Hélène (opera)
Encyclopedia
Hélène is a poème lyrique or opera
in one act by composer Camille Saint-Saëns
. It is the first opera for which Saint-Saëns wrote his own French
libretto
which is based on the classic story of Helen of Troy and Paris
from Greek mythology
. The opera premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo
in Monaco
on 18 February 1904. Moderately successful, the opera enjoyed a handful of revivals up through 1919, after which it fell out of the performance repertoire. The work was recently resurrected in 2008 for its first recording by the Australia
n music label Melba.
, which was led by enterprising director Raoul Gunsbourg
at that time. At its premiere, the opera was presented in conjunction with Jules Massenet
’s veristic La Navarraise
. The role of Helen was sung by acclaimed soprano Nellie Melba
who actually commissioned Saint-Saëns to write the opera specifically for her. The reviews of the premiere performance, though not stellar, were generally positive. The opera was subsequently revived at the Opéra-Comique
on the 18 January 1905 with Mary Garden
in the title role and in Monte Carlo again in 1909 and 1916. The Palais Garnier
staged the work for the first time on the 20 June 1919 with Marcelle Demougeot in the title role. After this production the opera fell into obscurity until the work was recorded for the first time in 2008 by the Belle Époque Chorus and the Orchestra Victoria
under conductor Guillaume Tourniaire.
Prior to composing Hélène, Saint-Saëns's had seen Offenbach
’s operetta on the same story, La belle Hélène
, which he criticized for its trivial portrayal of ancient Greece
and its "lax moral tone". Saint-Saëns's wrote his own text in highly poetic rhyming verse, and divided the plot into seven scenes. Some of the opera's more colourful episodes include the second scene where Helen, at the precipice of a large cliff, first implores Zeus to relieve her of her dilemma by striking her with thunderbolts and then contemplates suicide by throwing herself off the cliff into the sea and Pallas's prophecy which is full of gruesome bloody images of the coming Trojan war
. Critics such as Hugh Shirley have accused the work of being too sentimental, proposing that Saint-Saëns's deliberate desire to distance himself from the vogue of verismo
opera and the dramatic sensibilities of Richard Wagner
may have prevented him from any kind operatic psychoanalysis. The result, according to Shirley, is that while Saint-Saëns had intended to create a serious portrait of Helen of Troy, the music made it "sound at times like a parody of nineteenth-century sentimentality".
prince, comes to Sparta
to marry Helen, whom he had been promised by Venus
after he had chosen her
as the most beautiful of the goddesses, earning the wrath of Athena
and Hera
. Vénus tries to persuade Helen to abandon Menelaus
for love. Meanwhile, Pallas
warns Helen of the dreadful events that will ensue if she abandons Sparta for Troy. Helen heeds the words of Venus, not Pallas, and sets sail with Pâris in an ecstatic embrace.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
in one act by composer Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
. It is the first opera for which Saint-Saëns wrote his own French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
which is based on the classic story of Helen of Troy and Paris
Paris (mythology)
Paris , the son of Priam, king of Troy, appears in a number of Greek legends. Probably the best-known was his elopement with Helen, queen of Sparta, this being one of the immediate causes of the Trojan War...
from Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
. The opera premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo
Opéra de Monte-Carlo
The Opéra de Monte-Carlo is an opera house located in the principality of Monaco.With the lack of cultural diversions available in Monaco in the 1870s, Prince Charles III, along with the Société des Bains de Mer, decided on the construction of an opera house. Initially, it was Charles III's...
in Monaco
Monaco
Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
on 18 February 1904. Moderately successful, the opera enjoyed a handful of revivals up through 1919, after which it fell out of the performance repertoire. The work was recently resurrected in 2008 for its first recording by the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n music label Melba.
Performance history
Hélène is the first opera that Saint-Saëns composed for the opera house in Monte CarloMonte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....
, which was led by enterprising director Raoul Gunsbourg
Raoul Gunsbourg
Raoul Samuel Gunsbourg was a Jewish-Romania-born opera director, impresario, composer and writer...
at that time. At its premiere, the opera was presented in conjunction with Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
’s veristic La Navarraise
La Navarraise
La Navarraise is an opera in one act by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Jules Claretie and Henri Cain, based on Claretie's novel La Cigarette...
. The role of Helen was sung by acclaimed soprano Nellie Melba
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
who actually commissioned Saint-Saëns to write the opera specifically for her. The reviews of the premiere performance, though not stellar, were generally positive. The opera was subsequently revived at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
on the 18 January 1905 with Mary Garden
Mary Garden
Mary Garden , was a Scottish operatic soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century...
in the title role and in Monte Carlo again in 1909 and 1916. The Palais Garnier
Palais Garnier
The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...
staged the work for the first time on the 20 June 1919 with Marcelle Demougeot in the title role. After this production the opera fell into obscurity until the work was recorded for the first time in 2008 by the Belle Époque Chorus and the Orchestra Victoria
Orchestra Victoria
Orchestra Victoria is an orchestra based in Victoria, Australia. In addition to its own concert and education events, it is the performance partner of the following major performing arts companies: The Australian Ballet, Opera Australia and Victorian Opera...
under conductor Guillaume Tourniaire.
Textual and musical analysis
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
’s operetta on the same story, La belle Hélène
La belle Hélène
La belle Hélène , opéra bouffe in three acts, is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy...
, which he criticized for its trivial portrayal of ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and its "lax moral tone". Saint-Saëns's wrote his own text in highly poetic rhyming verse, and divided the plot into seven scenes. Some of the opera's more colourful episodes include the second scene where Helen, at the precipice of a large cliff, first implores Zeus to relieve her of her dilemma by striking her with thunderbolts and then contemplates suicide by throwing herself off the cliff into the sea and Pallas's prophecy which is full of gruesome bloody images of the coming Trojan war
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
. Critics such as Hugh Shirley have accused the work of being too sentimental, proposing that Saint-Saëns's deliberate desire to distance himself from the vogue of verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
opera and the dramatic sensibilities of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
may have prevented him from any kind operatic psychoanalysis. The result, according to Shirley, is that while Saint-Saëns had intended to create a serious portrait of Helen of Troy, the music made it "sound at times like a parody of nineteenth-century sentimentality".
Roles
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, 18 February 1904 |
|---|---|---|
| Hélène | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
Nellie Melba Nellie Melba Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century... |
| Pâris | tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2... |
Albert Alvarez |
| Vénus | soprano | Henriette Blot |
| Pallas | contralto Contralto Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above... |
Meyriane Héglon |
Synopsis
Paris, a TrojanTroy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
prince, comes to Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...
to marry Helen, whom he had been promised by Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
after he had chosen her
Judgement of Paris
thumb |right |460px |[[The Judgment of Paris |The Judgment of Paris]], [[Peter Paul Rubens]], ca 1636...
as the most beautiful of the goddesses, earning the wrath of Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
and Hera
Hera
Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...
. Vénus tries to persuade Helen to abandon Menelaus
Menelaus
Menelaus may refer to;*Menelaus, one of the two most known Atrides, a king of Sparta and son of Atreus and Aerope*Menelaus on the Moon, named after Menelaus of Alexandria.*Menelaus , brother of Ptolemy I Soter...
for love. Meanwhile, Pallas
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
warns Helen of the dreadful events that will ensue if she abandons Sparta for Troy. Helen heeds the words of Venus, not Pallas, and sets sail with Pâris in an ecstatic embrace.
Recording
| Year | Cast (Hélène, Pâris, Vénus, Pallas) |
Conductor, Chorus and Orchestra |
Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Rosamund Illing Steve Davislim Leanne Kenneally Zan McKendree-Wright |
Guillaume Tourniaire Belle Époque Chorus and the Orchestra Victoria Orchestra Victoria Orchestra Victoria is an orchestra based in Victoria, Australia. In addition to its own concert and education events, it is the performance partner of the following major performing arts companies: The Australian Ballet, Opera Australia and Victorian Opera... |
CD: Melba label Cat: MR301114-2 |