There are several operas in which the organ has a prominent role. It is the reason that many major opera houses have organs built into their architecture. Examples include the Metropolitan Opera House, the Sydney Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Palais Garnier, the Royal Opera House London, and the Rome Opera.
Here are several scenes in which the organ plays an important role. They are presented in no particular order. First, the Te Deum that concludes Act 1 of Puccini’s Tosca. The prominent organ part is no surprise, as the scene takes place in a church during a religious service. Bryn Terfel is a scruffy and villainous Baron Scarpia. The production is from the Royal Opera in London.
The Easter Hymn from Cavalleria Rusticana has a prominent organ part. The scene features Eva-Maria Westbroek and The Royal Opera Chorus.
The Church Scene from Gounod’s Faust, where Mephisto and a chorus of devils torment poor Marguerite, has a very prominent organ part. The scene is from a 1985 production at the Vienna State Opera. Gabriela Benackova is Marguerite and Ruggero Raimondi is Méphistophélès.
Busoni’s Doktor Faust is another opera more admired by scholars than by audiences. Doctor Faust, a brilliant but spiritually empty scholar, makes a pact with the devil’s agent Mephistopheles in exchange for knowledge, power, and worldly pleasures. Through a series of episodes – including seduction, deception, and the pursuit of magical power – Faust tries to transcend ordinary human limits. His schemes ultimately lead to tragedy, including the ruin of others. At the end, realizing the emptiness of his quest, Faust transfers his remaining life-force to a child and dies, suggesting a final, ambiguous act of redemption.
The opera’s organ solo occurs in the First Intermezzo set in a Catholic church. The organist plays an extended solo, one of the most striking instrumental episodes in the opera. The music is chromatic, dissonant, and harmonically restless; it’s very characteristic of Busoni’s late style. The passage functions almost like a concert interlude, standing apart from the surrounding vocal action.
The first scene of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg begins with a church service that is just ending with the singing of Da zu dir der Heiland kam (When the Saviour came to thee), an impressive pastiche of a Lutheran chorale. Of course, there’s an organ.
The scene at the monastery in Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, often incorrectly dubbed the Convent Scene even by the Met, contains some of the most beautiful music Verdi ever composed. The monastery scene in Act II of La forza del destino takes place after Leonora has fled following the accidental killing of her father by Don Alvaro.
Leonora arrives exhausted at a remote monastery seeking refuge. She confesses to the monk Fra Melitone that she is a noblewoman who wishes to renounce the world and live in penitence. The monk brings her before the abbot, Padre Guardiano, who listens to her story with compassion.
Leonora asks to live as a hermit in a cave near the monastery, dedicating her life to prayer and repentance. Padre Guardiano agrees and instructs the monks never to disturb her. In a solemn ritual, the monks chant prayers while Leonora takes her vows and is symbolically sealed away from the world.
The scene ends with Leonora alone in her hermitage, praying for mercy and peace, marking her withdrawal from human life and setting up the tragic events that follow later in the opera.
The excerpt below is the encounter between Leonora and Padre Guardiano. The organ is heard at its start.
In Act I of Otello, during the famous storm scene that opens the opera, Giuseppe Verdi uses the organ in a highly unusual orchestral role. The organ enters almost immediately at the beginning of the storm music (around the second measure). It sustains a low dissonant cluster, usually described as C-C♯-D in the lowest register. This cluster is held continuously for a very long stretch of the storm scene – roughly the first 250–270 measures, depending on the edition. It acts as a deep sonic foundation beneath the orchestra. The sustained dissonance creates a rumbling, atmospheric vibration, imitating the subsonic roar of thunder and the sea. Rather than playing melodic lines, the organ serves as a massive pedal point that intensifies the orchestral turbulence above it. The orchestra produces the wind, lightning, and waves. The organ provides the continuous seismic undertone of the storm, making the entire opening feel physically overwhelming. When the storm subsides and Otello finally arrives safely, the disappearance of this drone helps mark the dramatic calming of the scene. Verdi’s use of a tone cluster anticipates by decades the 20th-century music’s use of such a device. The organ is felt more than heard.
Other operas with organ parts include I Puritani (Bellini), Mefistofele (Boito), La Gioconda (Ponchielli), Turandot (Puccini), Il Trovatore (Verdi), Salome (Strauss), Lohengrin (Wagner), and Peter Grimes (Britten).
