Opera Books
THE OPERA
EDITED BY
ALBERT HILLERY BERGH
VOLUME IV.
1909
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De Lara.
Isidore de Lara was horn in London in 1860. His best known operas are The Light of Asia (1893); Amy Robsart (1894); Moina (1897); Messatine (1899), and Sanga (1906).
Opera by de Lara.
Libretto by Sylvestre and Morand.
Characters: iMiessaline, a Roman empress; Tyndaris; La Citharode;
Tsilla; Leoconce; Helicon, a gladiator, Harés, a singer, lovers of
Messaline; Myrtille; Olympias; Gallus; Myrrho; a Galley-slave; an
Alexandrine actor; a Poet; Loeno; a Water-seller; the Aedile; Romans,
women attendants and slaves.
Place, Rome. Time, 50 B. C. First produced at Monte Carlo in 1899.
First American production at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York,
1902.
Messaline, to gratify her depraved nature, draws Harés, a singer,
into her toils, and in company with him visits the slums of the city.
There she is rescued from a gang of roisterers by Helicon, a gladiator,
Messaline not knowing that he is the brother of Harés. The Roman
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empress discards the singer for the gladiator. Her love for him rises to
a height of which she has hitherto been incapable, yet through her
machinations the two brothers, devotedly attached to each other, and
each loving the empress unknown to the other, bring about their mutual
death. The curtain falls on a scene at the Circus Maximus, where, in his
final agonies, Harés clings with death-stiffened hand to the skirts of
the dissolute Messaline, who cowers in terror at the result of her
carnality.
Opera by de Lara.
Libretto adapted from an Italian story.
Characters: Sanga, a young workwoman; a Farmer; his Son; a Peasant
Girl.
Place, an Italian farm. Time, the present. First produced at Nice
in March, 1906.
Sanga deals
with the love of a farmer’s son for a young girl who works on the farm.
This girl, Sanga, is an outcast who has been sheltered by the family.
The boy’s father wishes him to marry another woman, and drives Sanga
away. She takes refuge in the mountains. A storm breaks over the valley,
which is flooded, and Sanga’s lover with his father and the fiancée
forced upon him take refuge on the farmhouse roof. Sanga comes with a
boat and takes her lover to safety, leaving the two others to perish.
The young man becomes indignant, and in a sudden burst of hatred against
the girl whom he had so passionately loved flings her into the water,
and in doing so is himself drowned.
Last updated April 19, 2007