Death and opera are as linked as bacon and eggs. The subject of this short series of articles is wholesale death – death that kills not only the principals, but the supers as well. This grim occurrence often gets the composer’s best effort, which is my excuse for presenting it.
I’ll start with Meyerbeer. He was the most popular composer of operas in the 19th century. Beginning in the early 20th century, his works fell out of favor, overwhelmed by those of Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini. Though they never completely vanished, their appearance was rare to almost invisible.
One reason they were not performed was that they required extensive resources to stage, as well as a posse of great voices. Also, tastes change, and Meyerbeer seemed old-fashioned and overblown. But the taste cycle is always in motion, and Meyerbeer once again seems attractive despite the paucity of great voices up to the task he set for his principals. Also important is that at his best he is very good.
The two operas discussed here are his two best – Les Huguenots and Le Prophète. Both deal with religious themes, and both end badly for lots of people. Eugène Scribe, who turned out librettos and “well-made” plays like drops in a thunderstorm, wrote the book for both operas. The plots of these archetypal French Grand Operas are very complex. I’ll just summarize their conclusions, which end in carnage.
Les Huguenots took five years to construct. Meyerbeer, who was independently wealthy, could take his time to get things exactly as he wanted. The opera is about the events leading to the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572, when thousands of French Protestants (Huguenots) were massacred by their Catholic compatriots. The event is historical; the characters and their interactions were invented by Scribe.
The opera was a triumph at its premiere at the Paris Opéra. It was the first work to receive 1000 performances at the Opéra. Yet between 1936 to 2018 it went unperformed by the Opéra. Berlioz called the score a “musical encyclopedia”. The Met has done the opera 129 times, but the last performance there was in 1915. If the company could find a proper cast, it seems time for a revival.
The opera ends with Protestant Raoul (tenor) and his Catholic lover together in a church. She knows of the planned massacre of all the Protestants led by her father, St Bris, and abjures her Catholic faith to share Raoul’s religion. Everyone is murdered. As Valentine dies, St Bris discovers that he has killed his own daughter. If this sounds like the end of Halévy’s La Juive (1835), it’s because it is the same – father discovers he’s killed his daughter. Luther’s hymn “Ein feste Burg” is a motif frequently used in the opera. For a synopsis of the story and more, go here.
Le Prophète (1849) was his next French Grand Opera. It is based on the life of John of Leiden, the Anabaptist leader and “King of Münster”. Scribe was again the librettist. The opera is in five acts, as was standard for the Opéra. It was another colossal success for Meyerbeer. Berlioz was again very impressed by Meyerbeer’s skill and invention.
His dominant position in French opera, combined with his Judaism, bred envy and resentment. Wagner was particularly hateful toward Meyerbeer, verging on maniacal anti-Semitism. This behavior was manifest only after Wagner had established himself as a composer. Meyerbeer had helped Wagner early in his career to such an extent that he wrote that without Meyerbeer ‘My wife and I would have starved in Paris’. And Meyerbeer continued his support; he recommended Rienzi to Dresden, and in 1841 he recommended The Flying Dutchman to Berlin.
The complex libretto is filled with ambiguity and darkness. There is no conventional love story; rather, the two protagonists are John and his mother, Fidès. The opera ends in the great hall of the Münster palace. John knows that Imperial troops are approaching and that he will be killed. He has the doors to the hall sealed after his enemies have entered. A huge explosion is triggered, and flames cause the palace to collapse, killing everyone. Sounds like a Wagner opera you may know. I’ll come to that one in a subsequent post.
As I mentioned above, Meyerbeer’s operas are big and require many fine singers. But these characteristics are true for Verdi’s Don Carlos and Aida. The same applies to many of Wagner’s operas. Yet they are regularly staged at both large and smaller houses. Meyerbeer’s turn may be coming around again.
