L'Île Enchantée
Encyclopedia
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
written as a divertissement
Divertissement
Divertissement is used, in a similar sense to the Italian 'divertimento', for a light piece of music for a small group of players, however the French term has additional meanings....
at the end of Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...
's La Sonnambula
La sonnambula
La sonnambula is an opera semiseria in two acts, with music in the bel canto tradition by Vincenzo Bellini to an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, based on a scenario for a ballet-pantomime by Eugène Scribe and Jean-Pierre Aumer called La somnambule, ou L'arrivée d'un nouveau seigneur.The first...
at Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
. It was choreographed by H. Desplaces.
Background and history
Arthur Sullivan was a young composer and the organist for the Royal Italian Opera at Covent GardenRoyal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, precursor to the Royal Opera, under the direction at that time of Sir Michael Costa
Michael Costa (conductor)
Sir Michael Andrew Angus Costa was an Italian-born conductor and composer who achieved success in England.-Biography:He was born in Naples as Michaele Andrea Agniello Costa, to a family, according to some, of Sephardic stock...
. He had made a sensation at The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
with his incidental music
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
to The Tempest
The Tempest (Sullivan)
The Tempest incidental music, Op. 1, is a set of movements for Shakespeare's play composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1861 and expanded in 1862. This was Sullivan's first major piece of composition, and its success quickly brought him to the attention of the musical establishment in...
in 1862.
In the Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
, it was customary for opera companies, when performing a shorter opera, to present a short ballet as an afterpiece
Afterpiece
An afterpiece is a short, usually humorous one-act playlet or musical work following the main attraction, the full-length play, and concluding the theatrical evening. This short comedy, farce, opera or pantomime was a popular theatrical form in the 18th and 19th centuries...
on the programme. As Sullivan was its house organist, the Royal Italian Opera looked to him to compose a ballet to follow its production of La Sonnambula starring Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti was a highly acclaimed 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851 and gave her last performance before an audience in 1914...
, and so Sullivan's second major composition became L'Île Enchantée. It was first performed on 16 May 1864, just after the composer's 22nd birthday, and enjoyed 13 performances in all, also appearing after Flowtow's Stradella, Rossini's Otello
Otello (Rossini)
Otello is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsi, based on Shakespeare's play Othello....
, Donizetti's La Figlia del Reggimento
La fille du régiment
La fille du régiment is an opéra comique in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. It was written while the composer was living in Paris, with a French libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François Bayard.La figlia del reggimento, a slightly different Italian-language version , was...
and L'Elisir d'Amore
L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts...
, and Verdi's La Traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
, and it was presented in concert at The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
in 1865.
The choreographer, H. Desplaces danced the role of the Mariner, Mdlle. Salvioni was the Queen of the Fairies, and other dancers included Mdlle. Carmine, Mdlle. Navarre, Mdlle. Assunta and Mr. W. H. Payne. The scenic designer was William Beverley.
The ballet consists of thirteen different numbers that break down into a total of approximately 30 independent melodic sections. A review in The Orchestra dated 21 May 1864 called the music "unusually picturesque and beautiful". After three years, the full autographed score was lost, although the surviving orchestra parts have permitted a reconstruction of the piece. Parts of the music in the ballet were reused in several of Sullivan's later works including: Thespis
Thespis (opera)
Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, is an operatic extravaganza that was the first collaboration between dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. No musical score of Thespis was ever published, and most of the music has been lost...
(1871), The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
(1871), The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
(incidental music; 1874), Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
(1888), and his other ballet Victoria and Merrie England
Victoria and Merrie England
Victoria and Merrie England is an 1897 ballet by Arthur Sullivan, written to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee – a remarkable sixty years on the throne. The ballet became very popular and ran for nearly six months.-Background:...
(1897).
In June 1990, the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society Festival staged the first performance since 1867. The ballet was recorded in 1992 by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra of Dublin, conducted by Andrew Penny, for Marco Polo
Description of the ballet
On a sea-shore, satyrs enter and wake sleeping nymphs. A storm frightens the fairies away and washes on shore an exhausted shipwrecked sailor. He awakes to find himself on an island whose residents are mythical creatures. He is enchanted by The Fairy Queen, who brings him to the magical fairy bower. The sailor encounters other nymphs who test his faithfulness. After scenes of jealousy involving the characters' former lovers, the Queen of the Fairies and the sailor fall in love, leaving the jilted lovers behind. The Fairy Queen and the sailor finally kiss, transforming the Fairy Queen into a mortal, and she bestows her hand upon him.Musical numbers
- No. 1 Prelude
- No. 2 Dance of Nymphs and Satyrs - Pas de Châles
- No. 3 Galop
- No. 4 Storm - Entrance of the Gnomes - Entrance of Fairy Queen
- No. 5 Pas de deux
- No. 6 Mazurka
- No. 6a Variation
- No. 7 Scène des disparitions
- No. 8 Tempo di valse
- No. 8a Variation for Mlle. Carmine
- No. 9 Pas de trois
- No. 10 Scène de jalousie
- No. 11
- No. 12 Galop
- No. 13 Finale