100 Great Operas and Their Stories

by Henry W. Simon

  When Onegin rushes to her and goes down on his knees, she attempts to be cold. She suggests that he may be only attracted by the glamour of having a love affair with the wife of a distinguished ornament of society. Onegin’s passion, however, is obviously far more genuine than this. He acknowledges that his former behavior had been sheer madness; he begs for pity; he asks her to run away with him. Tatiana, who has been trying to conquer her real emotions by the earlier show of coldness, now melts and finally sinks into his arms. Yet even during the passionate phrases that follow she knows what she owes to her husband. Summoning all her moral strength, she dismisses Onegin and rushes from the room. Again Onegin is overwhelmed with anguish.

  FALSTAFF

  Opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with

  libretto by Arrigo Boito based on Shakespeare’s

  The Merry Wives of Windsor and bits of

  Henry IV

  SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, the fat knight Baritone

  Falstaff’s hangers-on

  BARDOLPH Tenor

  PISTOL Bass

  FORD, a wealthy burgher Baritone

  ALICE FORD, his wife Soprano

  ANN (NANETTA) FORD, their daughter Soprano

  FENTON, Ann’s suitor Tenor

  DR. CAIUS, another suitor Tenor

  MISTRESS PAGE, a neighbor of the Fords Mezzo-soprano

  DAME QUICKLY, servant of Dr. Caius Contralto

  Time: early 15th century

  Place: Windsor

  First performance at Milan, February 9, 1893

  Verdi’s Falstaff is, as everyone knows, based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. It is, thus, a great opera by a great composer; and it is based on the work of a great dramatist who happened, for once, to write a pretty poor play. Maybe it is not polite to say that anything by Shakespeare is not very good. Anyway, this play was so really second-rate that many Shakespearean scholars doubt that Shakespeare wrote much of it.

  Be that as it may, Verdi’s librettist, Arrigo Boito, took out some of the unnecessary stuffing, added bits and pieces from better Shakespeare plays, and gave his friend Verdi an excellent concoction, filled with the champagne of high spirits. And Verdi, though in his eightieth year when the opera was produced, wrote a sparkling score. There is none of the long, passionate melodies here of the youthful Traviata and Trovartore, but wit, skill, and high spirits in almost every bar.

  ACT I

  Scene 1 The time is the fifteenth century; the place is Windsor, not far from London; and the scene is inside the Garter Inn. That fat old rascal, Sir John Falstaff, is being upbraided by the foolish old Dr. Caius. Apparently, the night before, Caius has had a drinking bout with Falstaff and his disreputable hangers-on, Bardolph and Pistol, and Caius’s pocket has been picked. He gets exactly nowhere with the three: they are merely contemptuous.

  When Caius has left, Falstaff is given a bill by the host of the inn. He cannot pay, and so he devises a plot to get money. He tells Bardolph and Pistol how two jolly wives of Windsor-Mistress Ford and Mistress Page—have been attracted to him. Both, he says, control their husbands’ purse strings. He means to make love to them and to get money from them. For this purpose he has written each a letter, and Bardolph and Pistol are to constitute themselves the postal department. But, surprisingly, these good-for-nothings refuse: they say they stand on their honor and will have nothing to do with this business. “Honor!” cries Falstaff—and he delivers them a terrific lecture on the meaninglessness of that word. (It is a pretty magnificent lecture, taken largely from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2.) Honor cannot fill an empty stomach or set straight a broken limb, and is nothing but a word that floats away. As for Bardolph and Pistol, they are nothing but thieves; and he closes the act by chasing them, with a broom, right out of the inn!

  Scene 2 In spite of Bardolph and Pistol, Falstaff has had his letters delivered by a page to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. And in the second scene of this act, we turn from the purely masculine company of the Garter Inn to meet the ladies in Ford’s house. There is Meg Page, and there is Alice Ford (those are the two “merry wives”), there is Alice’s pretty daughter Ann, and there is the gossipy old neighbor Dame Quickly, who happens also to be the servant of Dr. Caius. The two merry wives soon discover that they have received identical letters from Sir John Falstaff, and they are convulsed with glee.

  Meantime, those rapscallions, Bardolph and Pistol, have told Ford that the fat knight is planning to seduce his wife. The Ford household is a pretty busy place that morning, for Dr. Caius has also come over to complain of the way he has been treated. And, to make the stage quite full, there is also young Fenton, a suitor for the hand of Ann Ford. What with the women plotting against Falstaff on one side of the stage, the men plotting against him on the other, and everyone talking at the same time, Verdi had a fine chance for chattery nine-part writing. He made splendid use of it. And, by way of contrast, he also wrote some light love music for Ann and Fenton. Fenton’s suit is not approved by Ford, who wants Ann to marry Dr. Caius. Therefore, the young folks have only brief words with each other on the sly. No full-blown love duets here—just flirtations. The whole scene, in fact, is light and airy as a feather.

  ACT II

  Scene 1 The plots against Sir John Falstaff now begin to take shape. Back at the Garter Inn, Bardolph and Pistol, the hypocrites, ask to be taken back into Falstaff’s good graces. Soon they usher in Dame Quickly. She tells the knight that the two ladies—Mistress Page and Mistress Ford—are both in love with him. Ford, she says, is always away from home between two and three. Won’t Sir John pay a call? And Page—why, he’s away from home most of the time, so … Vastly flattered, Falstaff promises to come; and when Dame Quickly leaves, he expresses his self-satisfaction in the monologue Va, vecchio John. “Get along with you, old John,” he says in effect; “there’s life in the old boy yet.”

  But now Bardolph announces another visitor, one Maestro Fontana, who wishes to meet him, and who brings along a demijohn of wine for breakfast. This Fontana is none other than Ford in disguise. He enlists Falstaff’s aid, with the promise of money, in seducing the wife of a certain burgher of Windsor—Mistress Ford, to be exact. Falstaff falls into the trap completely, promising success based on his own attraction for the lady in question. But when he goes off to array himself properly for the conquest, Ford sings a terrific monologue (È sogno? o realtà?—“Is it a dream? or is it real?”) on the chances he stands of being made a cuckold. He swears a terrible revenge on both Falstaff and his own wife; but the scene ends again in comedy as he and Falstaff, now splendidly attired, bow each other out of the doorway with ludicrous ceremony.

  Scene 2 Back in Ford’s house things begin to come to a boil. The ladies are together, and Dame Quickly reports her success with Sir John Falstaff. He will come wooing Mistress Ford today, from two to three. Meantime, pretty little Ann tells her mother that Ford wants her to marry old Dr. Caius—a dreadful thought to both of them!

  Unfortunately, it is time for Falstaff to come a-wooing. The stage is set for him: Mistress Ford takes up a lute; the others hide behind a screen. The fat old gentleman wastes no time in his ludicrous love-making. Within two minutes he is proposing: he tells Alice how beautiful she is and how handsome he once was, and he does his best to take her into the cushioned circumference of his arms. Alice, of course, resists coquettishly, but they are soon interrupted. Ford is on his way home! And there is a fine how-de-do as the ladies hide His Fatness behind the screen.

  Ford breaks in furiously, with a whole retinue of followers. They look everywhere—even in a large laundry basket—but not, fortunately, behind the screen. When the men are off searching other rooms, the fat knight is stuffed into that laundry basket. He is covered with dirty clothes; and when the men return, he occasionally sticks out his head to complain that he’s roasting to death. It’s a perfectly mad scene, everyone singing at once, or in pairs, or in quartets. Even the two young lovers—Ann and Fenton—have a chance to exchange some tend
er words behind the screen. Finally, with the men off again searching in another room, the laundry basket, complete with Falstaff, is heaved out of the window and—splash—into the river outside. Huge laughter and merriment close the broadly farcical scene.

  ACT III

  Scene 1 Poor Jack Falstaff! Honest Jack Falstaff! Rogue Jack Falstaff! He has been thoroughly defeated—thrown, in a laundry basket, into the river, while Ford and his wife have become quite reconciled. But they are not through yet with the fat knight; otherwise there would have been no Act III. There he sits, before the Garter Inn, commiserating with himself. He has been terribly treated, vilely treated. But he gets a big beaker of hot wine, and then we hear the famous trill in the orchestra to show what it does to him. It starts way down (like the effect of wine), and it grows and grows, till the whole orchestra—like Jack’s whole body—is one big trill and thrill!

  Now Dame Quickly comes. With little difficulty she persuades Falstaff that it was not Alice’s fault. She still loves him—and he reads her letter, which Dame Quickly has brought. It is an assignation to meet at midnight, in disguise, at the royal park. The other plotters have been listening to this exchange; and when Falstaff and Dame Quickly enter the inn, the eavesdroppers occupy the entire stage and develop their various plots. And while they are in a conspiratorial mood, Dr. Caius and Ford plot, by means of disguises, to marry the old physician to young Ann that same night.

  Scene 2 And now, last scene of all: midnight in Windsor Park. There all sorts of things may happen—especially under Herne’s Oak. Herne was a legendary huntsman, and the very opening notes of the scene suggest the hunting horn’s echoing in ghostly fashion. There the lovers—Fenton and Ann—meet to sing a brief duet. It cannot go on long, for they must don their costumes for the fun, and to carry out their own plot.

  Then, cold on the stroke of midnight, enter Sir John, disguised as the hunter Herne. One … two … three … up to twelve he counts the strokes, when his beloved Alice greets him. Sir John’s love-making makes a sharp contrast with young Fenton’s; but he too is interrupted. A whole troop of fairies arrives, with Ann, disguised as their Queen, at their head. It is all done to charming, fairylike music, but Sir John hides, frightened to death, before the oak. In his superstitious mind it is death to look on fairies. With everyone assembled—the men, too, in their supernatural disguises—the fun begins. They torture poor Sir John—they stick him, prick him, pinch him, roll him, and tumble him, till the old man can take no more. At length he arises and shakes them off, only to be reviled—and finally forgiven. Never again will he go a-courting the merry wives of Windsor!

  But what of the young lovers? Ford, who has plotted to betroth Dr. Caius to his daughter Ann, does so. Only it turns out that the redheaded rascal Bardolph has taken over Ann’s disguise as the Queen of the Fairies, and Caius finds himself with a pretty bride indeed! At the same time Ford has blessed another couple in masks, and these turn out to be Ann herself and her true-love Fenton.

  In the magic of the night and the wooded scene everyone is reconciled. Falstaff proposes a grand finale, and Verdi ends his long and glorious operatic career with a magnificent fugue in nine parts.

  FAUST

  Opera in four acts by Charles Gounod with

  libretto in French by Jules Barbier and Michel

  Carré based on Part I of Goethe’s Faust

  FAUST, a doctor of philosophy Tenor

  MEPHISTOPHELES, the Tempter Bass

  VALENTINE, a soldier Baritone

  MARGUERITE, his sister Soprano

  SIEBEL, a boy in love with Marguerite Mezzo-soprano or soprano

  MARTHE, a mature neighbor of Marguerite Mezzo-soprano

  WAGNER, a student Baritone

  Time: 16th century

  Places: Wittenberg, Leipzig, and the Harz Mountains

  First performance at Paris, March 19, 1859

  The legend of Dr. Faustus seems to be the perfect story to attract both dramatists and composers. Marlowe and Goethe wrote great plays on the subject—not to mention some thirty lesser dramatists who wrote lesser plays. Beethoven once toyed with the idea of doing an opera on the subject. Wagner composed a Faust Overture. Liszt did a cantata. And Berlioz, Boito, and Gounod all wrote very find Faust operas. Spohr and Busoni wrote less successful ones; and there is even a Faust opera by that rara avis, a female opera composer-Louise Bertin. Gounod’s setting is easily the most popular of all of them—and in many ways the best. It is based, more closely than most critics have been willing to admit, on Part I of Goethe’s drama; and its theme is, of course, that of the old German scientist-philosopher who sells his soul in return for youth.

  PRELUDE

  The orchestral prelude begins with slow, soft music in a minor key and a contrapuntal style skillfully suggestive of the gloomy medieval scholar’s cell on which the curtain will shortly rise. Then, in a completely different style, the melody of Valentine’s aria Even Bravest Heart May Swell is played, and the prelude closes with a few measures of religioso music.

  ACT I

  Scene 1 deals with the contract Faust makes with the Devil—Mephistopheles. After the prelude, the old scholar, seated in his study in the medieval town of Wittenberg, complains that all his learning has brought him nothing. He is about to poison himself, when he hears youthful voices outside his study praising the Lord. In desperation Faust calls on the Devil for aid, and, much to his surprise, Mephistopheles appears, clothed like a sixteenth-century gentleman. At first Faust turns from him; but when Mephisto offers whatever he wants, Faust cries out that he desires—youth!

  Nothing could be simpler for Mephisto. He shows the old man a vision of the lovely young girl, Marguerite, and almost at once the philosopher is ready to sign the contract. On earth, Mephisto will serve him in everything. But below, the Devil will be master. A quick signature, a quick magic potion, and Faust is changed to a young man in elegant costume. The scene ends with a spirited duet, as the two go off in search of adventure—and love.

  Scene 2 takes us to a village fair in sixteenth-century Leipzig. Soldiers, students, villagers are milling around and singing the praises of light wines and beer. Valentine, who is Marguerite’s brother, is in a more serious frame of mind. He is worried about who will guard over his sister while he is at the wars, and he sings the familiar aria Even Bravest Heart May Swell. (Gounod, by the way, wrote this aria originally using the English words. The French translation begins: Avant de quitter ces lieux.) Now a student, Wagner, begins a song about a rat, but he is interrupted by Mephistopheles, who claims he knows a better song. This is the Calf of Gold, which is so rhythmic that everyone joins in the chorus, for as yet they do not recognize this genial basso as the Devil. Mephisto then produces, by magic, some excellent wine (much better, he says, than the local stuff), and he proposes a toast to Marguerite. Valentine is angered by having his sister’s name thus bandied about, and challenges the stranger. But just as he is about to attack, Mephisto points at him, and Valentine’s sword breaks in half. Now the villagers know whom they have to deal with. Led by Valentine, they reverse their swords, thus making the sign of the cross; and as they sing the Chorale of the Swords, Mephisto grovels on the ground.

  When they have left him alone, Faust appears on the stage, demanding to meet Marguerite, and the Devil is himself again. The famous waltz from Faust begins, and in the midst of the dancing Marguerite comes on the stage. Faust offers her his arm; she very politely declines; and the waltz resumes as the badly smitten Faust voices his newborn love. In a swirl of madder and madder waltz rhythms the scene ends.

  ACT II

  Act II is the justly famous Garden Scene. It takes place the same evening in Marguerite’s garden, and the familiar melodies that come from that garden may justly be called a sweet bouquet of great arias and concerted numbers. A list of them will make the action clear. First of all, there is Siebel’s Flower Song. Siebel is the young man who is in love with Marguerite; and as he sings, he gathers flowers and finally places the
m where Marguerite cannot fail to see them. The next great aria is Faust’s Salut demeure—“All hail thou dwelling pure and lowly.” In it he expresses his enchantment with the beautiful and simple surroundings wherein the lovely Marguerite grew up. Immediately after it Mephistopheles comes in and leaves a casket of jewels beside Siebel’s bouquet—a bit of unfair competition, I always thought. And, when the two gentlemen have retired, in comes Marguerite and, as she sits beside her spinning wheel, she sings the simple ballad The King of Thule. Every once in a while she interrupts herself as she moons a little about the handsome young stranger who had greeted her at the dance. Immediately after this she discovers first Siebel’s flowers, and then the casket of jewels. This is the signal for the brilliant Jewel Song, during which she decks herself out in the finery she finds.

  Marguerite now is joined by her gossipy old neighbor, Marthe, and then both are joined by Faust and Mephisto. And while Mephisto makes mock love to Marthe, Faust and Marguerite get to know each other better. A very fine quartet is the natural musical outcome. Twilight comes on, and Mephistopheles solemnly intones his Invocation to Night. He hopes it may lead to trouble for poor Marguerite, and Faust and Marguerite are then left alone for their great Love Duet. As she superstitiously plucks a daisy for the old he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not test, as she protests that it is growing too late, as she says she loves him so much that she would die for him, Gounod paints a picture of dawning love that few composers have ever equaled. Faust, who retains some compunctions about seducing an innocent maiden, finally consents to leave and return the next day. But the Devil knows his business only too well. Just as Faust is leaving the garden, he stops him and points to Marguerite’s window. There she is, leaning out of it, and singing to the stars about her new love. It is one of the most enchanting bits in the whole scene. Faust rushes to embrace her passionately; and Mephistopheles, his end achieved, laughs a hearty, wicked laugh as the orchestra swells and then fades away, picturing the love of Faust and Marguerite.