A holiday post of sorts: Werther may not qualify as "merry," but isn't it as completely a "Christmas opera" as you could imagine?

[NOTE: THIS ISN'T THE POST (OR ANY OF THE POSTS)
PLANNED FOR TODAY -- I'LL EXPLAIN EVENTUALLY]

Christmas in July: Curtain rise of Werther [4:28 of the audio clip] finds the Bailiff -- here Jonathan Summers, seen with the younger children and the oldest, Charlotte (Joyce DiDonato), at Covent Garden in 2016 -- trying to coax out of his now-motherless brood a passable rendering of their little Christmas song. With such labors, he clearly believes, it's never too early to begin.

The Bailiff's House (July 178_). At left, the house, with a wide bay window, with a usable veranda covered with greenery, accessed by a wooden stairway. At right, the garden. At the rear, a small door with a clear view. In front, a fountain. THE BAILIFF is sitting on the veranda with his youngest children, whom he's having sing.

The curtain rises on a great burst of laughter, very prolonged, from the children.

THE BAILIFF [grumbling]: Enough! Enough!
Will you listen to me this time?
Let's start again! Let's start again!
Above all not too much voice, not too much voice!
THE CHILDREN [singing brusquely, very loud and without nuance]: Noël! Noël! Noël!
Jesus has just been born,
here is our divine master . . .
BAILIFF [overlapping, annoyed]:
But no! It's not that!
No! No! It's not that!
[Severely] Do you dare to sing that way
when your sister Charlotte is in there?
She must be hearing everything on the other side of the door!
[The CHILDREN have appeared totally moved at CHARLOTTE's name. They take up the "Noël" again with seriousness.]
CHILDREN: Noël! . . .
BAILIFF: That's good!
CHILDREN: Noël! . . .
BAILIFF: That's good!
CHILDREN: Jesus has just been born,
here is our divine master,
kings and shepherds of Israel!
In the firmament,
faithful guardian angels
have opened their wings wide,
and go about everywhere singing: Noël!
BAILIFF [joining in]: Noël! &c
[And as the CHILDREN continue the "Noël" --]
It's just like that!
Noël! Noël Noël! Noël Noël!

[curtain rise at 4:28] Kurt Moll (bs), the Bailiff; West German Radio (WDR) Symphony Orchestra, Cologne, Riccardo Chailly, cond. DG, recorded in the Forumhalle, Leverkusen (across the Rhine from Cologne), February 1979

by Ken

And if Werther begins with "Christmas in July," it ends, of course, on Christmas Eve (in French "la nuit de Noël," "Christmas Night," which to them is definitely Christmas Eve and not, as we might take it, "the night of Christmas Day"). Let's recall the purely orchestral Scene 1 of Act IV:

Stage direction for the scene: "The little village of Wetzlar, Christmas Eve. -- The moon casts a great clarity on the roofs and trees, covered with snow. -- Some windows light up little by little. -- It's snowing. -- Then total obscurity."

West German Radio (WDR) Symphony Orchestra, Cologne, Riccardo Chailly, cond. DG, recorded in the Forumhalle, Leverkusen (across the Rhine from Cologne), February 1979


WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE CONTINUING (OR REALLY FINISHING UP) WITH SCHUBERT'S THREE SERENADES

"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.

#

We're going to be hearing Kurt Moll in his famously "Unexpected French Role" -- so curtain up!

Naturally, we've got a "Prélude"

West German Radio (WDR) Symphony Orchestra, Cologne, Riccardo Chailly, cond. DG, recorded in the Forumhalle, Leverkusen (across the Rhine from Cologne), February 1979

by Ken

As I mentioned in the Kurt Moll-themed posts from Saturday ("Preview: I won't go out on a limb and say this is the most beautiful bass voice I've ever heard, or this the most beautiful minute-and-a-half of singing. Then again --") and Sunday ("Quite right, Sir Georg: We'll need to hear not just Haydn's orchestral depiction of 'pre-Creation' chaos but the 'breathtaking' explosion when suddenly 'there was light!' "), it was a chance hearing of KM in what I've dubbed "an Unexpected French Role" which got me to thinking about him.

There's no other "news" peg for this 1979 recording -- the very recording from which we've just heard, as a curtain-raiser, the Prélude. It's a recording I was pretty sure I had on LP but realized I had no clear recollection of when I spotted a cheap CD copy in my used-CD mart of choice (no mystery: Academy Records on West 18th Street in Manhattan), where periodically, despite knowing that goodness knows I don't more damn records, I allow myself to browse -- especially on the "$1.99 and under" shelves, but also (when I have, or make, time) among the pricier $2.99- and $3.99-per-disc offerings, not to mention the cheap DVDs and Blu-rays. [POSTSCRIPT: Just to be clear, those aren't my CDs. I just borrowed the image to represent a tiny fraction of mine. (I only wish I had shelves like those!) -- Ed.]

At times it seems to me almost a moral issue not to allow tantalizingly underpriced musical items of value to languish unloved, like the time I came upon an irresistibly modest-priced copy of a pristine-looking EMI CD set of the 1953 Furtwängler-RAI Ring, of which my original copy, though I believe all the CDs are still playable, is badly beaten up from the heavy use it continues to get. Notwithstanding that Ring's undeniable limitations, it remains a repository of all manner of in-performance wisdom which makes it almost as essential to me, in its very different way, as the Solti-Decca and Karajan-DG Ring cycles. (Did I mention that I also have two LP editions of the Furtwängler-RAI Ring, the original American one and a later reissue made from supposedly better source material?)

So for the asked $5.98, I added that set to my growing pile. But then at home I never seemed to be in the mood to listen to it it, and it sat for months among a clump of other as-yet-unlistened-to CDs. Until one day I decided I wouldn't mind taking a listen.

And what a difference! I'm guessing that when I first acquired the LPs, which I indeed found neatly in place on my LP shelves, I sampled it and didn't much cotton to it, as I didn't with most of the growing number of recordings of this once-infrequently-recorded opera. Maybe I held its German provenance against it? It was made by Deutsche Grammophon, as German a record company as there is (though of course long since internationalized in its a&r thinking and its audience reach), with a German orchestra and supporting cast, and while most of the vocal principals and the conductor aren't German, they aren't French either, and neither is anybody else involved, in an opera by the most French of composers.


SAY, THIS IS GETTING TO BE AN AWFUL LOT OF
TALK -- HOW 'BOUT WE HAVE SOME MORE MUSIC?

Okay, can do!

Act II: Prélude

Act III: Prélude

Act IV: 1st Tableau, "The Night Before Christmas"

West German Radio (WDR) Symphony Orchestra, Cologne, Riccardo Chailly, cond. DG, recorded in the Forumhalle, Leverkusen (across the Rhine from Cologne), February 1979

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

How Massenet and Puccini make Manon and des Grieux matter to us

MANON [sad and resigned]: Come now, Manon, no more chimeras,
where your mind goes while dreaming!
Leave these ephemeral desires
at the door of your convent!
Come now, Manon, no more desires, no more chimeras!

Beverly Sills (s), Manon Lescaut; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Julius Rudel, cond. ABC-DG, recorded July 1970

by Ken

This is the 16-year-old Manon of Massenet's Act I, arrived in Amiens by coach where she has been met -- and promptly abandoned -- by her cousin Lescaut for dumping off to a convent. (We're going to hear a fuller version of this scene later.)

A few weeks ago I began poking around The Story of the Chévalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut (the title of the novel by the Abbé Prévost which formed the basis for all the subsequent adaptations) as it was shaped by Jules Massenet for his operatic Manon. Then in Friday's preview we switched over to Puccini's later rendering, which he distinguished by calling it Manon Lescaut.

The last thing I'm interested in is seeing which opera is "better." They seem to me wonderfully complementary, a classic case of two great storytellers who tell the same story, which comes out somewhat different because of their different sensibilities, emphases, and audiences. And I think looking at both operas helps us focus on what makes the story of these doomed lovers so enduringly fascinating.

Let's start by going back to the beginnings of both operas. We already heard the brief Prelude to Massenet's opera, but let's hear it again, first in a performance we already heard, then in one we didn't.

MASSENET: Manon: Prelude

New Philharmonia Orchestra, Julius Rudel, cond. ABC-DG, recorded July 1970

Orchestra of the Capitole de Toulouse, Michel Plasson, cond. EMI, recorded July 1982

Massenet's curtain rises on a "genre" scene at the inn in Amiens where Manon and des Grieux are going to meet. Puccini begins his opera with a similar sort of scene, focused on the male students at the inn flirting with the young ladies.

NOW FOR PUCCINI'S OPENING --

"The (Hi)story of the Chévalier des Grieux and of Manon"

MASSENET: Manon: Prelude to Act II

New Phliharmonia Orchestra, Julius Rudel, cond. ABC-EMI-DG, recorded July 1970

by Ken

This isn't an excerpt you're apt to hear often outside the context of the opera (it's not meant to stand alone, of course), but I've plunked it in here, not just because it's such a lovely two minutes' worth of music, but because it directly follows the chunk of duet we heard between Manon and the Chévalier des Grieux in Friday night's preview, when they declared so joyfully that they would live in Paris, tous les deux, tous les deux. Because as Act II begins, they are indeed living in Paris, tous les deux, and for this while at least, they're blissfully happy.

Without worrying about dramatic context for a moment, let's jump to later in the act, near the end, in fact, and hear des Grieux share with Manon a dream he's had -- one of the most celebrated and beautiful specimens of the lyric-tenor repertory, often known simply as "The Dream." (Not to worry, in the click-through we're going to hear it in proper dramatic context.)

Manon: Act II, Recitative and aria, des Grieux, "Instant charmant, où la crainte fait trêve" ("Enchanting moment, where fear is dispelled") . . . "En fermant les yeux ("On closing my eyes")

DES GRIEUX: Enchanting moment, where fear is dispelled,
where we are just the two of us.
Listen, Manon, while walking
I just had a dream.

On closing my eyes, I see
in the distance a humble retreat,
a little house,
all white, in the depths of the woods.
In its tranquil shadows
clear and joyous streams,
in which leaves are reflected,
sing with the birds.
It's Paradise. Oh, no!
Everything there is sad and morose,
for there's one thing lacking there.
Still needed there is Manon!
Our life will be there,
if you wish it, o Manon!

Jussi Bjoerling, tenor; orchestra, Donald Voorhees, cond. NBC Radio concert, Jan. 8, 1951

Léopold Simoneau, tenor; Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Paul Strauss, cond. DG, recorded 1953

[in Italian] Beniamino Gigli, tenor; orchestra, John Barbirolli, cond. Live performance, London, June 26, 1931

In good time the story of Manon and des Grieux (as told originally by the ex-Benedictine Abbé Prévost in his 1731 novel L'Histoire du Chévalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, bearing in mind that the French histoire conveniently means both "story" and "history") will turn not just wrong but horribly, disastrously wrong. For this week, though, I want to focus on what's right about the relationship, from the standpoints of both participants, as I'll explain in a moment.


BACK IN ACT I, ENTER MANON

Preview: "We'll live in Paris, together" -- a mystery theme and a mystery duet-fragment

Or, more properly, Andante sostenuto:

by Ken

For tonight's preview, we have a mystery theme, above, and a mystery duet-fragment, below. Before we proceed to it, though, I thought we might hear a somewhat fuller setting of our above theme -- starting a bit earlier in the piece and continuing on a bit longer, though still not quite to the end. We'll hear the whole thing (a whopping four minutes at its most drawn-out), properly identified, in the click-through. I think this is some of the most beautiful and moving music ever written, and its source is a piece that has a somewhat grudging place in the standard repertory but for a number of reasons doesn't get the respect I think it deserves.




NOW LET'S HAVE OUR DUET-FRAGMENT

We'll have these same performances, properly identified, in the click-throughd, so if you're not interested in hearing them blind, as it were, you can skip straight to there.

"Nous vivrons à Paris, tous les deux!"
("We'll live in Paris, together!")

HIM: We'll live in Paris . . .
HER: Together!
HIM: . . . together, and our loving hearts . . .
HER: In Paris!
HIM: . . . bound to one another . . .
HER: In Paris!
HIM: . . . for ever reunited . . .
HER [together]: We'll have only blessed days!
HIM [together]: . . . there we'll live only blessed days!
TOGETHER: In Paris! In Paris, together!
We'll live in Paris! Together!
HIM [approaching HER tenderly; soulfully]: And my name will become yours!
[then coming back to himself; half-spoken] Ah, pardon!
HER: In my eyes you must see well
that I am not angry with you.
And yet, it's wrong!
HIM: Come! We'll live in Paris . . .
HER: Together! &c.

[A]

[B]

[C]

[D]



FOR OUR COMPLETE MYSTERY PIECE, AND
DULY IDENTIFIED VERSIONS OF OUR DUET --