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Restaging La Juive in a Post-Holocaust Context

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Restaging La Juive in a Post-Holocaust Context RESTAGING LA JUIVE IN A POST-HOLOCAUST CONTEXT Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer Since 1989, Jacques Fromental Halévy’s opera, La Juive, has enjoyed numerous revivals on the European German-language stage, ending an almost seventy-year period of absence. In 1835, when La Juive pre- miered on the Parisian stage, four years after the premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (1831) and one year before Les Huguenots, the genre of French Grand Opera had reached its apex.1 At the time, the trope of the “beautiful Jewess,” inspired largely by the character of Rebecca in Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe (1820), had gained interna- tional prominence in both theater and literature. It is not surprising, then, that La Juive began its stage career in German-speaking countries soon after it opened in France. Rachel and Eléazar, the opera’s two main characters, joined an established theatrical tradition of Jewish father-daughter constellations that include Nathan and Recha in Less- ing’s Nathan the Wise, Shylock and Jessica in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, and Isaac of York and Rebecca in Heinrich Marschner’s suc- cessful romantic opera, Der Templer und die Jüdin (The Temple Knight and the Jewess, 1829), based on Scott’s novel.2,3 Grand Opera in gen- eral and Halévy’s piece in particular met high expectation and interest in the German countries in the mid 1830s.4 1 For a comprehensive study of the opera see Diana R. Hallman, Opera, Liberalism, and Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century France: The Politics of Halévy’s La Juive (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 2 A collection of introductory and interpreting essays can be found in Theat- ralia Judaica: Studien zur Geschichte und Theorie der dramatischen Künste. Emanzipation und Antisemitismus als Momente der Theatergeschichte. Von der Lessing-Zeit bis zur Shoah. Ed. Hans- Peter Bayerdörfer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992). 3 The literary reception of Scott and the formation of Marschner‘s piece, Der Tem- pler und die Jüdin, is analyzed in Annemarie Fischer’s essay, “Die ‘Schöne Jüdin’ in Oper und Schauspiel. Heinrich Marschners Der Templer und die Jüdin, Salomon Her- mann Mosenthals und Josef Bohuslav Foersters Debora(h)”, Judenrollen: Darstellungsfor- men im europäischen Theater von der Restauration bis zur Zwischenkriegszeit, eds. Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer and Jens Malte Fischer. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008). It should be noted that Scribe’s and Halévy’s plot was indebted to Lessing’s Nathan the Wise with regard to the father-daughter relationship. 4 An analysis and review of relevant scholarship by Karl Leich-Galland, Diana R.Hallman, Arnold Jacobshagen, and others is offered in Sieghart Döhring, Väterliche 244 hans-peter bayerdörfer It must be noted that since 1810, the intellectual elite of German Jewry, especially those residing in urban centers, had become ardent supporters of the stage. This interest was largely motivated by Lessing’s masterpiece, Nathan the Wise, which advocated for Jewish emancipation in tune with Moses Mendelssohn’s thinking. For German Jews, Jew- ish stage figures facilitated discussion regarding degrees of accultura- tion and issues of anti-Semitism. Jewish female roles were particularly challenging because the notion of “the beautiful Jewess” had been ridiculed on stage since the early 19th century, such as in a parody of Nathan the Wise in which Recha, Nathan’s daughter, was carica- tured as the prototypical emancipated young Jewish female mocked for her erotic, intellectual, and social aspirations. After 1813, when anti-Napoleonic nationalism stimulated feelings against non-German minorities, the anti-Jewish farce Unser Verkehr (Our Company), by the minor writer Karl Boromäus Sessa, premiered in Breslau in 1813, was published in 1815, and was popularly received in various cities across Germany thereafter. The farce mocked Enlightenment Jews by employing stereotypes including the father-daughter paradigm. Fol- lowing the success of this parody, the notion of the “beautiful Jewess” lost its romantic lustre and became mired in ambivalence. This may explain why Halévy reduced librettist Eugène Scribe’s original title, “La belle Juive,” to simply “La Juive.” In both France and Germany, Halévy’s opera was well-accepted and remained successful for over a century. Even the anti-Semitic Richard Wagner expressed his appreciation for La Juive as a work of significant value, unlike his dismissal of Meyerbeer’s operas.5 The role of Rachel was sung by just about every great soprano of the time, even in post-Wagnerian times, when the high dramatic soprano voice was being re-shaped by opera composers. La Juive remained in the Euro- pean repertoire well into the 20th century.6 The last European staging before World War II took place in Paris in 1937. The last production in Germany had taken place four years earlier, in May of 1933, in Liebe and Christenhass. “Die Rollengestalt des Eléazar in Halévy’s La Juive,” Judenrollen. Darstellungsformen im europäischen Theater von der Restauration bis zur Zwischenkriegszeit, eds. Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer and Jens Malte Fischer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008). 5 This did not prevent the anti-Jewish turmoil following new productions, especially in the years after Wagner had publicly acknowledged his authorship of the polemical Essay Das Judentum in der Musik. See Daniel Jütte, “Der jüdische Tenor als Eléazar. Heinrich Sontheim und die La Juive-Rezeption im 19. Jahrhundert”, Judenrollen. 6 La Juive was the only one of Halévy’s operas that had such a long reception history..
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