The Death of Tintagiles is an 1894

1894 in literature

The year 1894 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Robert Frost sells his first poem, "My Butterfly", to The New York Independent for fifteen dollars.*Hermann Hesse begins his apprenticeship at a factory in Calw....

 play by Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...

. It was Maeterlinck's last play for marionette

Marionette

A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...

s.

Maeterlinck dedicated the play to Aurélien Lugné-Poe

Aurélien Lugné-Poe

Aurélien-François Lugné-Poë born Aurélien-François-Marie Lugné was a French actor, theatre director, and scenic designer best known for his work at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, one of the first theatrical venues in France to provide a home for the artists of the Symbolist Movement at the end of the...

, a theatre director who had supported several of his earlier works.

Premiere

The play was successfully staged by The Theater Studio of the Moscow Art Theater in 1905. This production was directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a great Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre.-Early...

 and designed by Nikolai Sapunov

Nikolai Sapunov

Nikolai Nikolaevich Sapunov was a Russian painter. He was born in Moscow and studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture under Isaac Levitan , and at the Academy of Arts under Kiseliov....

 and Sergei Sudeikin. The production was marked by non-realistic scenery and planned still pictures and poses instead of movement.

Cast of characters

• Tintagiles
• Ygraine, sister of Tintagiles
• Bellangère, sister of Tintagiles
• Aglovale
• servants of the Queen

Synopsis

The Queen, who possesses complete control over her servants and people, has killed most of Tintagiles family. Ygraine and Bellangère try to protect him, but he is captured by the Queen's servants and brought to her castle. Ygraine pursues them to the castle door. Tintagiles cries for help from behind the door, but Ygraine is unable to open it and he is murdered by the Queen.

Themes

Maeterlinck, an avid reader of Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...

, believed that man was ultimately powerless against the forces of fate

Fatalism

Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate.Fatalism generally refers to several of the following ideas:...

. Believing that any actor, due to the limitations of his physical mannerisms and expressions, was unable to portray the symbolic figures of his plays, Maeterlinck decided that marionettes were an excellent alternative. Being guided by strings, which are operated by a puppeteer, marionettes are an excellent representation of fate's complete control over man.

This was the first time Maeterlinck had represented death in the form of a woman (The Queen) rather than a male figure or mysterious force.

Also for the first time, marking a transition in his work, Maeterlinck had his protagonist actively struggle against fate rather than passively or helplessly give in. Ygraine pursues the Queen's servants to the castle door and desperately tries to discover a way of opening it, even though she fails.

In other media

The Death of Tintagiles was the subject of a symphonic poem

Symphonic poem

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...

 written in 1897 by Charles Martin Loeffler

Charles Martin Loeffler

Charles Martin Loeffler was a German-born American violinist and composer.- Birthplace :Throughout his career Loeffler claimed to have been born in Mulhouse, Alsace and almost all music encyclopedias give this fabricated information. In his lifetime articles were published dissecting his...

. It was scored for full orchestra and two viole d'amore

Viola d'amore

The viola d'amore is a 7- or 6-stringed musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the baroque period. It is played under the chin in the same manner as the violin.- Structure and sound :...

, which represent the voices of Tintagiles and Ygraine.

In 1913, Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...

 wrote 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"....

 for the play.

The English conductor Lawrance Collingwood

Lawrance Collingwood

Lawrance Arthur Collingwood CBE was an English conductor, composer and record producer.Lawrance Collingwood was born in London and became a choirboy at Westminster Abbey. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Exeter College, Oxford...

wrote an opera based on the play, which was premièred in London in April 1950.