"I don't know if I'm awake or if I'm still dreaming" (Do those poets know how to make an entrance?)

Georges Thill (1897-1984)

With THE BAILIFF and all his children inside the house, as Papa continues to drill the six younger children in their "Noël" (in July!), WERTHER has appeared, led by a young guide, and verified that this is the home of the Bailiff. Alone, he penetrates farther into the courtyard and stops in front of the fountain.

WERTHER: I don't know if I'm awake or if I'm still dreaming.
Everything that surrounds me has the air of a paradise.
The wood sighs like an echoing harp.
A world reveals itself to my blown-away eyes.
O nature full of grace,
queen of time and space,
deign to welcome him who passes
and salutes you, humble mortal!
Mysterious silence! O solemn calm!
Everything attracts me and pleases me!
This wall, and this somber corner,
this limpid spring, and the freshness of the shade.
There's not a hedge, there's not a bush,
where a flower isn't enclosed, where a breeze doesn't pass.
O nature, intoxicate me with perfumes!
Mother eternally young, lovable, and pure!
And you, sun, come flood me with your rays!

Georges Thill (t), Werther; orchestra, Fernand Heurteur, cond. EMI (HMV), published Oct. 5, 1927

César Vezzani (t), Werther; with orchestra. EMI (Columbia), recorded Feb. 27, 1929

by Ken

This is one of the great operatic entrances, which Massenet has devised, and these Werthers -- whom I think we could describe without much fear of contradiction as the greatest French tenors of the 20th century -- sure know how to make that entrance sing. Note, though, what a different thing they make of it. Thill, master of making most everything he sang sound utterly and yet utterly unself-consciously, jaw-droppingly gorgeous and at the same time utterly, actively alive in the moment, is the purest of poets. Vezzani (1888-1951, seen at right) was a tenor of more heroic vocal bent (we should note that he was, properly speaking, Corsican, and though his mother had moved the family -- his father died before he was born -- to the French mainland when he was 12, Wikipedia describes him as, when he made his way to Paris at age 20, "speaking a poor French"), the poetic tingle he creates with his idyllic vision of the Bailiff's home is of a distinctly more energetic, physical sort.

In both cases, note the pleasure the singer enjoys and the communicative intent he shares in the singing of his language. The composers who have written great large-scale vocal works in French -- in addition to Massenet, I think (in no particular order) of Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Berlioz, Bizet, Meyerbeer -- share a skill and delight in showcasing their language, which calls not so much for "French singers" (after all, lots of French singers aren't much good at this either) as singers who have corresponding competence and relish in singing the language.

Werther's disposition to poetic rapture comes straight from his creator, Goethe, and while Massenet's idea of poetic raptures may not be exactly the same as Goethe's, they gave him an easy and darned effective entryway to the character -- everything Massenet's Werther sees is poetic, an elevated but not altogether practical way, as he never manages to understand in his overwrought existence, to go through one. In the last post, ("We're goig to be hearing Kurt Moll in his famously 'Unexpected French Role' -- so curtain up! "), we got as far as raising the curtain and watching the Bailiff -- in the heat of July -- preparing his six youngest children to sing a "Noël" -- before we wound up gulping down the first two-thirds or so (maybe three-fifths?) of Act I in a single swallow, or rather three single swallows, since we heard three performances of it.

If we're going to be sticklers, though, we've actually skipped over Werther's entrance proper. We'll come back to it, but meanwhile we have Georges and César to tide us over. And when we resume, we'll even have Georges with us, thanks to the complete recording of Werther he made just a few years later.

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Manon and des Grieux go their separate ways, or try

Natalie Dessay sings Manon's farewell to her table from Act II of Manon, from the same 2007 Barcelona performance from which we saw Rolando Villazón sharing des Grieux's dream with her in last night's preview. (Isn't it wonderful that you can sing like this and still be a star?)

by Ken

We're going to hear more of the full scene, but for now, to try to wash away the taste of the above performance, here's just the aria sung in Italian, as "Addio, o nostro picciol desco."

MASSENET: Manon: Act II, Manon, "Adieu, notre petite table" ("Farewell, our little table") (sung in Italian)

[Approaches the table, laid for dinner.]
Farewell, our little table,
that brought us together so often.
Farewell, farewell, our little table --
so big for us, however.
We take up, it's unimaginable,
so little space . . . especially while squeezing each other!
Farewell, our little table!
The same glass served us both.
Each of us, when we drank,
searched for the other's lips on it.
Ah! poor friend, how he loved me!
Farewell, our little table, farewell!

Mirella Freni (s), Manon; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, Peter Maag, cond. Live performance, June 3, 1969

As I wrote in last night's preview, today we're focusing on music that Massenet found to portray the pain of separation felt by both Manon and des Grieux. And as I also mentioned, we're filling in here some knowledge that Manon possesses already when des Grieux shares with her his ravishing dream, a dream that might not seem nearly so dreamy to her even if she didn't know that he's about to be abducted from their cozy little love nest by emissaries of his father, the Count des Grieux.


AS ACT III BEGINS, THE FORMER LOVERS
HAVE GONE THEIR SEPARATE WAYS

Preview: Tonight finally we hear des Grieux's "Dream" as sung by . . . well, you'll hear

Des Grieux (Rolando Villazón) shares his dream with Manon (Natalie Dessay) -- from Act II of Massenet's Manon in Barcelona, 2007.

by Ken

For tonight's preview we're going to revisit the young Chévalier des Grieux's "Dream," as shared with his young lover Manon Lescaut at a time when she, alas, already knows that they're as little as minutes away from everything between them coming to a crashing end. We're going to hear it tonight in a recording I was too lazy to prepare for presentation earlier. As we'll hear once again, des Grieux has no clue as to what's about to happen.

To recap: A high-spirited, ravishing, even magnetic (to men, that is) 16-year-old girl, destined by her family to be shut away in a convent, crosses paths with a dashing young aristocratic scion, and their hormones explode. They run off together and are deliriously happy -- for a while. Not long after, however, a mere couple of acts later (four at most) if it's an opera, one of them will be so destroyed that dying is more or less the easy way out, leaving the other behind, life in tatters.

It's the story of the Chévalier des Grieux and of Manon Lescaut, as first told novelistically by the Abbé Prévost, and then operatically by Jules Massenet and Giacomo Puccini. The case I've been trying to argue is that, setting Romeo and juliet aside, possibly no doomed couple has exerted as powerful a hold on the romantic imagination as these two.

SO FAR I'VE FOCUSED ON WHAT MAKES
THIS ROMANTIC PAIRING SO GRIPPING