Class 3: Grandest of the Grand

A. French Grand Opera

1. Title Slide 1 (Convent scene of Robert)

People often use the term “Grand Opera” loosely, to mean any large-scale opera of any period or nationality such as you might expect to see at the Met. But technically, the term grand opéra refers to a specific type of piece developed in France around 1830. Although it was dying out by the middle of the century, its concepts were hugely influential, reaching as far as Verdi and even Wagner.

2. Grand Opera characteristics

So what are the characteristics of grand opera? • Essentially a French phenomenon of the 1830s through 1850s, although many of its composers were foreign (Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi) • Large-scale works typically in five acts (sometimes four), calling for many scene-changes and much theatrical spectacle. • Subjects taken from history or historical myth, involving clear moral choices. • Highly demanding vocal roles, requiring large ranges, agility, stamina, and power. • Orchestra providing more than accompaniment, painting the scene, or commenting. • Substantial use of the chorus, who typically open or close each act. • Extended ballet sequences, in the second or third acts. As this is a unique feature of the genre, I shall be paying it special attention.

I will look at most of these features through a number of short scenes from the first runaway hit of the genre, Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (Robert the Devil) of 1831. After the break, I shall look at a single long scene from the opera that preceded Meyerbeer on the Paris stage, Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (William Tell) of 1829. Because of their huge demands—and because nobody quite knows how to handle the blatant melodrama of grand-opéra plots—neither opera has received many productions since grand opéra went out of fashion towards the end of the century, but it so happens that both have recently been given splendid new productions at Covent Garden, London. The two directors, Laurent Pelly and Damiano Michieletto, have come up with quite different solutions—one embracing all the artifice of the genre, the other bringing it into our own time. Their responses are also a large part of my interest.

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B. Meyerbeer’s Runaway Hit

3. Meyerbeer facts

Giacomo Meyerbeer (Jacob Liebmann Beer, 1791–1864) was the undisputed superstar of French grand opéra, and at the time of his death, he was the most performed composer in the world. Paradoxically, his success may owe much to the fact that he did not come to Paris empty-handed, but brought a combination of German orchestral mastery and Italian bel canto from his studies in both countries. He also had the sense to choose as collaborator France’s leading playwright, Eugène Scribe (1791–1861). Robert le diable, incidentally, was the composer’s twelfth opera; this was no neophyte!

4. The characters in Robert le diable

I have sent out a longer synopsis already, but here is a thumbnail guide to the four major characters: ROBERT (tenor), Duke of Normandy, currently traveling the world as a playboy. Legend has it that he is the offspring of his mother’s liaison with a demon. In history, Robert (called “The Magnificent”) became the father of William the Conqueror—through his mistress! BERTRAM (bass). He is introduced as Robert’s mentor and friend, but we soon learn that he is Robert’s father, and in thrall to the Devil. ISABELLE (coloratura soprano), Princess of Sicily. She is in love with Robert, and the reason for his presence here. Although she is committed to marry the winner of an upcoming tournament, they both hope that Robert himself will win. ALICE (lyric soprano), Robert’s foster-sister. Although she is the fiancée of a secondary character and I shall not be playing any of her earlier scenes, it is she, not Isabelle, who is the moral reference-point of the opera, and who wrestles for Robert’s soul at the end.

5. Robert le diable, original design for Act I

All the action is set in Sicily, in the early 11th century. Here is the original design, showing a field prepared for a tournament. All the grand-opéra ingredients are in place: exotic locale, romantic period, pageantry, and the possibility of some splendid action. So let’s look at the first three minutes of Laurent Pelly’s production, and see what he makes of these elements:

6. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, opening chorus (3:20) 7. — still from the above

Very different, isn’t it? Pelly’s choice of an inn setting is probably influenced by his observation that Jacques Offenbach (1819–80) almost certainly modeled the Prologue to The Tales of Hoffmann on Robert le diable. Apart from that, though, he has everything: the period, the knights in armor, the color. But he has dropped any pretense at literalism. He reckons that the first-night audience would have seen the set and thought “We are in for a treat.” So he says, “Let’s have a treat too. Let’s admit that this is all paper-thin, so let’s embrace the artifice, intensify the color. Whatever happens in the next four hours, we intend to have fun!” The brilliant set design is by Chantal Thomas.

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I said that Robert is pretty much a playboy. In the finale to this act, he gambles away all his money, followed by his horse and armor. Bertram, working behind his back, ensures that he will lose; he needs him in his power. So when Robert goes to see his beloved Isabelle in Act Two, he is rather shamefaced about it—at least until she provides him with new armor. I am playing this partly for the production, which treats us to a half-size model of castle, shaded with hatched lines like an old engraving. But more for the musical form, which follows current Italian practice of a slow imitative duet, ending in a cadenza, followed by a short action interlude, and ending in a fast cabaletta in which both sing together; I will add the various landmarks as titles on the screen. This would set the pattern for Verdi and many others. What makes it typically Meyerbeer, however, is the high range, the rather florid vocal writing in the slow section, and the use of crisp rhythmic phrases in the fast one.

8. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, Act II duet, with notes on form (6:45) 9. — still from the above

Did the annotations help you hear the form? We have seen this cavatina/cabaletta structure already in Lucia. And what about the acting? Neither Patrizia Ciofi nor Bryan Hymel are exactly pin-ups, but they have a delightful chemistry between them. Laurent Pelly is primarily a comic director (as we know from his Daughter of the Regiment and Cendrillon at the Met), but he uses comedy to enhance the romance, not puncture it.

Robert never gets to fight in the tournament. Bertram arranges to have him called off to answer a challenge from his chief rival, the Prince of Granada, who of course knows nothing about this, and appears at the tournament as promised. This is the second-act finale. I can’t show all of it, but will at least give you the opening. It is clearly designed by Meyerbeer as a big production number, and Pelly has done him proud.

10. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, Act II finale, opening (3:45) 11. — still from the above

Isabelle of course now has to promise to marry the Prince of Granada, so Robert, now desperate, is completely in Bertram’s hands. The setting of Act III is in a rocky gorge, again painted by Chantal Thomas in the style of an old engraving, this time with white lines on a black ground. Let’s hear the short scene in which Bertram communicates with the Devil, and then goes underground to receive his orders (which are to recruit his son that very night). Note how Meyerbeer achieves this musically, by the turmoil and color of his very un-Italian orchestra (he has been listening, I think, to Weber’s Freischütz), by exploiting the full range of the bass voice, and by that still-new device of the offstage infernal chorus!

12. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, Act III, scene 1, Bertram’s aria (3:10) 13. — still from the above

Robert comes in, and Bertram tells him that he can still win Isabelle if he goes to a ruined convent haunted by the ghosts of dead nuns who have broken their vows, a take a magic branch from the tomb of Saint Rosalie. After protesting that it is sacrilege—which is exactly the point, as Bertram is trying to

— 3 — recruit him to the Devil’s side—Robert agrees in another duet cabaletta, this time peppered with the ultra-high notes that make the role such a challenge for tenors.

14. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, Act III, scene 1, ending cabaletta (2:45) 15. Degas: Robert le diable

C. The Ballet Problem

So to the most notorious scene in Robert le diable: the ruined convent haunted by the ghosts of nuns who have broken their vows and had carnal relations. You have already seen the 1831 set in my title slide; here it is again, still in the same production, as painted by Degas in 1876. But it raises the thorny problem of what to do with the lengthy ballet sequences in modern productions of grand opera. It is the old-wine/new-bottles issue in a nutshell.

I mentioned that ballets always used to come in the second or third acts. This is because many of the wealthy younger patrons came for the ballet, not the opera, and generally skipped the first act. Many of them probably knew one of the dancers, and looked forward to an intimate supper afterwards. When Richard Wagner made a special version of Tannhäuser for Paris in 1861, he provided a suitably sexy ballet for the Venusberg scene; the only trouble was that it comes at the beginning of the first act, so the dancing was already over by the time the young bloods arrived. The Paris production was a fiasco.

My first experience of grand opéra in Paris was seeing Faust sometime around 1960. Faust has a lengthy ballet in Act IV, now seldom performed. In those days, though, they followed the old tradition of lifting the backcloth out of the way, so you saw right out of the back of the stage to the foyer de danse backing onto it. And there in the far distance, lit by hanging chandeliers, would be the entire corps de ballet in white tutus, slowly processing en pointe to the front of the stage itself. Totally magical—but totally irrelevant to anything going on dramatically before or after.

I have found an old clip of a production of Robert le diable from the Paris Opéra, probably from the middle of the last century. As you will see, you do not get the white tutus, except for the principal dancer, a young novice who is no doubt destined to break her vows in the course of the dance. But all the same, the appearance of the dancers seems incongruous with the rest of the drama, and I must say all that rushing around in silk cloaks seems pretty pointless.

16. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, Act III, scene 2, ballet from old Opéra production (1:30) 17. — still from the above

The scene is too famous and too central to the plot to be cut out, but it does require a treatment that fits in with the rest of the production rather than being a distraction from it. I think Laurent Pelly and his choreographer Lionel Hoche have come up with something rather wonderful. I will show you the same dance of the Nuns when summoned from their tombs by Bertram, and then—though there probably won’t be time—the last part of the scene in which they attempt to seduce Robert, but are unable to prevent him from taking the magic branch.

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18. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, Act III, scene 2, Nun’s ballet, first dance (4:34) 19. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, Act III, scene 2, finale (4:25, but omitted) 20. — still from the above

D. A Moral Reckoning

21. Robert le diable, Act V trio, painted by costume designer, François-Gabriel Lépaulle 22. — the same reversed

I mentioned that grands opéras typically had some strong moral framework, whereby a character was presented a choice between right and wrong, redemption or damnation. The one in Robert le diable is represented by this painting of the final trio by François-Gabriel Lépaulle, the original costume designer. It shows the forces of good and evil, Alice and Bertram, fighting for Robert’s soul; the singers are those of the original production. Now I admit that the moral choice here is entirely manufactured, reflecting the contrived melodrama of the plot. But it results in a splendid final trio, which gets into high gear when Alice shows Robert a death-bed letter from his mother, warning him to beware of the man who seduced her. Pelly reverses Lépaulle’s grouping, but otherwise keeps the moral idea, representing Alice on angelic clouds and showing Bertram before the jaws of Hell. I am not sure how much I will be able to play, but even the picture is worth seeing.

23. Meyerbeer: Robert le diable, Act V trio, closing portion (6:04) 24. Title slide 2 (still from the above)

E. The Ballet in William Tell

25. Rossini and Guillaume Tell

After writing almost three dozen operas in both comic and serious genres, Gioacchino Rossini (1792– 1868) came to Paris in 1824, to take up a position as director of the Théâtre Italien. He was only 32. Five years later, after the premiere of Guillaume Tell, he essentially retired, although he was to live for four decades more. Tell fits most of the grand-opéra criteria—though only in four acts, it can compete with anything by Meyerbeer in length, scale, and challenge—and so it is generally considered a foundation stone of the genre.

26. Facts about William Tell

Like the Meyerbeer opera, Guillaume Tell has a medieval setting, and an even stronger moral theme: the fight against oppression. But there is one big difference. Robert and Tell may both be wreathed in legend, but the political context of the Tell story is real. Whether or not he shot the apple off his son’s head or assassinate the Austrian governor, Albrecht Gessler, some such event triggered the rebellion that led to the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy, and thence to modern Switzerland. Moreover, Tell

— 5 — has remained as a symbol of the fight against oppression, and at the time Schiller was writing, the Habsburgs were still ruling Austria and rebellion was in the air.

27. Guillaume Tell, London (2015), opening scene

Rather like Laurent Pelly’s Robert le diable, Damiano Michieletto’s 2015 Covent Garden production of Giullaume Tell begins in a café. The Swiss peasants sing about getting in the harvest, but Michieletto makes them all listless, beaten down by decades of suffering as vassal people under foreign rule. They are in modern dress; I am not sure if it is specified, but the aura is that of the Balkan wars. Into this, Michieletto places a medieval archer dressed like the historical William Tell, who goes round sticking arrows into tables, but gets no response. The one person to take notice is a young boy, Jemmy, who had been seen playing with toy soldiers at the end of the overture, then reading a Classics Illustrated version of the William Tell legend. Jemmy tries to persuade his father to follow Tell’s example and take action, and eventually the father does accept the challenge. So the people are gradually drawn into reenacting the medieval story, but in the context of their real present-day oppression. It is a clever concept, and for the most part I think it works.

28. Guillaume Tell, ballet sequence (La Scala) 29. Guillaume Tell, ballet sequence (La Scala and Vienna)

Tell also has a ballet in Act III, about 15 minutes of dances and choruses if played at full length, but it comes about in very specific circumstances. The governor Gessler announces a feast day to celebrate his rule, and orders the peasants to dance and sing their traditional songs. It is coercive, intended for his entertainment and their humiliation. So to bring out a couple of soloists and a corps de ballet dancing as though this were The Sleeping Beauty makes no sense at all. Yet this is what is done in an old production I found from La Scala. I found another from Vienna, in which the peasants are replaced by goose- stepping storm troopers, yet I don’t fell this is a good solution either. Let’s look at the beginning of the La Scala scene, then at one from the Rossini Festival in Pesaro, which also has ballet dancers, but at least makes the ballerina reluctant to be forced to dance; her male partners clearly belonging to the opposing side. I’ll add one more from the production by Pierre Audi that started in Amsterdam, but came to the Met a few years back; it is interesting in that the people who are forced to dance are made to look like ordinary people, while the Austrians flaunt their decadent sexuality in dominatrices and transvestites.

30. Guillaume Tell, ballet sequence, La Scala (1:00) 31. Guillaume Tell, ballet sequence, Pesaro (1:20) 32. Guillaume Tell, ballet sequence, Amsterdam (1:00) 33. Guillaume Tell, molestation scene (London)

What did you think? Do any of these work? The picture on the screen now is the same moment from the London production, which is not treated as dance at all. I am going to play the entire Act III, scene 2, because it contains the essence of the Tell story in the most concentrated way, including the episode of shooting the apple. But it also includes the ballet. Michieletto cuts the dancing completely, including that very pretty chorus which is one of the most famous numbers in the score. Instead, he concentrates it all into the sexual torment of one young woman, chosen at random from the crowd, making a chilling

— 6 — contrast between ugly action and pretty music. The scene was booed at the London premiere because I gather it went all the way to simulated rape. I think they had toned it down by the time they made the DVD, though I personally think it still goes on too long; I won’t show it all. But there is plenty of documentation on the use of rape as a weapon of war, not least in Bosnia, where this is set.

F. Crime and Punishment

34. Guillaume Tell, Act II finale (London)

From now to the end of the hour, as I said, I am going to play a single scene (Act III, scene 2) of the London production, or as much as I can fit in. Let me give you the context. The picture here shows the blood oath of the partisans at the end of Act II. As their lands have been devastated, the Swiss patriots have taken to the forests, where they live among the roots of fallen trees. Act III opens with a long duet between the tenor Arnold Melcthal, who is Swiss, and the Habsburg princess Mathilde, who loves him, but realizes that there is no way for their love to flourish. She is the lady in a blue suit you will see at the beginning, which contrasts the banquet of the Austrian soldiers with the downtrodden existence of the Swiss. We also get to meet the psychopathic Gessler. Here is the first part, stopping as I promised when the scene gets too hard to watch.

35. Guillaume Tell, Act III, scene 1 (London), first part (8:20/11:05)*

I think we can see where this is heading. Horrible though the sequence is, it provides a much stronger motive for Tell’s intervention than the traditional business of bowing down to Gessler’s hat. And it leads directly to the famous trial of his marksmanship—and also his big aria, “Sois immobile,” in which he tells his son Jemmy not to move. This is interesting musically in that it does not have a typical Rossini tune; the emotion is in the orchestra and in the singer’s delivery; Wagner is just around the corner. Also, since Michieletto keeps the kitchen table onstage in this production, Tell is able not merely to tell Jemmy to think of his mother, he can actually interact with her. The rest should be more or less obvious, except perhaps for the final moments (if I reach them), which are an extension of the same business with the Archer and the arrows that I described at the opening. Every now and then, I think it is all getting rather silly, but then something wonderful happens that gets me engaged again. Not a perfect production, by any means, but it is one that gets me to think.

36. Guillaume Tell, Act III, scene 2 (London), second part (21:09/23:51)* 37. Title slide 3 (London production)

*The shorter times are where I stopped the clips in Baltimore. For Rockville, I am just taking the shorter versions.

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