|
|
Bob’s
|
|
Reviews — The New York Times
From the New York Times - November 14, 1909
“Sapho,” Another of Massenet’s Productions, to be Given
for the First Time Here at the Manhattan.
“Werther” is not new to New York. It was brought out at the Metropolitan Opera House on April 20, 1894, in the supplementary season, when it had only one performance, in which Jean de Reszke, Mme. Eames, Sigrid Arnoldson, Mr. Martapoura, and Mr. Carbone took the chief parts. It was given once again in the season of 1896-7. So to the great majority of operagoers today in New York it is an unfamiliar work.
In the list of Massenet’s operas “Werther” comes after “Manon” in the date of its composition - it was finished in 1887 - although it had to wait five years for its first performance. Its subject did not attract the director of the Opera Comique in Paris at the time, Mr. Carvalho; it seemed too gloomy - it must be remembered that times have changed a good deal in Paris in twenty-five years. Massenet had to go to Vienna to obtain a performance of his work. It was given at the Imperial Opera there on Feb. 16, 1892, with Ernest Van Dyck and Mme. Renard in the two chief roles, and under the direction of Jahn. There its success was great and immediate, which caused Mr. Carvalho to see a great light and to mount the opera promptly in less than a year in Paris. It has been a constant item of the repertory there ever since, and it has been played in other opera houses in France and Germany. It is, in fact, one of the most successful of Massenet’s works; and it is a matter of some surprise that operatic managers have done so little with it in New York.
Goethe’s melancholy, romantic tale, “The Sorrows of Werther,” a work of subtle analysis of human emotion and motives, made a deep impression on its first appearance in 1774, especially in France. Napoleon is said to have read it seven times and took it with him in his Egyptian campaign. It was also a subject of a number of operatic versions by French and Italian composers, till Massenet’s was created. His libretto was made by three collaborators, Edouard Blau, Paul Milliet, and Georges Hartmann. Their task, as the task is of all dramatizers of novels, was to pick out certain scenes that should first give the chief moments of the action so far as it allows of dramatic representation; and secondly, to suggest what is possible of the characters and personalities. And it rarely fails to happen that the best remains behind in the book and cannot be translated to the stage.
The “action,” indeed, in Goethe’s novel is not the most important part of it; but it is necessary the part that the adapters have to make most important in their work. As they have presented it, Werther, in the first act, sees Charlotte “cutting bread and butter” for her little brothers and sisters, and falls in love with her. But Charlotte marries Albert. In the second act Werther returns, he has a sober interview with Charlotte, without reproaches, in which he discovers to her his abiding passion, and she sends him away for she finds she herself cannot forget him - but with permission to return. In the third act it is Christmas Day - the time she has set when he may come to her. She is still thinking of him and brooding over that forbidden love when he appears. There is a passionate and tearful scene, the first in which passion and tears have come into their operatic rights, and for a moment Charlotte finds herself in Werther’s arms. She is instantly mistress of herself again, however, and tells Werther he shall see her no more. He departs, borrowing Albert’s pistol. In the last act Werther lies mortally wounded by his own hand. Charlotte comes to him, asks his pardon, confesses her love, and as he dies falls senseless at his feet, as sounds of Christmas merrymaking are heard outside.
So it is in the opera; for operatic librettists and dramatists generally want something conclusive with which to end a drama. But in Goethe’s story Charlotte does nothing of the sort. She departs not at all from the proprieties of wifehood. As Thackeray puts it in his brief but pithy satire on “The Sorrows of Werther”:
Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting break and butter.
Goethe’s story, it is evident, offers little that can summon forth much of the hot-blooded emotion and amorous recklessness that modern operatic composers put into their music:
Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the wealth of Indies,
Would do nothing for to hurt her.
Massenet, however, has for once given up his mood of the mystical, the sensuous, the amorous, has left behind his predilection for brilliant and dazzling ensembles, with the touch of the Orient of which he is so fond. He has found in Werther a new realm of expression in which he has sought for quiet beauty, restraint in the use of color, and the picturing of mood.
***
Massenet’s “Sapho” is another affair, in which self-restraint and conventional proprieties are not put into prominence. Daudet’s novel of “Sapho” was published about twenty years ago. It has been deemed one of his most masterly studies. It is “dangerous,” as the French use that term in literature; but it treats its subject in the light of a warning. At least so he himself intended, and suggested when he dedicated the book “to my sons when they are twenty years old.”
Before the opera was made it had already been put on the stage as a play. As the opera is arranged (by Messrs. Henri Cain and Bernede) there is a certain suggestion of the motive of “La Traviata” in the opening scene, when the fancy of the demi-mondaine, Fanny Legrand, is seized by the half innocence and naivete of the young art student, Jean Gaussin at an artists’ masked ball. Her life with him, in which he remains ignorant of all she is and has been; their break after he discovers her infamy, his return to decency and civilization with his own family, and, finally, his yielding once more to her fascination and to her temporary recrudescence of passion for him, when she steals away knowing that she can no longer possess him, that every kiss will be followed by a word of regret for what he has given up - these are the incidents that the opera presents.
In this piece - not an opera, but a “lyric play,” according to the author’s designation - their can be but the merest glimpse of Daudet’s acute psychological study, and the brilliancy of his literary work. It was originally produced at the Opera Comique in 1897, with Mme. Calvé in the title role; and was probably in some measure at least intended to exploit her powers as a singing actress. Last season it was revived at the Opera Comique in January, for which revival Massenet added a new act. It is inserted between that in which Jean’s eyes are opened to the reality of Sapho’s past, and his return to his native village in Provence; and it represents the disillusioned lover’s discovery of his old letters kept by Sapho, and his repelling of her. It has been called the most powerful scene in the drama, and its omission from the opera a surprising lapse on the part of the librettists. In this revival Mme. Marguerite Carre played the part of Fanny legrand, Thomas Stalignac, remembered at the Metropolitan as an Italian tenor in Mr. Grau’s regime, that of Jean, and Jean Perier, the Pelleas of two seasons ago at the Manhattan, that of Caoudal, the sculptor.
Richard Aldrich.
Last updated December 29, 2006