100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (14 page)

The mother sings a bitter lullaby to the child in the cradle as the Police Agent begins to ask questions. The interrogation is all the more ominous because it is carried on with decent politeness, though with scarcely veiled threats. Magda, however, succeeds in giving them no information worth having, and when they have left, John briefly returns. He knows now that he must get away; but when there is a message from him, the window will be broken, he says, and they must send for the glass cutter, Assan. The scene closes with a desolate farewell.

Scene 2
In the antechamber at an unidentified consulate various pathetic figures are waiting, hoping to get visas to leave the country. Each of them runs up against the pitiless
red tape represented by a businesslike secretary. One must get photographs of a different size; one must fill in forms and wait two months (though that may be too late); and Magda is not allowed to see the Consul. Nobody may see him. (In fact, nobody does—not even the audience, who are vouchsafed just a shadow of him at the end of the second act.) As Magda fills out blanks, Magadoff, the conjuror, does a few simple tricks to try to impress the secretary. That doesn’t help either, and the scene ends with a quintet in which all the applicants express their sense of frustration.

ACT II

Scene 1
A month later, in that dreary room of Magda’s, the same song,
Tu reviendras
, sounds through the window. The mother and Magda discuss the chances of securing a visa; and when Magda has left, the mother tries to cheer the ominously quiet child with another lullaby. Magda returns weary; she falls asleep in a chair; and she has a frightful dream in which John introduces the Secretary as his sister, and a dead child is somehow mixed up in it.

Suddenly a stone hurtles through the window, and Magda immediately telephones for Assan. Once more the Police Agent comes for an interview: if only Magda will give him the names of some of John’s friends, she may be able to join him. Magda becomes hysterical and threatens to kill the Police Agent if he comes back again.

Before the Agent has left, Assan is in the room repairing the window. He informs Magda that John is waiting for her, hiding in the mountains, and that he refuses to leave the country till he knows that she has a visa and can join him. They agree that John had better be told that the visa has been secured, even though it has not, so that he will leave and save his own life at least.

It is only after Assan has left that Magda sees her child has died in its grandmother’s arms. She is too much stunned to cry as yet, but the mother weeps softly for John.

Scene 2
A few days later we are again in the waiting room
of the consulate. Again the Secretary is frustrating everyone with her red tape. Again Magadoff tries his conjuring tricks; only, this time he hypnotizes them all so that they engage in a blissful dance. The Secretary makes him bring them out of it, and then Magda demands, once more, to see the Consul. Once again she is refused, whereupon she has her great scene, a tragic satire on official forms: Name? My name is woman … Color of eyes? The color of tears … Occupation? Waiting … and so forth. Even the Secretary is moved. With a petulant “You’re being very unreasonable, Mrs. Sorel,” she promises to see what can be done and a moment later reports that the Consul will see her. But just then his shadow is seen on the glazed glass door panel, shaking hands with another man. And when this other man emerges, he turns out to be the Police Agent. Magda faints at the sight.

ACT III

Scene 1
Once more at the waiting room, Magda is hoping to see the Consul even though the Secretary tells her that the office will close in ten minutes. One of the other applicants comes in, and this time there is good news for her: her application has been approved. As she and the Secretary sing a happy duet, Assan comes in with bad news for Magda. John has heard that his baby and his mother are now dead, and he is planning to return over the frontier to get his wife. Hurriedly she writes a note for Assan to take to him. She does not say what is in it, though we can deduce its contents from the happenings in the final scene.

When the Secretary is finally alone and preparing to leave, she has a little aria to show that underneath her cold, businesslike exterior she is really moved by the plight of the unfortunates she must deal with. Suddenly John rushes in, looking for Magda. He is followed almost at once by the police; his gun is knocked out of his hand; and the Secretary is politely told that he will come along quietly. The moment they leave she begins to dial the telephone.

Scene 2
The Secretary’s call is sounding in Magda’s home,
but it stops before she comes in. Drearily she turns on the gas stove, pulls up a chair to it, covers her head with a shawl, and leans over. The walls dissolve and show all the people in the consulate, who, with John and his mother (in a wedding dress), perform a strange ballet. Magda tries to talk to them, but they do not answer. Slowly they disappear, and we hear Magda’s deep breathing as she inhales the gas. The telephone begins its ringing once more, and Magda instinctively begins to reach for it. It is too late. She falls over in the chair. The ringing continues.

LE COQ
D’OR
(Zolotoy Pyetushok—The Golden Cockerel)

Opera in three acts by Nikolai Andreevich
Rimsky-Korsakoff with libretto in Russian by
Vladimir Ivanovich Byelsky, based on a fairy
tale by Alexandre Sergevich Pushkin, which he,
in turn, had heard from his nurse

Time: unspecified

Place: a mythical kingdom

First performance at Moscow, October 7, 1909

    Two days before he died, in 1908, Rimsky-Korsakoff wrote to his publisher, B. P. Jürgenson, as follows: “As regards
Le coq d’or
, there is trouble ahead. The Governor-General of Moscow is opposed to the production of this opera and has informed the censor about it. I think that they will be against it in St. Petersburg for the same reason.”

The composer was right. Even though Jürgenson had already published part of the score without molestation, it was sixteen months before the opera finally reached the stage, and then only after certain changes had been made. The composer, therefore, never saw it.

It has sometimes been thought that objections were raised because a phenomenally silly king has a leading part, and the Czar’s employees were still nervous on account of the 1905 revolutionary crisis. Perhaps a better guess is that it was a way of hobbling Rimsky himself, who had been effectively active at the time in wresting some of the control of the St. Petersburg Conservatory away from the bureaucrats and the police. For the tale, coming from the pen of the nationally honored poet Pushkin, could scarcely have been taken exception to. Nor, for that matter, is there anything—revolutionary or otherwise—that can be read into the engaging but utterly obscure symbolism of the libretto.

Ideally, the opera should be performed by a cast that can move bodies and limbs with the same grace and virtuosity as it can sing. Diaghilev, in Paris, put on a production with the singers sitting still, in boxes by the side of the stage, while a ballet troupe mimed the action. The idea was exported, with success, to both England and the United States. More recently it has been given generally with a single cast; and when that cast included such enticing figures as those of Lily Pons and Ezio Pinza, it was certainly worth going to see as well as to hear.

PROLOGUE

The most famous tune from the opera is, of course, the
Hymn to the Sun
, which the Queen of Shemakha sings in Act II. The introduction to the hymn, following immediately upon a muted trumpet call, is almost the first music heard. Then, before the curtain, comes the Astrologer. In a high, thin voice, almost like the xylophone that accompanies him, he tells the audience that he will conjure up a fairy tale with an edifying moral.

ACT I

King Dodon sits on his throne in the magnificent council room of some mythical kingdom in fairy-tale land. He is getting
old, he says; the army isn’t much good (the guards, as a matter of fact, can be seen sleeping at their posts); and he doesn’t like making war. What can he do about all those enemies who are making nuisances of themselves? Just keep everyone at home and not think about it, says his elder son, Guidon. Disband the army, says the younger son, Afron, and have them re-form behind the enemy for an attack. Old General Polkan points out that both these plans are pretty idiotic, but he has nothing more practicable to offer.

The Astrologer happens by conveniently at this moment, and he offers the only solution that could be regarded as sensible in a fairy tale. He gives the King a golden cockerel which will be quiet when there is no danger but will warn everyone by crowing when there is. The delighted Dodon offers anything he wants in exchange for the cockerel, and the Astrologer says he will decide later on what that may be. Thus everyone can go to sleep again for the time being; and the King retires, attended by his housekeeper Amelfa, to sweet dreams graphically described in the orchestra.

The first warning from the cockerel causes the King to be awakened and order off his sons and an army to meet the enemy and come home as soon as possible. Once more everyone else goes to sleep. The cockerel’s second summons, however, is more emphatic. General Polkan advises the King that this time he must be off to the wars himself. Grumbling about the inconvenience and the deplorable state of his armor, Dodon gets ready for battle and is cheered off to the wars by his court.

ACT II

Early in the morning, in a narrow mountain pass, it is evident that Dodon’s forces have met disaster. There lie the bodies of many soldiers, including his two sons; and when he comes upon them, accompanied by General Polkan, he utters a sad and deeply Slavic lamentation.

As the mists on the scene begin to disperse, a tent comes
into view, frightening the King. He orders up some ineffective artillery, but before the soldiers can make the cannon go off, there emerges from the tent a ravishingly beautiful young woman. This is the Queen of Shemakha, and her rendition of the
Hymn to the Sun
rivets the favorable attention of Dodon, Polkan, and the entire surviving army. At its close she identifies herself, saying that she has come to conquer Dodon’s kingdom, not by force, but by her beauty. Dodon orders away the soldiery (who
exeunt
, bearing bodies); the Queen’s slaves bring out some cushions for her visitors; and a very unusual exercise in international diplomacy ensues.

Polkan represents his country in the initial questioning period, but his gambits are so undiplomatic and personal that the Queen asks Dodon to dismiss him. (Polkan suggests, for example, that a mysterious voice heard by the Queen during the night was a man under her bed.) With the General in forced retirement behind the tent, whence he occasionally takes a surreptitious peek, the Queen goes to work in earnest on the foolish old King. She sidles up to him; she sings him a frankly voluptuous song about her own beauties when she is completely unclothed; she invites him into her tent (an invitation he does not feel up to accepting); and she asks him to entertain her with a song. When Dodon has obliged with a foolish little ditty, she goes on to describe her own homeland, and to say how much she needs a masterful man in her life.

Overcome by her beauty and her not very subtle suggestions, Dodon is enticed into making a complete fool of himself by dancing for her, and his conquest is completed when she orders out her slave girls to do a slow, suggestive dance for him in return. He offers her his hand, his heart, his kingdom, and the head of the offending General Polkan. With complete cynicism the Queen accepts. Her golden chariot is ordered out, and the two start out on a triumphal march home while her slaves sing a satirical chorus in praise of the king who walks like a camel and has the face of an ape.

ACT III

At home the weather is bad, and the crowd gathered outside King Dodon’s palace considers this ominous. Amelfa, however, assures them that Dodon has won a great victory (albeit he has lost his two sons), he has saved a beautiful princess from a dragon, and he is bringing her home to reign by his side.

A great procession arrives, at its close the golden chariot carrying the King and Queen. Everyone greets them with devotion and fervor, but the Queen continues to act disdainfully.

But now the Astrologer comes back and demands his reward. He wants nothing less than the Queen herself. First the King offers almost anything as a substitute, even half his kingdom; but when the Astrologer sticks to his price, the King, in a rage, kills him with his sword. The Queen is cynically interested and not much moved, but the King is afraid that this may be a bad omen for his wedding, especially as a clap of thunder punctuated his fatal blow.

He does not have long to wait before his fears are realized. As the two descend from the chariot, the golden cockerel suddenly leaves his perch, where he has been beneficently quiet all during the act, hovers for a moment over Dodon’s head, and then darts down to peck him dead. A crash of thunder; sudden darkness; an evil laugh out of the dark from the Queen; and when the lights go on again, she and the Astrologer have disappeared. The crowd is bewildered and feels lost It sings a despairing lament.