Patrick Bade
Giacomo Meyerbeer and French Grand Opera

Patrick Bade - Giacomo Meyerbeer and French Grand Opera

- So, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Hector Berlioz said about him that he had, “Not only the luck to be talented, but the talent to be lucky.” And that was a double-edged compliment. I think Meyerbeer was the most envied and the most vilified composer of the 19th century. I’ll get to Wagner later, of course, Wagner said very nasty things about him. But it wasn’t just Wagner, everybody seemed to be in on it. Everybody had their boot into Meyerbeer, Schumann and Chopard, and even Verdi and Mendelssohn said quite nasty things about him. And there is obviously the antisemitism, but I think it’s also just sheer envy. The fact that he happened to be born into an extremely wealthy family, and that he didn’t many of the problems that other composers had. So he was born in 1791 in Berlin. His birth name was Jacob Liebman Beer. That they were a family of financiers, they were so wealthy that they could even afford to have their own private synagogue in their house. And I think there was a perception among many of his rival composers that he had bought his way to success. Particularly because he heavily financed the production of Robert le diable in 1831, which was his great breakthrough opera. And of course, these things did happen. This is Isaac de Camondo, the cousin of Moïse de Camondo, the creator of the Nissim de Camondo Museum. He came from another great Jewish banking family in Paris, and he was an amateur composer.

And he financed a production of his opera, Le Clown in 1906 at l'Opéra-Comique. And he was able to afford to get the glamorous Geraldine Farrar, one of the top singers of the day. And it got, whether he paid for them or not, it got quite good reviews. But there is a difference, even though it had a respectable run initially, it dropped without trace. And that wasn’t the case with Meyerbeer. His operas really took off in a big way. And there’s another image of him surrounded by the operatic characters that he created. He was a very dignified man. He rose above the abuse. And he wrote, “I swore to myself never to respond personally to attack upon my work and never under any circumstances to cause or respond to personal polemics.” He was certainly aware of the undertone of antisemitism in a lot of the criticisms of his work. And in 1839, he wrote to Heyner, the great poet, with whom he had also rather fractious relationship. Again, I think Heyner, in his case, of course, it wasn’t antisemitism as they were both Jews, but Heyner was also very resentful of Meyerbeer’s wealth. And this is Meyerbeer writing to Heyner and he said that, “I believe the hatred of Jews is like love in theatres and novels, no matter how often one encounters it, it never misses its target if effectively wielded. Nothing can grow back the foreskin of which we were robbed on the eighth day of our life, those who on the ninth day do not bleed after this operation shall continue to bleed an entire lifetime and even after death.” So, he’s claimed to have been the most performed opera composer of the 19th century, and particularly his four great French grand operas. I’m going to concentrate on those today. That’s Robert le diable, Les Huguenots, Le prophète and L'Africaine.

They were absolutely central to the repertoire of every major opera house in the world for the rest of the 19th century. But then, suddenly in the 20th century, they largely disappeared from the mainstream repertoire. So what happened? Well, Wagner happened and Hitler happened, and it’s not quite as simple as that. There are other reasons, I think. for the disappearance of his opera from the repertoire. But of course, Wagner was a major factor. They had a very complicated relationship. I mean, Wagner, it’s a classic example of biting the hand that feeds him. For he that feeds you. I mean, Meyerbeer did a lot to help Wagner launch his career. It was thanks to Meyerbeer’s reputation that Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman were put on in Dresden. Meyerbeer gave Wagner every possible support, including financial support, including lending him money. So it’s pretty nasty of Wagner then in 1850, he published the first edition of his book Das Judentum in der Musik, Jewishness in music. Which was, in fact, in that book, Meyerbeer is not specifically named, but it’s very obvious, I think, who the target of his criticism was. And then after Meyerbeer died in 1869, Wagner published a much more virulent and nasty version of Das Judentum in der Musik in which Meyerbeer was really pillared, and that really sunk in eventually. And Meyerbeer’s reputation has never completely recovered from that.

But I would say that, of course, it’s all couched in Wagner’s text in the most vicious, non-pleasant, antisemitism. But nevertheless, Wagner has some points to make about Meyerbeer’s music which are, I think, valid points. At least from Wagner’s point of view, that he felt that Meyerbeer’s operas were more circus than serious opera. And that they lacked sort of coherence. They were sort of concocted in a way to please the bourgeois public of the 19th century. And they were consisted of disparate, desperate elements. Another reason, I mean, there are practical reasons, why Meyerbeer’s operas went out of favour in the 20th century. They’re far too long, I think, for most 20th century audiences. They involved spectacle and circus and were extremely expensive to put on. And also there is the question of the singers. Meyerbeer happened to live in a golden age of singing. Probably the art of singing reached its absolute apogee in the early- to mid- 19th century. And he tailored the roles in his operas to these very great singers. And it’s very difficult in the 20th century, it’s been very difficult, to find the singers to sing these operas. On the screen, here on the left, you’ve got Adolphe Nourrit, who sang in the premieres of Robert le diable, Les Huguenots, and also in La Juive. He was the greatest tenor of his period, came to a rather sad end. It was actually towards the end of his career that there were changes actually in the vocal method of tenors, that a new tenor came along called Duprez, who was the toast of Paris. And he took his top notes from the chest, in the way that most modern singers, the way that say Pavarotti would.

And this took the public by storm, not everybody liked it. Rossini really didn’t like it. And when Duprez came to Rossini’s house to sing for him, Rossini very ostentatiously rushed to put away all the crystal in case it shattered from the loud top notes. In the middle is Madame Falcon. I mean she gave… Cornélie Falcon, she sang Valentine in the premiere of Les Huguenots and Rachel in the premiere of La Juive. And on the right hand side is Pauline Viardot, for whom Meyerbeer wrote the part of Fidès in Le prophète. And when the Paris Opera refused to use her, he refused to allow it. In fact, for several years, he refused to allow it to be staged without her, because it was so specifically written for her. Now, even by the end of the 19th century, it was beginning to get difficult to find a cast for Les Huguenots. But it was a very famous cast at the Met in the 1890s, which was dubbed, “The Night of the Seven Stars,” here are the Seven Stars who appeared in New York in Les Huguenots. Pol Plançon the bass, top left. Jean de Reszke, top middle, Nellie Melba, Victor Maurel, Édouard de Reszke, Lillian Nordica, and Sofia Scalchi. They’re all superstars, amazing, amazing singers.

It’s been a really hard opera to cast in the 20th century. Probably the most famous and successful deduction in the entire 20th century was in Milan in 1962. And you can hear that, because you’re in quite good sound, you can get a transcript of a radio broadcast and it starred Joan Sutherland, Franco Correlli, Giulietta Simionato, Giorgio Tozzi, and so on and so on. Wonderful cast of singers. And it’s very exciting and I recommend it to you. Although my guess is that if Meyerbeer had heard it, he would’ve found a lot of the singing very crude by the standards of his day. So Meyerbeer had start off as a German composer, becomes an Italian composer, and lands up as a French composer. He’s very cosmopolitan. And this was of course another thing that people held against him, particularly antisemites. There’s this idea that, of course Wagner has, that Jews have no roots. They don’t really belong anywhere. This term of abuse that the Nazis used of rootless cosmopolitan, it’s something that I actually identify with quite strongly. I feel like a rootless cosmopolitan. Who knows, perhaps that’s one reason why I’ve always had such a strong affinity with Jews and Jewish culture. It’s this idea of actually not particularly belonging in one place, and being able to move from one place to another. So he starts off, as I said, very German. He’s a close friend of that. Most German romantics, Weber as a teenager, he actually took part in the premiere of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, playing the timpani. But in 1816, he goes off to Italy and he completely falls in love with Italy.

He wrote, “At that time, all the Italy was feasting in sweet ecstasy. All that was needed to complete the happiness was the music of Rossini. In spite of myself, I like the rest, was caught up in this gossamer web of sound.” So he writes several operas while he’s in Italy between 1816 and 1825. And they sound incredibly like Rossini. He really was very, very influenced by Rossini. And the last of these operas in 1825 was Il crociato in Egitto, the crusade to Egypt. It still sounds completely like Rossini. In some ways it’s a backward looking opera, not least because it’s the last major opera that was written for a castrato, a man called Giovanni Battista Velluti, the last great castrato, you see his portrait top right. In some ways it’s important for the future for Meyerbeer, because it’s at the theme of religious conflict is one that crops up in all his operas, forthcoming operas, his grand French operas. And it’s been lots of speculation, maybe. He was very, very conscious of being a Jew, and proud of it too. And never, never wished to renounce his Jewishness. But he was very aware of persecution and prejudice. So as I said, that is that religious prejudice and persecution is a constant theme in his work. I’m going to play you, this is the only excerpt I’m going to play you, of his pre-French operas.

It’s a duet from Il crociato in Egitto. And I think if you just heard this on the radio and you didn’t know who wrote it, you’d be very likely to think it was Rossini on quite a good day. He’d, as I said, being very successful in Italy. But Il crociato in Egitto was his breakthrough from Italy to international fame. It was put on in Paris with very considerable success in 1826. Now, 2 years later, Auber’s La muette de Portici also had a sensational success. And it’s usually regarded as the foundation stone of French grand opera, a new type of opera. It sets the agenda for opera in Paris for much of the rest of the 19th century. It’s on a huge scale, it’s got five acts. It contains a ballet and lots of spectacle. It actually, special effects. I mean the Paris Opera was famous for having the most elaborate special effects. If you’ve been to Paris, you’ll know that the Paris Opera House has this huge fly tower that dominates the Paris skyline, where all the elaborate sets were raised and lowered. And you can see in the final scene of La muette de Portici, the volcano, Vesuvius erupts. And I’m sure it was a very spectacular effect. At La muette de Portici, it’s not, again, not very often done.

None of these grand operas are done very often. Not even Rossini’s William Tell, I suppose the only one that is specifically written to be a French grand opera, that does get done a lot is Verdi’s Don Carlos. But La muette de Portici made its mark on history because two years after the Paris premier, it was put on in Brussels at the La Monnaie Theatre. At this time, Belgian had been given to Holland at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but the Belgians were very restless. And they rioted, they got so excited by this performance of La muette de Portici that they rioted and the riots spread to the streets. And that led to the Belgian revolution and the creation of Belgian as an independent country. Something that made censors throughout Europe very, very nervous after that. Particularly in Italy, all the earlier Verdi operas were heavily censored in case they were too exciting for the audiences. Then Rossini, the following year in 1829, he writes his first French grand opera and last. Guillaume Tell, another tremendous success, another absolutely enormous work. But it was in fact his last opera altogether, although he lived another more than 30 years. And it was as though Rossini really handed over his crown to the younger Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer and Rossini had a kind of real mutual, huge mutual admiration. They loved each other’s work.

Rossini was one, perhaps the only great composer, who was never nasty to Meyerbeer. And in fact, there’s a rather touching story ‘cause although he was older than Meyerbeer, he outlived him. And the day after Meyerbeer died, in 1864 in Paris, Rossini went to his house to visit him. And he was so shocked by the news that Meyerbeer had died in the night that he collapsed in a dead faint. So, Meyerbeer’s first grand opera Robert le diable, as I said, he had to invest a lot of money in it before the Paris Opera would put it on. But he certainly must have earned that back again many, many times over as it was such a tremendous success in Paris and everywhere it was put on. Very rarely done today. I did see a performance of it at the Royal Opera House, think about three or four years ago, which was very fascinating. I can’t say I think it’s a completely inspired masterpiece all the way through. It’s a very long opera to sit through. And as I said, it’s a bit of a concoction. But what really did strike me is you kept on hearing pre- echoes of other, today more famous 19th century operas. It’s clear that all the other composers thought that Meyerbeer was a great composer to thieve from. I’m going to play you just the opening bars of the overture, which begins with a couple of drum rolls and then a statement in unison from the brass in the orchestra. When I heard that, I thought, “Oh my God, it’s Trovatore!” Trovatore presented 15 years later. The opening is, I would say, pretty well a blatant theft from Meyerbeer. Here is the opening of Verdi’s Trovatore.

There’s also a trio for the bass baritone, tenor and soprano. And when you hear that, you think, “Oh, well that is, it’s obvious where Maiguno got his ideas for the climactic trio of Faust.” It’s very directly based on it. And Wagner too, was definitely influenced by the orgiastic ballet. Very spectacular scene, which was really one of the big hits of Robert le diable, where the devil character comes and he raises dead nuns from their tombs. Nuns who’ve broken their vows of chastity, and they perform an orgiastic ballet that anticipates the ballet in Wagner’s Tannhäuser. So, I’m going to play you a bit. But I’m going to play you the scene where the devil, he’s conjuring up the dead nuns, and we’re going to hear it with the devilishly handsome and sexy Ezio Pinza. Meyerbeer was a perfectionist and by 19th century standards, he was a slow worker. Donizetti and Rossini, at the height of their operatic careers, were able to turn out an opera in a month or so. And Verdi, in the first part of his career, was producing more than one opera a year. But so Meyerbeer’s next great opera was Les Huguenots. That came out in 1836. And it’s an opera that’s is about one of the great religious persecutions of the 16th century when Catherine de’ Medici ordered the slaughter of the Huguenots gathered in Paris for a royal wedding. And as I said, it’s an opera that needs very great singers indeed.

And I’ve mainly used singers from the early 20th century who I think still retained some of the skills of the 19th century singers that Meyerbeer would’ve been used to. Although having said that, I’m getting with Caruso singing the great tenor aria from Les Huguenots. Wonderful picture here. You can see him with his amazingly anachronistic moustache that doesn’t look at all 16th century, it looks very Belle Époque. You could argue that actually Caruso is the first really modern tenor. He produces that big, beefy sound that we now expect from tenors. It’s not the sort of sound that 19th century tenors produced at all. But he’s still a very great artist with a wonderful, smooth legato and exquisitely silky phrasing. Next we’re going to hear the Marguerite’s aria, the aria of Queen Marguerite. Of course, Joan Sutherland was very spectacular in this. It’s a freakily difficult coloratura role. But I’m going to play an early 20th century singer, Margarethe Siems. Amazingly, she was a favourite singer of Strauss, and she sang in the premiers of Elektra as Chrysothemis, and she was the first marshal in. But her virtuosity is, I would say even way, way beyond that of Joan Sutherland.

Particularly the trills, I’d like you to listen to these astonishing trills. She just seems to be able to extend them for as long as she likes, and she can swell them and diminish them, and they become an extraordinary expressive device. As I said, there are seven roles in this opera that need that kind of virtuous a technique. And even the relatively minor character of the page boy, which is written for a mezzo, has an absolutely showstopping aria. Now, Berlioz said about Les Huguenots, that it was an encyclopaedia of music. And I don’t think he actually meant that as a compliment, or at least it was, again, a very double-edged compliment. I think what he really meant was that it lacked unity and it was a bit of a musical rag bag. But it certainly contains some marvellous stretches of music, particularly as a absolutely thrilling duet for the hero, Raoul, and heroin, Valentine. She’s a Catholic, he’s a Protestant, it’s the eve of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. They sing this great love duet, and then the toxin tolls, the bell tolls for the start of the massacre. And as you can see, he leaps out of the window. I’m going to play you an absolutely extraordinary record that has a very interesting history of this duet.

It was recorded in Berlin as late as 1932, with two singers who were major stars of the Nazi period, Marcel Wittrich, who was said to be Hitler’s favourite tenor, and Margarete Teschemacher. The original record was issued on the plum label. I think that probably, aren’t that many of you old enough to know what I’m talking about there. But before the war, HMV had different coloured labels at different prices and the classical repertoire, the plum label was the cheap label. And the red label, which you see here, was for the big celebrity stars like Gigli and so on, Rosa Ponselle. This record came out on a plum label, but it was almost- Because the next year, 1933, it was withdrawn, it was suppressed. The Nazis went through the archive in Berlin, and they actually went to the trouble of destroying the master of this record. But some copies survived. And after The Second World War, somebody played a copy on The BBC, the third programme. And there was a fantastic reaction to it. People said, “Oh my god, what an incredible piece of singing. What a marvellous piece of music.” And HMV went to the trouble of dubbing from a surviving copy onto, they issued a new record, still 78 rpm, but this time on the expensive celebrity red label. So, if any of you have piles of old records in your attic, it’s not unlike that you’ll find a copy. I have a copy on the red label.

But if you do find, by any chance, that you have a copy of this record on the plum label, it’s actually worth quite a lot of money ‘cause it’s a great rarity. But here is this… Oh, where is it? Oh, there it is. Yes, here is this very thrilling duet with Marcel Wittrich and Margarete Teschemacher giving it their all. I wish I could play the whole thing, but it’s eight minutes long. And in the last act the Protestants are moaned down by the Catholics. And as they die, or as they’re about to die, they sing the Lutheran hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. We are going to move onto Meyerbeer’s next opera, Le prophète. He finished it in the early 1840s, but as I said, the Paris Opera, for some reason or other, were not willing to cast Pauline Viardot. And he waited till there was a change of management, so it wasn’t actually premiered till 1849. It’s about the Anabaptist revolt in Münster in the 16th century. And it’s incredibly brutal, suppression. Again, an opera on a huge scale. This is again, the great Sigrid Onegin. I’ll play a tiny bit of this. Interestingly, the central female character, is not a love interest. It’s actually the hero’s mother. The last opera that he composed was L'Africaine. And in fact, it wasn’t staged till after he died. He agonised over it for a very long time, and the plot changed and the characters changed and the settings changed. And the final result is actually to say the least, somewhat confused. Eventually it was decided the hero would be based on the great Portuguese Explorer, Vasco da Gama. And the original setting of the opera was in Africa. But eventually it lands up, largely set in India. There’s a very spectacular first act you can see on board a ship.

And here he arrives in India. But there is, as I said, to some confusion, especially if you look at the the costumes and sets of the original production. Where are with a strange fusion of African, well there are European characters, of course, but on the right of African and Indian characters. This is the baritone character Nélusko that was written specifically for the great star, French star baritone of the mid-century, Jean-Baptiste Faure. Who is also these days, he’s probably more often mentioned as an important early collector of impressionist painting. But I have to show you this drawing on the right hand side. I found it just three weeks ago in the flea market in Paris, in amongst a whole lot of drawings on the pavement for, you know, just a few euros, it was next to nothing. Fascinating drawing. It’s dated 1865 and it’s a drawing for a costume for Nélusko and it’s clearly a working drawing. You can see they’re all little notes about what materials should be used and what colours and so on. And it’s signed and dated 1865. So quite extraordinary to find something like that in the 21st century in a flea market. I just show you this vague, this Europeans in the mid 19th century, of course, everything alien that was not European, was all kind of muddled up together. This is a painting of Queen Victoria presenting a Bible to a kind of all-purpose native. I mean, where does that costume come from?

You know, it could be from anywhere or everywhere in the world. I’m going to play you the great tenor aria actually sung in German here by Melchior. It’s a great challenge to a tenor. You need a heroic sound, but you need to be able to really shape a phrase to sing this aria and to shade from fortissimo to pianissimo. Now I’m going to just finish by talking about another great 19th century French grand opera written by another Jewish composer, this time a French-Jewish composer, and this is Fromental Halévy. Who was quite a prolific composer, but his masterpiece in the work, which really made an impact and is still done from time-to-time is, La Juive. And again, interestingly, it’s an opera about religious conflict and persecution in this case specifically, of course, persecution of Jews. And it has a tremendous central role. The rabbi Eléazar, and it was the last role that was taken on by Caruso and he really got into it. And Caruso was much loved by the Jewish community in New York. He had a real connection with them and they helped him prepare for the role. He went to synagogues and listened to cantorial singing in order to prepare himself for the role. So, I’m going to play you a little bit of- And incidentally, he’s so identified with the role, he made this bronze relief of himself in the role of Eléazar. So, here is Caruso in the great aria, Rachel, quand du Seigneur. Oh no, that’s not it. See, see. What is that? Not this. Oh! Yes, that’s it. Now, as I’m running out of time, I’m going to finish with an excerpt from the very beautiful, very moving passover scene from La Juive, sung by Richard Tucker, who was a New Yorker, but of Russian-Jewish background. And he identified very strongly with the role and sang it often over the years. And I managed to get the link on the wrong image. But here, this is actually Richard Tucker in the passover scene from La Juive. Right, well, let’s see what you’ve got to say.

Q&A and Comments:

As I said, actually the Ralph Nadu sets from last week, it not only came to London, but actually toured and it went to Dublin. So I’m sure that the only way to to do that must have been to roll it up. The singers, it’s on the list that came with the images this morning.

It’s Yvonne Kennedy in plait. Yvonne Kenny, very fine singer, only recently retired. In the Rob, the Taglioni, was in the ballet section. That’s very likely, top dancers used to perform in the ballets of these operas. There wasn’t a Wagner excerpt, they didn’t play Wagner today. And who could that have been? And all those singers are listed on my list that you should have been sent. How to account for my best’s top billing as an opera composer, then compared with now.

I’m only familiar, yes, Les Patineurs, no, I didn’t talk about that. Of course, that was the great success of the opera, the Skater’s Waltz. I mean, it was a very spectacular ballet, presumably on roller skates for Le prophète. Do I think there’s any connection between the opening of Robert… Yes, I suppose the world could be, although apparently he wasn’t a very good timpanist. Seems that Beethoven thought that he didn’t have a strong sense of rhythm and was behind the beat.

Q: Can you refer us to a modern tenor who sounds like 19th century?

A: Not really, not really. I mean, it’s fascinating how skills are gained, lost and regained. In some ways, I mean, try Michael Spaz, he’s pretty fantastic. I think he’s probably the modern tenor who comes closest to what a 19th century was like. But he still is inclined to sing out those top notes from the chest. which was, as I said, an innovation of the mid 19th century. Yes, probably Michael Spaz would be my recommendation to you.

Yes, Margarethe Siems, it’s completely freakish, isn’t it? It’s so amazing what she can do and to think that she was singing in… You know, having to overcome the Straussian orchestra in Elektra and Rosenkavalier. Oh dear, Betty couldn’t get any of the music. How strange, I don’t know why that is.

• [Judi] Just, Patrick, Betty, I’ll send you… It’s Judi here. I’ll send you the recording a bit later on today.

• Yeah, good. Thank you. Thank you, Judi, that’s wonderful. And I’m glad you like my scratchy, old records. The march of the Huguenots is displayed every year at the Trooping the Colours. I didn’t know that. Thank you.

Thank you all for your kind comments. And luckily there is an increasing influence in Meyerbeer and I think we will have a chance to revisit these operas, and they’re definitely worthwhile. The name of the last composer is Fromental Halévy, and yes, you should have the list. It should have been…

The link that you have, if you scroll down, you’ll get the list. Meyerbeer left there. Yes, there’s a huge amount of letters and diaries and everything. Yes, there’s vast material on Meyerbeer and quite an extensive literature on him. Books on him, and so on.

So, thank you. I’m returning to my daytime job as an art historian next time for Angra and De Laqua. Thank you. Thank you very much, bye-bye.