Opera Books
THE OPERA
EDITED BY
ALBERT HILLERY BERGH
VOLUME II.
1909
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Berlioz.
Hector Berlioz is one of the most difficult of all
musicians to discuss fairly. He appeals to us on many counts—as a
musician pure and simple, as a revolutionary, and as a man of letters.
We may like him or dislike him, but we cannot ignore him. No man has
left his mark more enduringly upon the history of music. Orchestral
music, as we now know it, can be said almost without exaggeration to be
his creation. Tschaikowski and all the modern masters of orchestral
expression are in a sense his children. It is true, perhaps, that his
own musical achievements are not destined for immortality. His interests
were too varied, his range of sympathy was too wide, for him to succeed
as a pure musician. He tried to make music do too much, but in the
effort—whether we write it down a failure or not—he opened new worlds to
the ken of man, worlds which have proved a goodly heritage to those .who
came after him.
The incidents of Berlioz’s career and the various influences with
which he came into contact affected his music profoundly, and in
considering his works it is necessary to bear in mind his environment
more than in the case of any other great musician. There was little in
his upbringing that tended to foster his musical genius; in fact, few
musicians found more difficulty in
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reaching the goal of their desires. He was born on the 11th of December,
1803, at La Côte St. André, near Grenoble. His father was a country
doctor, who intended that his son should follow his own profession. As a
boy, Berlioz was allowed to amuse himself with music, but he had no
regular musical education, and when he went to Paris in 1822 to study at
the School of Medicine, his musical attainments embraced only a moderate
knowledge of the flageolet and a smattering of harmony picked up from
Catel’s standard work on the subject. Paris soon showed him in what
direction his real career lay. The dissecting-room disgusted him, and
the library of the Conservatoire opened a haven of refuge. His
determination to relinquish the study of’ medicine entailed a rupture
with his parents, but admission to the Conservatoire and lessons from
Lesueur consoled him, though for many years he had a hard struggle for
existence, and had to support himself by singing in the chorus of one of
the minor theatres.
At the Conservatoire, too, his revolutionary views upon music made
him enemies, of whom the most bitter and relentless was the director,
Cherubini. However, he never lost heart, and he was rewarded in 1830 by
winning the Prix de Rome. He had already written a good deal of music,
most of it drawn from the literary sources which were to exercise so
powerful an influence upon him throughout his career. Shakespeare had
given him the Fantasia on The Tempest, Goethe the Eight Scenes
from Faust, Scott the Waverley overture, while though the
extraordinary Symphonie Fantastique was’ ostensibly a nightmare
of his
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own devising, it was, as a matter of fact, a musical exposition of the
popular Byronism of the day—an attitude of mind which is reflected in
much of Berlioz’s music with singular fidelity. Berlioz was not happy in
Italy, and after eighteen months at Rome he obtained leave to return.
How far his own marvellous description of that return is to be accepted
as true may be left to the taste and fancy of the reader. The important
point is that his Italian trip resulted in more music, of which the
King Lear and Corsair overtures—further tributes to
Shakespeare and Byron—formed the chief part.
Berlioz was fated to carry his literary predilections into private
life with lamentable results. In Henrietta Smithson, an Irish actress
who played in Paris with Kemble, he found an embodiment of Shakespeare’s
heroines. He married his Ophelia in 1833— for the strange tale of his
courtship the reader may be referred to the composer’s autobiography—but
the union was not a happy one. Berlioz’s music was not popular, and in
order to keep the wolf from the door he was forced to take to musical
journalism, a task which his soul abhorred. He used to complain that
feuilleton-writing left him no time for composition, but as a matter of
fact his journalistic period was singularly fruitful in music. Between
the years 1833 and 1840 he produced some of his most important works,
including the Requiem, Harold en Italie, Symponie Funèbre et
Triomphale, Roméo et Juliette, and the opera Benvenuto Cellini.
In 1838 came a welcome present of 20,000 francs, conveyed to him by
the hand of Paganini, but now
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said to have been the gift of M. Bertin, the proprietor of the
Journal des Débats, the newspaper for which Berlioz principally
wrote. This relieved him for the time from the bonds of journalism, and
enabled him to visit Germany, where his music was far better known and
more justly appreciated than in France. His German tour was the
beginning of a series of foreign triumphs, but no news of his successes
abroad could convince his compatriots that they had a great composer in
their midst. In 1847 he paid the first of a series of visits to London,
having been engaged by Jullien to conduct an opera season at Covent
Garden. Both on this occasion and when he came later the man and his
music were popular in England.
His Benvenuto Cellini failed at Covent Garden in 1853,
largely, as Berlioz himself believed and declared, owing to a cabal
organized by Costa, who was jealous of French conductors and composers;
but his Roméo et Juliette and other works, performed during his
conductorship of the New Philharmonic Society in 1852 and 1855, pleased
press and public alike. In Paris he never won genuine popularity during
his lifetime. The great works of his later years, La Damnation de
Faust, the Te Deum and Les Troyens, received but
scanty recognition, and the official honors that at length were decreed
to him—his election to the Académie de Beaux Arts, and his appointment
to the post of librarian at his old Alma Mater, the Conservatoire—came
too late to heal the wounds dealt by a lifetime of neglect. Berlioz died
in 1869, a soured and disappointed man, unable for his peace of mind to
foresee the influence that his music was to exercise upon the
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development of his art and the place that he himself was destined to
occupy in the affections of his fellow-countrymen.
The secret at once of Berlioz’s weakness and of his strength lies
in the essence of his own genius—he was as much a poet as a musician.
His imagination was literary rather than musical. He did not conceive in
terms of music but in terms of literature, and afterwards translated his
conception into the language of-sound. This does not affect the value of
his work in the extension of musical form and in orchestral technique,
but it seriously affects the value of his own productions. It is this
that gives Berlioz’s orchestral music what might be called its
experimental character. He does not give the impression of recording
emotion in music as Beethoven and Schubert do; he is always trying to
find the right musical equivalent for ideas that presented themselves to
his mind in a different medium.
This is by no means the same thing as saying that Berlioz worked
from a poetic basis. A poetic basis can generate musical ideas, as in
Weber’s Concertstück, which was written while Berlioz was still
slaving among his gallipots at La Côte St. André, but in Berlioz’s case
it generated literary ideas, and between the two lies a world of
difference. The difference between Weber and Berlioz in this respect is
just the difference between good and bad art, between a man working in
a’ medium that he fully understands and one struggling with forces that
he has not properly learned to master. Weber, for all his poetic basis,
is never anything but a musician. His ideas come to him in a musical
form,
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and he develops them in a musical way. Berlioz, striving to put his
literary ideas into a musical form, is continually outraging music,
neglecting her limitations and forcing her to express things that by her
nature she cannot express. The contrast between the two embodies the
whole squabble about programme music.
Some writers on music still continue to affirm that music cannot
express definite emotions, and quote the works of Berlioz as an
instance. Had Berlioz contented himself with making music express
definite emotions, his works would have been a triumphant refutation of
this absurd proposition. It was because he tried to make music express
physical facts that he failed. Hadow, in his article on Berlioz in the
new edition of Grove’s Dictionary, says naïvely: “It is as idle to
inquire the meaning of a composition as to inquire the meaning of a
sunset.” Why should a musical composition, the work of human imagination
and industry, be compared to a natural phenomenon? The two have nothing
in common. Music may often have a definite meaning into which it is
perfectly legitimate to inquire; but music, like all other arts, has
limitations. Its province is to depict emotions, not to record facts. It
was because Berlioz, with his poet’s imagination, did not recognize
these limitations, which a true musician instinctively feels, that so
much of his orchestral music must be written down a failure. But even in
his failure he accomplished great things. He brought new elements into
music and gave her new resources. He was a true child of the romantic
renascence, a scorner of boundaries and a leaper over
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the fences of tradition. If some of his experiments recoiled upon his
own head, others bore lasting fruit in the subsequent history of music.
To call him the creator of programme music is absurd. Programme
music there had been before him in many senses. In one sense, all music
is programme music, since music that is worthy of the name must almost
of necessity be an expression of feeling, or at any rate of a mood,
however vague and indeterminate that feeling or that mood may be. In a
narrower sense Beethoven’s symphonies may be called programme music,
being unquestionably records of definite personal emotions, even when
not, as in the case of the Pastoral symphony, actually descriptive. Nor
can the name of programme music be denied to the Coriolan
overture, in which Beethoven, putting personal emotion aside, describes
in music the heroic character of the great Roman. But it is a long step
from Beethoven to Berlioz—from the Coriolan overture to the
Symphonie Fantastique. What Berlioz did that was new was to take a
definite poetic narrative and translate it into the language of sound,
following the development of the story step by step, as though he were
writing a poem or painting a picture. Even this, as we know, had been
attempted by Weber, but Berlioz carried the idea much further, using
infinitely more elaborate technique, though, as has been already said,
his musical taste was not unerring enough to carry him over the
difficulties that beset the pioneer.
But though Berlioz’s own works are marred by grave defects, and do
not appear to have in them the seeds of immortality, his influence upon
those who came
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after him can hardly be overestimated, lie enlarged the boundaries of
musical form, he opened new vistas of expression to the world. Not
merely by his sublime disregard of tradition and by his restless search
for new means of expression is he the herald of the revolution in music
that the nineteenth century witnessed, but his extraordinary mastery of
the orchestra practically revolutionized the whole system of
instrumental music. Berlioz handled the orchestra as nobody had handled
it before his day. He is the first of the great colorists, indeed to him
color was at least as important as design. He knew ‘every secret of
instrumental effect, wielding his orchestra as a painter wields his
brush and palette.
His famous Traité de l’Orchestration marks an epoch in the
history of music. The book is like a romance. To Berlioz’s eye the
orchestra was a land of fairies peopled with beings whom his magic touch
could call into life, lie talks of musical instruments almost as if they
were alive, dilating upon the special qualities of each and its capacity
for expressing certain shades of emotion with a’ knowledge and sympathy
that seem to have been born in him. Berlioz has often been compared to
Victor lingo, another child of the romantic movement. What Victor lingo
did for poetry Berlioz did for music; the verbal magic of the one, his
delight in the sheer beauty of words, and his power of drawing sudden
loveliness from their combined harmonies, recalls the marvelous
orchestral touch of the other and his rapture in the mere glory of
orchestral color. But Berlioz was not the accomplished artist that Hugo
was, and we find him too often playing his
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delightful tricks with the orchestra to the detriment of the musical
effect of the work he had in hand, while Hugo’s magical power over words
is but rarely used save in subservience to the design of a poem.
The essential qualities of Berlioz’s genius made it only natural
that his best work should be found in his vocal compositions. There are
marvellous things in the Symphonie Fantastique and Harold en
Italie. The unmistakable seal of genius is upon them, but neither is
satisfactory as a whole. Apart from the hopelessness’ of the task which
Berlioz set himself in attempting to put into music things essentially
unmusical, the attitude of mind betrayed in both works is fundamentally
insincere. Berlioz is himself, of course, the hero of both works, but is
it the real Berlioz we find there? Is it not rather Berlioz as he wished
to appear to the world, Berlioz seen through very Byronic spectacles
indeed? Berlioz in the guise of the Pilgrim of Eternity, the melancholy
youth who has drunk of all fountains and is satisfied with none, seemed
no doubt an impressive figure to the man himself; but it is considerably
less impressive to us, who, in music as well as in literature, find the
Byronic pose of the thirties the most insufferable thing in the world.
Even in his Roméo et Juliette, that strange and unsatisfactory
compound of symphony, cantata and opera, the Byronic Berlioz is still
with us. Berlioz was an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, and had
saturated himself with Shakespeare’s plays; but in his Romeo there is a
great deal more of Byron than of Shakespeare. Berlioz’s love-music is
nearly always
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maudlin, and the love-scene in Roméo et Juliette has not a
suggestion of the virile passion of Shakespeare.
To say that Berlioz’s music is best when it is least subjective is
almost the same thing as saying that he was a great artist but not a
great man—and this is perhaps the truth about him put as briefly as
possible. Berlioz’s personality, to be perfectly frank, is not engaging.
It is possible to sympathize with his trials and disappointments—and he
had many—without feeling any overmastering admiration for the man
himself. Berlioz was really something very much more than a querulous
poseur, but often it becomes necessary to remind oneself of the
fact. He was naturally self-conscious, and his self-consciousness was
increased by his lifelong struggle to win recognition from the world in
which he lived. He was emphatically not one of those men to whom art is
enough. Success was the breath of life to him, and he fought for it with
all his strength. His constant endeavor to impress the world with a
sense of his greatness undoubtedly affected his music. It led him into
extravagances and sensationalism, which possibly in his later days he
may have deplored.
A man of this type is found at his best in works which lead him
away from himself, and thus we find Berlioz’s strongest and finest music
not in those works such as the Symphonie Fantastique and
Harold en Italie, in which, roughly speaking, he is writing about
himself, but in his Te Deum, his Requiem, and his
Damnation de Faust, in which a fine subject appeals to his
imagination, and takes him into a new world of thought and emotion. In
his two great ecclesiastical
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works we have him at his best. Berlioz worked best with a vast canvas
and a broad scheme of color. The Te Deum and Requiem are
colossal in conception, and carried out with splendid mastery of detail.
There is a primitive grandeur about this music of his which has rarely
been reached by other composers.
Heine said of Berlioz: “He makes me think of vast mammoths and
other extinct animals, of fabulous empires filled with fabulous crimes,
and other enormous possibilities”—a happy description of the dim, cloudy
grandeur of such splendid achievements of musical imagination as, for
instance, the Judex crederis, a conception of the Last Judgment
which may well be ranked with that of Michael Angelo. In the
Damnation de Faust the scheme is less grandiose, but the color is
richer and more varied, and the emotion more poignant and searching.
Berlioz sent the kernel of his work—the eight scenes from Faust,
which he wrote in 1828—to Goethe, but the offering was never
acknowledged. Probably the sedulous Zelter, whose life was devoted to
keeping all other musicians outside the Olympian circle, intercepted it,
or at any rate prevented Goethe from studying it. Whether Goethe would
have approved of it as an interpretation of his own poem may be doubted,
but he would have appreciated the earnestness of the musician.
The Faust of Berlioz is a very different person from
Goethe’s, and the work as a whole is somewhat unsatisfactory, being too
dramatic in style for the concert room and not dramatic enough for the
stage, as recent attempts to play it as an opera have conclusively
proved; but Berlioz put his best and most
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living work into it, and if not altogether successful as a transcription
of Goethe’s Faust, it is unquestionably the finest piece of music
inspired by the poem that has been given to the world as yet. Berlioz’s
operas show as plainly as does his Faust that he had not the
dramatic gift. His Les Troyens has many noble pages, often
showing unmistakable traces of the enthusiasm for Gluck that was one of
Berlioz’s earliest and moat lasting emotions, but the atmosphere of the
work is epic rather than dramatic, and on the stage Les Troyens
leaves the spectator cold.
Of all great composers—and in many senses the title cannot be
denied to Berlioz—few have left behind them less music that can
sincerely be called great, and as time goes on it is probable that
Berlioz will figure less and less actively as a direct influence in
music. An indirect influence he must always be. The man who gave us the
modern ‘orchestra and showed us how to use it must always be a
historical figure of supreme interest, even when, as Wagner aptly said,
the musician in him is buried beneath the ruins of his own machines.
Opera in three acts by Hector Berlioz. Libretto by
de Wailly and Barbier. German text by Peter Cornelius.
Characters: Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine goldsmith; Giacomo
Balducci, the Papal treasurer; Fieramosca; Cardinal Salviati; Francesco,
Bernadino, Cellini’s head-workmen; Pompeo, a bravo; an innkeeper;
Teresa, daughter of Balducci; Ascanio, pupil
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of Cellini; personages of the Pantomine; the counterfeit Treasurer;
Harlequin; Punchinello; Columbine; two fighters; servants and neighbors
of Balducci, metal workers, founders, maskers, Roman archers, monks,
members of the Cardinal’s suite, people.
Place, Rome. Time, Sixteenth Century. First produced at Paris in
1838.
The events of this opera are supposed to have occurred in the year
1532, under Pope Clement VII, during three days, Monday before
Shrove-tide, Shrove-Tuesday and Ash-Wednesday. Benvenuto Cellini, the
Tuscan goldsmith, has been called to Rome by the Pope, in order to
embellish the city with his masterpieces. He loves Teresa, the daughter
of the old papal treasurer, Balducci, and the love is mutual. At the
same time another suitor, Fieramosca, the Pope’s sculptor, is favored by
her father. Old Balducci grumbles in the first scene at the Pope’s
predilection for Cellini, declaring that such an excellent sculptor as
Fieramosca ought to suffice. He goes for a walk, and Cellini finds
Teresa alone. To save her from Fieramosca he plans an elopement,
selecting the close of the Carnival as the time best suited for carrying
out their design. The rendezvous is to be the Piazza di Colonna, where
he will wait for her, disguised as a monk in white, accompanied by a
Capuchin, his pupil Ascanio.
Unhappily the rival, Fieramosca, has entered unseen, and has
overheard all. While the lovers are bidding each other farewell Balducci
returns, and Cellini has scarcely time to hide behind the window-curtain
before he enters. The father is surprised to find his daughter
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still up, and Teresa, seeking for an excuse to send him away, feigns to
be frightened by a thief in her chamber. There Balducci finds the
hapless Fiermosca hidden and Cellini meanwhile escapes. Balducci and his
daughter calling for help, all the female servants and women of the
neighborhood appear armed with brooms and wooden spoons. They fall upon
the hapless lover and finally force him to escape through a window.
In the second act we find Cellini in a tavern with his pupils and
friends. They have no money left to pay for their wine, when Ascanio
brings gold from the Pope, which, however, he only delivers after
Cellini has given a solemn promise to finish at once the statue of
Perseus he is engaged upon. Great is the general wrath when they find
the money consists of but a paltry sum, and they resolve to avenge
themselves on the avaricious treasurer, Balducci, by impersonating him
in the theatre. Fieramosca, who has again been eavesdropping, turns for
help to his friend Pompeo, a bravo. They decide to outwit Cellini by
adopting the same costumes as he and his pupil.
The scene changes. We see the Piazza di Colonna and the theatre, in
which the pantomime of King Midas is acted. Balducci, who is there with
his daughter among the spectators, recognizes in the snoring King a
portrait of himself and furiously advances to grapple with the actor.
Cellini profits by the ensuing tumult to approach Teresa, but at the
same time Fieramosca comes up with Pompeo, and Teresa cannot discern
which is the true lover, owing to the masks worn by each. A fight ensues,
in which Cellini stabs Pompeo. He is arrested, and Teresa flies with the
Capuchin
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Ascanio to Cellini’s atelier. The enraged people are about to lynch the
murderer, when three cannon shots are fired, announcing that it is
Ash-Wednesday, the lights are extinguished and Cellini escapes in the
darkness.
The third act represents Cellini’s atelier with the workmen in it.
Teresa, not finding her lover, is in great distress. Ascanio consoles
her, and when the Miserere of the Penitents is heard, both join in a
prayer to the Holy Virgin.
Suddenly Cellini rushes in, and, embracing Teresa, relates that he
fled the night before into a house. A procession of penitent monks
passing by in the morning, he joined them, as their white cowls were
similar to his own disguise. He decides to escape at once to Florence
with Teresa, but is already pursued by Balducci, who appears with
Fieramosca, and insists on his daughter returning to marry the latter.
At this moment the Cardinal Salviati steps in to look for the statue. He
is highly indignant that Cellini, thoughtless, like most artists,, has
not kept his promise. Moreover, hearing him accused by Balducci, he
threatens severe punishment, and finally declares that Perseus shall be
cast by another. Cellini, in the pride of genius, and full of rage,
seizes a hammer, and, surrounded by his workmen, declares that he will
destroy his work rather than see it finished by another.
The Cardinal, fearful of losing the statue, changes his tactics,
and, in compliance with Cellini’s request, promises him full pardon and
Teresa’s hand, if he will finish Perseus in an hour’s time as Cellini
offers to do.
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he fail in his gigantic task, his life will be forfeited.
All set to work at once. At the Cardinal’s request, even Fieramosca
assists. More and more metal is demanded, and Cellini sacrifices all his
masterpieces in gold and silver. At last the casting is completed,
Cellini breaks the mould and the statue of Persens shines faultlessly
forth, a glorious work of art, bringing immortality to its maker. All
present bow before the greatness of genius, and Fieramosca, the rival in
art and love, is the first to embrace Cellini, who obtains full pardon
and the hand of Teresa, accompanied by her father’s blessing.
Opera in four parts by Hector Berlioz. Libretto
founded upon Goethe’s Faust, and adapted by Berlioz, Gérard and
Gadonnière.
Characters: Faust; Mephistopheles; Brander; Marguerite; soldiers
and students, angels and demons, gnomes, sylphs, men and women.
Place, Hungary and Northern Germany. Time, Seventeenth Century.
First produced at Paris in 1846.
The first part opens with Faust wandering on the plains of Hungary,
and meditating upon the approaching spring. Peasants are heard dancing
and singing in the distance, which renders Faust sorrowful. The
Hungarian troops march by, leaving him to melancholy soliloquy.
In the second part the scene changes to Faust’s laboratory, in a
city in the north of Germany. He is
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eager for knowledge, yet tired of life, lie resolves to destroy himself,
and raises a cup of poison to his lips. At this moment Mephistopheles
appears, and promises to take him where he will enjoy all the pleasures
of life. Faust consents to go, and they disappear into the air.
Anerbach’s cellar in Leipzig is the next scene. Brander, surrounded
by students, burgesses and soldiers, sings a drinking song, which is
followed by one from Mephistopheles. Faust is disgusted by the brutality
and vileness of the drinking-cellar, and Mephistopheles carries him off
again, through the air, on the mantle of Faust.
The fourth scene of this part of the opera is on the banks of the
Elk, where the travelers are greeted by a chorus of gnomes and sylphs.
Sleeping, Faust dreams of Marguerite, and is promised that she shall be
his. Mephistopheles now invites Faust to accompany him to the cottage of
Marguerite, and the part ends with a chorus of passing soldiers and
students.
The third part opens in the chamber of Marguerite. Faust and
Mephistopheles enter, and, concealing Faust in the curtains of
Marguerite’s bed, the demon leaves him alone. Marguerite enters, a lamp
in her hand. She thinks of Faust, whom she has seen and spoken to in a
vision, and she wonders if her dream will return. While braiding her
hair she sings a ballad, and then sighs deeply. The scene here changes
abruptly to the square outside Marguerite’s home. Mephistopheles invokes
the spirits of fire, who come at his summons, and dance a weird minuet
around the house. The scene returns to the chamber of Marguerite.
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She has suddenly discovered Faust, and is overcome with astonishment.
Faust passionately woos her, but Marguerite, doubting, resists him.
Mephistopheles suddenly enters, to warn the maiden that the neighbors
have taken alarm and are coming to call on Marguerite and warn her
mother. Faust hurriedly leaves with Mephistopheles by a side-gate of the
garden, after Marguerite has confessed her love for him, and has agreed
to meet him on the next day.
The first scene of the fourth part again opens in Marguerite’s
chamber, where she sits singing of her love. Drums and trumpets sound
the retreat for the soldiers, and the chorus of men is heard behind the
scene. Marguerite recalls that it was on such a night that she first
learned to love Faust, and she mourns because he has deserted her.
The next scene is laid in a sombre forest full of caverns. Faust
meditates upon nature, and describes the sufferings caused by his stormy
emotions. Mephistopheles appears and taunts him with his inconstancy to
Marguerite. He informs him that she is languishing in a dungeon on
account of Faust, and the latter is penitent and indignant, He declares
that Mephistopheles must save her. Mephistopheles consents to do so upon
condition that Faust will sign a parchment which he presents to him.
Faust signs the proffered document without reading it, and begs to be
conducted to the cell where his mistress is confined. Mephistopheles and
Faust depart on the magic black horses of the demon. As they ride
swiftly through the open country in the night, they pass a crowd of
kneeling peasants, which disperses with frightened
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cries. Faust believes that the hosts of bell are pursuing them.
Mephistopheles, slackening speed, declares that he hears the passing
bell tolling for Marguerite, and inquires of Faust if he is afraid to go
on. Faust cries out that he is not, and they urge on their horses. Faust
is again overtaken with terror of the shapes that pursue them, while
Mephistopheles shouts in a voice of thunder, “His soul is mine… for
evermore!” and with cries of horror from Faust they fall into the abyss
which has opened before them.
In the last scene Faust is delivered to the flames of hell. The
princes of darkness ask Mephistopheles if he has truly conquered the
proud soul of the doctor, and the demon replies that Faust has signed
away his soul of his own free will, and that it is enslaved forever. The
curtain falls on infernal orgies and the triumph of Mephistopheles.
In the epilogue to this opera the scene is laid first on earth, and
then in heaven. Voices are heard declaring that there was heard out of
hell only the seething of the lakes of fire and the gnashing of the
teeth of the damned, while in the depths profound was wrought an awful
deed.
Then the voices of seraphim are heard, lauding God, and pleading
for the reception of a contrite soul. A voice from the highest heaven
calls her name, and the opera ends with the apotheosis of Marguerite,
saved by her faith and hope, and called by the heavenly choir to the
courts of the blest.
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Opera in two parts by Hector Berlioz. Libretto by the composer.
Part I. The Conquest of Troy. Opera in three acts.
Characters: Priam, King of Troy; Cassandra, his
daughter; Polyxena; Hector’s spirit; Andromache; Astyanax; Aeneas;
Ascanius; Pantheus; Choroëbus.
Place, before and in Troy. Time, the heroic age. First produced at
Paris in 1863.
The first act shows the camp of the Greeks before the gates of
Troy. No Greek warriors are to be seen, as they are concealed within a
huge wooden horse, which the Trojans, who have come beyond their gates
to plunder the camp, discover and gaze at with interest and curiosity.
The Trojan prophetess, Cassandra, daughter of the King, predicts that
the wooden horse forebodes misfortune, and she tries in vain to persuade
her betrothed, Choroëbus, to escape the impending doom.
In the second act, the Trojans, while engaged in their sports, hear
of the death of Laocoön, who had insulted Pallas. They think they can
atone for his act by bringing the wooden horse into the city. Cassandra
again warns the Trojans, but in vain. When the wooden horse is within
the gates of Troy, the Greek warriors rush out of it and devastate the
city. Aeneas, who has been warned by the spirit of Hector of the
impending fall of Troy, and has been directed by Hector’s spirit to
found a new kingdom in Italy, leads the Trojan forces in the ensuing
conflict with the Greeks.
{115}
The death of Choroëbus is being announced by Gas. sandra to the
priestesses in the sanctuary of Vesta, when the Greeks enter, but fail
to capture the vestals, as all prefer death to bondage.
Part II. The Trojans in Carthage. Opera in five acts.
Characters: Dido, Queen of Carthage; Anna; Aeneas;
Ascanius; Pantheus; Narbal; Jarbas Hylas.
Place, Carthage. Time, after the Trojan War. First produced at
Paris in 1863.
The defeated Trojans follow Aeneas to Carthage, where they seek
shelter at Pido’s palace. Aeneas learns that Dido is about to be forced
to marry Jarbas, the Numidian King, who is approaching with his army.
Aeneas summons his companions to Dido’s assistance, and they conquer her
enemy. Dido receives Aeneas in state, and hears from him the story of
Troy. She falls in love with him, and for a time they are very happy.
But Mercury reminds Aeneas of his duty in Italy, and Karbal warns Dido
that he cannot remain in Carthage. While the lovers find shelter from a
storm in a grotto, they see the spirits of the woods, which are shown in
a panorama.
Aeneas finally listens to the spirits of the slain Trojans and
resists the power of Dido’s love. He breaks up the Trojan camp and the
ships set sail. Queen Dido, after vain attempts to detain him, resolves
to die, and orders the erection of a funeral pyre on the terrace by the
sea. Cursing Aeneas, she mounts the pyre, and after phophesying that
from her ashes an avenger shall arise (Hannibal), she stabs herself with
{116} the sword of Aeneas. She sees a
vision of the Roman Capitol with the inscription “Roma” on it, and then
expires with the word “Rome” upon her lips.
Last updated February 09, 2007