The subject is operas with prisons or prisoners as part, or all, of their story. I’ve got a dozen of them here. There are more, but 12 are enough. They’re not in chronological order, but rather as seems logical to me.
The ultimate prison opera is of course Beethoven’s Fidelio. The entire work take place in “A Spanish state prison, a few miles from Seville.” It is an example of the “rescue opera” popular around the turn of the 19th century and the only one to survive as part of today’s standard operatic repertory.
Anything by Beethoven is of great interest, but opera was not his forte. He struggled with his only opera for a decade constantly revising it. It remains a flawed opera with both arid passages and moments of inspiration. The prisoners chorus (O welche Lust—”O what a joy”) is their expression of joy at being given a moment of fresh air and sunlight.
Florestan had been unjustly imprisoned by Pizarro a rival nobleman. His wife Leonore disguised as Fidelio infiltrates the prison and eventually frees him to the delight of all save the evil Pizarro. At the start of Act 2 Florestan, alone in his cell, sings of his wretched state in the darkness and then has a vision of his wife coming to save him. The aria, indeed the whole opera, focuses on two of Beethoven’s favorite themes – conjugal love (he was a lifetime bachelor) and freedom. (Gott! Welch Dunkel hier!—”God! What darkness here”). The aria is very difficult as is most of Beethoven’s writing for voice. The tessitura is challenging and the aria is centered in the most difficult part of the tenor range. The singer is Jonas Kaufmann who gives a perfect reading of the thrilling but awkwardly placed aria.
Verdi’s Il Trovatore concludes in a dungeon. Manrico and Azucena have been captured and are awaiting Manrico’s execution by the Count di Luna who may or may not be his brother. Azucena threw a baby into her mother’s funeral pyre. Supposedly, the baby was the younger brother of the Count. Azucena is so mentally messed up that she may have thrown the wrong baby, hers, into the flames.
Manrico attempts to soothe Azucena, whose mind wanders to happier days in the mountains (‘Ai nostri monti ritorneremo‘ / ‘Again to our mountains we shall return’). The singers are Fedora Barbieri and Jussi Björling.
Verdi’s Don Carlo has a prison scene. It’s Act 3 scene 2 of the 1883 revised opera in Italian. It started life as a five act French grand opera – Don Carlos. Don Carlo has been imprisoned by his father King Philip II. Rodrigo visits him in jail. While he describes how he saved Carlo from execution by allowing himself to be incriminated by politically sensitive documents he is shot by agents of the Grand Inquisitor who demanded and received permission to assassinate Rodrigo in exchange for clerical approval for the king to kill his own son – Carlo. Rodrigo dies to the most beautiful music written for a soon to be ex-baritone. Ettore Bastianini and Flaviano Labò are Rodrigo and Carlo, respectively.
Two operas on the Faust story have prisons scenes. Gounod’s Faust was once the most popular opera in the world. It was performed so often in New York that the Met was dubbed the Faustspielhaus. It popularity has waned, but it’s still regularly performed.
The opera’s final scene is in a prison where Marguerite is being held for killing her child. Faust offers to rescue her from but she prefers to trust her fate to God and His angels. She asks why Faust’s hands are covered in blood, pushes him away, and falls down dead. Méphistophélès curses her, but a chorus of angels declares her salvation and her soul rises to heaven. Nicolai Gedda is Faust, Boris Christoff is Méphistophélès, Victoria de los Angeles is the abused Marguerite.
Boito’s Mefistofele is the second Faust opera presented here. After Gounod’s, it’s the most often performed of those based on the Faust story. In Act 3 Margareta is in a cell for poisoning her mother. She gave her a sleeping draught supplied by Faust. She also drowned their baby. She’s overjoyed at seeing Faust again, but horrified by the appearance of Mefistofele. She prays for divine forgiveness. She dies as a celestial choir grants her prayer. The devil hurries Faust away. The singers are Renata Tebaldi, Mario Del Monaco, and Cesare Siepi.
Johann Strauss Jr’s operetta Die Fledermaus (The Bat) was derived from a farce called Das Gefängnis (The Prison). Gabriel von Eisenstein, a Viennese man-about-town, has been sentenced to eight days in prison for insulting an official. He doesn’t get there until Act 3, the entirety of which takes place in a jail. The plot details are very complicated, but all gets sorted out by the Act 3 and the operetta’s end. The jailer Frosch is typically played by a non-singing comedian.
The work was a big hit at its premiere in 1874 and has remained so ever since. Even the staid Met has done it 233 times, which ranks 39th in frequency of operas performed by the company.
The ‘Champagne Song’ ends Act 2. Its reprised at the operetta’s conclusion. Herbert von Karajan conducts a cast headed by Elisabeth Schwarzkof and Nicolai Gedda.
Bizet’s Carmen is based on a novella by Prosper Mérimée. Don José is a Basque nobleman hence the title Don. In the opera José is a corporal making Don inappropriate. But it’s an opera, so who cares? Bizet’s Carmen and José are much less nasty than in the novella. There’s a prison scene in Mérimée’s story. In the opera José is in prison between Acts 1 and 2. He was punished for letting Carmen escape at the end of Act 1.
In his Flower Song in Act 2, José recounts how he kept the flower with him in his cell and how he thought only of her during his incarceration. The tenor is the 61 year old Richard Tucker – from a live performance in 1974.
The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut is a novel by Antoine François Prévost. Most commonly referred to as simply Manon Lescaut, the novel is a tragic love story about a nobleman (known only as the Chevalier des Grieux) and a common woman (Manon Lescaut). Defying conventional morality, they run away together and commit an escalating series of crimes to fund a lifestyle of pleasure. The narrative is presented as a long speech by des Grieux nine months after Manon’s death, and is often interrupted by his retrospective emotions. The novel is regarded as a classic, and is the most reprinted novel in French literature, with over 250 editions. [From Wikipedia]
The novel has been the source of at least three operas. Manon by Massenet and Manon Lescaut by Puccini are part of the core of the standard operatic repertory. In both operas Manon goes to jail. In the Massenet she dies on the road to Le Havre. Puccini finishes her off on “A desert plain on the borders of New Orleans.” Geography isn’t important in opera. In fairness to Puccini and his battalion of librettists, the English translation should be “A deserted plain…”
The death of Massenet’s Manon is sung by Victoria de los Angeles and Henri Legay.
Puccini’s Manon death scene is sung by Licia Albanese and Jussi Björling. The conductor is Jonel Perlea.
Act 3 of Puccini’s Tosca is set in atop Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo. Cavaradossi is led in by a jailer who tells him that he has one hour to live. He starts to write a letter to Tosca but is overcome by emotion. He then sings ‘E lucevan le stelle’ recalling his time with her and how he dies in desperation. Franco Corelli sings the aria recorded live at London’s Royal Opera House during his house debut in 1955. His diminuendo and filatura on the word ‘disciogliea’ are spectacular. The conductor cuts short the applause, otherwise the audience would still be clapping.
Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chenier is his only opera to get into the standard repertory. But is a very good one. Hard to understand why he could never reach this level again. His Fedora is occasionally performed, but that’s it for this composer.
Act 4 of Chenier is set in the Saint-Lazare Prison in Paris. The eponymous poet is soon to meet the guillotine. Like many of its victims during the French Revolution, he’s not guilty of anything. His lover Maddalena di Coigny takes the place of a condemned noblewoman, and they go to face the guillotine joined in love. Their final duet is a barnburner. ‘Vicino a te’ is sung by Zinka Milanov and Richard Tucker.
Richard Strauss’s third opera and first success was Salome. The opera was so shocking that after one performance at the Met in 1907, it was withdrawn and didn’t reappear at the house until 1934. Salome wandering across the stage kissing the severed head of John the Baptist still has shock potential even in the jaded 21st century. The Baptist spends most of the opera imprisoned in a cistern. Brigit Nilsson definitively sings the opera’s final scene under the leadership of Georg Solti.
There are other operas that involve prisons and prisoners. Among these are Luigi Dallapiccola’s Il Prigioniero, Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, The Beggar’s Opera, and The Threepenny Opera.
