The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (54 page)

Berlioz described the score as ‘a caprice written with the point of a needle’ and it requires the lightest of touches from everyone concerned, not least the conductor.
The tenor role of Bénédict has nothing much to offer, but Béatrice is a gift to a mezzo-soprano with wit and personality (though the last page of her Act II aria lies very high).
Lyric sopranos singing Hero often stumble when it comes to the clumsily composed coloratura passage Berlioz writes at the end of her aria.

The highlight of this delicately orchestrated score is undoubtedly the sublimely simple nocturne for Hero and Ursula at the end of Act I.

In performance

The drama is very feeble, with much of what makes Shakespeare’s play complex and interesting (such as the figure of Don John) simply omitted and the focus firmly placed on the silly love-intrigue plot.
The character of the music-master Somarone gives all too much room for a comic turn, with often extremely tiresome results.
The spoken dialogue is generally an embarrassment to singers (passages from Shakespeare’s text are customarily used in productions performed in English).
But for all that, the opera has great charm.

Recording

CD: Janet Baker (Béatrice); Colin Davis (cond.).
Philips 416 952 2

Charles Gounod

(1818–93)

Faust

Five acts. First performed Paris, 1859.

Libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré

Adapted from the first part of Goethe’s
Faust
to suit the sentimental French taste.
It is an opera which has never recovered the extraordinary popularity it enjoyed in the late nineteenth century, but audiences invariably respond to the richness of melody and theatricality whenever it is revived today.

Plot

Longing to recover his youth, the elderly scholar Faust calls on the devil Mephistopheles, who shows him an alluring vision of the beautiful but humbly born maiden Marguerite.
Faust agrees to a pact – in return for his immortal soul, Mephistopheles will restore him to youth and grant all his earthly desires.

In the town square, a summer fair is being celebrated.
Faust and the disguised Mephistopheles appear, and encounter Marguerite’s brother Valentin, just off to the wars, and her admirer, Siebel.
Mephistopheles wreaks some demonic magic on the revellers, until Valentin uses his broken sword to make the sign of the cross.
Faust meets Marguerite, who is passing on her way from church.

Siebel leaves a modest bunch of flowers for Marguerite in her garden.
Mephistopheles replaces them with a casket of jewels: when Marguerite finds them, she is entranced by their glitter.
Mephistopheles distracts the attention of Marguerite’s friend Marthe, allowing Faust to declare himself to the susceptible Marguerite.
They agree to meet the next day, but after a little resistance, Marguerite allows Faust into her bedroom – much to Mephistopheles’s amusement.

Faust abandons Marguerite, leaving her with a baby.
Siebel remains steadfast, but Marguerite continues to believe that Faust will return.
She enters a church to pray, but
Mephistopheles taunts her.
Valentin returns from the wars, discovers his sister’s disgrace and challenges Faust to a duel.
Helped by Mephistopheles, Faust wins the fight.
With his dying breath, Valentin curses Marguerite.

Mephistopheles attempts to distract Faust with visions of famous courtesans, but he insists on returning to Marguerite, who is in prison awaiting execution, having gone mad and killed her baby.
He begs her to escape with him, but she refuses.
As she dies, a choir of angels is heard promising her redemption.

What to listen for

Originally written with passages of dialogue, but now customarily performed with the sung recitatives which Gounod added – along with an elaborate ‘Walpurgisnacht’ ballet – for a later production.

A score which intellectuals scorn today, but which is full of rich, sweet Victorian melody – Faust’s elegant ‘Salut, demeure chaste et pure’; the Soldiers’ chorus and Kermesse waltz; Marguerite’s ballad of the ‘Roi de Thulé’, Jewel and Spinning Songs; charming numbers for the baritone Valentin (‘Avant de quitter ces lieux’) and light mezzo-soprano Siebel (‘Faites-lui mes aveux’); and the show-stopping final trio.

Faust is a role for lyric tenor, with some very high notes (in the duet with Marguerite) that modern singers often omit or fudge.
Marguerite is a grateful, well-paced role for lyric soprano which requires a light touch for the Jewel Song but no coloratura; the only real difficulty is the final trio, where the faint-voiced can run out of puff and end up drowned out by the orchestra.

The opera is long if performed complete, and cuts are often made to get the audience out in under four hours.

In performance

The seduction of a peasant girl by a lubricious gentleman was a favourite Victorian theme, and contemporary productions
like Frank Corsaro’s for Chicago take the sexual politics seriously.
A much-travelled production by Ian Judge, originally for ENO, presents the final scene in a lunatic asylum.
Bad taste and bare breasts often come to the fore in the Walpurgisnacht ballet.

Recording

CD: Richard Leech (Faust); Cheryl Studer (Marguerite); Michel Plasson (cond.).
EMI 5 4624 2

Roméo
et
Juliette

Five acts. First performed Paris, 1867.

Libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré

The most successful of some forty operatic adaptations of Shakespeare’s play, focused on a series of lavish duets for the star-cross’d lovers.
Hugely popular before the First World War, it has now become a vehicle for glamorous star couples like Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu.

Plot

Broadly the same as Shakespeare’s play, with the addition of a larger role for Roméo’s page Stéphano, and less prominence given to Mercutio and the Nurse.
The opera opens at the Capulets’ masked ball.

What to listen for

Giving the tenor (Roméo) and soprano (Juliette) four duets is probably a gesture unprecedented in operatic history: they develop in lyrical voluptuousness, culminating in the final scene where, unlike the play, Juliette wakes in good time to be reunited with Roméo.
This fifteen-minute encounter is musically unusual for its time in its freedom of form and phrase-length.