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Reviews — The New York Times
From the New York Times - January 20, 1910
`GRISELIDIS’ CHARMS
AT THE MANHATTAN
Massenet’s Mediaeval Opera Has
Picturesqueness, Imagina-
tion, and Poetic Feeling.
MARY GARDEN AS HEROINE
Gives Remarkable Interpretation of a
Shadowy and Unreal Character - Mr.
Huberdeau Vividly Portrays Devil.
Griselidis Miss Mary Garden
Fiamina Mme. WalterVilla
Bertrade Mme. Duchene
The Marquis M. Dufranne
Alain M. Dalmores
The Devil M. Huberdeau
The Prior M. Villa
Gondebaud M. Scott
Conductor - M. Henriquez de la Fuente.
In the unceasing stream of his operas he has more than once found it necessary to substitute for inspiration his practiced skill - a skill that is often that of a virtuosos in the construction of lyric drama. Yet there rarely fails to appear in even the most obviously carpentered of his operas something that is peculiarly and characteristically Massenet’s own - something in the melodic line, something in the harmonic treatment, or in the use of orchestral effect; and there is that in this work. It is individual and at the same time typical. There is something peculiarly Gallic that underlies all this work of his, and that makes its appeal as such. Romain Rolland in one of his “Jean Christophe” volumes, remark on “the Massenet that slumbers in all French hearts,” and that he hears awakening at moments even in “Pelléas et Mélisande.”
Nobody ever roamed further or experimented more widely in various fields of operatic art than Massenet. He has tried almost every style of subject. For a short time he was evidently tempted by the simplicity and naivet‚ that are offered by the Middle Ages. Of this fact “Le Jongleur de Notre Dame” and “Grisélidis” are the results. “Le Jongleur,” it will be remembered, is called a “miracle play,” one of the oldest mediaeval forms of dramatic art. Cognate with it, and similar in its purpose, was the “Mystery” that Armand Sylverter and Eugene Morand produced at the Com‚die Française in 1891.
In this play the author gave a very free and much changed version of a legend that has had a place in European literatures since the eleventh century, that of “Patient Grisel.” It is one of the stories that Boccaccio tells in the “Decameron.” Petrarch translated it into Latin. From him Chaucer took it, and made it into the Clerk of Oxenford’s narrative in his “Canterbury Tales.” There were other English forms of the tale of Grisel, and Thomas Dekker made a play of it at the end of the sixteenth century, as did other dramatists. And of course innumerable operatic composers fastened upon the subject as Alessandro Scarlatti, Bononcini, Porpora, Vivaldi, Piccinni; others more modern, as Paer and Federico Ricci.
The French adapters were limited by no scruples in their appropriation of the pathetic tale of Grisélidis, who, as the elder poets related it, was submitted to innumerable cruel trials of her fidelity by a pitiless husband. These trials rouse Chaucer’s indignation, who refers to them, very justly, as “wicked usage.” The trials of this new Grisélidis are supplied by the Devil himself, who appears in person and occupies, indeed, a leading rôle in the dramatic events. The motive of the story is, of course, wholly transformed into one that, so far as appears, is a loving and gentle spouse, and all turns upon the machinations of an Evil One and his wife.
There is a loving swain, Alain, of a station as humble as her own, whose love is disappointed by Grisélidis’s immediate acceptance of her lordly suitor, and who appears later as one of the Devil’s instruments in her temptations. The old story serves the new form in so far as one of Grisélidis’s trials is the appearance of another woman to take her place as her lord’s wife, and another is the abduction of her little boy. But both of these are the diabolical doings of the Evil One rather than the wicked usage of the Marquis. The newer form is doubtless more palatable to a modern taste than the old, for in that it is almost as difficult to sympathize with Grisélidis’s completeness of wifely self-abnegation as with her lord’s requirement of it.
Grisélidis herself departs widely from the type of Massenet’s women of French grace, seductiveness, and exalted passion whom he has presented in so many different guises. In her delicacy, grace, mystical quality are the predominating ones. The outline is vague; the character, except in a few instances, is not quickened with human impulses. Nor do we perceive unmistakably, from what the drama reveals to us, whether she really loves the Marquis, though she has much less reason for hating him, than her prototype in the ancient tale. Still less clearly, though he is drawn in broader lines, is the Marquis-husband defined as a personality. The protagonist of the drama is the Devil, a lively cheerful companionable person, instant in all ill doing; a little boisterously bourgeois. Upon him Massenet has expended his resources of musical characterization with more success than upon the others in the opera, and to a less degree upon the somewhat unmeaning figure of his wife.
There is in the music much of the vague arioso for the singing voices that is familiar especially in Massenet’s later operas; nor is matter of great musical moment often intrusted to the orchestra. Close watching may detect a few representative themes, but they do not at all make themselves felt as such, and they furnish very little that is developed into any firm orchestral fabric.
In the prologue Alain’s love song has an accent of uplifted joy, to which Mr. Dalmorès’s vigorous and spirited singing contributes much. There is a curious foreshadowing in this scene of the atmosphere and dreamlike doings that are presented to us in “Pelléas et Mélisande,” but it does not persist long. The bouffe element enters with the appearance of the Devil at the window of the castle, in the first act, to take up the departing husband’s challenge. The music is noisy, brawling, full of animation and sharp rhythm and accentuation, of comic effect in instrumentation. There follows a scene between the Marquis and Gris‚lidis, a scene of leave taking and of deep emotion, but the music is not deeply emotional, and it has, indeed, little more than some of Massenet’s honeyed formulas.
There is more vivacious diablerie in the second act, with its long introduction, and the characteristic air of the Devil, “Loin de sa Femme,” which Mr. Gilbert sang at one of the concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, full of sardonic irony.
The scene between the Devil and his wife that follows is of the same cast, the music is fantastical, of a headlong staccato character more picturesque than substantial. When Grisélidis enters she sings a sustained and mournful air, lamenting her lord’s absence - but how poor in real musical expressiveness!
More successful is the scene of the Devil’s deception of the unsuspecting wife, all too ready to obey what he induces her to believe are the commands of her absent husband. It is ingenious and full of movement, and at least the semblance of comic spirit. The Devil evokes his spirits, by whom her old lover, Alain, is brought to Grisélidis to tempt her faithfulness once more, and there is a passionate scene between the two; but it has more of the outward show of passion than of the real pith and movement.
So, too, in the last set, when the husband comes home and sees Grisélidis returning after she half yielded to the Devil’s last temptation; and in the scene between husband and wife, when the villainous machinations are cleared away and the two have revealed to each other their truth, unsullied, the music that should glow with warmth and exultation beats dull and noisily. Nor is the inevitable miracle at the end, when the triptych of the saints’ image is opened, revealing the lost child in her arms, illustrating by more than the seeming of sublimity in the music.
Indeed, it seems with all the skill with which the composer has wrought this work that he is continually preoccupied with his effects, calculating his arrangements and contrasts. The work has brilliancy, unquestionably; it has pages that charm, and has much to engage the eye and the ear; but musical interest is not sustained uninterruptedly.
Miss Mary Garden again discloses her remarkable versatility and skill as an operatic actress as Grisélidis. Here is a part that brings her back within measurable distance of Mélisande, her most notable achievement; a part that has something of the strange and shadowy, passionless unreality of Debussy’s and Maeterlinck’s heroine. Miss Garden gives it an indefinable grace, an aloofness, an exquisite delicacy of touch that are fascinating. It is unquestionably an individual interpretation of a character that might be much more robustly treated and still be within the lines in which the librettists and the musician have represented it. She composes it in her own conception with a most artistic skill, with unfailing consistency, and with a truly poetic imagination.
Her singing in it is not an unalloyed joy. The long and measured phrase of which much of her music consists are trying to her voice, and her delivery of the music is too often lacking in steadiness and beauty of tone. Yet it is an impersonation that must be put among her most admirable ones.
Mr. Huberdeau as the Devil presents a most admirable study; in it he reveals his powers and capacities as a lyric actor in a way that he has had no opportunity to do hitherto in New York. He fills it with an immense gusto and animation, with a grisly and sardonic humor that are not altogether those of the conventional operatic fiend, and he makes the character plausible. His excellent singing has before been admired, and he gives much of it in this part with an admirable and crisp enunciation. His makeup is exceedingly effective in the different guises in which he appears, and he realizes in his presentation of the part the importance that it must needs maintain in the opera.
As the Marquis Mr. Dufranne sings in admirable style in his most sonorous tones, and present an impressive figure, though it is not one that admits of much sharp definition in characterization. Mme. WalterVilla as Fiamina has much vivacity, but she is hardly on a level with her consort in the vividness and humor of her portrayal.
There is comparatively little for Mr. Dalmorès in the part of Alain, yet it is one that needs the noble singing and the romance and picturesqueness that he brings to it. Mme. Duchène and Messrs. Villa and Scott fill minor parts with varying degrees of acceptability.
The performance had been carefully prepared and was one of the most effective in its ensemble that has been seen at the Manhattan Opera House for a good while. The scenic settings were admirably designed, and some of them were of rare beauty, as the Provençal forest in the prologue, and the terrace and garden in the second act. These, and still more the representation of the oratory of the château might have been improved by a finer feeling for color. The effect of the spirits gathering at the behest of the master, with the electric illuminations all over their persons, was effective and uncanny.
Mr. de la Fuente conducted, and deserves the credit of an excellent performance - a performance that had many delicate musical touches, and that on the whole fairly represented the quality of Massenet’s score.
Last updated December 30, 2006