Nevertheless, it is a treasurable score. The use of genuine children’s folk songs in Act I, the Prayer as it is sung in Act II, the Witches’ Ride, and several other pages of music have become part of our culture, and deservedly so. One could, however, almost wish that Humperdinck had reined his enthusiasm for writing notes by confining himself to his original intention—that of composing some incidental music for a children’s play that his sister, Frau Adelheid Wette, had written for the family.
OVERTURE
A favorite number on pops concerts, the overture begins with the Prayer from Act II, continues with contrasting themes from other parts of the score, and develops quite elaborately till the Prayer is thundered out as if it were a hymn to victory.
ACT I
In the cottage of a poor broommaker his two children, Hänsel and Gretel, are hungry but nevertheless working, playing, and quarreling in the best of spirits. They sing the old German folk song about Susie and her geese (who have no shoes), and they end up by singing and dancing the familiar “Brother, come and dance with me” (Brüderchen, komm tanz’ mit mir). Their mother’s entrance puts a quick stop to the laughing, and they guiltily try to explain away the broommaking they have abandoned. In her anger the mother knocks over a pitcher of milk, leaving nothing for supper. With threats of a dire beating she sends them into the woods, warning them not to come back before they have picked a full basket of strawberries.
Peter, the father, returns home, jolly and drunk, and mollifies his wife, Gertrude, by exhibiting a basket of sausages, coffee, and bread and butter, which he has bought after an unexpected windfall of business in the village. As she prepares the supper, he misses the children, and Gertrude tells him that she has sent out the brats for strawberries. She doesn’t care if they’re at a mountain called Ilsenstein. Peter is horrified; and, as Gertrude does not seem to be up on local sociology, he sings her an aria explaining that there is a witch at Ilsenstein who navigates a broom and bakes little children into gingerbread. Gertrude at once rushes out after the children, and Peter follows, armed with his bottle of liquor.
ACT II
As intermission time can be troublesome when an audience includes many children, the management often labels this act “Scene 2” and the orchestra plays the Hexenritt (“Witches’ Ride”), a lively little tone poem, while the scenery is being changed.
At the foot of the dread Ilsenstein the children are casually gathering—and eating—their strawberries. Gretel sings the charming folk song Ein Männlein steht im Walde, likening a mushroom to a man; but as it begins to grow dark, they begin to be frightened. They have lost their way; they think they see mysterious figures and hear mysterious voices (there is a female chorus off-stage to lend some verisimilitude to this); and they fall into each other’s arms in fright. But the Little Sandman comforts them, strews the sand of sleepiness over them, and disappears as they sing the lovely Children’s Prayer about fourteen angels who will guard them in their sleep.
A light shines on them from the mountain, and the fourteen angels descend, gather round them, and perform a quiet and modest ballet.
ACT III
After a short prelude, the curtain rises on the same scene next morning, except that there is now visible in the back a charming old German house decorated all over with life-size figures of children looking like gingerbread. It is, of course, the Witch’s house.
The Dew Man, after singing a little self-identifying song, wakes the children, who are delighted to see the attractive dwelling. Hänsel breaks off a piece of gingerbread and begins to eat it; and they decide it is merely the wind when they hear someone inside singing the old game tune “Who’s Nibbling at My House?” But it is really the Witch, who tosses a rope around Hansel’s neck (he frees himself), invites the children into the house (they refuse), and only manages to make them prisoners by the use of magic. She waves a juniper bough, utters the words “Hocus-pocus Hexenschuss”—and they are paralyzed. She thereupon places Hänsel in a cage, orders Gretel to work about the house, prepares the big stove, and takes a fiendish ride on her broom.
But this Witch is not very competent. When she tests Hänsel to see how good he is to eat, he presents her with a stick instead of his finger, and she is satisfied that he is too bony to cook. When she isn’t looking, Gretel gets hold of the magic wand and frees her brother. And when Gretel asks for instructions about looking into the stove, she shows her how and is pushed into the fire for her pains. Delighted with their arson, the children start gathering sweetmeats from all over the house, when the big stove crackles and then explodes. With this turn of events the children whom the Witch had baked into her gingerbread house become partially free of the spell; Hänsel completes the reverse spell with the wand; and they all join in a chorus celebrating the end of the black magic.
Just then Peter and Gertrude find their children, with all their new friends; the Witch, now in the shape of a great gingerbread cake, is dragged from the debris of her oven; Peter finds an appropriate moral (wickedness gets punished); and everyone praises God in a choral variation of the Prayer.
L’HEURE ESPAGNOLE
(The Spanish Hour)
Opera in one act by Maurice Ravel with
libretto in French by “Franc-Nohain” (Maurice
Legrand) based on his own play of the same
name
TORQUEMADA, a clockmaker Tenor
CONCEPCION, his wife Soprano
GONZALVE, a poet Tenor
RAMIRO, a muleteer Baritone
DON INIGO GOMEZ, a banker Bass
Time: 18th century
Place: Toledo, Spain
First performance at Paris, May 19, 1911
Maurice Ravel was just about as French a composer as any composer who ever lived. Yet he was born in the Pyrenees, his mother apparently was a Basque, and he liked to write about Spain—sometimes even with a Spanish accent in his music. L’Heure espagnole is, of course, about Spain. Its title means, quite literally, “The Spanish Hour,” but the word “hour” does not really mean a sixty-minute hour. The word is used, perhaps, as Longfellow used it, in the title of his famous poem The Children’s Hour. That poem says, in effect, “Now is the time to pay some attention to the children.” And the title of the opera suggests: “Let’s talk about the Spaniards … and what they do with time.” The libretto—a very French one—comes from a one-act play written by a Frenchman named Maurice Legrand. He further Frenchified it by using a nom de plume—Franc-Nohain.
The opera, first produced in 1911, still seems young and modern—partly, perhaps, because it is so very sophisticated—but its story goes back to eighteenth-century Toledo. It concerns a middle-aged clockmaker, Torquemada, and his young, pretty, and very sexy wife, Concepcion. One hears the tick-tocks of Torquemada’s clocks in the score almost from the beginning. Anyway, Torquemada, working in his shop one morning, gets a new customer—a big, handsome, muscular, good-natured, simple-minded muleteer named Ramiro. Keep your eye on Ramiro. Concepcion gets rid of her husband by reminding him that it is time to go and regulate the town clocks. That’s part of his job. Her reason for wanting to be rid of Torquemada is that she has a rendezvous with one Gonzalve, a romantic poet.
The story (which is as complicated as a French bedroom farce) has to do with Concepcion keeping her men separated. She rids herself of Ramiro, the muleteer, by getting him to carry a grandfather’s clock up to her bedroom. But that’s only temporary. Gonzalve is more interested in singing and reciting his verses than in making love, so Ramiro returns inconveniently. Concepcion then gets him to carry up another clock, and pretty soon she even gets him to carry up one of the clocks with her lover secretly inside it.
Then—further complications. Another lover—Inigo, the fat banker—appears. Between the two lovers hiding in clocks and Ramiro carrying them up and downstairs within those clocks and Concepcion’s growing admiration for Ramiro’s strength and good nature—well, there’s plenty of comedy. Finally, Concepcion invites Ramiro upstair
s without any clock. While they are away, the poet finds the fat banker stuck inside a clock, unable to get out. In addition, Torquemada returns from his chores. No one is especially upset by all this, and Ramiro, always the good-natured strong man, pulls the poor banker out to safety.
And so they all join in a jolly quintet saying nothing of any importance at all. For in “the Spanish hour,” so to speak, nothing seems to matter but a bit of flirtation.
LES HUGUENOTS
Opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer with
libretto in French by Augustin Eugène Scribe,
revised by Émile Deschamps and the composer
MARGUERITE DE VALOIS, sister of Charles IX of France Soprano
URBAIN, her page Mezzo-soprano
Catholic noblemen
COUNT DE ST. BRIS Baritone
COUNT DE NEVERS Baritone
COUNT MAUREVERT Bass
Catholic gentlemen
COSSÉ Tenor
MÉRU Baritone
THORÉ Baritone
TAVANNES Tenor
VALENTINE, daughter of St. Bris Soprano
RAOUL DE NANGIS, a Huguenot nobleman Tenor
MARCEL, servant to Raoul Bass
BOIS-ROSÉ, a Huguenot soldier Tenor
Time: August 1572
Places: Touraine and Paris
First performance at Paris, February 29, 1836
It was The Huguenots that in 1836 made Meyerbeer the king of the opera not only in Paris but practically everywhere else. Not that he lacked detractors even in his own time. Richard Wagner described the typical Meyerbeer libretto as “a monstrous motley, historico-romantic, sacro-frivolous, mysterious-brazen, sentimental-humbugging dramatic hodge-podge” and, after Meyerbeer stopped being an easy touch, continually attacked and denigrated him. (Yet, in a rare access of honesty, he once admitted that the fourth act of The Huguenots had deeply moved him.) It did not occur to Wagner that his descriptions of these librettos were not inapplicable, at least in part, to his own. Nor were Wagner’s librettos, however many detractors they too had in their own day, ever taken seriously enough to frighten those interesting weather vanes of political opinion, the official censors. The Huguenots can at least claim the distinction of having had its religious conflict disguised in a number of sensitively Catholic cities. In Vienna and St. Petersburg it was performed as The Guelphs and the Ghibellines, in Munich and Florence as The Anglicans and the Puritans, and in the last city also as Renato di Croenwald, whoever that was.
Today it is difficult to take the pseudo-history of Meyerbeer and Scribe seriously, and, more important, the musical effects seem to have lost much of their impact. The opera is still regularly performed in France, less regularly in Germany, and hardly ever in the United States, England, or Italy. Individual numbers are sometimes sung in concert, and recordings of arias by singers of the Golden Age are collectors’ items. Some of the music is therefore still current; but it appears unlikely that there will be a gala revival in an important American opera house before a genuine all-star cast can be assembled equal to the ones in the 1890’s at the Metropolitan when the price of seats was raised two dollars for the occasion. For such a “night of seven stars,” as it was publicized, the program listed Nordica, Melba, the two De Reszkes, Scalchi, Plançon, and Maurel. Even as late as 1905 one might have heard Caruso, Nordica, Sembrich, Scotti, Walker, Journet, and Plançon. But those days are gone forever, and perhaps Les Huguenots with them.
PRELUDE
The prelude consists of a series of repetitions (“variations” is too strong a word), with dramatic contrasts in dynamics, pitch, and orchestration, of the great Lutheran chorale Ein feste Burg (“A Mighty Fortress”). This wonderful tune is used a number of times later in the opera for dramatic purposes.
ACT I
It was a time, in France, of the bloodiest work of religious fanaticism, and a series of civil wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots came to an uneasy pause when, in 1572, Marguerite of France married Henry of Bourbon, thus uniting the leading Catholic and Protestant families. But the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve put an end to the Huguenot hopes for domination. The opera opens not long before St. Bartholomew’s Eve, and the massacre closes it.
The Count de Nevers is one of the leading young Catholic noblemen, and in his castle in Touraine he is entertaining some of his boon companions, jolly blades all. Nevers himself is the only one among them who has some character, and he asks them to show a bit of tolerance toward an expected guest even though he is a Huguenot aristocrat. Nevertheless, when the handsome but distinctly provincial Raoul de Nangis is introduced, they utter some ungentlemanly asides about his looking like a Calvinist.
The banquet now begins, and a rousing chorus is sung in praise of good eating and the wines of Touraine. Next, a toast is proposed to everyone’s mistress, but Nevers admits that as he is about to be married, he must decline; in fact, he adds, he finds the circumstance rather embarrassing: the ladies seem to be pursuing him even more ardently than before his engagement became known. Raoul then obliges with an account of his own love—an unknown beauty whom he saved one day from a gang of rowdy students. This aria (Plus blanche que la blanche hermine—“Whiter than ermine”) features the obbligato of an obsolete instrument, the viola d’amore, which makes it especially effective. He has dedicated his heart to this unknown, a romantic gesture that wins only smiles of condescension from his worldly-wise auditors.
Raoul’s retainer, Marcel, a redoubtable old soldier, is completely out of sympathy with his master’s making such acquaintances and tries to warn him. He boldly huffs out the Lutheran chorale, A Mighty Fortress, and proudly admits that it was he who, in battle, had administered the scar to the face of one of the guests, Cossé. Cossé good-naturedly invites the old soldier to drink. Being an unbending Calvinist, Marcel refuses, but he does substitute something better—the Chanson huguenote, a vigorous and brutal anti-papist battle song which features a refrain on the syllables Piff, paff denoting the damage inflicted on Catholics by Protestant bullets.
The merriment is interrupted when the host is called out to receive a message from a young lady in the garden. Everyone speculates on Nevers’ continuing intrigues even after his engagement, and Raoul is deeply shocked when, looking through a window with the others, he recognizes in Nevers’ visitor the unknown beauty he had vowed to love. He swears vengeance. But he does not overhear Nevers when, on his return, he says that his visitor was his fiancée, Valentine, a protégé of the Queen’s, who has asked to be released from her engagement. Nevers, though deeply chagrined, has acquiesced.
Another messenger from another lady again interrupts the party. This messenger is the page Urbain, so young a chap that his part is taken by a mezzo-soprano, and in a once-admired aria (Une dame noble et sage—“A wise and noble lady”) he announces that he bears a letter from an important personage. It turns out to be addressed not to Nevers, as everyone supposed, but to Raoul; and it asks that he permit himself to be blindfolded before going to a rendezvous. When Nevers sees the missive, he recognizes the seal as that of Marguerite of Valois, the King’s sister. This mark of esteem for the young Huguenot wins him the respect of all the Catholic gentry present, and they convey their politically motivated congratulations in the finale. Marcel, for his part, strikes in with a Te Deum and the observation that Samson has overcome the Philistines.
ACT II
In the garden of her castle of Chenonceaux, in Touraine, Marguerite of Valois is awaiting Raoul de Nangis. The ladies-in-waiting sing the praises of the countryside, as does the Queen herself. The Queen, it appears, has sent for Raoul so that he may become engaged to Valentine, the daughter of the Count de St. Bris, one of the leading Catholic noblemen. Such a marriage, rather than one with another Catholic, should help allay the civil strife. Valentine shows only a ladylike hesitation about being made a political pawn in this fashion: it was long the common fate of aristocratic girls.
The page Urbain is also present at the court,
having been thrilled by leading the handsome, blindfolded cavalier through the streets. He is a Cherubino-like figure, in love with Valentine, with the Queen, and with the sex in general. But he is as much coarser in conception than Cherubino as Meyerbeer’s music was coarser than Mozart’s. The fascination women have for him is projected by his acting as a Peeping Tom when the girls of the court go bathing, which they do at the back of the stage within tantalizing half-sight of the audience. They also sing a bathers’ chorus.
When Raoul is finally led blindfolded into the presence of the Queen and left alone with her, he is permitted to take off the scarf and finds himself at once overpowered with the beauty of the young woman he sees. He does not know it is the Queen, and he vows gallantly to serve her. The Queen, for her part, assures him that there will be occasion for her to call upon him.
It is only when Urbain returns to announce that the whole court is about to arrive that Raoul learns whom he has been vowing to serve. And when the Queen tells him that this service must be his marrying the daughter of the Count de St. Bris for political reasons, he readily consents, even though he does not know he has ever seen the girl. The courtiers then enter to the tune of a minuet and range themselves on two sides of the stage, Catholic and Huguenots, with Nevers and St. Bris heading the former. Some letters brought to the Queen demand, in the name of King Charles IX. the presence of the Catholics in Paris for some important but undisclosed project. Before they leave, however, the Queen demands and receives an oath from both sides pledging them to eternal peace. It is a most impressive chorus.
100 Great Operas and Their Stories Page 21