid [character]. The straightforward solemnity of his music, which so eloquently expresses the moral greatness of this man of the people, and also its simplicity, the noble nature of its thought and form, remains outstanding from the beginning to the end of the opera. The scene of the Blessing of the Daggers is similarly above all criticism. It belongs to those rare works of art wherein judgement, the overwhelming impression of the moment wrenched from the feelings of everyone, is confirmed by the cautious criticism of the next day. Of similarly irresistible effect is the already famous duet in act 4. This image of love and death, this summons to arms, this intimation of hideous slaughter that bursts into the magical words of a deeply felt declaration of love, alternately takes possession of the trembling heart and impels it, full of excitement, to sacrifice itself to the power of a situation marked by the

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highest poetical effect. A giant talent speaks to us in this beautiful scene, and if a certain originality and dignity is occasionally lacking in individual vocal phrases, this is more than compensated for by the wealth and novelty of the accompaniment A longer lingering on the details of this opera, which has already been analyzed in the most perceptive way by Berlioz, and which still serves to nourish the critics, would appear to be superfluous. Neither would we like to add to their numbers—that plague of art, that swarm of locusts which, like that of the Egyptians, only serve to gnaw away and obfuscate. We will therefore say in a few words: we discern in Meyerbeer’s career a continuous ascent, we see the results of a diligent and expanding calling. And if this composition were not enough in and of itself to recommend it, they [the critics] believe themselves exempted of the duty of continuous learning, without sharing his eminent capabilities. To the creator of the Crociato, Robert, and the Huguenots appears reserved the solution of a great task: to bring about the definitive unification of Italian and German music He belongs to the one as much as to the other; he is, using a beautiful comparison of Jean Paul’s, a lovely tree rooted in Germany, whose richly laden boughs stretch out to Italy.

George Sand Letter XI: “To Giacomo Meyerbeer” (1837) From Lettres d’un Voyageur (1837). Letters of A Traveller. Trans. E. A. Ashurst, ed. M.M. Hays (London: Churton, 1847). Geneva, September 1836 My Dear Maestro, You have allowed me to write to you from Geneva, and I am daring enough to use the permission, knowing well that they will never accuse you of comradeship, with a poor poet of my sort. This is why, against all received custom, I shall tell you all my admiration without fear of wounding your modesty. I am no dispenser of fame, I am but a scholar of no importance in art, and masters may accept my enthusiasm with a smile. I will relate to you then a day of my journey, a day commenced in a church, where I thought of nothing but you, and finished in a theatre, where I spoke of nothing but you. That I may not annoy you with myself, I will make a recapitulation of my reverie and my dialogue.

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Fig. 129 Paris Opéra 1936 Act 2 (The Queen and Urbain)

Fig. 130 Paris Opéra 1936 Act 2 (The Vow)

I entered the Protestant temple, and I heard the psalms, noble chants, pure and brave hymns, half warlike, half religious, sacred vestiges of the heroic ages of faith, as old and expiring as our own!

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If I were to judge of the Protestant religion by the sermon I heard, and of the Protestant character, by the insipid faces which hardly filled one corner of the church, I should have a fine opportunity for loading the church, the form and the adepts of the religion, with my superb disdain; but it is fashionable to do this at the present day, and I shall take care not to do so, for I have a great suspicion of all that is fashionable, more especially in the literary world. Our generation is so shortsighted, that in thought as in the flesh, it lives entirely in the present day, it judges of men of all past ages by the degenerate man of today, it determines upon every thing, and decides that slavery is the natural condition of humanity, indifference its eternal inclination, weakness and egotism its inevitable organization, its necessary infirmity. It has no faith either in great men or great things, and the reason of this is simple. Those who have so arranged their lives as to live beyond those grave puerilities and pedantic squabbles with which intelligent minds nourish themselves today, feel yet a great admiration for the past, and from this cause also, a great indulgence for the present; for seeing what was yesterday, one sees what may be tomorrow, that the passing hour, the age in which one lives, proves no absolute truth as to the progress or degeneracy of mankind. Men of actuality (as they say now), seeing the Calvinistic temples as unpeopled as the Catholic; and the Protestants make a bargain of their faith as we do of ours, have inferred that the Reformation has been from the first, the flattest idea in the world, and the religious force of that idea the most poverty stricken and arid of all forms. By a strange reaction, which the caprice of fashion can alone explain, (for in the time of Benjamin Constant, not so very distant a period, there were everywhere praises and sympathy for the Reformed religion, aversion and railing against Catholicism), all the writing and declaiming generation throws itself into the embrace of a newly dated orthodoxy, singularly amalgamated with an incurable atheism and a magnificent disdain for all practical Christianity. Literary men of gentle characters, penetrated with horror at the savage expiations of ‘93, have arrived at such a point as I am told, as to say carelessly, between the Opera-Buffa and Tortoni’s ices, benignant formulas of such a strength as this: “The massacre of St. Bartholomew, was simply a grand and wise measure of lofty policy, without which the throne and the altar would have been the prey of the factious.” “If one looks at things from above, there was in the massacre of the Huguenots, neither executioners nor victims, but a war of legitimate defence, provoked by plots dangerous to the safety of the state,” &c. &c.

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Fig. 131 Hamburg 1958 Act 2 (The Assembly)

Fig. 132 Hamburg 1958 Act 2 (The Vow)

Fig. 133 Hamburg 1958 Act 4 (Raoul & Valentine)

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The words factious and safety of the state, have been admirably made use of ever since there have been oppressors and oppressed. Each time that an idea of safety has germinated in the brain of one party, the others have constituted themselves the defenders of their own advantages and privileges, dissimulated under the pompous names of the inviolability of the government and of public safety. When a government is threatened, it invokes the shopkeepers whose windows have been broken by the mob, and it despatches the liberators of human intelligence to the scaffold, under the pretext, that they trouble the sleep of the venerable citizens of the place. Our generation, which showed itself proud and strong enough one morning to chase away the Jesuits in the person of Charles X, cannot, as it seems to me, without a very bad grace, spit at the courageous attempts at reform, and insult the great name of Luther in his religious posterity. Which of us was not factious in 1830? Did not the family of Charles X. also represent the safety of the state? Has it not been necessary, in order to effect the reconciliation of a whole people up to a certain point, to shake off the yoke of the most revolting prejudices, to cause the tardy and inevitable reign of popular justice to make one step forward; has it not been necessary, I repeat, to break many windows, and disturb many sleepers? I hope, for the rest, that these words of monarchial quackery have lost all pretence to significance in men’s conscience, and that those who use them may not be able to meet each other without laughing. I should willingly yield to our newly born Catholics the praise of reason and wisdom, if whilst declaring as they do, that they proscribe bad princes, dissolute monks, and attribute to them all the discredit into which their dear orthodoxy is fallen, they did not reserve anathemas, yet more bitter and ferocious, against the purifiers of the gospel. But then logic is quite at fault when they attack the reformation of Luther, they who assume the position of new reformers of perfected Christians. If one were to re-establish convents and benefices, they would utter frightful cries, and would be Luther and Calvin over again, without deigning to perceive that the idea is not new, and that the path toward a just reform has been worn by footsteps more noble and more decided than their own. I should like to know if these fine professors of the Catholic faith, blame the measures taken in the National Assembly relative to the possessions of the clergy; on the contrary, I think, they were very well pleased at them, and that they would not be contented at seeing the convents and monasteries rebuilt at the expense of the forms which their parents installed forty years since, upon the ruins of those properties, so agreeably acquired, so profitably cultivated, so good to take—in a word, so good to keep.

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If they despise Luther and Calvin, because of the war they waged against ecclesiastical riches with a view towards Christian perfection, and not towards the profit of a newly formed clergy, I advise them not to boast of it, and to keep their national property, without insulting those, who, daring to be the first who preached to the apostles of Jesus, the poverty, the austerity and humility of their divine maestro, prepared for the catholic clergy what has happened to them in France, and what is happening to them in Spain. The apparent hypocrisy of those who attack them, would strike us with horror, if their childishness, their partiality for” the first paradox that comes in their way, their apish nature and total want of reasoning did not make us smile. Having placed these fundamental questions before my eyes, I entered the Geneva temple, and listened with much mildness to the sermon of a gentleman who had a very pleasant countenance, and whose name, for that very reason I rejoice at having forgotten. He taught us, that if industry had made any progress in Switzerland, it is because the religion of Geneva is Protestant (therefore we are free to believe that, if industry is flourishing with us, it is because we are Catholics.) He also told us that God always bestowed wealth upon pious men, which doctrine did not appear very certain to me, nor very conformable to the spirit of the gospel; then, that, if his auditory were wanting in fervour, that the price of merchandize would fall, trade go to the devil, and the citizens’ be obliged to drink bad wine and smoke damaged tobacco. I believe even that he added, that these beautiful mountains and lovely lakes, with which Providence had gratified the Protestants of Geneva, might even be suppressed by some divine decree, if people were not more assiduous at divine service. The auditory retired quite satisfied after singing some psalms, and I remained alone in the temple. When these impassible faces, upon whose brow Lavater could only have inscribed the word exactitude: when this pastor with his nasal tones had ceased his remonstrances, so paternally prosaic, the Reformation, that grand idea, without symbols, without veils, without mysterious ornaments, appeared to me in all its greatness and all its nakedness. The church with neither tabernacle* [in a Catholic church, the little closet in which the sacred vessels for the sacrament are kept] nor sanctuary, the colourless windows brightened by a brilliant sun, the wooden forms, on which equality is throned (at least at the hour of prayer), the cold smooth walls, all the aspect of order which seems recently established in a devastated Catholic church, the theatre of an entirely military installation, struck me with melancholy and respect. Here and there, some figures of pelicans and chimeras, vestiges of the ancient faith, twisted themselves as though captive

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Fig. 134 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 2 (The Court of Love)

Fig. 135 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 2 (The Queen & Raoul)

18. Historical Appendices

Fig. 136 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 3 (Sutherland as the Queen)

Fig. 137 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 4 (Raoul & Valentine)

Fig. 138 Milan La Scala 1962 Act 4 (Corelli as Raoul)

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captive and complaining, round the capitals of the columns. The grand domes were neither Catholic nor Protestant. Elevated and profound, they seemed fitted to receive aspiration towards heaven under all forms, to respond in all rhythms to prayer and religious invocations. From these flags, never warmed by Protestant knees, seemed to proceed grave voices, and accents of calm and serene triumph, there the sighs of the dying, and the murmurs of a tranquil, resigned and confiding death, without groan or struggle. This was the voice of the Calvinist martyr, a martyr without ecstacy and without delirium, whose torments are smothered under austere pride and lofty certainty. Naturally, these imaginary accents took the form in my mind of the beautiful psalm of the opera of the Huguenots; and whilst I thought I could hear the furious cries, and the heavy firing of the Catholics, one of the grandest figures of the dramatic art, one of the finest personifications of the religious idea, which has ever been produced by the arts in the present day, passed before me, the Marcel of Meyerbeer. And saw the statue of bronze standing there, clothed in his buff armour, and animated by the divine fire which the composer has endowed it with. I saw it, oh Maestro, pardon my presumption, as it must have appeared to you yourself when you came to seek it at the brave bold noontide hour, under the resplendent arcades of some Protestant temple, vast and light as this one. Oh musician more poetical than any of us; in what unknown depths of your soul, in what hidden treasure of your intellect have you found these pure and sharply cut features, this conception as simple as an antique, truthful as history, lucid as conscience, strong as faith? You who were lately on your knees in the voluptuous shadows of St. Mark, and erecting your Sicilian church in proportions yet more magnificent, inebriating yourself with Catholic incense at the gloomy hour when the tapers are illumined and the walls of gold and marble sparkle in their light, giving yourself up to the tender yet terrible emotions of the holy place; how is it that you have known how to evoke in Luther’s temple his austere poetry, and resuscitate his heroic dead? We thought your soul was disquieted and timid like Dante when, carried away to hell, and to heaven by his genius, he experienced fear or tenderness at every step. You have surprised the secrets of the invisible choirs, when at the elevation of the host the angels in Titian’s mosaic wave their large black wings, over the golden ground of the Byzantine dome, and hover over the kneeling people. You have pierced the impenetrable silence of the tomb, and under the shuddering pavement of the cathedrals your ears have heard the bitter wailings of the damned, and the menaces of the angels of darkness. You have seized all these dark and strange allegories in their

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deepest meaning and their sublimest sadness. Between the angel and the demon, between the fantastic heaven and hell of the Middle Ages, you have discerned man divided within himself, torn between the flesh and the spirit, drawn towards the darkness of brutality, but protected by vivifying intelligence and saved by a divine hope. You have depicted these struggles, these fears, these sufferings, these promises and this enthusiasm in their serious and touching features, still leaving them enveloped in their poetic symbols. You have known how to move and trouble our feelings with chimerical personages, and impossible situations. This is because a human heart still throbs in the artist, and feels all the impressions of real life, it is because high art does nothing that is insignificant, and that the soundest philosophy and the sweetest human sympathies always preside over the most brilliant caprices of genius. But may we not believe, after this great Catholic work of Robert, that all your power and all your inspiration were kindled in your German, and consequently learned and conscientious intellect, under the sky of Naples or Palermo? Are not you a brave and profound spirit of the north, changed into an impassioned character by a southern climate? In your modest and touching manners, your language full of grace and timid vivacity, in the species of combat which seems to exist between the enthusiasm of the artist and what I scarcely know how to express, the apprehensive pride of the man of the world, I find all the charm of your works, all the piquancy of your manner. But the sublimity of the great interior me being veiled by custom and the legitimate reserve of words, I asked myself if you would long continue to lead the foremost rank of science and poetry, Germany and Italy, the pomp of Catholicism, and the gravity of Protestantism; for there is already somewhat of Protestantism in Bertram, in that gloomy and rebellious spirit whose cries of grief and anger are sometimes interrupted to mock and despise the credulous faith, and the vain ceremonies by which he is surrounded. This fine contrast of audacious doubt, and desperate courage, in the midst of these mystic sighs and enthusiastic feeling towards saints and angels, proved already an union of various powers, a lively comprehension of the changes of thought and religious character in mankind. Apropos of the Huguenots, it has been said that there is no Protestant music, any more than there is Catholic music, which is equivalent to saying that the psalms of Luther which are sung in Germany have not a different character from the Gregorian chant of the Sistine chapel; as if music were nothing but a skilful arrangement of sounds more or less calculated to please the ear, and that rhythm, alone appropriated to dramatic situation, suffices to express the sentiments and passions of the lyrical drama. I confess that I do not understand this, and that I must ask if

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the principal beauty of Guillaume Tell does not consist in the pastoral Helvetic character, so admirably felt and so nobly idealized?

Fig. 139 Leipzig 1974 Act 2 (The Queen and Valentine)

Fig. 140 Leipzig 1974 Act 5 (The Grand Trio)

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But many other paradoxes for the intellect have been put forth about you, with which I shall not vainly trouble my brain. Until a light breaks in upon me, I remain convinced that it is possible for the most beautiful of all the arts, to paint all the shades of sentiment and all the phases of passion. Except metaphysical dissertation (and for my own part I do not regret this) music can express all things. The description of nature finds in it both colour and ideal lines, which, neither exact nor minute, are but more vaguely and deliciously poetical. Does not the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven open to the imagination, even more exquisitely and more grandly than the finest paintings, a valley of Engaddi or Misnia, a terrestrial paradise to which the soul wings her flight, beholding a limitless horizon open before her, pictures where storms are raging, birds singing, a tempest rising, or dying away, where the sun is drinking the dew from the leaves, and the lark shaking her humid wings, where the weary heart may expand itself, the spirit and the body be re-animated, and identifying itself with nature, sink into a delicious repose. When the noisy and disorderly sounds of the Pré aux Clercs fade away in the distance, when the curfew utters its melancholy voice, mournful as the hour, and dying away like the light of day, is there any need of the painted red canvass of the opera and the adroit management of half a dozen lamps to enable the mind to represent the fading tints of the horizon, the expiring noises of the town, slumber extending her grey wings in the darkness, the murmur of the Seine which resumes its empire as the cries and sounds of human life are lost in the distance. At this moment of the representation, I like to shut my eyes, bury my head in my hands, set in fancy a heaven more brightly glowing, and a city painted in truer tints than, without offence to Monsieur Duponchel, the beautiful decorations, and skilful management of his fading lights. How often have I execrated the rising of the sun, which accompanies the last chorus of the second act of Guillaume Tell! Oh canvass! oh pasteboard! oh tinsel! oh machinery! what have you in common with that magnificent prayer in which all the rays of the sun display themselves so majestically, where the king of day himself appears in his splendour, seeming to make the snowy mountains open to send him into the horizon as the last notes of the sacred song peal forth. But in this respect, music has yet a greater power. There is no need of a complete melody; a few modulations are all that are wanted to send dark clouds, sweeping over the blue heaven and covering the face of Phoebus, to create volcanoes, and hear the cyclops roaring in the bowels of the earth, or to bring back the moist breeze and send it breathing over the trees withered by fear. Alice appears, the weather is serene, nature is full of wild and primitive harmonies. Suddenly the sorcerers are heard

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weaving their frantic dance under her feet. The earth shakes, the turf dries up, and subterranean fire escapes through every pore of the groaning soil, the air is darkened, and unearthly fire illumines the rocks. But the fiends carry their Sabbath deeper into the inaccessible caverns, nature breathes again, the heavens are pure, the air is again fresh, the rivulet resumes its course interrupted by terror; Alice kneels and prays. Apropos, and spite of the length of this digression, I must tell you, Maestro, a trifling fact entirely personal to myself, but for which I have always wished to testify my gratitude to you. Two years ago I went into the country to pass two of the saddest months of my life. I had the spleen, and whilst I was suffering from its fits, I was not very far from madness. All the furies, all the demons, all the serpents, all the broken and dragging chains of your sorcerer’s Sabbath were raging in my heart. When these crises, following the routine of all maladies, were beginning to clear off, I discovered an infallible means of hastening the transition, and gaining tranquillity in a few moments. This was to make my nephew, a handsome fresh-coloured curly-haired youth, seat himself at the piano, he was serious and full of a tender monachal gravity, endowed with unchanging brow and unalterable health. At a sign which he understood, he used to play my beloved modulation of Alice at the foot of the cross, a perfect and charming image of the state of my soul at the moment, of the end of the storm and the return of hope. What poetical and religious consolations fell like holy dew from these sweet and penetrating notes. The chaffinch who lives in the white lilac-tree at my window, used to forget the cold of winter, and began to sing as though it were May. The hemerocale* [a flower—the day-lily] on the chimney-piece half opened, and shed its pure perfume over me as the last notes sounded. The pastille of aloes fumed in my Turkish pipe, the hearth sent forth its brilliant gleams, and my. nephew, patient as a steam-engine and devoted as a son, recommenced this adorable passage twenty times, until he saw his dear uncle throw all his woollen wrappers of the ground and begin to make the most graceful bounds about the room, throwing his cap up to the ceiling, and sneezing for twenty minutes. How can I help blessing you, my dear Maestro, who have cured me so often better than a doctor, for your cures were done without suffering and without a fee! and how could I believe that music is merely an art of amusement and simple speculation, when I remember I have been more touched by its effects, and more convinced by its eloquence than by all my books of philosophy?

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Fig. 141 Los Angeles 1976 Act 2 (The Vow)

Fig. 142 Australian Opera 1991 Sutherland (The Queen)

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To return to the first appearance of the Huguenots, I own to you that I did not expect so intellectual and so strong a work, and that I should have been contented with less. I did not foresee all the advantage you could draw from the subject, that is to say, from the idea of the subject, for what subject could embarrass you after the apocalyptic poem of Robert? Nevertheless, I had admired Robert so much that I could not imagine I should like your new production more. I went therefore to hear the Huguenots with a kind of sadness and anxiety, not for you, but for myself; I knew that whatever the poem on the subject might be, you would find in your science of instrumentation and your skill in ingenious resources, both the means of governing the public, checking the discontented, and quieting the many-headed Cerberus of criticism by producing all your gilded cakes, all your grand orchestral effects, all the riches of harmony of which you possess such inexhaustible mines. I did not fear for your success, I knew that men like you impose upon us all that they will, and that if inspiration fails them, science supplies its place. But the poets! those incomplete and morbid beings, who know nothing, and study so little, but who have a presentiment, a divination of all things, it is difficult to deceive them and no warmth emanates from the altar on which the sacred fire has not descended. How great was my joy when I felt myself touched, affected by this agitated history, by these truthful characters, without allegory, as much as I had been troubled and agitated by the emblematic struggles of Robert! I had neither the coolness nor the leisure to examine the poem. I laughed a little at the style when I read it afterwards; but I feel the difficulty of writing for singing, and besides, I am infinitely obliged to Monsieur Scribe (if it is not you who have given him the subject and the finest situations) for having thrown you into a new arena, into another epoch, another country, another religion especially. You have given proof of a high power for the development of the religious sentiment, and it was an excellent idea of his, (always supposing it was not you who gave it to him) to give you a religious form which was not the same, and which did not oblige you to abuse your resources. But inform us how, with twenty or thirty insignificant verses you have contrived to design such individualities and create personages of the first order where the author of the libretto has only indicated accessories. This old servant, rough, intolerant. faithful in friendship as to God, cruel in war, distrustful, anxious, full of cold blooded fanaticism, sublime in his joy and calm at the hour of martyrdom. is he not the type of the Lutheran idea in all the extent of its poetical development, in all the acceptation of the true ideal, of artistic reality, that is to say, of all possible perfections! The tall handsome brunette too, so courageous, enterprising and enthusiastic,

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careless of her reputation as of her life, and passing from Catholic fanaticism to the serenity of the Protestant martyr, is not this a strong and generous figure, worthy to take a place beside Marcel? Nevers, the handsome young man, in his white satin doublet, who has only, I think, three or four words to say in the libretto, you have known how to give him a gracious, elegant and chivalric physiognomy. a nature which one likes notwithstanding its impertinence, as he speaks with a bewitching melancholy of the number of the court ladies who will be driven to despair by his marriage. Except in the two last acts, the part of Raoul, notwithstanding your skill, does not escape from the utter nothingness imposed on it by Monsieur Scribe. The quick sensibility and rare intelligence of Nourrit struggled in vain against this character resembling a sentimental grasshopper, the true victim of circumstances, as we say in romances. But how the character is elevated in the third act! what advantage is drawn from a scene which a puritanism, otherwise estimable, has blamed rather carelessly, and which, to me, who think no evil, either of a swoon or of a sofa in the scene, has appeared pathetic, mournful, and not at all anacreontic! What a duo! what a dialogue! Maestro! how you can weep, pray, shudder and conquer in the stead of Monsieur Scribe. Oh Maestro! you are a great dramatic poet, and maker of romances. I yield your little page up to criticism, he cannot triumph over his ungrateful position; but I defend the last trio against each and all, an imitable scene, spoiled and broken up, because the situation requires it, because its dramatic truth is of some consequence to you, who do not admit that there may be a difference between the music of a musician and the music of a literary man. but that there is a music of true passion and probable action, where the charm of the music ought not to struggle against the situation, and cause the cavatina to be sung according to rule with the consecrated coda and inevitable trait of the hero who falls covered with wounds upon the arena. It is full time, I think, to subject art to the yoke of common sense, and not to force the naive spectator to say: “How can these people sing in such a fearful situation?” It is necessary then that the song should be a true pianto, and that one should condescend to free oneself from the beaten track, to such a point as to seduce the most simple mind, and make it feel something more than the mere emotion of conventionalism. You have given proof that this may be done, Maestro, and when Rossini has willed it, he has proved it likewise.

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Fig. 143 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 5 The Wall (DVD cover)

Fig. 144 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 2 (Angela Denning as the Queen)

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Fig. 145 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 4 (The Conspiracy)

Fig. 146 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 4 (The Love Duet)

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Permit me in the meantime to express a wish to you. This is rather insolent on my part and I detest insolence under all its forms and pretences. Therefore do not imagine, I beg of you, that I am offering you advice. But sometimes, as you are aware, an ignorant person has a good idea from which an artist may draw some advantage in the same way that he draws his boldest conceptions from the most naive and unforeseen impressions, the splendour of temples from the wild grandeur of the forests, full and scientific melodies from some rustic sounds, sobbing breezes, or murmuring waters. This is what vexes me: why this consecrated form? why this coda, a kind of uniform and heavy framework? why this trait, equivalent to the perilous pirouette of the dancer? why this habit of sending the voice, towards the end of every song, through an the highest and lowest notes of the scale? why all these commonplace and monotonous forms which destroy the effect of the finest phrases or melody? Will the time never come when the public will be tired of them, and will recognize that the moral action (which is, whatever they may say, inseparable from the lyrical action) is interrupted every moment by the inevitable ritornello; that all grace, all naivete, all freshness is degraded or defaced by this rigid wand, by this unintellectual and trivial formula, from which one does not dare to disembarrass oneself? Liszt compares this formula to, “I have the honour to be your very humble and obedient servant,” which one puts at the bottom of all letters of ceremony in the falsest and most absurd acceptation as well as in the most just and truly felt. It appears that the vulgar crowd still cherish this old custom, and believe that no scene is finished without the four or eight bars of commonplace roulade, which is neither melody, harmony, singing nor recitative. In this ridiculous situation, the interest remains suspended, the actors, forced to assume an attitude more and more theatrical, are forced to scream at the top of their voices and exaggerate the efforts of their cold transport which the melody no longer sustains. The supreme effect of passion or emotion, requited hy what has preceded, is lost and overwhelmed under this formula, just as if, in the midst of a tragic scene, the drama tis personae, animated by their position, were to salute the public several times over. You have not entirely freed yourself from this condescension to an ignorant public and the requisitions of unintelligent singers. You could not do so, I think. Perhaps even, you have only been able to get your most beautiful ideas accepted by favouring the received custom of these formulas. But at present, cannot you educate your audience, impose your own will upon it, put it into leading strings, and reveal to it a purity of taste of which it is ignorant, and which no one has yet been able to proclaim? This immense success, such brilliant victories gained, also

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impose duties upon you, for beyond popular favour and human glory, there ought to be the worship of art and the faith of the artist. You are the man of the present, Maestro, be also that of the future .... But if my idea is ridiculous, my request inexpedient, imagine that I have said nothing. Now that I am in a dreaming mood, I dream of a poem for you which would transport you entirely into paganism, the Eumenides, the fearful opera, ready arranged by Aeschylus; where the death of Orpheus, so terrible, so simple, and yet, so easy to describe when associated with a man like yourself, who has only need of a gauze canvass to form it into a veil of gold and precious stones. If I could rhyme two lines together, Maestro, I would beg you to prescribe all the scenes to me, and I should be proud to see you attempt Grecian melodies, fuller, more complete, more simple in their accompaniment perhaps than your preceding subjects have required. I should then see you do all that you are defied to accomplish, and reply as a great artist, to menaces, by victory. But such happiness will not be given to me. I do not understand prose, how should I then know verse? As to my Greek subject, you know what is fitted for you better than I do, but it will tempt you some day. I answer for it. Maestro, I am no connoisseur, my voice is bad, and I cannot play on any instrument whatever. Forgive me if I do not speak the technical terms of hypercriticism. Even if I were an enlightened dilettante. I would not scan your chefs-d’oeuvres to try and find out some slight fault which might give me the opportunity of showing off my science; I would not seek whether your inspiration came from the head or the heart, a strange distinction signifying absolutely nothing, an eternal reproach addressed by critics to artists; as if the same blood were not throbbing in the bosom and the temple; as if, supposing that there are two distinct parts in man destined to receive the sacred fire, the warmth which mounts from the entrails to the brain, and that which descends from the brain to the entrails did not produce exactly the same effects in art and in poetry! If one were to say that your temperament is sanguine-bilious, that you are a slow worker, but that, although you work less rapidly, yet it is with more perfection than the sanguine and plethoric, I should pretty well understand what they wanted to say, and I should think it quite simple and natural that you were not endowed with all the temperaments at once; but what matters it to me that you have upon your piano a decanter of water, clear as crystal, instead of a flask of Cyprus wine, if it inspire you as others are inspired by wine? What pedagogic fury torments these poor literary appreciators, incessantly occupied in mistrusting their own sympathies, and in asking themselves if the Venus of Milo were not chiselled by the left instead of the right hand? To see the trouble which men of talent give

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themselves to pierce the mystery of the workshop and penetrate the secret of the watchings and the reveries of the artist, fills one with chagrin and regret to see this family of intellect, fruitful without doubt, impoverish itself of all its power in order to arrive at what it calls clear-sightedness and impartiality.

Fig. 147 Berlin Deutsche Oper 1991 Act 5 (The Massacre)

Doubtless it is good and necessary that men of taste should give the common herd the right direction and undertake its education. But it is well known that even the noblest profession hardens those who practice it exclusively. As the surgeon accustomed to play with suffering, with life and death, as the judge systematises himself easily, and setting out from wise deductions, is induced to feel too much confidence in his own distrust, and not to see truth except under arbitrary points of view. Thus criticism proceeds conscientious at first, it soon arrives at an over scrupulous casuistry, and it finishes by feeling nothing, through reasoning so much. When one no longer feels, reasoning becomes merely specious, and appreciation a labour more and more ungrateful, painful, may not I say, impossible? At the end of a repast, where one has eaten to excess, the finest meats lose their savour, and the sated palate no longer distinguishes the freshness of fruit from the fire of spice. The man who insists upon

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Fig. 148 Liège 2005 Act 2 (The Queen, Valentine and Raoul)

Fig. 149 Liège 2005 Act 2 (Finale)

experiencing all the enjoyments of life, cannot in the end even sleep upon down, and imagines the bed of heather upon which he slept at first warmer and softer. Deplorable error as far as art is concerned, but it is an inevitable condition of human nature! The first essay of youthful talent is seen, and perhaps treated with more affection and kindness than it merited. But those who judge grow old sooner than those who produce. Where we look at life as an everlasting spectacle in which we fear or disdain to take a part, we are soon tired of the actor because we are tired of ourselves. We follow the progress of the artist; but in proportion as he acquires or loses by inaction, unknown to himself, the sacred fire which he derives from the godlike law of labour, the very day when he produces his chef-d’oeuvre,

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he is no longer cared for; we look back with regret to the first day of emotion which he gave us; a day lost and engulfed under the riches of the past, a sweet and precious emotion which we weep for and never find again. The artist has become a Prometheus; but the man of clay is petrified and remains inert under the divine breath. We say that it is the artist who has degenerated, and we know not that we lie! This is the history of the public in matters of art, and of generations in matters of politics; but this history is summed up in a fearful manner in the short moral existence of the unfortunate being who gives himself up to criticism. He sees his whole age compressed into a few years, his beard is hardly grown, and yet his brow is already worn by ennui, fatigue and disgust. He might have taken a brilliant and honourable place amongst productive artists, but he no longer has the strength to do so, he has faith in nothing, and in himself less than in anything else. When one casts one’s eyes, some day when courage or curiosity reigns, over the twenty or thirty judgments which are printed the day after the appearance of any literary trifle, one feels quite astonished at such mind, such learned reasonings, ingenious parallels, sublime dissertations, for the most part written in a rich, ornate, and dazzling style; and one regrets to see the treasures which in other times, would have supplied a whole year, scattered péle-méle at the feet of a careless public which scarcely looks at them; and which does well, for supposing that the truth could be discovered across this kaleidoscope of contradictory ideas and sentiments, this truth would be so futile, so common-place, so easy to be expressed in three lines, that the day would have been lost in cutting down an oak to form an allumette. A man of good sense therefore examines the object of discussion himself, and is very little disquieted as to knowing whether the critic allows the author a grain or a hundred weight of glory. It is not that I despise criticism for itself; I esteem and respect it so much in its aim and possible and desirable effects, that I grieve to see it go out of its road and become more hurtful than useful to artists, more amusing than instructive for a public, at once idle, indifferent and satirical. I wish to believe the men who exercise it full of loyalty and possessed by one single passion, the love of truth and beauty. Well then! I grieve that the organization of this useful and respectable body should be so bad that its management becomes impossible if not fatal, and that its consideration falls each day under the suspicions and jests of the ignorant crowd. If I had to seek a remedy for so much abuse and confusion, the following would be my Utopia.

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Fig. 150 Bard College 2009 (mp3 cover)

Fig. 151 Bard College 2009 Act 5 (The Massacre)

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First, I should wish the number of critics much increased, at the same time the number of criticisms published should be very much restricted. I should wish criticism not to be made a trade, and that there should not be criticism every day and upon every thing. Since the public desire to have journals, und that the columns of the journals should be the chairs of eloquence assigned to certain athletic professors, I should like every journal to have its jury, of competent men chosen according to the spirit and opinions of the journal, and called to pronounce upon any work of importance; I wish that a crowd of youths, without knowledge, taste or experience were not admitted to judge the seniors in art, to make or mar rising reputations, upon the mere recommendation of an easy style, a facility of compilation, or ingenious and pleasant manner. I should wish no one to exercise criticism as a profession, but that any man of talent and knowledge should fulfil its serious and noble functions as a duty and through love of literature, competent to draw all honourable benefit from it on occasion, since the priest is permitted to live by the altar. I am not one of those who think, that artists alone ought to judge artists. On the contrary, I think generally this is a bad test, and that the journals would soon become in the hands of rivals of the same profession, the theatre of combats both undignified and uncontrolled, where passion being always uppermost, truth would be less than ever displayed. The part of a critic would demand, it is true, peculiar knowledge, besides a calm and disinterested judgment, and it is very difficult to find this calm and disinterestedness in anyone who feels his destiny is in the hands of the public. Without therefore excluding artists whose experience, settled position, and exceptional character might offer sufficient guarantees, I would give few means of governing opinion to men to whom public opinion is a personal and exclusive necessity. And if this crowd of young beaux-esprits, who live by reviews and feuilletons, complain of having no means of publicity or opportunity of development, I would say to them: “Be grateful to those measures which make you labour and produce; you worked like eunuchs and slaves; you were condemned to bathe, to dress and undress the children of the rich; be fathers in your turn. Whether your children be deformed or beautiful, strong or weak, you will love them, for they will be your own. Your life of hatred and pity will change into a life of love and hope. You will not all perhaps be great men, but at least you will be men, and at present you are not.” And if, through being more thoughtful and judicious, critical judgments should become rarer (which would be inevitable) if the conductors of the journals should complain of empty columns, and the public of the absence

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Fig. 152 Brussels 2011 (poster)

Fig. 153 Brussels 2011 Act 1 (Marcel)

Fig. 154 Brussels 2011 Act 4 (The Conspiracy)

of the feuilleton, why should not these blank pages alas, so longed for and so difficult of access, be open to all those unknown and modest talents who are repugnant to enter upon criticism without experience, and who, vainly seeking means to pierce the obscurity in which they languish from the want of an editor who comprehends them, and lends them his paper and print gratis? All those young pamphleteers, who are now obliged to present themselves like firemen or policemen at every new representation,

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and to write gravely all night on the most unworthy pasquinades of the minor theatres, (sure to cite the deluge apropos of a capon) why should not they be called upon daily to publish those poems or romances which lie slumbering in the head or desk, smothered by the necessities of a brutalizing trade? Poor children! young Levites of art; stained in the bloom of your powers by the scandalous requirements of the press, you who would have been with joy, meekness, love, and with a special advantage too, the disciples of great masters, fear not that I condemn you without pity, and that I do not understand what there is, what there might be in you, both good and pure! I know your secrets, and your vexations, I have drunk of the cup of your sorrows! I know that more than one amongst you, sitting at midnight in his cold and miserable garret, obliged to have the next day (what is equivalent to the daily bread of the artists of old) a whole coat and new gloves, has allowed his face bathed in tears to droop upon some beautiful new production which envy has ordered him to insult and which his deep sympathy forces him to throw afar from him, that he may condemn the artist without hearing him. Pity for you who have been obliged to blush for yourselves! Shame and condemnation for those who have forgotten how to blush! But why, Maestro, have I occupied you so long upon French criticism? you are too highly placed to care about it, and perhaps you are ignorant that it has endeavoured to dispute the palm which the European public has every where offered you? Far from me be the vulgar thought of consoling you for injustice, which you must have received with the smiling humility of a conqueror, if they ever happened to reach your ears. I know not whether men like you are as modest as their gracious manners and exquisite politeness gives room to suppose, but I know that the consciousness of their strength inspires them with a lofty wisdom. They live with the god and not with men; they are good, because they are great. Do you remember, Maestro, that one evening I had the honour of meeting you at a concert given by Berlioz? We had very bad places, for Berlioz is any thing but gallant in the distribution of his tickets, but it was a stroke of good fortune for me to be thrown just there by the crowd. They were playing the Marche au Supplice. I shall never forget your sympathetic grasp of the hand nor the effusion of sensibility with which that hand, laden with crowns, applauded the great but misappreciated artist, who so heroically struggles against an ungrateful public and a bitter destiny; you would willingly have shared your trophies with him, and I went away with my eyes full of tears, without too well knowing why, for is it surprising that you should be like this?

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Fig. 155 Les Huguenots. Original costume designs

Fig. 156 Les Huguenots. Playbill for the Royal Opera House, 1927

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Fig. 157 Gustave Roger as Raoul

NOTES

1

See Heinz Becker, Briefwechsel und Tagebücher (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1960), 2: 68–81 for a listing of reviews of the first performances; also the section under Les Huguenots in M.-H.Coudroy, La critique parisienne des ‘grands opéras’ de Meyerbeer (Saarbrücken: Musik Edition Lucie Galland, 1988) for reprints of contemporary critical reactions. An account of the first night, with all the preliminaries and aftermath and much documentation, is provided by Thomas Forrest Kelly in First Nights at the Opera (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004): 133-228. 2 In a letter to his sister Nanci Pal, Berlioz described Les Huguenots as an “encyclopédie musicale dont le succès se rattache à tant d’intérêts d’art et de fortune” (a musical encyclopedia, the success of which is as much due to artistic interest as it is to good fortune). 3 Théophile Gautier, Histoire de l’art dramatique en France depuis vingt-cinq ans (Paris, Leipzig: Hetzel, 1858-59), 4:82. 4 George Sand, Lettres d'un Voyageur, trans. Sacha Rabinovitch and Patricia Thomson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987), Letter Eleven, 275-91 5 Giacomo Meyerbeer. Les Huguenots: The Manuscript Facsimile. Introduced by Robert Letellier. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006); xx, 984. 6 See H. Becker, Briefwechsel und Tagebüher, 2:232-233. Heinz Becker and Gudrun Becker, Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Life in Letters, trans. Mark Violette (Portland, OR.: Amadeus Press, 1983): 56-57. 7 Von dem Schöpfer ‘Robert’s’ hatte das Publikum das Recht Grosses zu erwarten, für ihn aber was es keine geringe Aufgabe sich der Stufe würdig zu behaupten welche ihm die öffentliche Meinung nach der Vorführung dieser Oper angewiesen hatte. Doch der Beifall der Menge machte in nicht schwindeln: sicheren und kräftigen Schrittes hat er seinen Weg fortgesesezt einen Höhe erreichend, welche von wenigen seiner Mitstrebeneden erlangt werden kann” [From the author of Robert the public had the right to expect something great, but for him it was no small task worthily to attain the level which public opinion expected of him after the production of this opera. But the acclaim of the crowd did not turn his head: he continued along his own path with sure and powerful steps, and achieved a height reached by few of those who struggled along side him] (Franz Liszt, “Über Meyerbeers Hugenotten” (1837) in Gesammelte Schriften von Franz Liszt. 10 vols. Ed. L. Ramann. [Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1881], 2:64). 8 The terrible events continued to be treated as historical fiction until the end of the century. See, for example, Alexandre Dumas (père), La Reine Margot (1845) (in anonymous English translation as Marguerite de Valois [London: R. E. King, n.d.]) and George Alfred Henty, St. Bartholomew’s Eve. A Tale of the Huguenot Wars (London and Glasgow: Blackie & Sons Ltd., 1897). The Dumas novel begins

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with the fearful events, seen at the heart of royal politics; the Henty builds up to the horror of the massacre, depicting the War of Religion from a provincial point of view. One of the scenes of massacre in the latter book, when the young hero witnesses a Huguenot prayer-meeting broken up by marauding Catholics, reads almost like a scenario for act 5 scene 2 of Meyerbeer’s opera: “...he heard the sudden shout of ‘Down with the Huguenot dogs! Kill, kill!.’He dashed forward, followed by his men. A mob of armed men, headed by two or three horsemen... were rushing upon the Huguenots, who had just broken up into small groups. They stood as if paralyzed by this sudden attack.. No cry or scream broke from the women; most of these threw themselves upon their knees; a few of the men followed their example, and prepared to die unresistingly. Some sprang away among the trees, and above the din the preacher’s voice was heard commencing a Huguenot hymn beginning ‘The gates of heaven are opened,’ in which, without a moment’s hesitation, those who remained around him, joined....In a moment, with savage shouts and yells, their assailants were upon them, smiting and thrusting....his rage at this massacre of innocent people—a scene common enough in France, but which he now for the first time witnessed—half-maddened him” (ch.16). 9 See H. Becker, Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, 2:232. 10 See Michael Walter, Hugenotten-Studien, (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1987): 22-46. 11 See M. Walter, Hugenotten-Studien: 47-60. 12 See Jean Montgrédien, “Aux sources du livret des Huguenots: la collaboration entre Scribe et Meyerbeer” in Giacomo Meyerbeer—Musik als Welterfahrung: Heinz Becker zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Sieghart Döhring and Jürgen Schläder (Munich: Ricordi, 1995), 161. Montgrédien transcribes Meyerbeer’s comments in full. 13 See Anselm Gerhard’s discussion of this in The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century (Trans. Mary Whittall. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998): 177. 14 Heinz Becker, “Giacomo Meyerbeers Mitarbeit an den Libretti seiner Opern”. In Bericht über den internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bonn 1970, eds. C. Dahlhaus, H. J. Marx, M. Marx-Weber, G. Massenkeil (Cassel: Bärenreiter, 1973): 155-62. 15 Rossi wrote Romilda e Costanza, Emma di Resburo and Il Crociato in Egitto for Meyerbeer, and partially arranged the Metestasian Semiramide for him. 16 Heinz Becker, “‘...Der Marcel von Meyerbeer’: Anmerkungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Hugenotten”, Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preussischer Kulturbesitz 1979-80 (Berlin, 1981): 79-100, esp. 84. 17 See Henri Girard, Un Bourgeois dilettante à l’époque romantique: Émile Deschamps (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1921) and Georges Jean-Aubry, “A Romantic Dilettante: Émile Deschamps (1791-1871).” Music and Letters 20 (1939): 250-265. 18 See Bernd Böhmel and Reiner Zimmermann, Die Hugenotten: Leipziger Bühnenfassung (Leipzig: Peters, 1974). 19 Sieghart Döhring,”Die Autographen der vier Hauptopern Meyerbeers: Ein erster Quellenbericht”. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 39:1 (1982): 48.

Notes 20

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See Meyerbeer, Briefwechsel und Tägebücher, 2:377. See Heinz Becker, “‘...Der Marcel von Meyerbeer’”: 100. Becker considers Marcel the most important character of the opera, one who progresses from servant in act 1 to spiritual mentor and father in act 5 where he assumes the role of a minister and spiritual visionary. Given the detail and consuming imagination of Meyerbeer’s involvement with this role, it is difficult to accept Gerhard’s opinion that Marcel exits solely in relation to Raoul, in order to express his Protestant upbringing (see The Urbanization of Opera, 173). Liszt understood entirely the depth of Meyerbeer’s intentions in creating this character: “The part of Marcel, the purest type of plebeian pride and religious self-sacrifice, appears to us to be the most complete and vivid [character]. The straightforward solemnity of his music, which expresses the moral greatness of this man of the people so eloquently, and also its simplicity, the noble nature of its thought and form, remains outstanding from the beginning to the end of the opera” (Gesammelte Schriften, 2: 65). Meyerbeer was searching to embody a religious ideal, and something of the paradox of faith and fanaticism. It is worth comparing the character of Marcel with a thumbnail sketch of Reformed fervour to be found in ch. 35 of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), where the hero is put under the charge of Mr Gilfillan: “...they soon recognized in solemn march, first the performer upon the drum; secondly a large flag of four compartments upon which was inscribed the words COVENANT, KIRK, KING, KINGDOMS. The person who was honoured with this charge was followed by the commander of the party, a thin, dark, rigid looking man, about sixty years old. The spiritual pride, which in mine Host of the Candlestick mantled in a sort of supercilious hypocrisy, was in this man’s face elevated and yet darkened by genuine and undoubting fanaticism, It was impossible to behold him without imagination placing him some strange crisis, where religious zeal was the ruling principle. A martyr at the stake, a soldier in the field, a lonely and banished wanderer consoled by the intensity and supposed purity of his faith under every earthly privation; perhaps a persecuting inquisitor, as terrific in power as unyielding in adversity; any of these seemed congenial characters to this personage. With these high traits of energy, there was something in the affected precision and solemnity of his deportment and discourse that bordered upon the ludicrous; so that according to the mood of the spectator’s mind, and the light under which Mr Gilfillan presented himself, one might have feared, admired or laughed at him. His dress was that of a west-country peasant, of better material indeed than that of the lower rank, but in no respect affecting either the mode of the age, or of any Scottish gentry at any period. His arms were a broadsword and pistols...” (Waverley, ed. with an introduction by Andrew Hook. [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972]: 264-65). 22 All citations from the Oeuvres Illustrées de Eugène Scribe [Paris: Vialat et Cie, Editeurs, Maresq et Cie, Libraires, 1854] 129, 137. 23 All citations of the standard libretto are from Giacomo Meyerbeer: The Complete Libretti in Five Volumes. In the Original and English Translation by Richard Arsenty with an Introduction by Robert Letellier. Vol. 3: Il crociato in Egitto. Robert le Diable. Les Huguenots. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004. [= LGM] 21

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24 Jacques-Gabriel Prod’Homme, “Die Hugenotten-Première,” Die Musik 3:9 (19034): 187-200, and Thomas Forrest Kelly, First Nights at the Opera (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) 25 See Henry Pleasants, The Great Tenor Tragedy: The Last Days of Adolphe Nourrit As Told (Mostly) by Himself. Edited, Annotated, and with and an Introduction and Epilogue (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1995). 26 Franz Liszt, “Über Meyerbeers Hugenotten” (1837). In Gesammelte Schriften, 2: 64-66. 27 Ernest Newman, “Les Huguenots”. In More Stories of Famous Operas. Philadelphia: Blakeston, 1946. 28 Prosper Mérimée, A Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX, in The Novels, Tales and Letters of Prosper Mérimée. Edited by Prof. George Saintsbury, M. A. Complete in eight volumes (New York and Philadelphia: Frank S. Holby, 1906), 6:252-257. 29 LGM, 3:594-595. 30 LGM, 3:596-597. 31 Mérimée, A Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX, 6:312. 32 Theodor Agrippa d’Aubigné, Der Hugenott von altem Schrott und Korn: Denkwürdigkeiten Theodor Agrippa d’Aubignés (Leipzig,1854); Histoire universelle, ed. A. de Ruble. Vol. 3 (Paris, 1889). See Geoffrey Brereton, A Short History of French Literature (1954), second edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), 170-172 and Walter, Hugenotten-Studien, 32-34. 33 D’Aubigné, “L’Hyver” (stanza 4), in The Oxford Book of French Verse, ed. St John Lucas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908): 123. 34 LGM, 3:620-623. 35 The historical Marguerite de Valois was notorious for her many love affairs, so that when she begins her famous aside “Ah, si j’étais coquette” in her duet with Raoul, one is not dealing with an instance “in which high seriousness is repeatedly pushed aside for mere diversion”(the allegation of Arthur Jacobs in his review of Les Huguenots at Covent Garden, Opera [Nov. 1991]: 106), but a genuine recreation of character, an authentically historical characterization. 36 Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots, v.s pp. 243-48 (Brandus): 279-83 (Boosey/Kalmus). 37 Christhard Frese, Dramaturgie der grossen Opern Giacomo Meyerbeers (Berlin: Robert Linau, 1970): 136. 38 Norbert Miller, “Grosse Oper als Historiengemälde. Überlegungen zur Zusammenarbeit von Eugène Scribe und Giacomo Meyerbeer (am Beispiel des 1. Aktes von Les Huguenots” [exemplified by.Act 1 of Les Huguenots]. In Oper und Opertexte. (Reihe Siegen, Beiträge zur Literatur- und Sprachwissenschaft, 60.) Ed. Jens Malte FISCHER (Heidelberg, 1985): 7. 39 See Max Brod, “Some Comments on the Relationship between Wagner and Meyerbeer,” Year Book IX of the Leo Baeck Institute (London,1964): 203. “Not only, however, did Meyerbeer invest his hostile characters with all the regalia of their dark powers, the sitra achra; he found true colours for beauty, chivalry and all the elegance of courtiers. In Acts I and II of Les Huguenots there are passages which move me deeply though there is nothing in them to arouse deep emotions, because they are filled with light and grace and air. The Bathers’ Chorus, musical

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inspiration of the highest order, glides past us. In the opening scenes, we hear that polished and noble De ces lieux enchanteurs making a unique background for what follows, and there is the delightful aria for the Page, without which Verdi might not have created the part of the Page Oscar in Un Ballo in Maschera with such sure and graceful lines. Incidentally, both are coloratura parts.” 40 LGM, 3:626-627. 41 George Sand, Lettres d’un Voyageur, trans. Sacha Rabinovitch and Patricia Thomson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987), Letter Eleven, 275-91.”You had depicted these struggles, these fears and torments, these promises and raptures in solemn, touching strokes while leaving them cloaked in their poetic symbols and you had known how to touch and disturb us with chimerial characters and improbable situations” (280). 42 David Charlton, “Romantic Opera: 1830-1850 (a) Grand Opéra”. In The New Oxford History of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 9: 89-119, esp. “Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots”, 9: 97-100. 43 See Ursula Günther, “Verdis Don Carlos: Eine französische grand opéra” (Mainz, 1985): 15. 44 Eduard Hanslick, Aus dem Tagebuch eines Musikers, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Allgemeine Verein für deutsche Literatur, 1892): 105. 45 Bülow, Hans von. Briefe und Schriften. Ed. Marie von Bülow. 8 vols. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1895-1936. 46 For a discussion of the opera’s characteristics in terms of Hugo’s aesthetics, see Walter, Hugenotten-Studien, 97-132 and Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera, 162-70. 47 In the light of the treatment of Luther’s hymn, and the character of Marcel particularly, it is difficult to understand how exactly Mary Ann Smart reaches her opinion that in spite of the “foregrounding” of “tableaux of religious conversion... there is a sense in which Meyerbeer’s view of the spiritual dimension remains obstinately, paradoxically mundane” (see Smart, Mimomania [University of California Press, 2004]: 103). How differently Georges Sand saw it: “Though you are a musician, you are more a poet than any of us! In what secret recess of your recess of your soul, in what hidden treasury of your mind, did you find those clear, pure features, that concept,...true as history, lucid as conscience, true as faith? It was not long ago that you were on your knees in the sensuous darkness... constructing your Sicilian cathedral...bowed down by the tender and terrible ecstasies of that holy place. ...How then was it, when you entered the church of Luther, that you were able to evoke its austere poetry, revive its heroic dead?” (Lettres d’un Voyageur, 279).The sensitivity to aspects of both Catholic and Protestant spirituality quietly evinced in Les Huguenots must, moreover, be understood in the context of the assumption of the high-mimetic phase of Northrop Frye’s literary modes, which sees magic and mystery subsumed into a more vigorous political realism. All of this suggests a most imaginative, even poetical, response to the challenge of depicting religion and spirituality in a dramatic work with a specifically historical background. 48 See Meyerbeer, Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, 3:72. It is also discussed and quoted in Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera, 209.

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Charlton, “Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots”, 9: 97-100. Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera, 199. 51 See Victor and Marina A. Ledin, Introductory essay,”Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Complete Piano Music, Volume 1” (Naxos, 8.553852): 6. 52 See Nicolai Gedda. Nicolai Gedda. My Life and Art, trans. by Tom Geddes (Opera Biography Series, 12) (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1999), 86: “In that second concert [in Carnegie Hall], which took place in November 1962, I did scenes from French opera, including a duet from Giacomo’s Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, which had been requested by a music society called Friends of French Opera. Les Huguenots includes bel canto in the true meaning of the term—that is, ‘beautiful song’, with its long extended phrases and pianissimo phrases—a also a cadenza where the tenor goes up to a high D-flat, half a tone higher than high C. That concert was my great breakthrough as a bel canto singer, and all the reviewers were in agreement—they had not heard such bel canto since Caruso’s prime. The audience was completely ecstatic.” 53 See The Viking Opera Guide. Ed. Amanda Holden, Nicholas Kenyon, Stephen Walsh (London: Viking, 1993): 661. See also the mezzo Carolyn Sebron on the role of Sélika in L’Africaine: “While I wouldn’t call Meyerbeer bel canto per se, it requires that level of singing” (Opera, 55:6 [June 2004]: 665). 54 See Adam Carse, The History of Orchestration (1925) (London: Dover Publications, 1964), 205-206; also see 253-254. 55 The most detailed analysis of Meyerbeer’s use of the duet is Stephen Huebner’s “Italianate Duets in Meyerbeer’s Grands Opéras,” Journal for Musicological Research 8 (1989): 203-58. 56 Bellini, Norma (Milan: Ricordi, n.d.; rpt. 1991): 61-69. 57 The beautiful phrase is David Kimbell’s. See “Vincenzo Bellini”, The Viking Book of Opera, 70). 58 Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots (Paris: Brandus, n.d.): 148-52; Gli Ugonotti (London: Boosey & Co., n.d.; rpt. Kalmus, 1978): 168-73. 59 The opera had a distinguished defender in Camille Saint-Saëns, the composer of Samson and Delilah. It was revived at the new Théâtre Lyrique in Paris in 1909, and certain superior critics had their fling at it. Whereupon its cause was warmly championed by M. Arthur Pougin, one of the leaders of musical criticism in Paris. It was to signify his cordial approval of M. Pougin’s championing of Meyerbeer that M. Saint-Saëns wrote. In his letter, addressed to M. Pougin, he says: “You have very properly praised the three last Acts, full of nobility in style, powerfully and pathetically inspired. It is certain that with the opening of the third Act the work suggests the rising flight of a bird. But is this bird so contemptible as you seem to think whilst it is still strutting on the ground, pluming itself and flapping its wings?” In this last sentence the reference is to Marcel’s Huguenot war-song and to Queen Marguerite’s aria. Saint-Saëns goes on to show that these are masterpieces of their kind. Such songs are no longer fashionable in opera; but, to pass sober judgment on a work of art, it must be examined in the light of the epoch in which it was created, and not solely in that of our own day. 60 William Spark, Musical Memories (London: W. Reeves, 1888; rev. 1908): 51. An organist, choir-master and writer, Spark (1823–1897) is best remembered for 50

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his active role in the Leeds musical scene. His various contribution to papers and journals were anthologized and later revised and reprinted (1908). 61 See John Ella, “Personal Recollections of Meyerbeer” (1837), revised for The Musical Union Record (1864). Reprinted in Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Reader. Compiled and edited by Robert Ignatius Letellier (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007): 140-141. 62 Irmer, Siegfried. “Das Orgien-Wiegen-Fahnenlied”. In Die UniversitätGesamthochschule Paderborn. Kennen Sie Meyerbeer? Die lange Meyerbeer Nacht. [An evening of exhibition and performance in honour of the bicentennary of Meyerbeer’s birth.] Paderborn: Zentrum für Kulturwissenchaft der UniversitätGesamthochschule Paderborn, 5 Oct. 1991: 41-42. 63 Sieghard Döhring, “Les Huguenots”, Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, 4:135 64 See The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, 1:454-55. 65 See Becker (ed.), Meyerbeer, Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, 2:370, translated by R. I. Letellier. 66 The classic analysis of this scene and the famous love duet is Edgar Istel’s “Act IV of Les Huguenots”, The Musical Quarterly 22 (1936): 87-97. 67 Les Huguenots v.s., 356-65 (Brandus); 402-11 (Boosey/Kalmus). 68 Norma v.s., 214-20. 69 Éva Pintér-Lück most aptly captures the psychological implications of Bellini’s powerful drama in this piece: “...the choruses in Bellini’s operas do not serve a purely decorative function, but show a nation with a topical message in Italy of the 1830s....As with many other historicizing Romantic operas, the old subject matter served Bellini only as a pretext for treating contemporary phenomena, though he was less interested in superficial political matters than in expressing both an individual and a collective yearning for a self-determining life, free of prohibitions and regulations - with all its dangers and challenges” (see András Batta [ed.], Opera: Composers, Works, Performers [Cologne: Könemann, 2000]: 29). 70 Cf. Norma, Sinfonia, 8-9. 71 “Dr. Ox’s Experiment” (“A Fantasy of Dr Ox”) (French: Une fantaisie du docteur Ox) is a short story by the French writer and pioneer of science-fiction, Jules Verne, published in 1872. It describes an experiment by one Dr. Ox and his assistant Gedeon Ygene. A prosperous scientist Dr. Ox offers to build a novel gas lighting system to an unusually stuffy Flemish town of Quiquendone. As the town bore no charges, the offer is gladly accepted. The hidden interest of Dr. Ox is however not lighting, but large scale experiment on effect of oxygen on plants, animals and humans. He uses electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The latter is being pumped to the city causing accelerated growth of plants, excitement and aggressiveness in animals and humans. The story ends up by destruction of the oxygen factory of Dr. Ox – by accident, oxygen and hydrogen got mixed causing a major explosion. Jules Verne acknowledges in the epilogue that the described effect of oxygen is a pure fiction invented by him. The text was re-published in a Verne short-story anthology, Doctor Ox, in 1874. The story was adapted by Jacques Offenbach as Le Docteur Ox, an opéra-bouffe in three acts and six tableaux, premiered on 26 January 1877 with a libretto by Arnold Mortier,

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Philippe Gille and Verne himself. Annibale Bizzelli composed another version, Il Dottor Oss. 72 See Max Brod, “Some Comments on the Relationship between Wagner and Meyerbeer”. Year Book IX of the Leo Baeck Institute (London, 1964): 202-204. “Valentine and Raoul sing in an ecstasy of loving harmony immediately before hatred and carnage break loose.” 73 This observation comes from Verdi’s famous letter of 2 May 1898 addressed to Camille Bellaigue. 74 Les Huguenots, v.s., 375-81 (Brandus); 422-29 (Boosey/Kalmus). 75 Max Brod, “Some Comments on the Relationship between Wagner and Meyerbeer”. Year Book IX of the Leo Baeck Institute (London, 1964): 203. 76 Les Huguenots, v.s., 375-81 (Brandus); 422-29 (Boosey/Kalmus). 77 Franz Liszt again expressed the matter with his usual enlightening perspicuity in his essay on Meyerbeer’s opera: “Of similarly irresistible effect is the already famous duet in act 4. This picture of love and death, this summons to arms, this intimation of hideous slaughter that intrudes amidst the magical words of a deeply felt profession of love, alternately takes possession of the shaken heart and impels it, full of excitement, to sacrifice itself to the power of a situation marked by the highest poetical effect. A giant talent speaks to us from this beautiful scene, and if a certain originality and dignity is perhaps sometimes lacking in individual vocal phrases, this is more than compensated by the wealth and novelty of the accompaniment” (Franz Liszt, Gesammelte Schriften, 2:65). 78 Max Brod, “Some Comments on the Relationship between Wagner and Meyerbeer,” 204. 79 See Edward Garden, Tchaikovsky (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1973, 1976): 8486. 80 William Spark, Musical Memories, 63, 193-194. 81 Reiner Zimmermann, Giacomo Meyerbeer: Eine Biographie nach Dokumenten (Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 1991), 221. 82 See Jean-Maxime Lévêque, Edouard Desplechin, Le Décorateur du Grand Opéra à la française (Paris: Univers musical, 2008). 83 See Louis Marie Quicherat, Adolphe Nourrit: Sa vie, son talent, son caractère, sa correspondance. 3 vols. (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1867); Francis Rogers, “Adolphe Nourrit.” The Musical Quarterly 25 (1939): 11-25; Henry Pleasants, The Great Tenor Tragedy: The Last Days of Adolphe Nourrit As Told (Mostly) By Himself (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1995). 84 See Heinz Becker (ed.), Meyerbeer, Briefwechsel und Tagebücher 2:680-81, for a listing of reviews, also the section under Les Huguenots in M.-H. Coudroy, La Critique parisienne des “grands operas” de Meyerbeer, for reprints of contemporary critical reactions. 85 See Stéphanie Wolff, L’Opéra au Palais Garnier, 1875-1962 (Paris: L’Entr’acte, 1962): 115-18. 86 See Harold Rosenthal, Two Centuries of Opera at Covent Garden (London: Putman, 1958). 87 The 1927 performance of Les Huguenots has gone down in popular understanding as a disaster, principally because of the ineptitude of John O’Sullivan, with the

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Royal party leaving before the end, and the performance booed. The press reports, however, cast the event in a much more positive light. The Times, 31 May 1927. Regarding O’Sullivan, they stated that he was nervous in the first act and that he finished well and concluded that “he is a tenor who should prove a considerable acquisition”. There is no mention of booing or anybody leaving early. The Observer, 5 June 1927. The report is rather bland, alluding only to Stabile and Guglielmenti by name. There is no mention of booing. Irish Times, 31 May 1927. “The King, who followed the performance very closely, repeatedly used his opera glasses to watch the scenes on the stage....The feature ofthe opera was the triumph of the Irish tenor, John O’Sullivan, who sang Raoul. He was a little nervous in his opening bars in the first act, but quickly gained confidence, and before the end of the act he was singing magnificently. He had a great reception, especially from the upper part of the House”. Again no disapproval is mentioned. The Yorkshire Post, 31 May 1927: “... Most tenors are compelled to sing this note (fourth act high D-flat) falsetto, but Mr. O’Sullivan takes it full voice, and I believe he is the only tenor alive who is able to do so. When he sang Raoul at Milan, four years ago, the applause after the fourth act spread into the street, where the crowd gathered calling for him to come out that they might acclaim him.” The Sunday Times, 5 June 1927: Ernest Newman praises only Kipnis and Dua, but does not mention any booing. The French theatrical paper Comoedia sent a reviewer who criticized Kipnis and Stabile as insufficient and found Autori, Scacciati and O’Sullivan the positive elements of the evening. In the view of the reviewer, the conductor Bellezza was a real disaster, “confusing Les Huguenots with Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Professor Goldman, when he was writing his radio program “Send him Canorious” for the BBC, a piece on James Joyce and O’Sullivan, interviewed Kipnis and Robert Gwynne, a member of the Covent Garden chorus at the time. He asked them both if there had been any booing, and both denied it. (“Meyerbeer’s Huguenots at Covent Garden,” OPERA-L Archives, 5 Jan 1997) 88 See Francis Robinson, Caruso. His Life in Pictures (New York and London: The Studio Publications, Inc., 1957), 62; Howard S. Greenfield. Caruso. An Illustrated Life (London: Collins & Brown, 1991): 27-28.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Giacomo Meyerbeer General Studies —. Meyerbeer Studies. A Series of Lectures, Essays, and Articles on the Life and Work of Giacomo Meyerbeer, Madison; Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses, 2005 [10 articles.] —. The Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer. Madison; Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/ Associated University Presses, 2006. —. An Introduction to the Dramatic Works of Giacomo Meyerbeer: Operas, Ballets, Cantatas, Plays. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2008. —. Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Reader. Compiled and edited by Robert Ignatius Letellier. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. —. Religious Themes in French Grand Opera. (Wort und Musik, 69. Salzburger Akademische Beiträger.) Anif/Salzburg: Verlag MuellerSpeiser, 2009; 137 pages, with illustrations. [[email protected]]

Life Correspondence and Diaries MEYERBEER, Giacomo. Briefwechsel und Tagebücher. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1960, 1970, 1975, 1985, 1998. —. Vol. 1 (up to 1824). Ed. Heinz BECKER (1960). —. Vol. 2 (1825-1836). Ed. Heinz BECKER (1970). —. Vol. 3 (1837-1845). Ed. Heinz and Gudrun BECKER (1975). —. Vol. 4 (1846-1849). Ed. Heinz and Gudrun BECKER (1985). —. Vol. 5. (1849-1852).Ed. Sabine HENZE-DÖHRING (with Hans MOELLER) (1998). —. Vol. 6. (1853-1855). Ed. Sabine Henze-DÖHRING (with Hans MOELLER) (2002). —. Vol. 7. (1856-1859). Ed. Sabine Henze-DÖHRING (2004). —. Vol. 8. (1860-1864). Ed. Sabine Henze-DÖHRING (2006).

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MEYERBEER, Giacomo. The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer. Translated, Edited and Annotated by Robert Ignatius LETELLIER. Madison; Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1999, 2000. —. Vol. 1: The Early Years and Italy (1791-1826) and The Parisian Triumphs (1827-1839) (1999). —. Vol. 2: The Prussian Years and ‘Le Prophète’ (1840-1849) (2000). —. Vol. 3: The Years of Celebrity (1850-1856) (2002). —. Vol. 4: The Last Years (1857-1864) (2003).

Bibliography LETELLIER, Robert Ignatius and Marco Clemente PELLEGRINI. Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Guide to Research. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.

Libretti Giacomo Meyerbeer: The Complete Libretti in Five Volumes. In the Original and English Translation by Richard Arsenty with an Introduction by Robert Letellier. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004. [= LGM] —. Vol.1: Jephtas Gelbde. Wirth und Gast. Das Brandenburger Tor. Romilda e Costanza. —. Vol. 2: Semiramide. Emma di Resburgo. Margherita d’Anjou. L’Esule di Granata. —. Vol. 3: Il crociato in Egitto. Robert le Diable. Les Huguenots. —. Vol. 4: Ein Feldleger in Schlesien. Vielka. Le Prophète. —. Vol. 5: L’Étolie du Nord. Le Pardon de Ploërmel. L’Africaine. Giacomo Meyerbeer: The Non-Operatic Texts. Complied by Robert Ignatius Letellier and Richard Arsenty with English translations by Richard Arsenty and an introduction by Robert Ignatius Letellier. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. Giacomo Meyerbeer: The Complete Libretti in Eleven Volumes. In the Original and English Translation by Richard Arsenty with an Introduction by Robert Letellier. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009 [separate volumes, paperbacks]

Augustin-Eugène Scribe Oeuvres Complètes d’Eugène Scribe [Paris: Furne, A. Andre, 1840-1841]).

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Oeuvres Illustrées de Eugène Scribe (Lithographie de C. Roux et G. Maurand d’après les dessins de Tony et Alfred Johannot pour l’édition des [Paris: Vialat et Cie, Editeurs, Maresq et Cie, Libraires, 1854] 129, 137. KOON, Helene and SWITZER, Richard. Eugène Scribe. Boston: Twayne, 1980. LEGOUVÉ, Ernest Wilfrid. Eugène Scribe. Paris: Didier et Cie, 1874. PENDLE, Karin. “Eugène Scribe and the French Opera of the 19th Century.” The Musical Quarterly 57 (1971): 535-561. —. Eugène Scribe and French Opera of the Nineteenth Century. (Studies in Musicology, 6.) Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979. YON, Jean-Claude Eugène Scribe. La fortune et la liberté. Saint-Genouph: Librairie A.-G. Nizet, 2000.

Émile Deschamps DESCHAMPS, Émile. “Lettres sur la musique.” In vol. 4 of Oeuvres complètes. Paris, 1873. GIRARD, Henri. Un Bourgeois dilettante à l’époque romantique: Émile Deschamps. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1921. JEAN-AUBRY, Georges. “A Romantic Dilettante: Émile Deschamps (1791-1871).” Music and Letters 20 (1939): 250-265.

Les Huguenots MEYERBEER, Giacomo. Les Huguenots: The Manuscript Facsimile. Compiled and Introduced by Robert LETELLIER. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006; pp. xx, 984.

Libretto Meyerbeer, G. (1836). Les Huguenots; a grand Opera in five Acts, the French words by E. Scribe, the English words by W. Ball. Scribe, A. E. and G. Meyerbeer Les Huguenots: opera in five acts text. S.l., s.n. n.d. Scribe Augustin E., G. Meyerbeer Jacob, et al. (1865). “The Opera Libretto. Meyerbeer’s Grand Opera of Les Huguenots,etc.” [Translated from the French of Scribe.]. Condé, G. and E. Scribe (1990). “Les Huguenots.” Paris: L’Avant-Scène, 1990.

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Scores Meyerbeer, G. (1836). Les Huguenots. Opéra en cinq actes. Paroles de M. E. Scribe ... Partition. Paris: Chez Maurice Schlesinger, 1836. —. (1836). Les Huguenots. Opéra en cinq actes. Paroles de M. E. Scribe ... Partition. Paris: Chez Maurice Schlesinger, 1836. —. (1836). Les Huguenots. Opéra en cinq actes. Paroles de M. E. Scribe ... Partition. Paris: Chez Maurice Schlesinger, 1836. —. (1836). Die Hugenotten. Grosse Oper in fünf Aufzügen von E. Scribe mit deutscher Uebersetzung von J. F. Castelli ... Klavierauszug ohne Finales. (Ger. & Fr.) Leipzig: Bei Breitkopf & Härtel, 1836? Meyerbeer, G. and C. Schwencke (1837). Die Hugenotten ... Grosse Oper in fünf Aufzügen von E. Scribe mit deutscher Uebersetzung von J. F. Castelli ... Vollständiger Klavierauszug nach der Originalpartitur von Ch. Schwencke. Ger. & Fr. Leipzig: Bei Breitkopf & Härtel, 1837? Meyerbeer, G. (1840). Die Gibellinen in Pisa. Grosse Oper in fünf Aufzügen nach dem Französischen des Scribe bearbeitet von G. Ott ... zur Musik der Huguenotten ... Vollständiger Klavierauszug. —. (1848). Gli Ugonotti, grand’opera in quattro atti, parole di Eugenio Scribe, messe in italiano da Manfredo Maggioni, etc. [Vocal score.]. London: R. Addison & Co, 1848? Meyerbeer, G. and C. Schwencke (1850). “Les Huguenots, etc. [An edition in separate numbers, with P. F. accompaniment by C. Schwencke.]” No. 15. Paris: Chez Maurice Schlesinger, 1850? Meyerbeer, G. (1852). Gli Ugonotti. Opéra en 3 actes ... Partition pour piano et chant avec paroles italiennes. Paris: Brandus & cie, 1852? —. (1855). Les Huguenots ... Partition Piano et Chant. Paris: G. Brandus, Dufour et Cie 1855? —. (1855). Gli Ugonotti. Opera in cinque atti ... Riduzione per canto con accomp. di pianoforte. Nuova tradizione italiana, etc. Milano: Giovanni Ricordi, 1855? —. (1858). “Gli Ugonotti with an English version, and the Music of the principal Airs. Ital. & Eng.” London: Davidson,1858. —. (1861). “Les Huguenots, The Huguenots ... with an English version, and the Music of the principal Airs. Fr. & Eng.” London: Davidson, 1861. —. (1861). Gli Ugonotti. Grand’opera in cinque atti. Partitura a piena orchestra con illustrazione e ritratto. Firenze: G. G. Guidi, 1861. [Miniature full score.] —. (1883). Gli Ugonotti. An Opera in five Acts, etc. —. (1900). Les Huguenots. Opéra en cinq actes. Paroles de Scribe ... (Édition définitive et complète soigneusement revue et corrigée et

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contenant les variantes adoptées à l’Opéra de Paris.) Partition chant et piano. Paris: Benoit aîné, c. 1900. Sullivan Arthur, S., J. Pittman, et al. (1871). Gli Ugonotti. (Les Huguenots.) Opera in five acts ... with Italian words by M. Maggioni, and an English adaptation by F. Romer ... Edited by A. Sullivan and J. Pittman. [Vocal score.].

Modern Editions i) Full Score Meyerbeer, G. and C. Rosen (1980). Les Huguenots. Libretto by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps ... A facsimile edition of the printed orchestral score (published by M. Schlesinger, Paris), with an introduction by Charles Rosen. New York; London: Garland Publishing, 1980. GOSSETT, Philip and ROSEN, Charles (eds). Les Huguenots: Facsimile of the Schlesinger Full Score (1836). (Early Romantic Opera, 20.) New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1980. 2 vols.POSPISIL, Milan and OTTLOVÁ, Maria (eds). Les Huguenots. (Meyerbeer Werkausgabe I; Meyerbeer Institute, Thurnau.) Feldkirchen, Munich: Ricordi & Co. [in preparation]. ii) Vocal Score SULLIVAN, Arthur and PITTMAN, J. (eds). Gli Ugonotti: Facsimile of the Boosey & Co. Vocal Score. New York: Edwin F. Kalmus, 1985.

Separate Pieces Meyerbeer, G. (1836). “Ballet des noces, etc.” [Piano.]. —. (1836). “Les Huguenots. The celebrated chorus The Carousal, etc.” London: Mori & Lavenu,1836. —. (1836). “Rata-plan, the celebrated chorus, etc.” London: Mori & Lavenu, 1836. —. (1836). “No. 21. Grand Trio, etc”. Paris: Maurice Schlesinger, 1836? —. (1841). “Introduction [and airs], etc.” —. (1844). “Thy flow’ry banks oh lovely river.” —. (1845). “‘Beauté divine,’ ‘Fair Star of this enchanted Bower,’ the favorite duett, etc.” Fr. & Eng. London: Addison & Hodson, 1845? —. (1848). “‘O vago suol della Turena.’ Aria. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “‘Non più laì.’ Grand Duet.”

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—. (1848). “‘D’un sacro zel l’ardore’ (Benedizione dei pugnali). Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “D’un sacro zel l’ardore.” —. (1848). “‘Finita è pei frati.’ Aria. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848).”‘No, caso egual giammai scommetto.’ Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “‘ Providenza dolce madre.’ Romanza. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “‘O ciel dove vai tu?’ Grand Duet. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “‘Il piacer, l’onor, l’opulenza.’ Duettino. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “‘Più bianca del più bianco velo.’ Romanza. Words by M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “‘Pure as the snow ... Più bianca del più bianco velo.’ (Words by E. J. Gill.).” —. (1848). “‘Beltà divina.’ Duet. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848).”‘ Nobil Donna è tanto onesta.’ Cavatina, etc.” London: R. Addison & Co, 1848. —. (1848).”‘ Giovin beltà’. Aria [in E flat]. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “‘Ah! l’ingrato d’offesa mortale.’ Arietta. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1848). “‘Ah vèdete, il ciel,’ Visione. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1849). “‘Sweeter than the breath of morning,’ the melody ... ‘Nobil Donna e tanto onesta’ the words by E. J. Gill.” —. (1849). “The Huguenots: English version [beginning: ‘No, no, no there’s no page’]. The Pages song.” —. (1849). “‘Tu m’ami? Oh qual brillo.’ Cavatina.” —. (1849). “‘Giovin beltà. Aria [in C major]. Parole di M. Maggioni.” —. (1849). “‘One moonlit eve.’ Song; words by W. H. Bellamy.” —. (1854). “List to the minstrel’s lay. ‘A noble lady,’ romance.” —. (1855). “Thou lov’st me. (Tu m’ami.).” —. (1856). “Piu bianca del piu candido velo”. —. (1858). “Il piacer e l’onor.” —. (1858). “Carousal Chorus. Arranged for the Pianoforte.” —. (1858). “Nobil Signor.” - “No, caso e qual.” —. (1859). “‘In this sweet grove.’ Chorus. English words by G. Linley.” —. (1860). “‘Nobil donna e tanto onesta,’ cavatina, etc.” London: Lamborn Cock Addison & Co, c. 1860. —. (1865). “Gaily flashes the sun on the mountain.” —. (1865). “The Spinning Wheel. Trio.” —. (1866). “‘Noble Signior I greet thee.’ (‘Nobil donna e tanto onesta.’

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Discography and Bibliography ARSENTY, Richard and LETELLIER, Robert Ignatius. Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Discography of Vintage Recordings, 1889-1955. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. BEBB, Richard and LIFF, Vivian, “Les Huguenots on old 78’s” Essay in the programme notes to the 1968 concert performance in London.] See

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below ROYAL ALBERT HALL. BEBB, Richard and LIFF, Vivian (disc.). “Les Huguenots - Part 1” and “Les Huguenots - Part 2”. (Opera on the Gramophone, 24.) Opera (July 1969): 580-86; (August 1969): 678-84. DÖHRING, Sieghart (bib.). In Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, ( Eds. Carl DAHLHAUS and Sieghart DÖHRING. 4 vols. Munich and Zurich, 1986-91), 4:140. DUTRONC, Jean-Louis (disc.); GIULIANI, Elisabeth (bib.).Meyerbeer: ‘Les Huguenots’ (L’Avant-Scène Opéra, 134) (Sept.-Oct. 1990). Paris: ABexpress, 1990:108-113, 120, 122. LANDINI, Giancarlo. “Storia di dame e di cavalieri alla corte di Luigi Filippo”, Musica, 22 (1981):258-263

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—. Diapason, 360 (1990):148-149. —. Diapason, 375 (1991):164. RICHTER, Michael. “Huguenots. Meyerbeer”, Opera on Video. A Personal Review, 1997:151-152. SEGALINI, Sergio. Opéra International, 195 (1995):63. STEANE, John B. Gramophone, September 1990. —. Gramophone, ? (1991). —. Gramophone, March 2004:76-77. STEFANELLI, Alfredo. L’opera, 79 (1994):92. WEAVER, William. Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana, 5 (1971):164-165. For a complete discography of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, see: http://k.1asphost.com/clor/CLMEHUGU.HTM

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Barcelona, 1971 PRICE, Gilbert. “Barcelona”. Opera News, 36/9 (January 22, 1972):32.

Sydney 1981 CARGHER, John. “Sydney”. Opera News, 46/9 (January 16, 1982):30. HARRIS, Frank. “AO won the battle for Huguenots”. Opera-Opera, August 1981.

Berlin 1987 STRURZBECHER, U. “Giacomo Meyerbeers Die Hugenotten in Berlin”. Zeitschrift für Orchesterkultur und Runfunks-Chorwesen 35 (1987).

Montpellier 1988 CADARS, Pierre. “Cyril Diederich directeur général de l’orchestre” Des Huguenots pour un centenaire, Supplément spécial au numéro 118 d’Opéra International d’Octobre 1988.

Montpellier 1990 CONDÉ, Gérard. “Les Huguenots, de Giacomo Meyerbeer, a l’Opéra de Montpellier: un compositeur composite”. Le Monde, 22 November 1990. PAROUTY, Michel. “Les Huguenots a Montpellier”. Diapason, 367 (1991): 26. REY, Anne. “Les Huguenots sont toujours debout Résurrection scénique d’un grand opéra historique cent cinquante-quatre ans après sa création. Le Corum de Montpellier s’ouvre à l’art lyrique”. Le Monde, 27 November 1990.

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London, 1991 HIGGINS, John. “No sects please, we’re modern”. The Times, 7 November 1991. LANDINI, Giancarlo. “Parola di Rosina! Intervista a Jennifer Larmore”. L’opera, 131 (July-August 1999):41.

Novara 1993 BUSNELLI, Mariella. “Les Huguenots”. Sipario, 534, (1993):57-58. DEL CORONA, Mario. “Katia Ricciarelli fra gli Ugonotti a Novara sulle orme di Toscanini”. Corriere della Sera. 26 febbraio 1993. GALLIA, Francesco. Ugonotti: dieci minuti di applausi”. Corriere di Novara, 1 March 1993. FOLETTO, Angelo. “Ugonotti un suicidio deplorevole”. La Repubblica, 28 February 1993. FARINA, Carlo Alessandro. “Coccia, la lirica è tornata con Ricciarelli e ‘forze locali’”. L’Azione, 6 march 1993. GAVAZZENI, Giovanni. “A Novara, il Teatro Coccia si riapre con i leggendari Ugonotti”. Amadeus, 42 (1993):13. GERVASONI, Giorgio. “Piccola Scala”. Il nostro tempo, 14 March 1993. GUALERZI, Giorgio. “Ugonotti maltrattatti a Novara”. Famiglia Cristiana, 17 March 1993: 155. “Novara Teatro Coccia. Gli Ugonotti” in Opera ‘93. Annuario EDT dell’opera lirica in Italia, a cura di Giorgio PUGLIARO, Torino, EDT: 143. HASTINGS, Stephen, Opera News, 57:16 (May 1993):59.

Berlin 1998 GEITEL, Klaus. “Der Mauertod der Protestanten. John Dews HugenottenInszenierung wieder an der Deutschen Oper, Berliner Morgenpost, 14 December 1998.

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New York 2001 ANSON, Philip. “Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots.Opera Orchestra of New York. 23 April 2001”. La Scena Musicale, 25 April, 2001. BERNHEIMER, Martin. “The Arts: Ordinary Mortals Fan The Flames Music New York”. Financial Times, 26 April 2001. GRIFFITHS, Paul. “Les Huguenots: Meyerbeer Claims a Place in the Present”. The New York Times, 28 April 2001. KELLOW, Brian. “Concert and Recitals”. Opera News, 66/2 (August 2001). LEVINE, Robert. “Krassimira Stoyanova is the most thrilling member of a magnificent cast in a Carnegie Hall concert performance of Meyerbeer’s enormous opera”. Andante.com Magazine, April 2001. DAVIS, Peter G. “In Brief: Classical Music”. New York Magazine, 14 May 2001. ROSASCO, Joan. “Les Huguenots”. Opera Orchestra of New York Newsletter, Spring 2001.

Martina Franca, 2002 CAROLI, Annarita. “Les Huguenots di Giacomo Meyerbeer al Festival della Valle D’Itria”. Caffè Europa, 191 (26 August 2002). CIRIGNANO, Antonio. “Gli ugonotti lanciano la sfida in Valle d’Itria”. Il Giornale, 11 July 2002. —. “Se Gli Ugonotti diventano ebrei il pubblico si accapiglia in sala”. Il Giornale, 6 August 2002. DI FELICE, Paolo. “Martina Franca. Les Huguenots”. Opéra International, 272 (October 2002):39-41. GALLARATI, Paolo. “Tra ebrei e nazisti, arrivano Gli Ugonotti”. La Stampa, 6 August 2002.

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ZIBULSKI, Axel. “Wahre Liebe im Duett”. Wiesbadener Kurier, 26 November 2002.

Metz 2004 HERLIN, Philippe “Par delà les clichés”. Concerto Net.com - The Classical Music Network. CARREROTTI, Placido. “Rocky: le retour”. Forum Opéra.com. CONDÉ, Gérard. “Metz. Les Huguenots Meyerbeer. Opéra-Théâre, le 12 juin”. Opéra International, 292 (July-August 2004):42. LANDINI, Giancarlo. “Seminario sulla voce perduta”. L’opera, 185 (JulyAugust 2004):85-86. MASSON, Georges. “Opéra critique Les Huguenots à Metz: encore trois représentations”. Le Républicain Lorrain, 8 June 2004. R. B. “Les Huguenots de Meyerbeer”. Le Républicain Lorrain, 1 June 2004. —. “Culture - Opéra-théâtre Les Huguenots: des jeunes entrent dans l’Histoire, Le Républicain Lorrain, 2 June 2004.

Liège 2005 JACKSON, Alan. “Les Huguenots”. Donizetti Society Newletter, 94 (October 2005). Placido CARREROTTI, “Une Saint Barthelemy Massacrée”. Forum Opéra.com. DICKERSON, Evan. “Giacomo Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots”. Seen and Heard International Opera Review, 21 June 2005. DESNIOU, William. “Meyerbeer, Les Huguenots”. Donizetti Society Newletter, 96 (October 2005). LETAWE, Richard. “Les Huguenots [Liège] Meyerbeer charcuté!”. Res Musica, 22 June 2005. NECKERS, Jan. “Liège: Les Huguenots”. Opera Today. PAROUTY, Michel. “Passions sanglantes: Les Huguenots de Giacomo Meyerbeer”. Les echos, 21 June 2005. ROSENBAUM, Charles. “La Gloire du Bel Canto français. Les Huguenots de Giacomo Meyerbeer - Théâtre Royal de Liège (Belgique)”. Webthea.com, 8 July 2005. TILLMANN, Thomas. “Erstbegegnung mit einer großen Oper”. Onlile Musik Magazine, June 2005.

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Strasbourg 2012 OPERA NEWS - Les Huguenots www.operanews.com/.../Reviews/STRASBOURG__Les_Huguenots.ht ml? In Review Strasbourg Huguenots hdl 612. “Playful dramatic energy: Py’s staging of Les Huguenots in Strasbourg ... Olivier Py’s staging, a coproduction with La Monnaie in Brussels, had its French premiere on March 14 at Opéra du Rhin in ...” Après Bruxelles, les Huguenots triomphent à Strasbourg - ResMusica www.resmusica.com/.../apres-bruxelles-les-huguenots-...? (20 Mar 2012)

GENERAL INDEX

Agoult, Marie d’, comtesse, writer, beloved of Liszt, 126 Allain, Jean, conductor, 147 Allemandi, Antenello, conductor, 152 Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, xx Andersson, Knud, conductor, 149 Anti-Semitism, 130, 151, 152 Arditi, Luigi, conductor, 135 Atherton, David, conductor, 138, 152 Auber, Daniel-François-Esprit, composer, 2, 77, 100 La Muette de Portici, 3, 79 Aubigné, Théodore-Agrippa d’, writer, 25 Les Fers, 25 Les Feux, 25 Les Tragiques, 25 Bach, Johann Sebastian, composer, 109 Bassi, Calisto, translator, 130 I Guelfi ed i Ghibellini, 130 Beer, Amalia, mother of the composer, 1 Beer, Michael, youngest brother of the composer, 1 Beethoven, Ludwig van, composer, 199 Fidelio, 74 Pastoral Symphony, 199 Bellaigue, Camille, 224 Bellezza, Vincenzo, conductor, 138, 225 Bellini, Vincenzo, composer, 4, 33, 67-68, 84-88, 92, 95, 222 n. 56, 223 n. 69

Norma, 4, 67-68, 84-88, 222 n. 56; musical examples, 69, 86, 88 I Puritani, 100 Berlioz, Hector, composer, xx, 105, 188, 214, 217 n. 2 Bevignani, Enrico, conductor, 138 Bible, The, 74, 186, I Corinthians, 31 Birch-Pfeiffer Charlotte, playwright, librettist, translator, 129 Die Anglikaner und die Puritaner 129 Bittner, Albert, conductor, 147 Bizzelli, Annibale, composer, 224 Il Dottor Oss, 224 Blanchard, lithographer, 168 Blech, Leo, conductor, 146 Bonynge, Richard, conductor, 148, 151 Botstein, Leon, conductor, 154 Busser, Henri, conductor, 133 Callegari, Daniele, conductor, 154 Calvin, John, French theologian and reformer, xxiii, 27, 32, 37, 38, 48, 71, 190, 192, 193, 196 Campanini, Cleofonte, conductor, 138 Castelli, Ignaz Franz, translator, 130 Catherine de’ Medici, queen of France, xxiii, 5, 10, 19, 159 Chaperon, Philippe, scene designer, 108 Chappell’s Army Journal, 123 Charles IX, King of France, 2, 19 Charles X, King of France, 2, 192

266

General Index

Chenonceaux, chateau, xxi, 13, 18, 28, 36, 37, 44, 48, 110, 159, 165, 178, 179 Coligny, Admiral, Huguenot leader, 4, 13, 15, 26, 28, 103, 161 Constant, Benjamin, 190 Costa, Michael, conductor, 133, 135 Cromwell, Oliver, Puritan leader, 48, 129 Deldevez, Edouard-Marie-Ernest, conductor, 133 Delpech, lithographer, v Deschamps, Émile, poet and librettist, xix, xx, 3-8, 5, 23 Deshaye, lithographer, 17 Déspléchin, Edouard-Désiré-Joseph, scene designer, 121 Deveria, Achille, lithographer, 107, 108 Devoyod, conductor, 136 Dew, John, producer, 149 Diederich, Cyril, conductor, 151 Diéterle, Jules-Pierre-Michel, scene designer, 121 Donizetti, Gaetano, composer Don Pasquale, 100 Dranischnikov, Vladimir, conductor, 146 Dubois, François, artist, 10 Dumas, Alexandre (père), writer, 1, 217-18 Le Brigand, 1 La Reine Margot, 217-18 Duponchel, Charles-Edmond, scene designer, 4, 5, 199 Duruy, A., lithographer, 10 Feuchère, Léon, stage designer, 121 Flon, Philippe, conductor, 138 French Revolutions, 1789, 79; 1830, 2; Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, 130 Gallois, Henri, conductor, 149

Gavazzeni, Gianandrea, conductor, 139, 148 Gille, Philippe, librettist, 224 Giovaninetti, Reynald, conductor, 148 Gliese, Rochus, patron, 146 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, composer, 20 Iphigénie en Tauride, 20 Gouin, Louis, Meyerbeer’s confidant and agent in Paris, 4 Gounod, Charles-François, composer, 121, 122, 132 Faust, 121, 122, 132 Gründgens, Gustaf, producer, 146 Guidi, Francesco, translator, 129 Gli Anglicani, 129 Guise family, 19 Habeneck, François-Antoine, conductor, xix, 121, 133 Hainl, Georges-François, conductor, 133 Halévy, Fromental, composer, 4, 79, 101 La Juive, 4, 79, 101 Heger, Robert, conductor, 147 Heine, Heinrich, writer and poet, 117 Henry of Navarre, later Henry IV, King of France, xxi, 10, 11, 19, 37, 103, 113 Henty, George Alfred, writer, 217-18 St Bartholomew’s Eve, 217-18 Hérold, Louis-Ferdinand, composer, 1 Le Pré aux clercs, 1 Herz, Joachim, producer, 149 Hohenzollerns, Prussian royal family, 70 Hugo, Victor, novelist, 48-49, 174, 221 n. 46 Cromwell, 48-49 Notre Dame de Paris, 174

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Illustrated London News, The, 36, 66 Irish Times, 225 n. 87 Jaeger, artist, v Jelly, P., engraver, 115 Johannot, Alfred, artist, 168 Johannot, Tony, artist, 168 Journal des Débats, Le, 105 Joyce, James, writer, 144, 225 n. 87 Kalasnikov, Pyotr, Russian translator, 130 Lacombe, Jacques, conductor, 154 Lajoinie, Guy, conductor, 148 Leftwich Dodge, William de, artist, 176-78 Leipold, H. J., conductor, 149 Lemud, François-Joseph-Aimé de, artist, 174-76 Le Sueur, composer, 79 La Caverne, 79 Liebig cards, The, 178-83 Liszt, Franz, composer and arranger, 19, 126, 186, 186-88, 206, 217 n. 7, 219 n. 21, 220 n. 26, 222 n. 51, 224 n. 77 Lopez Cobos, Jesus, conductor, 151 Losski, Vladimir, producer, 146 Louis-Philippe, King of France, 2 Luther, Martin, religious reformer, 4, 11, 37, 38, 51-56, 65, 67, 70-71, 72, 74, 79, 98, 109, 130, 182, 186, 192-93, 196, 197, 202, 221 n. 47 “Ein’ Feste Burg ist unser Gott” chorale, 4, 11, 38, 51-56, 53, 65, 67, 70-71, 72, 74, 79, 98, 109, 130, 182, 221 n. 47 Maggioni, Manfredo, Italian translator, 130 Mahler, Gustav, composer and conductor, 146 Mancinelli, L., conductor, 136, 138

267

Mansouri, Lofti, producer, 151 Maraut, Clément, poet, 57 Psalter, 57 Marguerite de Valois, queen of Navarre, and role in Les Huguenots xx, xxi, 10, 18, 19 Martina Franca Festival della Valle d’Istria, 125, 152 Märzendorfer, Ernst, conductor, 149 Massone Toulon, M., lithographer, 115 Maurand, G., lithographer, 168 Maurin, artist, v Maxym, Robert, conductor, 151 Mazilier, Joseph, choreographer, 122 Merimée, Prosper, novelist, xx, 1, 2, 5, 24, 47, 220 n. 28, 220 n. 31 Chronique du règne de Charles IX, xx, 1, 2, 220 n. 28, 220 n. 31 Metastasio, Pietro, poet and librettist, 3, 218 n. 15 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, composer: concern for characterisation, xxi, 19; as creator of historical music drama, 43-44, 46-48, 56-57; fame following Robert le Diable, 1, 19-20; Heinrich Laube on, 185-86; instinct for the theatre of, xx; international style of, 51; and Judaism, 57, 80, 130, 185-86; and French Romanticism, 4, 47-48, 74; portraits, v; relationship with Scribe, 2-3 Crociato in Egitto, Il, 50, 188, 218 n. 15 Emma di Resburgo, 218 n. 15 Fackeltänze, 70 Les Huguenots: arrangements of, 126; ballet in, 113-114; and Bellini’s Norma, 4, 84-88; The Blessing of the Daggers (Bénédiction des Poignards), 81-89; Catholic

268

General Index musical motifs, 57-60; characterisation in, xxi, 3, 5, 19; chorus in, 77-80; dramatic ensembles of situation in, 74-75, 103-107; dramatic structure of, 43-47, 49-50; development of libretto, 3-8, 20-29; Franz Liszt on, 19, 186-188; genesis, xx-xxiii, 1-2; George Sand on, xxiii, 188-214; historical background, 2, 19; iconography, 155-183; instrumental writing, 63-65; Jules Verne on, 88-89; literary sources, xx, 1-2, 20-27; the love duet, 91-101; manuscript of, xxiii; melodic concept, 67-70; motifs of deception, secrecy and revelation in libretto, 27-29; musical examples, 34, 53, 58, 60, 64, 68, 69, 71, 85, 86, 88, 94, 96, 97, 99-100, 104, 106, 111, 123; orchestral music, 109-114; performing traditions, 129-154; plot of, 11-16; Protestant musical motifs, 4, 51-57, 70-74; reception history, xx, xxi-xxii, 8, 117-126; and religious idealism and fanaticism, 19-20, 31-41, 74; role of Deschamps in libretto, 4-8; role of Rossi in libretto, 3-4; scene illustrations, 12, 15, 16-18, 36, 39, 40-41, 44, 45, 50, 54-56, 66, 101, 108, 115, 158, 160, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169-70, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 189, 191, 194-95, 198, 201, 204-205, 208, 209, 211, 213, 215-216; and Scott’s

Waverley hero, 3; premiere xx, 117; use of local colour (couleur locale) xxi, 47-49, 56-57 Robert le Diable: xx, 1, 3, 4, 8, 19, 31, 38, 39, 43, 47, 48, 72, 89, 100, 107, 109, 113, 117, 186-88, 197, 202, 217 n. 7; Ballet of the Nuns, 3 Romilda e Costanza, 218 n. 15 Semiramide, 218 n. 15 Meyerbeer, Minna, wife of the composer, 1, 3, 85 Minkowski, Marc, conductor, 154 Mitchell, J. R., engraver, 55 Montessu, Pauline-Euphrosine, dancer, 119 Mortier, Arnold, librettist, 223-24 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, composer, 74 Don Giovanni, 74 Musée des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux, 172 Nebolsin, Vassili, conductor, 146 Neumann, Angelo, theatre director, 132 Niel, F., artist, 54 Observer, The, 225 n. 87 Offenbach, Jacques, composer, 89, 223-24 n. 71 Le Docteur Ox, 223-24 n. 71 Ott, Georg, translator, 129 Die Gibellinen in Pisa, 129 Overskou, Thomas, Danish translator, 130 Pal, Nanci, sister of Berlioz, 217 n. 2 Palumbo, Renato, conductor, 152, 154 Polacco, G., conductor, 138 Py, Olivier, producer, 154 Queler, Eve, conductor, 152

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Radiotelevisione Italiana Milan, 144 Romansky, Ljubomir, conductor, 149 Romanticism, 4 Roqueplan, Camille, artist, 172-74, 176 Rossi, Gaetano, librettist, xix, 3-5, 218 n. 15 Il Crociato in Egitto, 218 n. 15 Emma di Resburgo, 218 n. 15 Romilda e Costanza, 218 n. 15 Semiramide [riconosciuta], 218 n. 15 Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio, composer, 77, 100, 203, Barbiere di Siviglia, 225 n. 87 Guillaume Tell, 89, 198, 199 Rota, Marcello, conductor, 152 Roux, C., lithographer, 168 Ruhlmann, François, conductor, 133, 146 Rumstadt, Guido Johannes, conductor, 152 Saint-Saëns, Camille, composer, 222 n. 59 Savini, Ino, conductor, 149 Sax, Adolphe, instrument maker, 64 Schumann, Robert, composer, 129 Scott, Sir Walter, writer, 219 n. 21 Waverley, 3, 219 n. 21 Scribe, Augustin-Eugène, playright and librettist, xix, xxii, 109, 117, 185, 202, 203; adaptation of Mérimée’s Charles IX, xx-xxi, 1, 2, 20-24; collaboration with Deschamps, 3-8, 23 ; concern for psychological realism, 19, 107; as creator of historical music drama, 44-50, 103; and D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques, 25-27; depiction of religious fanaticism, 19, 20, ; historical sources, 1-2, 19-27; Liszt on Scribe, 19; and relationship with Meyerbeer, 2-3, 5; Nourrit’s

269

contribution to libretto, 4-5, 23; Rossi’s contribution to libretto, 3-4 Le Brigand, 1 Léonore, ou La St Barthélemy, 1 Oeuvres Illustrées de Eugène Scribe, 168-72, 219, n. 22 Le Portefaix, 1 Séchan, Charles-Polycarpe, scene designer, 45, 121 Seidl, A., conductor, 138 Serafin, Tullio, conductor, 144, 147 Silver, Jeremy, conductor, 154 Smithson, Harriet, xx Smolitsch, Nikolai, producer, 146 Society of Jesus, The (Jesuits), 2, 192 Soltesz, Stefan, conductor, 152 Sperl, Viennese café, 126 Spontini, Gasparo, composer, 20, 79 Fernand Cortez, 20, 79 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, xx, xxi, xxiv, 1, 2, 10, 19, 20, 25, 26, 29, 36, 37, 43, 46, 48, 100, 107, 112, 157, 163, 172, 190, 217-18, n. 8 Strauss, Johann (Vater), composer and arranger, 126 Sunday Times, The, 225 n. 87 Taffanel, conductor, 133 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, composer, 98, 112 Eugène Onegin, 98 Pique Dame, 112 Times, The, 225 n. 87 Toscanni, Arturo, conductor, 152 Trik, Jean, conductor, 148 Vaughan Williams, composer and arranger, 126 Verdi, Giuseppe, composer, 47, 92, 93, 220-21 n. 39, 224, n. 73 Otello, 93 Un ballo in maschera, 220-21 n. 39

General Index

270

Verne, Jules, writer, 88-89, 223-24, n. 71 Une fantaisie du docteur Ox, 88-89, 223-24, n. 71 Véron, Louis-Desiré, director of the Paris Opéra, 1, 3 Vianesi, A., conductor, 135, 138 Vidal, P., conductor, 133, 136 Vigna, A., conductor, 138 Villon, François, poet, 49 “Ballade des Pendus”, 49 Vitet, Ludovic, writer, 25 Scènes historiques, 25 Votto, Antonino, conductor

143, 220-21 n. 39 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 74 Tristan und Isolde, 23, 93, 95 War of the Leagues, Italy, 130 Wars of Religion (16th century), 1, 19, 25, 50, 74, 112, 157, 172 Waverley hero (in the novels of Sir Walter Scott), 3 Weber, Carl Maria von, composer Der Freischütz, 48 Weber, Gottfried, music editor, 52 Cäcilia [journal], 52 Westerstrand, Pehr, Swedish translator, 130

Yorkshire Post, The, 225 n. 87 Wagner, Richard, composer and writer, 23, 93, 95, 118, 129,

Yigdal, Jewish hymn of thanksgiving on Sabbath eve, 57

Index of Arrangers Adam, Adolphe-Charles-Louis, 126 Alvars, ELie Parish,126 Antonio, A., 126

Cramer, Henry, 126 Cunio, Angelo, 126 Czerny, Carl, 126

Baugniet, Charles?, 126 Bellak, James, 126 Berg, Albert W., 126 Bertrand, L. A., 126 Beyer, Ferdinand, 126 Billet, Alexandre-Philippe, 126 Blagrove, Richard, 126 Bochsa, Robert-Nicolas-Charles, 126 Brissac, Jules, 126 Brissler, Friedrich, 126 Brunner, Christian Traugott, 126

Daussoigne, Jean-Louis, 126 De Bois de Fiennes, Henri, 126 Döhler, Theodor, 126 Dorn, Edouard, 126 Dubois, R., 126 Duvernoy, Jean-Baptiste, 126

Calcott [Callcott], William Hutchins, 126 Caldini, arranger, 126 Chatterton, Frederick, 126 Clodomir, Pierre-François, 126 Colville, A. S., 126

Favager, René, 126 Filby, William Charles, 126 Glover, Charles William, 126 Godfrey, Sir Dan (Daniel Eyers), 126 Hartmann, Albert, 126 Hawkes, William W., 126 Herz, Henri, 126 Hoechst, C., 126 Hume, James O., 126

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Hundt, Ludwig,126 Jullien, Louis-Antoine, 126 Kappey, Jacob A., 126 Ketterer, Eugène, 126 Korbach, J. J., 126 Kuhe, Wilhelm, 126 Laurent, Henri, 126 Le Carpentier, Adolphe-Clair, 126 Legarde, Maurice, 126 Lickl, Carl Georg, 126 Liebich, Immanuel, 126 Liebling, Emil, 126 Liszt, Franz, 19, 126, 186, 186-88, 206, 217 n. 7, 219 n. 21, 220 n. 26, 222 n. 51, 224 n. 77 Marseille, W. H., 126 Méliot, A., 126 Millars, Francis Joseph, 126 Musard, Philippe, 126 Napoleon, Arthur, 126 Nelson, S., 126 Oberthür [also Oberthuer], Carl, 126 Oesten, Theodor, 126 Osborne, George Alexander, 126 Pixis, Johann Peter, 126 Praeger, Ferdinand Christian Wilhelm, 126 Pratten, Robert Sidney, 126 Prudent, Emile Beunie, 126

271

Raff, Joachim, 126 Ralph, 126 Rea, William, 126 Rémusat, Jean, 126 Richards, Henry Brinley, 126 Rimbalt [Rimbault], Edward, 126 Rivière, Jules, 126 Rockstro, William Smith, 126 Roe, John, 126 Roehner, Ernst, 126 Rosen, 126 Schloesser, Carl Wilhelm Adolph, 126 Schubert, Franz L.,126 Schuncke, Karl, 126 Schwenke, Charles, 126 Servais, 126 Sloper, Adrien-François, 126 Smith, Edward Sidney, 126 Spieker, Max, 126 Sprenger, Julius, 126 Steabbog, Jean-Louis, 126 Stein, Theodore, 126 Stone, Jospeh T., 126 Thalberg, Sigismund, 126 Tolbecque, Jean-Baptiste, 126 Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 126 Vimeux, J., 126 Weippert, John, 126 Werter, Carl, 126 West, George Frederick, 126 Zardo, Nicolo Redento, 126

Index of Singers Acs, Carlotta, mezzo-soprano, 139 Adams, Susan, soprano, 138 Adini, Ada, soprano, 136 Affre, Auguste, tenor, 127, 133 Agliati, Elvira, mezzo-soprano, 139

Agnesi, Luigi, bass-baritone, 135 Agussol, Charlotte-Marie, soprano/mezzo, 133 Aikin, Laura, soprano, 154 Albani, Emma, soprano, 136, 138

272

General Index

Albers, Henri, baritone, 136, 138, 141 Alboni, Marietta, contralto, 124, 130, 133 Alchewsky [Altechewsky], Jean, tenor, 127, 133 Alda, Francès, soprano, 141 Alexandrowicz, tenor, 133 Allegretta, Sara, mezzo-soprano, 152 Alten, Bella, mezzo-soprano, 138 Alvarez, Albert-Raymond, tenor, 122, 133, 136, 138 Alzina, bass, 141 Ancona, Mario, baritone, 125, 136, 138 Andonian, Andrea, mezzo-soprano, 151 Andrade, d’, see D’Andrade Angeli, Elvira, mezzo-soprano, 141 Angelini, GianFrancesco, bass-baritone, 141 Angri, Elena, soprano, 133 Anton, Andrea, bass, 141 Antonucci, Giovanni Battista, bass, 135 Arati, Marco, bass, 139 Arcangeli, Alessandro, bass, 141 Arimondi, Vittorio, bass, 136 Arist-Kielisch, Melody, mezzo-soprano, 151 Arnaud, Antoinette, soprano, 133 Arnoldson, Sigrid, soprano, 136, 140 Arroyo, Martina, soprano, 148 Asmus, Ruth, mezzo-soprano, 149 Attri [Atry], Giorgio, bass, 135, 139, Austin, Anson, tenor, 151 Autori, Fernando, bass, 138, 141, 225 n. 87 Bacquier, Gabriel, bass-baritone, 148 Bagagiolo, Enrico, bass, 135 Bak, Valerie, soprano, 147

Balla, soprano, 135 Barbasini, Alida, soprano, 152 Barbot, Andréa, soprano, 139 Barrard, Marc, bass-baritone, 151, 154 Barzal, Anton, tenor, 132 Bastin, Jules, bass, 149 Battu, Marie, soprano, 133, 135 Beck, Joseph, bass, 138 Belletti, Giovanni, bass, 130 Beltramelli, Giuditta, soprano, 130, 138 Belval, Jules-Bernard Gaffiot, bass, 122, 133 Belval, Marie, soprano, 133 Berger, Patrice, baritone, 154 Berini [Berini-Maini], Enrichetta, soprano, 139, 141 Berry, Walter, baritone, 147 Berthet, Lucy, soprano, 122, 133 Berti, Ersilia, soprano, 139 Bertolini, Remigio, tenor, 139 Bertrandi, soprano, 133 Better, Leonore, soprano, 132 Bettini, Alessandro, tenor, 135, 139 Bianchi, Bianca [Berta Schwarz], soprano, 135, 138 Bindel, John Marcus, bass, 154 Bisaccia, Luigi, bass, 139 Bispham, David Scull, bass, 136 Black, Jeffrey, baritone, 138 Blake, Rockwell, tenor, 154 Blanchart, Ramón, bass, 141 Blasius, Martin, bass, 152 Boccherini, Emilia, soprano, 139 Bolis, Luigi, tenor, 135 Bondzio, Hildegard, soprano, 149 Bonelli, baritone (Milan), 1139 Bonini, Francesco Maria, baritone, 141 Bordato, Maddalena, mezzo-soprano, 141 Borelli, Tersilla, soprano, 141 Borghi Zerni, Ayres, soprano, 141 Borsi De Giuli, Teresa, soprano, 141

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Borst, Danielle, soprano, 151 Bortolomasi [Bartolomasi], Francesco, baritone, 141 Bosio, Angiolina, soprano, 133 Bottaro, soprano, 139 Bottone, Bonaventura, tenor, 152 Bouché, Luciano, bass, 122 Boudouresque, Auguste-Acanthe, bass, 139, 141 Boutros, Kamel, bass, 152 Bouvet, Maximilien-Nicolas, bass, 136 Braccialini, mezzo-soprano, 141 Braun, Carl, bass, 138 Brazzi, soprano/mezzo, 136 Brémond, Hippolyte, bass, 139 Bresolles, soprano, 136 Bréval, Lucienne, soprano, 122, 131, 133, 138 Bronikowski, Marcin, baritone, 152 Brunin, Géry, soprano, 148 Buireo, soprano, 139 Bulicioff, Nadia [Nadina], soprano, 141 Buti, Giuseppina, baritone, 139 Cachemaille, Gilles, bass-baritone, 151 Callemieu, soprano/mezzo, 141 Cambon, Charles, baritone, 147 Camignia Alcarez, Fidelia, soprano, 141 Campanini, Italo, tenor, 138 Candia, Giovanni Mario di, tenor, see Mario Capasso, Camille, mezzo-soprano, 152 Cappellaro, soprano, 141 Capponi, Giuseppe, bass, 136, 139 Cardinoli, [Cardinali, Franco], tenor, 141 Carlson, Lenus, baritone, 151, 152 Carmeli, Boris, bass, 148 Carnago [Cornago], Giovanni Battista, bass, 139 Caron, Eugène, baritone, 133

273

Carpi, Carlo, tenor, 135, 139 Carrara, Olga, soprano, 141 Caruso, Enrico, tenor, 75, 76, 132, 134, 137, 138, 143, 222 n. 52 Carvalho, Caroline, soprano, 122, 133, 135 Castellan, Jeanne-Anaïs, soprano, 130, 133 Castelmary, Armand, bass, 136, 141 Cavallini, soprano, 141 Cela, Aleka, soprano, 154 Cepada, Anna, soprano, 136 Ceppi, Antonio, tenor, 136 Chaignaud, Jean-Luc, baritone, 152 Chambon, Marius, bass, 133 Chamorro, Angeles, mezzo-soprano, 149 Cherubini, Fortunato, bass, 141 Cherubini, Enrico, bass, 141 Chiaramonte Luigia, soprano, 139 Christian, Jany, mezzo-soprano, 148 Ciampi, Giuseppe, baritone, 135, 139 Clarke, Kathie, soprano, 149 Colin, tenor, 124 Colombo, Rachele, soprano, 135 Coltone, baritone, 139 Constantino, Florencio, tenor, 131 Contarini, Albina, soprano, 141 Corani, soprano, 139 Corbeil, Claude, bass, 149 Corelli, Franco, tenor, 139, 148, 150, 154 Corsi, Matilde, mezzo-soprano (Milan), 139 Cossa, Dominic, baritone, 148, 149 Cossira, Émile, tenor, 136 Cossotto, Fiorenza, contralto, 139, 148 Cotogni, Antonio, baritone, 135, 136, 141 Couderc, Simone, mezzo-soprano, 147 Courtis, Jean-Philippe, bass, 151 Cred, Kay, mezzo-soprano, 148 Cresci, Francesco, baritone, 138

274

General Index

Crivelli, Gaetano, tenor, 139 Cromberg, Leopoldo, bass-baritone, 141 Cunitz, Maud, soprano, 147 Cutler, Eric, tenor, 154 D’Andrade, Francesco, baritone, 136 D’Angeri, Anna, soprano, 135 D’Anna, Mario, baritone, 149 D’Assy, Pierre, bass, 141 Dado, Augusto, bass, 141 Dal Monte, Albertina, mezzo-soprano, 138, 141 Damrau, Diana, soprano, 152 Daram, Joséphine, soprano, 133 Darclée, Hariclea, soprano, 139, 144 Darmel, François, tenor, 141 David, Joseph, bass, 133 Davidova, Tatiana, soprano, 152 De Belocca, Anna, contralto, 136 De Bernis, Emilio, bass, 141 De Cavalieri, Anna, soprano, 144, 147 De Capellio, bass, 139 De Claus, Marie, mezzo-soprano, 141 De Grazia, Giuseppe, bass, 141 De Joly, Eugenia, soprano, 139 De Lerma, Mathilde, soprano, 139 De Macchi, Maria, soprano, 138 De Marchi, Emilio, tenor, 138, 139, 144 De Méric [De Méric-Lablache], Emilie, mezzo-soprano, 133, 135 De Reszke Edouard, bass, xxii, 132, 136, 138 De Reszke, Jean, tenor, xxii, 131, 132, 136, 138 De Roissi,Noëmi, soprano (Genoa), 139 De Spagni, Ilma, mezzo-soprano, 136 De Vigne, J., mezzo-soprano, 138 De Vita, Estella, mezzo-soprano, 141

De Vries, Thomas, tenor, 141 Declaery [Decléry], Maurice, baritone, 138 Degli Abbati, Armanda, mezzo-soprano, 139 Deischa-Sionizkaya, Mariya, soprano, 132 Del Puente, Giuseppe, baritone, 136, 138 Deliliers, Vittore, tenor, 141 Delmas, Jean-François, baritone, 133 Delmas, Solange, soprano, 133, 146 Delunsch, Mireille, soprano, 154 Denning, Angela, soprano, 149, 152, 204 Dentale, Teofilo, bass, 141 Dereims, Andréa, soprano, 133 Dereyne, Fely, soprano, 138 Dérivis, Prosper, baritone, xix, 120, 121, 122 Derly, soprano, 139 Derschinskaya, Xenia, soprano, 146 Deshayes, Karine, mezzo-soprano, 154 Deshorties, Alexandra, soprano, 154 Destinn, Emmy, soprano, 137, 138, 140, 144 Devère, mezzo-soprano, 139 Devilliers, Vittore, tenor, 139 Devries, Hermann, bass, 138 Di Giacomo, Juliana, soprano, 154 Di Giuseppe, Enrico, tenor, 149 Di Lelio, Umberto, bass, 141 Di Murska, Ilma, soprano, 135 Diaz, Justino, bass-baritone, 148, 149 Didot, Alfredo, bass, 130, 138 Didur, Adam, bass, 138 Dobré, Claire, soprano, 122 Donskoi, Lawrenti, tenor, 132 Doria, Renée,soprano, 147, 148 Dorian, Diane, soprano, 148 Dorus-Gras, Julie, soprano, xix, 118, 121, 133

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Dubuc, Gilbert, baritone, 148 Ducret, Barbara, soprano, 154 Dufriche, Eugène, baritone, 136 Dupeyron, Hector, tenor, 136 Duprez, Caroline, soprano, 124, 133 Duprez, Gilbert-Louis, tenor, 122 Durand, Maria, soprano, 136 Durné, Robert, tenor, 151 Duske, Erna Maria, mezzo-soprano, 147 Eames, Emma, soprano, 134 Ebers, Clara, soprano, 147 Echeverria, Giuseppe, bass, 139 Eda-Pierre, Christine, soprano, 149 El Hage, Robert, baritone, 148 Elian, soprano, 133 Elmblad, Johannes, bass, 132 Endrèze, Arthur, baritone, 133 Engle, Marie, soprano, 136, 138 Ericdotter, S., soprano, 147 Erl, Joseph, tenor, 129 Ernstein, M., bass, 146 Espinasse, Fort-Arthur, tenor, 122 Esposito, Andrée, soprano, 148 Etcheverry, Henri, bass, 133, 146 Eyreams, Cécile, soprano/mezzo, 141 Falcon, Marie-Cornélie, soprano, xix, 8, 100, 107, 118, 121 Fancelli, Giuseppe, tenor, 135, 141 Farina, Luiz-Ottavio, bass, 152 Farres, Pedro, baritone, 149 Faure, Jean-Baptiste, baritone, 133, 135 Feltri [-Spalla], Rosina, mezzo-soprano, 139 Fendi, soprano, 139 Ferrara, bass, 139 Fischer, Emil, bass, 138 Fischer, Pierre, bass, 148 Flécheux, Louise-Marie, soprano, xix, 119, 121 Formes, Karl Johann, bass, 133, 135 Fossa, Amalia, soprano, 139

275

Fouché, Guy, tenor, 147 Fricci, Antonia, soprano/mezzo, 135 Frick, Gottlob, bass, 147 Fuchs, Franz, baritone, 147 Fursch-Madi, Emma, soprano, 136 Gadski, Johanna, soprano, 138 Gaggi. See Storti Gaggi Gailhard, Pierre, bass, 90, 133 Galassi, Antonio, baritone, 136 Galetti. See Gianoli Galetti, Isabela Gall, Yvonne, soprano, 133 Galvany, Marisa, soprano, 149 Ganzarolli, Wladimiro, baritone, 139, 148 Gardino [Jardino], Jolanda, mezzo-soprano, 144, 147 Garolta, soprano, 139 Garrison, Mabel, soprano, 138, 142 Gassier, Edouard, baritone, 135 Gayarré, Julian, tenor, 136, 139 Gedda, Nicolai, tenor, 149, 151, 153, 154, 222 n. 52 Gelhaar, Mathilda, soprano, 130 Genaux, Vivica, mezzo-soprano, 152 Gherster, soprano, 141 Ghiaurov, Nicolai, bass, 139, 148, 150 Ghini, Marco, bass, 139 Ghiuselev, Nicola, bass, 148, 151, 152 Gianoli Galetti, Isabella, soprano, 139 Giering-De Haan, Jane, soprano, 151 Giordani, Marcello, tenor, 152, 154 Giorini, G., tenor, 146 Giuglini, Antonio, tenor, 130, 138, 139 Glahn, Paul, bass, 149 Glover, Charles William, Golinkin, L., soprano, 146 Gozatégui, Josefa, soprano, 133, 144 Grandjean, Louise, soprano, 127

276

General Index

Grant, Clifford, bass, 151 Grassi, Luca, bass, 152 Graziani, Francesco, baritone, 135 Greager, Richard, tenor, 151 Gresse, André, bass, 133 Gresse, Léon, bass, 122, 133 Grienauer, Alois, baritone, 138 Grisi, Giulia, soprano, 100, 101, 130, 133, 135 Grommen, Joseph, bass, 141 Grossi, Eleonora, mezzo, 135 Gueymard, Louis, tenor, 122, 133 Guglielmenti, Anna Maria, soprano, 138, 225 n. 87 Gulin, Angeles, soprano, 148 Günther, Julius, tenor, 130 Haas, Julien, baritone, 148 Hagen, Reinhard, bass, 152 Halem, Victor von, bass, 151 Har-Melach, J., baritone, 146 Hass, Sabine, soprano, 149 Hasselt-Barth,Wilhelmine van, soprano, 129 Hecht, Joshua, bass, 148 Heinefetter, Kathinka, soprano, 122 Helzel, Ulrike, mezzo-soprano, 152 Hempel, Frieda, soprano, 138, 140, 144 Hes [Heš], Vilém, bass, 144 Hill, Lucille, soprano, 138 Hodezénne, bass, 139 Hoerner, Germaine, soprano, 133, 146 Homer, Louise, contralto, 138 Hommey, Maria, soprano, 139 Honoré, mezzo, 135 Howarth, Judith, soprano, 138, 152 Howell, Gwynne, bass, 138, 152 Huberty, Albert, bass, 133, 144, 146 Ibos, Guillaume, tenor, 136 Isle, Félix Mécène Marié de l’, tenor, 122 Jamerson, Thomas, baritone, 148

Jatic, Branislav, bass, 154 Jobin, Raoul, tenor, 133, 146 Johnson, Suzanne, mezzo-soprano, 151 Jones, Della, mezzo-soprano, 149 Jörn, Karl, tenor, 144 Joung, soprano, 139 Journet, Marcel, bass, 73, 132, 136, 138, 142 Julienne-Dejean, Eugenia, soprano, 122 Junca, François-Marcel [Marcello], bass, 139 Kahn, Philippe, bass, 152, 154 Kang, Seun Won, bass, 152 Karshowska, F., mezzo-soprano, 138 Kaschmann, Giuseppe, bass, 138 Kastorski, Vladimir, bass, 146 Kipnis, Alexander, bass, 138, 104, 225 n. 87 Knüpfer, Paul, bass, 144 Koehler, Bernhard, baritone, 135 Köhrer, Eta, mezzo-soprano, 147 Konetzni, Anny, soprano, 146 Konstantinovsky, M., baritone, 146 Kovariková, Jika, soprano, 149 Krauss, Gabrielle, soprano, 122, 127, 133 Krieger, S., mezzo-soprano, 146 Kunde, Gregory, tenor, 151, 154 Kunder, Friedmann, bass, 152 Kurz, Selma, soprano, 138, 144 La Senne, Germaine, soprano/mezzo, 133 Laborde, Rosalie-Henriette, soprano, 122 Lafitte, Jeanne, soprano, 141 Lafitte, Léon, tenor, 141 Lalloni, baritone, 139, 141 Lamore, Jennifer, mezzo-soprano, 138 Lanzi, Faustina Claudina, soprano, 139

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Lapointe, Jean-François, baritone, 154 Laskin, bass, 133, 141 Lassalle, Jean-Louis, baritone, 133, 136, 138 Laterza, Raffaele, baritone, 139 Lauri-Volpi, Giacomo, tenor, 144, 145, 147, 154 Laute-Brun, Antoinette, soprano, 133 Laval, Jane, soprano, 133 Lazaro, Hipolito, tenor, 143 Lebrun, Louise, soprano, 149 Lechner, Gabriele, soprano, 151 Leclerc, Jeanne, mezzo-soprano, 138 Leech, Richard, tenor, 138, 151, 152, 153, 154 Legros, Adrien, bass, 147 Lehmann, Lilli, soprano, 138 Lemaire, Giuseppina, mezzo-soprano, 139 Lenormand, Marie, mezzo-soprano, 154 Leonardi, Emilia [Emma] soprano, 139 Leria, soprano, 136 Levasseur, Nicolas-Prosper, bass, xix, 8, 107, 120, 121, 133 Levielli, Melle, soprano, 133 Lezhneva, Yulia, mezzo-soprano, 154 Lhérie, Paul, baritone, 139 Lieberhardt, soprano, 135 Liebling, Estelle, soprano, 138 List, Emanuel, bass, 146 Litvinne, Félia, soprano, 138, 141 Llorens Nolasco, Pietro, bass, 139 Lo Forese, Angelo, tenor, 149 Lorengar, Pilar, soprano, 149, 153 Lorrain, Eugenio, bass, 136, 139 Lotti, Marcellina [Lotti Dalla Santa, Marcella], soprano, 139 Lucca, Pauline, soprano, 130, 135 Lucic, Zeljko, baritone, 152 Lucignani, Benedetto, tenor, 136, 141

277

Ludlow, Ivan, baritone, 154 Lutzer, Jenny, soprano, 129 Maaß-Geiger, Joachim, bass, 151 MacIntyre, Margaret, soprano, 136 Macurdy, John, bass, 151 Maffei, Giovanni Camillo, bass, 139 Magini-Coletti, Antonio, baritone, 138 Mahé, Renée, mezzo-soprano, 133, 146 Maini, Armando, bass, 141 Makarina, Olga, soprano, 152 Malibran, Maria, mezzo-soprano, 84 Manfrini, Luigi, bass, 141 Mantelli, Eugenia, mezzo-soprano, 138, 141 Mantius, Eduard, tenor, 130 Maray [Marai], Albine, soprano, 130, 135 Marconi, Francesco, tenor, 141 Mariacher, Michele, tenor, 139 Mariani, Luciano, bass, 141 Mariani-De Angelis, Flora, mezzo-soprano, 141 Marimon, Marie, soprano, 135 Marini, Ignazio, bass, 36, 130, 133, 139 Mario [Mario di Candida], Giovanni, Marchese di Candia, tenor, 65, 100, 101, 130, 133, 135, 136 Marion, Biro de, soprano, 136 Marlière, Jean-Philipppe, bass, 154 Marsee, Susanne, mezzo-soprano, 149 Marti, Barnabé, tenor, 149 Martin, Bruce, bass, 151 Martinelli, Giovanni, tenor, 143 Martini, Marguerite, soprano, 136 Martinovich, Boris, bass, 151 Massard, Robert, baritone, 149 Massart, Nestor, tenor, 141 Massis, Annick, soprano, 154 Massol, Eugène, tenor, 133 Materna, Amalie, soprano, 132

278

General Index

Maurel, Victor, baritone, xxii, 132, 135, 136, 138 McDonald, Ann-Maree, mezzo-soprano, 151 Medini, Paolo, bass, 139 Médori, Joséphine, soprano, 130, 139 Médus, Henri, bass, 147 Meisslinger, Luise, mezzo-soprano, 136 Melba, Nellie, soprano, xxii, 132, 134, 136 Mendes, Berthe, soprano, 133 Mendioroz, José, baritone, 135 Meoni, Giovanni, baritone, 152 Merly, Jean-Baptiste bass, 139 Meroles, Pablo, bass, 136 Merritt, Chris, tenor, 152 Mierzwinski, Wladyslaw, tenor, 136 Mirabella, Giovanni, bass, 138 Miricioiu, Nelly, soprano, 138 Moisset, Gabrielle, soprano, 141 Mok, Warren, tenor, 152 Monchero, Amilcare, bass, 141 Mongini, Pietro, tenor, 135, 139 Montariol, Sebastian, tenor, 136 Monteleone, Vincenzo, tenor, 141 Monti, Gaetano, tenor, 141 Morensi, Kate, contralto, 135 Moriani, Gustavo, baritone, 139 Morino, Giuseppe, tenor, 152 Morley, Erin, soprano, 154 Moro, Achille, baritone, 139, 141 Mravina, Eugenia [Yevgeniya], soprano, 136 Müller Georg, tenor, 132 Muraro, Maurizio, bass, 152 Nannetti, Romano, bass, 139, 141 Nantier-Didier [Didiée], Constance-Betzy-Rosabella, mezzo-soprano, 130 Nau, Maria, soprano, 122 Naudin, Emilio, tenor, 135 Navarrini, Franceso, bass, 139, 141, 144

Nelepp, Georgi, tenor, 146 Neri-Baraldi, Antonietta Fricci, mezzo-soprano, 139 Nicolini, Ernesto, tenor, 135, 141 Nilsson, Christine, soprano, 137, 138 Nivette, Juste, bass, 138 Nolasco See Llorens Nolasco Nordica, Lilian, soprano, xxii, 132, 136, 138, 140 Norena, Eidé, soprano, 133 Noté , Jean, baritone, 78, 133, 136 Nourrit, Adolphe-Louis, tenor, xix, xxiii, 4-5, 8, 23, 75, 100, 107, 119, 121, 203 Nowack, Hans, bass, 151 O’Sullivan, John, tenor, 133, 138, 141, 144, 145, 224-25 n. 87 Obin, Louis-Henri, bass, 122 Olitzka, Rosa, contralto, 136, 138 Olsen, Frode, bass, 152 Ortolani. See Tiberini, Angiolina Oserow, Nikolai, tenor, 146 Pacary, Lina, soprano, 136 Padilla [y Ramos], Mariano, baritone, 136 Padovani, Adelina, soprano, 139, 141, 144 Palet, José, tenor, 143, 145 Pancani, Emilio, tenor, 130, 139 Pandolfini, Ugo, bass, 136, 139 Panis, Lucile, soprano, 141 Pantaleoni, Romilda, soprano, 139, 141 Paolicchi-Mugnone, Maria L., mezzo-soprano, 141 Parodi Rastelli, Marcellina, soprano, 141 Pasero, Tancredi, bass, 141, 144 Pasini, Laura, soprano, 141 Pastori, Antonietta, soprano, 144, 147 Patti, Adelina, soprano, 127, 130, 133, 135

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Paty, Hubert, bass, 133, 141 Pavlovskaya, Valentina, soprano, 146 Peacock, Lucy, soprano, 152 Pederzini, Gianna, mezzo-soprano, 141, 144 Peri, Giulia, soprano, 136 Pernet, André, bass, 133, 145 Peroni, Amalia, soprano, 140 Perotti, Julius, tenor, 136, 138 Perras, Margherita, soprano, 146 Perrini, Flora, mezzo-soprano, 141 Pessina, mezzo-soprano, 139 Petersen, Marlis, soprano, 154 Petiti, bass, 135 Petkov, Dimiter, bass, 149 Petrina, Ira, soprano, 136 Petrov, Ossip, bass, 132 Pettigiani, Maria, soprano, 138, 141 Pinkert, Regina, soprano, 136 Pinto, bass, 136 Plançon, Pol, bass, xxii, 84, 132, 136, 138 Plishka, Paul, bass, 149 Poinsot, Anne, soprano, 122, 139 Poli Randaccio, Ernestina [Tina], soprano, 141 Pollet, Françoise, soprano, 151 Polonini, Alessandro, bass-baritone, 133 Poncet, Tony, tenor, 148, 153 Ponsard, August, bass, 133 Pornot, Angèle, soprano (Brussels), 141 Pozzi Branzanti, Virginia, mezzo-soprano, 139 Prestia, Giacomo, bass, 152 Pringle, John, baritone, 151 Rabatinsky, Maria von, soprano, 132 Ragon, Gilles, tenor, 154 Raguer, Francesco, bass, 139 Raisa, Rosa, soprano, 141, 144 Rancatore, Désirée, soprano, 152 Raphanel, Ghylaine, soprano, 151 Raspagliosi, Annalisa, soprano, 152

279

Ravelli, Luigi, tenor, 136 Ravogli, Giulia, mezzo-soprano, 136 Renaud, Maurice, baritone, 133, 136, 138 Renaux, Solange, soprano/mezzo, 133 Repetto, [Repetto-Trisolini, Elvira], soprano, 136 Rettich-Pirk, Sarolta von, contralto, 132 Rey, Anais, soprano, 139 Ricciarelli, Katia, soprano, 152 Rimini, Giacomo, baritone, 141, 144 Rinella, Jane, soprano, 147 Risse, Carl, bass, 130 Roger, Gustave-Hippolyte, tenor, 122, 133, 216 Rokitansky, Hans von, bass, 132 Ronconi, Giorgio, baritone, 139 Rootering, Jan-Hendrik, bass, 151 Roselly,Christopher, bass-baritone, 133 Rossi, Giulio, bass, 141 Rossi-Galli, Enrico, bass, 139 Roth, Sigmund, bass, 147 Rothier, Léon, bass-baritone, 138 Rouard, Edouard, baritone, 133, 141 Rouillon, Philippe, bass, 154 Roy, Will, bass, 149 Ruesche, Kurt, tenor, 147 Russell, Ella, soprano, 136 Ruzdak, Vladimir [Wladimir], baritone, 147 Sabran, Edmée, mezzo-soprano, 148 Saléza, Albert, tenor, 138 Salto, Eugenio, tenor, 141 Sanchez, Ana Maria, soprano, 152 Sandis, Marie-Belle, mezzo-soprano, 154 Sandra, soprano, 136 Sani, Giovanni, bass, 141 Santley, Charles, baritone, 135 Saraceni, Adelaide, soprano, 141, 144

280

General Index

Sari, Ada, soprano, 141 Sass, Marie-Constance, soprano, 124, 133, 139 Sassaroli, Germano, bass, 139 Saville, Frances, soprano, 136, 144 Scacciati, Bianca, soprano, 138, 144, 225 n. 87 Scalchi, Sofia, contralto, xxii, 130, 132, 135, 136, 138 Scaramberg, Émile, tenor, 134 Schenk, Manfred, bass, 149 Schlaeger, Toni [Antonia], soprano, 136 Schmid, bass, 135 Schöne, Lotte, soprano, 142 Schou, soprano, 136 Schröder-Devrient, Wilhelmine, soprano, 130 Schröder-Hanfstängel, M., soprano, 138 Schroeder, Andrew, baritone, 154 Schubert, Maschinka, soprano, 130 Scotti, Antonio, baritone, 61, 132, 138, 139 Scovotti, Jeanette, soprano, 149 Sedlmair, Sophie, soprano, 144 Seguin, Ann, soprano/mezzo, 133 Sembrich, Marcella, soprano, 132, 136, 138 Serbolini, E., baritone, 138 Serda, Jacques-Emile, bass, xix, 120, 121, 122, 133 Sessi, Mathilde, soprano, 135 Setov, Iossif, tenor, 132 Severin, Franziska, mezzo-soprano, 152 Seygard, C., contralto, 138 Shane, Rita, soprano, 149 Sherrington, Helen (Lemmens-), soprano, 135 Sills, Beverly, soprano, 148 Silver, Sally, soprano, 154 Silvestri, Alessandro, bass, 136, 139 Simionato, Giulietta, mezzo-soprano, 139, 147 Simmonet, Manette, soprano, 136

Simpson, Gary, bass, 152 Singher, Martial, baritone, 133 Sinico, Clarice, soprano, 135 Slezak, Leo, tenor, 137, 144 Smeroschi, Caroline, soprano, 136 Smilek, Wojtek, bass, 154 Spagna, soprano, 141 Spezia-Aldighieri, Maria, soprano, 130, 138 Spotti, Marco, bass, 154 Spyres, Michael, tenor, 154 Stabile, Mariano, baritone, 138, 225 n. 87 Stahl, Amalie, mezzo-soprano, 136 Staudigl, Joseph, bass, 129 Stehle, Adelina, soprano, 139 Steller, Francesco, baritone, 139 Stoltz, Rosine, mezzo-soprano, 122, 133 Stolz, Teresa, soprano, 141 Storti Gaggi, Ercole, baritone, 139 Stoyanova, Krassimira, soprano, 152 Stromfeld[-KlamrzyĔska, Aleksandra], soprano, 136 Sutherland, Joan, soprano, 139, 147, 148, 150, 151, 195, 201 Taddei, Giuseppe, baritone, 144, 147 Tagliafico, Joseph, bass, 133, 135 Tagliana, Emilia, soprano, 132 Tagliapietra, Giovanni, baritone, 141 Tamagno Francesco, tenor, 136, 139 Tamburini, Antonio, bass, 133, 141 Tansini, Giovanni, bass, 141 Tarrès, Enriqueta, soprano, 149 Teissie, Léonce, baritone, 133 Teodorini, Elena, soprano, 136, 139 Terkal, Karl, tenor, 147 Tetrazzini, Luisa, soprano, 136, 138 Thane, Amanda, soprano, 151 Thebault, Hjödis, mezzo-soprano, 154 Theodorini, Elena, soprano, 141

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Thibault, Blanche, soprano, 133 Thill, Georges, tenor, 133 Tiberini, Angiolina [Ortolani-Tberini], soprano, 135, 139 Tichatschek, Joseph, tenor, 130 Ticozzi, Ebe, contralto, 141 Tietjens, Therese, soprano, 130, 135 Tiliakos, Dimitris, baritone, 154 Togliani, Achille, baritone, 141 Tomaszewski, Rolf, bass, 149 Torres de Luna, Giuseppe [José], bass, 141 Torressella, Fanny, soprano, 141 Tourangeau, Huguette, mezzo-soprano, 148 Tozzi, Giorgio, bass, 139, 144, 147, 148 Trebelli, Zélia, contralto, 135, 136, 139 Treillet-Nathan, Marie, soprano, 122, 134 Trombetto, bass, 141 Tuczek, Leopoldine, soprano, 130 Turconi-Bruni, Angelina, soprano, 139 Turolla, Emma, soprano, 136 Tyssière, baritone, 136 Tzchernov [Cernoff], M., baritone, 136 Ude, Armin, tenor, 149 Ulyanov, Dmitry, bass, 154 Vacchioni, bass, 139 Valero, Fernando, tenor, 138 Valleria, Alwina, soprano, 136 Valot, Sylvia, soprano, 148 Van Allen, Richard, bass, 138, 152 Van Cauteren, Marie, soprano, 141 Van Dam, José, bass-baritone, 148 Vanni-Marcoux, Jean-Emile, bass-baritone, 138 Vanzini, Elena, mezzo-soprano, 135 Vanzo, Alain, tenor, 149 Varnier, Jerôme, bass, 154

281

Vaselli, Gian Battista, baritone, 141 Vécray, Huberte, soprano, 147 Verni, Elena, soprano, 136 Viale, Lucia, mezzo-soprano, 139 Vialetti, Pietro, bass, 139 Viardot-Garcia, Pauline, mezzo-soprano, 36, 124, 130, 133 Viganotti, Ignazio, baritone, 141 Vilda, Maria (see Marie Wilt) [also known as Marie Liebenthaler] Villa, mezzo-soprano, 139 Villaret, Pierre-François, tenor, 122, 133 Viola, Virginia, soprano, 139 Vizzani, Giovanni, tenor, 135 Volpe, Peter, bass, 154 Vrenios, Anastasios, tenor, 148 Wachtel, Theodor, tenor, 135 Wachutka, Elisabeth-Maria, soprano, 152 Walker, Edyth, mezzo-soprano, 132, 138 Wallström, Tord, baritone, 151 Walter, Gustav, tenor, 132 Warnots, Elly Elisabeth, soprano, 136 Wartel, Pierre-François, tenor, xix Wegner, John, bass, 151 Weiser, Enrichetta, soprano, 139 Welker, Hartmut, bass, 152 Wett, Alexandra von der, soprano, 152 Whitehall, Clarence, bass-baritone, 138 Wichert, Achim, baritone, 149 Wiemann, Ernst, bass, 147 Wierzbicky, Taddeusz, bass, 148 Wilt, Marie [also known as Maria Vilda and Marie Liebenthaler], soprano, 132, 135 Wittrisch, Marcel, tenor, 146 Wiziak, Emma, soprano, 141 Zaccaria, Nicola, bass, 144, 147 Zacchi, Mauro, bass-baritone, 139

General Index

282

Zanatello, Giovanni, tenor, 138 Zawner, Carolina, mezzo-soprano, 139 Zelger, Henri-Charles-Joseph, bass, 130, 135

Zezevitch, Andrea, bass, 139 Zifchak, Maria, mezzo-soprano, 152 Zschau, Marilyn, soprano, 151 Zschiesche, August, bass [Zchiesse], 130

Index of Theatres Berlin: Deutsche Oper, 138, 149, 152, 204-05, 208 Staatsoper, 146 Brussels: La Monnaie, 154 Frankfurt Alte Oper Genoa: Carlo Felice, 139, 141 Politeama, 141 Jerusalem: Palestine Opera Company, 146 Liège Opéra Royal de Wallonie, 154 London: Royal Albert Hall, 148 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 100, 101, 122, 130, 133-38, 144, 220 n. 35, 225 n. 87 Scala Theatre, 147-48 Madrid: Teatro Real, 40, 154 Metz Opéra-Théâtre, 152 Milan: Carcano, 125

La Scala, 138, 145, 148, 194-95 Teatro Canobbiana, 130, 139 Montpellier: Berlioz, 151 Moscow: Bolshoi Theatre, 132, 146 Naples: Bellini, 125 New York: Carnegie Hall, 152, 222 n. 52 Metropolitan Opera, xxii, 132, 138 Novara: Teatro Coccia, 152 Paris: Académie royale de musique, xix, 18, 39, 55 Paris Opéra, xix, xx, xxi, 1, 3, 4, 8, 12, 15, 16, 17, 44, 55, 83, 100, 115, 121-22, 132-33, 146, 155, 189; Garnier, 122, 133; Rue le Peletier, xix, 9 Théâtre Lyrique, 133, 222 n. 59 Théâtre Apollo, 147 Rome: Costanzo, 141 Teatro Apollo, 50, 50, 141 St Petersburg / Leningrad: Kirov Theatre, 146 Maryinsky Theatre, 130

Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots: An Evangel of Religion and Love Strasbourg: Opéra National du Rhin, 154 Verona: Arena, 141, 144

283

Vienna: Hofoper [Court Opera], 144 Kärtnertor Theater, 129 Theater in der Josefstadt, 129

Index of Scholars and Commentators Becker, Gudrun, 217 n. 6 Becker, Heinz, 217 nn. 1, 6, 218 nn. 9, 14, 16, 219 n. 21, 223 n. 65, 224 n. 84 Böhmel, Berndt, 149, 218 n. 18 Brereton, Geoffrey, 220 n. 32 Brod, Max, 220 n. 39, 224 nn. 72, 75, 78 Buel, James W., 176 Bülow, Hans von, xxi, 47, 221 n. 45 Bülow, Marie von, 221 n. 45 Carse, Adam, 222 n. 54 Charlton, David, 52, 221 n. 42, 222 n. 49 Coudroy, Marie-Hélène, 217 n. 1, 224 n. 84 Dahlhaus, Carl, 218 n. 14 Döhring, Sieghard, 80, 218 nn. 12, 19, 223 n. 63 Ella, John, 223 n. 61 Ficher, Jens Malte, 220 n. 38 Frese, Christhard, 220 n. 37 Frye, Northrop, 221 n. 47 Garden, Edward, 224 n. 79 Gautier, Théophile, xx, 155, 217 n. 3 Geddes, Tom, 222 n. 52 Gerhard, Anselm, 56, 218, n. 13, 219 n. 21, 221 nn. 46, 48, 222 n. 50 Girard, Henri, 218 n. 17 Goldman,Professor, 225 n. 87 Greenfield, Howard S., 225 n. 88 Günther, Ursula, 221 n. 43

Hanslick, Eduard, music critic, 47, 221 n. 44 Holden, Amanda, 222 n. 53 Huebner, Stephen, 222 n. 55 Irmer, Siegfried, 223 n. 62 Istel, Edgar, 223 n. 66 Jacobs, Arthur, 220 n. 35 Jean-Aubry, Georges, 218 n. 17 Kapp, Julius, 146 Kelly, Thomas Forrest, 217 n. 1, 220 n. 24 Kenyon, Nicholas, 222 n. 53 Kimbell, David, 222 n. 57 Laube, Heinrich, 185-86 Ledin, Marina A., 222 n. 51 Ledin, Victor, 222 n. 51 Lévêque, Jean-Maxime, 224 n. 82 Liszt, Franz, 19, 126, 186, 186-88, 206, 217 n. 7, 219 n. 21, 220 n. 26, 222 n. 51, 224 n. 77 Le Bon, Gustav, 80 Letellier Robert Ignatius, 186, 217 n. 5, 219 n. 23, 223 nn. 61, 65 Lucas, St John, 220 n. 33 Marx, H. J., 218 n. 14 Marx-Weber, M., 218 n. 14 Massenkeil, G., 218 n. 14 Miller, Norbert, 220 p. 38 Montgrédien, Jean, 218 n. 12 Newman, Ernest, 19, 220 n. 27, 225 n. 87 Pintér-Lück, Ơva, 223 n. 69

284

General Index

Pleasants, Henry, 220 n. 25, 224 n. 83 Pougin, Artur, 222 n. 59 Prod’Homme, Jacques-Gabriel, 220 n. 24

Schläder, Jürgen, 218 n. 12 Smart, Mary Ann, 221 n. 47 Spark, William, writer, 70, 100, 222-23 n. 60, 224 n. 80 Stoepel, Friedrich, critic, xx

Quicherat, Louis Marie, 224 n. 83

Thomson, Patricia, 217 n. 4

Rabinovitch, Sacha, 217 n. 4 Ramann, L., 217 n. 7 Robinson, Francis, 225 n. 88 Rogers, Francis, 224 n. 83 Rosenthal, Harold, 224 n. 86 Ruble, A. de, 220 n. 32

Violette, Mark, 217 n.6

Saintsbury, Professor George, 220 n. 28 Sand, George (Aurore Dupin), xx, xxiii, 5, 31, 38, 46, 71, 188-214

Walsh, Stephen, 222 n. 53 Walter, Michael, 218 nn. 10, 11, 220 n. 32, 221 n. 46 Whitall, Mary, 218 n. 13 Wolff, Stéphanie, 224 n. 85 Zimmermann, Reiner, 149, 218 n. 18, 224 n. 81