100 Great Operas and Their Stories

by Henry W. Simon

  Adelina Patti, the most famous of Juliets, also followed at least one portion of the story with faithfulness to the spirit of the text. In the 1880’s, when she was married to (but separated from) the Marquis de Caux, she sang the role at the Paris Opéra with a French tenor named Nicolini. (His real name was Ernest Nicolas, but he changed it out of respect for Italy, which appreciated his singing more than did his native country.) The principals were as much in love, apparently, as the characters they were representing; and one heartless observer (could he have been a critic?) tallied twenty-nine genuine kisses that passed between them during the balcony scene. When Patti was finally divorced from the Marquis, this operatic couple was married—and lived lyrically together for twelve years, at the end of which the tenor died and the soprano returned to the aristocracy as the Baroness Cederström.

  PROLOGUE

  Shakespeare’s play is prefaced with a prologue in the form of a sonnet spoken by a single actor denominated “Chorus.” Its well-known lines begin:

  Two houses, both alike in dignity,

  In fair Verona, where we lay our scene …

  and goes on to speak of the “star-cross’d lovers.” Gounod’s opera begins with the same sonnet, but the lines of “Chorus” are sung by the full chorus.

  ACT I

  Act I begins with the ballroom scene, which, in Shakespeare’s play, is Scene 5. However, the librettists manage to tell us all the important things that happen in the earlier scenes—and even a few that don’t! The curtain rises to the music of a waltz being danced to at a party given by the Capulets. Tybalt discusses his cousin Juliet’s forthcoming marriage with the Count Paris. (Incidentally, no one has bothered to tell Juliet that she has been betrothed. Parents did things in a rather highhanded way in those days.)

  Pretty soon, along comes that pompous old bore Lord Capulet, Juliet’s father. He introduces his daughter to the company, and she obliges with a very nice little aria. It shows her to have at least one very marked talent—a fine coloratura.

  It appears, however, that there are some unwanted guests at the ball—a group of the hated Montagues. One of them is Romeo, and he naturally has fallen in love with Juliet at first sight. Mercutio teases him about it a bit, and he sings a light baritone aria—a French paraphrase of the famous Queen Mab speech. Next there is a scene between the nurse and Juliet, and when marriage is hinted at to our heroine, she claims she wants none of it. It is then that she has her most famous aria—the well-known Waltz Song. Ironically, she meets a moment later the man she is to marry. Juliet and Romeo have the first of the series of love duets that characterize this opera, and at its end Juliet is just as much in love as Romeo is.

  But Cousin Tybalt believes he recognizes the voice of a Montague. He is not certain, for the guests are wearing masks. However—hotheaded fellow that he is—he is ready to cause trouble and is restrained with some difficulty by the host, Lord Capulet, who insists that there be no trouble at his party. He urges everyone to dance, and so the act ends as it began—with a waltz chorus.

  ACT II

  Act II is the familiar balcony scene. It begins—as does Shakespeare’s balcony scene—with Romeo escaping from his jolly companions, and finding himself beneath Juliet’s balcony. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound,” he mutters to himself (in French, of course), and then he sings his big aria, Ah! lève-toi, soleil! The balance of the act is an exceptionally fine love duet. As in Shakespeare, it is Juliet who proposes marriage—and a very speedy one—and Romeo eagerly agrees. Twice during the course of tie long duet they are interrupted. Once it is a party of Capulets who are still searching for the Montagues, and once it is the nurse, who urges Juliet to go to bed. Toward the close there is the famous couplet about “parting is such sweet sorrow”; and then, after Juliet has followed the nurse indoors, Romeo breaths a few more ecstatic phrases.

  ACT III

  Scene 1 is very brief, consisting largely of the secret marriage of Romeo and Juliet. They come to the cell of the good old Friar Lawrence; Romeo explains that they wish to be married quickly and secretly; the friar decides such a marriage may end the bitter feud between the Montagues and the Capulets; and the ceremony is performed. At the end there is a quartet of rejoicing, in which they are joined by the nurse.

  Scene 2 contains a good deal of action and one brand-new, non-Shakespearean character. This is the page Stephano. He is an elegant, gay, and fearless young Montague-so young, in fact, that his part is sung by a soprano. He opens the scene by singing a pert and insulting serenade to the Capulets, Que fais-tu, blanche tourterelle? Gregory, a Capulet, starts to attack him with a sword. But a group of Montagues arrives, and very quickly there is serious trouble. Tybalt challenges Romeo, and Romeo, who has just been married to Tybalt’s cousin, refuses the challenge. The hotheaded Mercutio takes it up instead, and when he is slain by Tybalt, Romeo can no longer restrain himself. He attacks Tybalt and slays him in turn. Now older and wiser heads appear, Lord Capulet and the Duke of Verona among them. The Duke, properly shocked by the bloodshed, banishes Romeo from the city. This is the worst possible fate for the tragic newlywed, and he leads the ensemble in a fine concerted number bewailing his misfortune.

  ACT IV

  Act IV begins with the third of the four love duets that melodiously punctuate this sad story. Romeo and Juliet have spent their one night together, and it is now time for Romeo to depart. The Duke has decreed that if he is found within the walls of Verona, he shall forfeit his life. In vain the lovers imagine that it is the nightingale and not the lark who sings (to quote Shakespeare) “so out of tune.” Very much in tune, the soprano and the tenor take a tragic farewell.

  But worse is in store for poor Juliet. Her father comes in to tell her that she must marry the Count Paris at once. She is utterly distraught, and when she is left alone with Friar Lawrence, she begs for advice. She is ready for anything—even death. The friar conveniently produces a phial. In it, he explains, there is a drug. If she drinks it, she will appear to be dead for forty-two hours. At the end of that time, he promises, he will have brought Romeo back to her. Quickly she takes the drink.

  Thereupon, oddly enough, there is a ballet in several movements. I say “oddly enough” because it wasn’t originally in the score. Gounod obligingly supplied it when the opera was first given at the National Opera, a year after its premiere at the Théâtre Lyrique. The fashionable members of the Jockey Club always insisted on a ballet in the middle of any opera given at the big house, and who was a mere composer to object? The ballet makes no dramatic sense at all, but the music is rather pretty.

  Now Lord Capulet reappears to urge on the marriage. Wildly Juliet cries that the grave shall be her marriage bed—and she falls in a dead faint as everyone is horror-struck. The drug, apparently, has done the first part of its work during the ballet.

  ACT V

  The last brief and tragic act is devoted largely to the last of the love duets. It opens, however, with a little tone poem supposed to describe Juliet’s deathlike sleep in the vault of the Capulets. Romeo (who has heard that she is dead—not that she is only drugged) comes into the vault to sing a last farewell, O ma femme! o ma bien aimée! Thereupon he, too, takes a drug—only, his is real poison, not merely a sleeping draught like Juliet’s. A moment later Juliet begins to wake and learns to her horror what Romeo has done. One more duet they have, but the poison works too well, and Romeo is dying. Quickly she seizes her dagger—and the two most famous lovers in literature die in each other’s arms.

  DER ROSENKAVALIER

  (The Knight of the Rose)

  Opera in three acts by Richard Strauss with libretto

  in German by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

  PRINCESS VON WERDENBERG, the Marschallin Soprano

  BARON OCHS VON LERCHENAU, her cousin Bass

  OCTAVIAN, her lover Mezzo-soprano

  HERR VON FANINAL, a wealthy parvenu Baritone

  SOPHIE, his daughter Soprano

  MARIANNE, his housekeeper So
prano

  VALZACCHI, an Italian intriguer Tenor

  ANNINA, his partner Contralto

  POLICE COMMISSIONER Bass

  MAJOR-DOMO OF THE MARSCHALLIN Tenor

  MAJOR-DOMO OF FANINAL Tenor

  ATTORNEY Bass

  INNKEEPER Tenor

  A SINGER Tenor

  silent

  A FLUTE PLAYER

  A HAIRDRESSER

  A SCHOLAR

  A NOBLE WIDOW

  MAHOMET, a page

  THREE NOBLE ORPHANS Soprano, Mezzo-soprano, Contralto

  A DRESSMAKER Soprano

  AN ANIMAL TAMER Tenor

  Time: middle of the 18th century

  Place: Vienna

  First performance at Dresden, January 26, 1911

  There is an anecdote about Der Rosenkavalier and its composer which, as the Italians say, si non è vero, è ben trovato, if not gospel truth, is at least to the point. The opera was produced in 1911, and quite some years later the aging composer was, for the first time, conducting a performance of it himself. In the last act—all the while conducting—he leaned over to his first fiddle and whispered, “Isn’t this awfully long?” “Why, maestro,” objected the concertmaster, “you composed it yourself.” “I know,” said Strauss sadly, “but I never thought I’d have to conduct it.”

  A completely uncut version of the opera, without intermissions, would take almost four hours to perform. All the more remarkable is it that a light comedy can sustain its charm so consistently that its length has not prevented its becoming the most popular of all the operas of Richard Strauss, a staple in the repertoire of almost every great opera house in England, the United States, and Central Europe (Latin countries take to it a little less kindly); and, along with Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, it is generally regarded as the greatest comic opera to come out of Germany since Mozart. Like Die Meistersinger, incidentally, it was originally planned as a very short work, but its composer became so enamored of the idea of reproducing a full-length portrait of a phase in social history, that it gained enormous depth in detail during the writing. No one who loves either of these works wishes to forgo a single one of those details.

  ACT I

  One of those “details,” which the librettist, Von Hofmannsthal, had not even thought of when he wrote his first synopsis, turned out to be the dominant character in the story. This is the Princess von Werdenberg, who is married to a field marshal and is therefore generally referred to as the Marschallin. Although too often represented on the stage by an overripe soprano, Strauss and Von Hofmannsthal thought of her as a very attractive young woman in her early thirties. When the curtain rises, it is midmorning, and she has been entertaining, in her husband’s absence on a hunting trip, her current young lover. This is an aristocrat named Octavian, just seventeen years old. With the Marschallin still in bed and Octavian in deshabille, the lovers are bidding each other good-by, a farewell overshadowed with pathos as the Princess realizes that the discrepancy in their ages must soon put an end to the affair.

  Before an unwelcome visitor—her cousin, the rather brutish Baron Ochs—can force his way in, Octavian manages to hide behind the bed and disguise himself as a chambermaid. As his part is written for a sylphlike soprano (Hofmannsthal had Geraldine Farrar or Mary Garden in mind), Ochs is quite taken in by the disguise and tries, throughout the scene, to make passes at the “girl” and a date with her. Actually, he has come to request the Marschallin to obtain the services of a Knight of the Rose (a Roserikavalier) to fulfill a traditional custom, that is, to present a silvered rose to his fiancée, who turns out to be Sophie, the daughter of a wealthy nouveau riche gentleman named Von Faninal. Ochs also wants the services of an attorney, and his distinguished cousin bids him wait so that he may meet her own man of law, who is expected at her levee that morning.

  This levee now begins. Not only the attorney, but a hairdresser, a widow with numerous progeny, a couple of Italian busybodies (of whom we shall hear more later), an Italian tenor, and various other odd characters try to get something from the Princess. The tenor shows his wares in a very handsome Italian aria, which is interrupted at its climax by Ochs’s arguing with the attorney about the dowry.

  At last the Marschallin is left alone again, and, in the Mirror aria, she reflects sadly on the changes wrought in her since the time when she was a blooming young girl like Sophie von Faninal. The return of Octavian, now booted and spurred, does not alter her sadly nostalgic mood. He protests his undying devotion, but the Marschallin knows better. She tells him it must soon be over, and she sends him away. Maybe she will see him later in the day, riding in the park, maybe not. And off the youngster goes. Suddenly she remembers: he has not even kissed her good-by. She sends some servants off to get him back. But it is too late: he has dashed away from the door. And as the act closes, she scans her face in the mirror. She is a sad lady, but a wise one, too.

  ACT II

  The second act takes us to the home of Von Faninal. He and his housekeeper, Marianne, are delighted over the prospect of his daughter’s marrying a nobleman, however tarnished his reputation may be. Today is the day when Octavian is expected to bring the silvered rose on behalf of Baron Ochs, and the formal presentation takes place soon after the beginning of the act. It is one of the most beautiful passages in the opera. Octavian is suitably dressed in great grandeur, and he and the lovely Sophie fall in love at once. Soon after, the Baron Ochs arrives with his retinue. His behavior is very coarse indeed. He tries to squeeze and to kiss his young bride-to-be, but she repulses him at every step. This only amuses the old roué. He goes off to another room to draw up the marriage contract with Faninal, and he even suggests that, while he is gone, Octavian might teach Sophie a little something about love-making. This instruction has not proceeded very far when they are interrupted by the wildly angry servants. It seems that the Baron’s men, taking after their master, have tried to make love to one of the Faninal servant girls, who didn’t like it.

  Now Octavian and Sophie have a very serious discussion, for both know that the Baron will make her an impossible husband. Meanwhile, as the two fall more and more in love, Octavian promises to save Sophie, The two Italians, briefly met in Act I and named Valzacchi and Annina, suddenly appear from behind a couple of decorative stoves, just in time to discover the lovers in each other’s arms. Loudly they call for Baron Ochs in the hope that he may reward their services as spies. A quite colorful and confusing scene then develops. Sophie insists she will not marry Ochs; Ochs is largely amused; Faninal and his housekeeper insist that Sophic must go through with the marriage; and Octavian grows more and more outraged. Finally he draws his sword on the Baron, who calls for help from his servants. The Baron is slightly wounded in the arm and loudly demands a doctor. When the physician arrives, he declares the wound slight.

  At last Ochs is left alone to recover, and as he sips wine, he gets a message signed, “Mariandel.” This is the servant girl he thought he had met in Act I at the Marschallin’s, and the note confirms the date he had tried to make with her. “Mariandel” is none other than Octavian himself, who obviously has some useful mischief in mind in sending Ochs this billet-doux. Meantime, the news that he has a date with a new girl cheers him up. Under this influence-not to mention the wine he has been drinking—he starts to sing waltzes. Snatches of the famous Rosenkavalier waltzes have punctuated earlier parts of the score, but now, at the end of the act, they are sung and played irresistibly.

  ACT III

  The Baron’s two henchmen, Valzacchi and Annina, have deserted him. He did not pay well enough, and they are now in the employ of Octavian, supervising the preparation of the chambre séparée of an inn—that is, a private dining room, complete with bed. Here the Baron is to come for his date with the disguised Octavian, and a pretty horrific surprise is in the making. There are to be windows that open suddenly, revealing strange heads, a trap door, and other devices to drive the evil old fellow crazy.

  When the Baron arrives, every
thing seems to start off well enough. There are Viennese waltzes from an off-stage orchestra, and Mariandel acts coy but not too standoffish. Then things begin to happen. Doors spring open, as planned, and a disguised Annina rushes in with four children. She claims the Baron as her husband, while the children address him as “Papa.” The Baron calls for the police, who arrive in due time but fail to be impressed by this pathetic nobleman, who has lost his wig. Next, Faninal is summoned and is duly shocked at the behavior of his son-in-law-to-be. Sophie, too, descends on the party and becomes involved in a real argument with her father. The Marschallin is the last to appear in all her dignity, and she roundly tells off her kinsman.

  At last—thoroughly defeated and threatened with huge bills for the entire party—Ochs is glad to escape. Faninal and the rest also retire, and then comes the climax of the whole opera.

  In a beautiful trio the Marschallin finally renounces her late lover, Octavian, and bestows him—sadly but graciously—on her young and beautiful rival, Sophie. Then she leaves them, and the final love duet is interrupted only briefly, as the Marschallin brings back Faninal for a fatherly comment on the ways of youth.

  “It is a dream … it can hardly be true.…but it will last forever.” These are the last lines heard from the two young lovers, but the opera is not quite over. When they have left, the little black page, Mahomet, runs in, finds a handkerchief that Sophie has dropped, and quickly disappears.