I GUESS THIS COULD BE THOUGHT OF AS "Part 2b-ii"
OF OUR ONGOING SEIJI OZAWA REMEMBERANCE
Laurence Thorstenberg, English horn; Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa, cond.
by Ken
What we hear (and see!) above is the haunting English-horn solo that sets us in the "Chambre de Marguerite" -- the bedchamber of the now-"fallen" Marguerite, accused of murdering her mother by gradual poisoning and abandoned by Faust, of Part IV of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust. As we will see, or rather hear, however, abandoned though she may be, she spends all her days waiting by the window or outside her house waiting for him to return.
BERLIOZ: The Damnation of Faust, Op. 24: Part IV,
romance, Marguerite, "D'amour l'ardente flamme"
Rita Gorr, mezzo-soprano; Robert Casier, English horn; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra (Paris), André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, Oct. 5-10, 1959
Maria Callas, soprano; Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, May 2-8, 1963
SPOILER ALERT
Careful readers will have noticed something amiss in the above presentation. For technical reasons, I had to construct the text box in two pieces, and because I thought it might look a little better this way, I left the stage direction "Trumpets and drums sound in the distance" with the romance proper, never imagining that the two boxlets would be split apart. Now here we are box-splitting and the trumpets and drums are still attached to "D'amour l'ardente flamme, but in the Gorr and Callas recordings they're nowhere to be heard -- because these are what we might call "concert performances."
Gorr is a singer, a genuine dramatic-weight mezzo, for whom I have considerable fondness. We've heard her, in three languages, as Gluck's Alceste and Orphée, quite commandingly as Saint-Saëns's Dalila (opposite the unmatched Samson of Jon Vickers), as Fricka in Wagner's Die Walküre, and (another great role) as Amneris in Verdi's Aida. The Damnation excerpt is from an LP's worth of Damnation excerpts, with Nicolai Gedda as Faust and Gérard Souzay as Méphistophelès, conducted by that grand French-music veteran hand Maestro Cluytens, but her entire contribution is Marguerite's two arias: the retelling of the "Roi de Thulé" legend in Part III and the romance from Part IV. (Gedda would at least get to record Damnation complete a decade later, when EMI sprang for a recording of the whole thing, with Janet Baker as Marguerite and Georges Prêtre conducting. We'll be hearing a snatch of that recording in a moment.)
The Callas "D'amour," meanwhile, is from the 1963 sequel to her highly successful 1961 French-opera recital LP Callas in Paris, a mix of somewhat troubled soprano and untroubled mezzo repertory. (I'm sorry to report that Callas à Paris 2 finds her in generally less steady voice -- not yet a permanent condition, considering that the complete Carmen, to my mind one of her great recordings, wasn't made till July 1964.)
In both cases, in consideration of the LPs' contexts, there was apparently no question of including what I've come to think of as the piece's "tail": the crucial two minutes' worth of action that follows. I guess for concert performance "D'amour l'ardente flamme" seems complete enough as is, but it's not complete, and the composer never suggested that it is. In the score there is no separation between the romance and its "tail."
This kind of thing matters to me because when intended clips extend across CD tracks -- and on CD recordings of the complete Damnation (which now seem to number in the dozens) the romance and the "tail" are almost always on separate tracks -- I have to apply my massive digital editing skills to digitally glue the tracks together. (The exercise of those supposedly massive digital editing skills, I might note, is habitually punctuated by violent outbursts of shouting and cursing. Surprisingly, this hardly ever improves the editing procedure.)
I think once we hear the "tail," it'll be pretty obvious that Berlioz's formal construction here wasn't an "aria" but a scene, and the beautiful romance isn't complete without the "tail."
The Damnation of Faust: Part IV, offstage men's chorus,
"Au son des trompettes" ("At the sound of trumpets")
Edith Mathis (s), Marguerite; Laurence Thorstenberg, English horn; men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchetra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, October 1973
Janet Baker (ms), Marguerite; men of the Paris Opera Chorus, Orchestre de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, October 1969
Now, I'm totally happy with what Edith Mathis and Seiji and the Bostonians do here. Note, for example, the tonal luster the BSO horns and trumpets give off, without sounding in any way unmilitary -- there's no reason why this military tattoo has to sound ragtag! Especially when we consider the effect these sounds, and the sounds of the offstage choruses of soldiers and students, have on Marguerite as they drift into her consciousness. I'm sure that you'll recall which military bugle call it is that the tattoo is sounding; I had to look it up. It is, of all things (given our context), "Retreat." [Of course, it makes sense. The whole point is that it's evening and the soldiers are being called back to wherever they, you know, retreat. Still . . . -- Ed.] And in both rhythm and tune it feeds into these final utterances of Marguerite's, drifting so unexpectedly and pitiably to the moment she first laid eyes on Faust.
On all counts the 1973 Boston Damnation seems to me immaculate in this scene. Edith M. is totally inside the character, and when she gets to the pair of "Il ne vient pas"s, she's heart-breaking. Note how the second one seems to give way to a loss of will, though she seems to rouse herself for those final despairing "Hélas"es. I imagine that when Edith and Seiji (and maybe English hornist Larry Thorstenberg too?), huddled with the tech crew in the control room, heard this take, there were smiles all around.
BUT WHAT JANET BAKER DID THERE KNOCKS ME OUT
In the proper post we're going to hear Janet B. and Georges P. do the full scene, and we'll all have opinions about what she does with "D'amour l'ardente flamme." Baker fans, I expect, will swoon. What she does here, though, in the "tail" -- you might want to go back and listen to it again 00 is something else, the whole thing delivered in a sweet but unyieldingly flat sound. The poor lass is audibly gone to the world -- just amazing!
We learned in the romance proper that Marguerite's existence has now shrunk to waiting desperately but still in some kind of hope for Faust to come back. Now she knows.
"He's not coming! He's not coming! Alas! Alas!"
Edith Mathis (s), Marguerite; Laurence Thorstenberg, English horn; men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchetra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, October 1973
Janet Baker (ms), Marguerite; men of the Paris Opera Chorus, Orchestre de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, October 1969
ONE LAST "TAIL" TALE -- OR PAIR OF TALES
While scouting material for inclusion in this post, noting the pair of live performances of Damnation featuring Régine Crespin, always a somewhat problematic singer but likely the most important French soprano of the 20th (or 21st) century, I decided to go ahead and make clips from both to make it easier to observe them. And there's a lot to like in both. Crespin seems in somewhat more secure voice in the 1962 Royal Festival Hall performance, though it's worth bearing in mind that this was a big voice (remember, she sang both Sieglinde and Brünnhilde in Die Walküre; we've heard her as both, and as Charlotte in Werther and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier), and so not easy to capture with microphones, especially under the presumably technically constrained conditions of these live-performance captures).
BERLIOZ: The Damnation of Faust (dramatic legend), Op. 24: Part IV, romance, Marguerite, "D'amour l'ardente flamme" . . . Offstage chorus of soldiers, "Au son des trompettes"
[Trumpets and drums at 8:03] Régine Crespin (s), Marguerite; men of the RTF Chorus, Orchestre National de la RTF, Igor Markevitch, cond. Live performance from the Montreux Festival, Sept. 24, 1959
[Trumpets and drums at 8:36] Régine Crespin (s), Marguerite; men of the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Monteux, cond. Live performance from the Royal Festival Hall, Mar. 8, 1962
In the 1962 Royal Festival Hall performance (in the same month when Maestro Monteux (at age 87) made the Berlioz Roméo et Juliette recording for Westminster which we sampled last week; presumably a Damnation recording, a considerably more expensive affair, was considered too risky), after Mme C. sings "D'amour l'ardente flamme," she receives, understandably enough, a nice round of applause, after which Maestro Monteux proceeds into the "tail." Nothing remarkable to note there, right?
Except that in the 1959 Montreux Festival performance there's no such break. It's true that Maestro Markevitch proceeds decisively with the entry of the offstage drums, but does that kind of decisiveness really stop an audience hell bent on applauding? Did the Montreux Festival-goers not know that there was an applause opportunity being passed over? Or, contrarily, was the audience so sophisticated as to appreciate that nothing has ended at this point? Was there something about the performance that clued them in that a dramatic scene was continuing and not meant for interrupting?
(Rest assured that at the end Mme C. got a good hand, which I've lopped off, as I tend to do with live-performance applause when there'a clean cut available. It's a matter not so much of mean-spiritedness as of better representing the musical argument -- for example, in relation to timings. We're usually hearing multiple performances of a piece, and I think most of us look at some point at comparative timings. Applause can distort them, leaving me to ponder incorporatin additional information in the credits like "[with applause]."
I just thought it was interesting, how differently the two audiences behaved. Beyond that, this gives us a chance to hear the complete scene -- twice, in fact! Before we take it up properly in the "proper" post.
UP NEXT
Well, the "proper" post, of course, forging ahead to Part 2c of the Seiji Ozawa remembrance, with the working title "Yes, Berlioz and Mahler wielded incomparably vivid imaginations, but it wasn't to cover over any want of ability to ravish us with sheer musical beauty" - including further consideration of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust set alongside Mahler's Wunderhorn song "Urlicht" (the fourth movement of the ResurrectionSymphony), plus other goodies.
Plus, one of these days, or weeks, I've got to rig up a box encapsuling the ongoing Seiji celebration.
OF OUR ONGOING SEIJI OZAWA REMEMBERANCE
Laurence Thorstenberg, English horn; Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa, cond.
by Ken
What we hear (and see!) above is the haunting English-horn solo that sets us in the "Chambre de Marguerite" -- the bedchamber of the now-"fallen" Marguerite, accused of murdering her mother by gradual poisoning and abandoned by Faust, of Part IV of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust. As we will see, or rather hear, however, abandoned though she may be, she spends all her days waiting by the window or outside her house waiting for him to return.
BERLIOZ: The Damnation of Faust, Op. 24: Part IV,
romance, Marguerite, "D'amour l'ardente flamme"
Rita Gorr, mezzo-soprano; Robert Casier, English horn; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra (Paris), André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, Oct. 5-10, 1959
Maria Callas, soprano; Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, May 2-8, 1963
SPOILER ALERT
Careful readers will have noticed something amiss in the above presentation. For technical reasons, I had to construct the text box in two pieces, and because I thought it might look a little better this way, I left the stage direction "Trumpets and drums sound in the distance" with the romance proper, never imagining that the two boxlets would be split apart. Now here we are box-splitting and the trumpets and drums are still attached to "D'amour l'ardente flamme, but in the Gorr and Callas recordings they're nowhere to be heard -- because these are what we might call "concert performances."
Gorr is a singer, a genuine dramatic-weight mezzo, for whom I have considerable fondness. We've heard her, in three languages, as Gluck's Alceste and Orphée, quite commandingly as Saint-Saëns's Dalila (opposite the unmatched Samson of Jon Vickers), as Fricka in Wagner's Die Walküre, and (another great role) as Amneris in Verdi's Aida. The Damnation excerpt is from an LP's worth of Damnation excerpts, with Nicolai Gedda as Faust and Gérard Souzay as Méphistophelès, conducted by that grand French-music veteran hand Maestro Cluytens, but her entire contribution is Marguerite's two arias: the retelling of the "Roi de Thulé" legend in Part III and the romance from Part IV. (Gedda would at least get to record Damnation complete a decade later, when EMI sprang for a recording of the whole thing, with Janet Baker as Marguerite and Georges Prêtre conducting. We'll be hearing a snatch of that recording in a moment.)
The Callas "D'amour," meanwhile, is from the 1963 sequel to her highly successful 1961 French-opera recital LP Callas in Paris, a mix of somewhat troubled soprano and untroubled mezzo repertory. (I'm sorry to report that Callas à Paris 2 finds her in generally less steady voice -- not yet a permanent condition, considering that the complete Carmen, to my mind one of her great recordings, wasn't made till July 1964.)
In both cases, in consideration of the LPs' contexts, there was apparently no question of including what I've come to think of as the piece's "tail": the crucial two minutes' worth of action that follows. I guess for concert performance "D'amour l'ardente flamme" seems complete enough as is, but it's not complete, and the composer never suggested that it is. In the score there is no separation between the romance and its "tail."
This kind of thing matters to me because when intended clips extend across CD tracks -- and on CD recordings of the complete Damnation (which now seem to number in the dozens) the romance and the "tail" are almost always on separate tracks -- I have to apply my massive digital editing skills to digitally glue the tracks together. (The exercise of those supposedly massive digital editing skills, I might note, is habitually punctuated by violent outbursts of shouting and cursing. Surprisingly, this hardly ever improves the editing procedure.)
I think once we hear the "tail," it'll be pretty obvious that Berlioz's formal construction here wasn't an "aria" but a scene, and the beautiful romance isn't complete without the "tail."
The Damnation of Faust: Part IV, offstage men's chorus,
"Au son des trompettes" ("At the sound of trumpets")
Edith Mathis (s), Marguerite; Laurence Thorstenberg, English horn; men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchetra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, October 1973
Janet Baker (ms), Marguerite; men of the Paris Opera Chorus, Orchestre de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, October 1969
Now, I'm totally happy with what Edith Mathis and Seiji and the Bostonians do here. Note, for example, the tonal luster the BSO horns and trumpets give off, without sounding in any way unmilitary -- there's no reason why this military tattoo has to sound ragtag! Especially when we consider the effect these sounds, and the sounds of the offstage choruses of soldiers and students, have on Marguerite as they drift into her consciousness. I'm sure that you'll recall which military bugle call it is that the tattoo is sounding; I had to look it up. It is, of all things (given our context), "Retreat." [Of course, it makes sense. The whole point is that it's evening and the soldiers are being called back to wherever they, you know, retreat. Still . . . -- Ed.] And in both rhythm and tune it feeds into these final utterances of Marguerite's, drifting so unexpectedly and pitiably to the moment she first laid eyes on Faust.
On all counts the 1973 Boston Damnation seems to me immaculate in this scene. Edith M. is totally inside the character, and when she gets to the pair of "Il ne vient pas"s, she's heart-breaking. Note how the second one seems to give way to a loss of will, though she seems to rouse herself for those final despairing "Hélas"es. I imagine that when Edith and Seiji (and maybe English hornist Larry Thorstenberg too?), huddled with the tech crew in the control room, heard this take, there were smiles all around.
BUT WHAT JANET BAKER DID THERE KNOCKS ME OUT
We learned in the romance proper that Marguerite's existence has now shrunk to waiting desperately but still in some kind of hope for Faust to come back. Now she knows.
"He's not coming! He's not coming! Alas! Alas!"
Edith Mathis (s), Marguerite; Laurence Thorstenberg, English horn; men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchetra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, October 1973
Janet Baker (ms), Marguerite; men of the Paris Opera Chorus, Orchestre de Paris, Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded in the Salle Wagram, October 1969
AFTERTHOUGHT RE. MARGUERITE'S "Il ne vient pas!"
Languages can be funny, in their infinite ways, about verb tenses. In English, Marguerite might be thinking "He doesn't come" or "He isn't coming," but French has just one form for the present tense: "Il ne vient pas." So maybe she's just thinking about today, about this evening. It sure sounds to me, though, from Berlioz's setting, that she knows now, he's not coming.
It's also possible, in fact, that this is pretty much the way all of M's days end now: knowing that Faust isn't coming -- and the next morning, all the same, she's back at the window for another day of waiting for him to come. Which could be even bleaker.
ONE LAST "TAIL" TALE -- OR PAIR OF TALES
BERLIOZ: The Damnation of Faust (dramatic legend), Op. 24: Part IV, romance, Marguerite, "D'amour l'ardente flamme" . . . Offstage chorus of soldiers, "Au son des trompettes"
[Trumpets and drums at 8:03] Régine Crespin (s), Marguerite; men of the RTF Chorus, Orchestre National de la RTF, Igor Markevitch, cond. Live performance from the Montreux Festival, Sept. 24, 1959
[Trumpets and drums at 8:36] Régine Crespin (s), Marguerite; men of the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Monteux, cond. Live performance from the Royal Festival Hall, Mar. 8, 1962
In the 1962 Royal Festival Hall performance (in the same month when Maestro Monteux (at age 87) made the Berlioz Roméo et Juliette recording for Westminster which we sampled last week; presumably a Damnation recording, a considerably more expensive affair, was considered too risky), after Mme C. sings "D'amour l'ardente flamme," she receives, understandably enough, a nice round of applause, after which Maestro Monteux proceeds into the "tail." Nothing remarkable to note there, right?
Except that in the 1959 Montreux Festival performance there's no such break. It's true that Maestro Markevitch proceeds decisively with the entry of the offstage drums, but does that kind of decisiveness really stop an audience hell bent on applauding? Did the Montreux Festival-goers not know that there was an applause opportunity being passed over? Or, contrarily, was the audience so sophisticated as to appreciate that nothing has ended at this point? Was there something about the performance that clued them in that a dramatic scene was continuing and not meant for interrupting?
(Rest assured that at the end Mme C. got a good hand, which I've lopped off, as I tend to do with live-performance applause when there'a clean cut available. It's a matter not so much of mean-spiritedness as of better representing the musical argument -- for example, in relation to timings. We're usually hearing multiple performances of a piece, and I think most of us look at some point at comparative timings. Applause can distort them, leaving me to ponder incorporatin additional information in the credits like "[with applause]."
I just thought it was interesting, how differently the two audiences behaved. Beyond that, this gives us a chance to hear the complete scene -- twice, in fact! Before we take it up properly in the "proper" post.
UP NEXT
Well, the "proper" post, of course, forging ahead to Part 2c of the Seiji Ozawa remembrance, with the working title "Yes, Berlioz and Mahler wielded incomparably vivid imaginations, but it wasn't to cover over any want of ability to ravish us with sheer musical beauty" - including further consideration of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust set alongside Mahler's Wunderhorn song "Urlicht" (the fourth movement of the ResurrectionSymphony), plus other goodies.
Plus, one of these days, or weeks, I've got to rig up a box encapsuling the ongoing Seiji celebration.
#
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