Mélidore et Phrosine
Encyclopedia
Mélidore et Phrosine is an opera by the French composer Étienne Méhul
. It takes the form of a drame lyrique (a type of opéra comique
) in three acts. The libretto, by Antoine Vincent Arnault, is loosely based on the myth of Hero and Leander
. The work was first performed at the Théâtre Favart
, Paris on 6 May 1794. It is an important example of early Romantic
opera.
's narrative poem Phrosine et Mélidore. In his memoirs, he describes the trouble he had with the French Revolution
ary censorship of the time. He submitted the libretto to the censor Jean-Baptiste Baudrais, who found "nothing innocent in it." Baudrais explained: "It's not enough...that a work is not against us, it must be for us. The spirit of your opera is not republican; the behaviour of your characters is not republican; the word 'liberty!' is not pronounced a single time. You must bring your opera in harmony with our institutions." Fortunately for Arnault, he was able to enlist the help of the writer Legouvé
who added a few more lines to the libretto, containing enough references to liberty to satisfy Baudrais.
The opera was a moderate success and divided the critics, some of whom saw it as a masterpiece, others complaining of its lack of simplicity. Arnault was unimpressed by the performance of the tenor Solié, who was subsequently replaced by Jean Elleviou
. In the troubled atmosphere in the weeks before the fall
of Robespierre, Arnault continued to worry that the opera would attract unwelcome attention from the authorities, but Méhul was on friendly terms with the leading politician Bertrand Barère. Shortly after, the composer wrote his most famous work of Revolutionary propaganda music, the Chant du départ
.
Mélidore is in love with Phrosine but their marriage is forbidden by Phrosine's brothers Aimar and Jule, Aimar because he thinks Mélidore is not of a high enough social class, Jule because he nurtures incestuous feelings for his sister. The couple plan to elope so they can be married by a hermit on a nearby island but as they are making their escape, Aimar surprises them. In the ensuing fight, Mélidore apparently mortally wounds Aimar, who makes his followers swear revenge.
Mélidore arrives on the hermit's island only to find him dead. He decides to assume the hermit's identity. Jule and Phrosine arrive to ask the hermit if he has seen the fugitive Mélidore. The "hermit" tells them that Mélidore has drowned. Phrosine is distraught but then she recognises Mélidore's voice. The two secretly make a plan to see each other again. Mélidore says he will light a beacon on the island every night which will guide Phrosine as she swims across the Straits of Messina to him.
It is night. Mélidore lights the beacon just before a storm blows up. Mélidore prays for Phrosine's safety. However, the storm extinguishes the beacon. A boat arrives, but it contains Jule, not Phrosine. Jule explains how he had seen his sister swimming across the strait and pursued her in the boat. Phrosine swam towards him as she mistook Jule's torch for the beacon. Jule refused to let her get into the boat and left her to drown. Mélidore leaps into the sea to save her and drags her to land. The repentant Jule finally agrees to the couple's marriage, as does Aimar who turns out to have survived.
, "The harmonic style of Mélidore et Phrosine is bolder than anything in Rossini, Bellini
or Donizetti
, and even than early Beethoven
." Hector Berlioz
, an admirer of Méhul, praised the composer's innovative orchestration:"the music [of Mélidore et Phrosine] is often inspired and contains orchestral effects entirely new at the time, such as the use of four horns in their hollowest hand-stopped notes to accompany, like an instrumental death-rattle, the voice of a dying man."
Edward Dent
described the opera's place in the development of musical Romanticism
: "Mélidore et Phrosine has in fact almost all the ingredients we look for in a typical Romantic opera; but perhaps we do not recognise them, because they are definitely French and not German. If that sort of descriptive orchestral writing which is called the 'music of Nature' is typically Romantic, we shall find that in Méhul too, at any rate as far as storms are concerned. As a Frenchman, he is concerned primarily with human beings and human feelings. The conception of man as the helpless victim of the invisible forces of nature, of man as something less than nature, was impossible for him, at any rate at this stage of his career."
Étienne Méhul
Etienne Nicolas Méhul was a French composer, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution." He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic".-Life:...
. It takes the form of a drame lyrique (a type of opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...
) in three acts. The libretto, by Antoine Vincent Arnault, is loosely based on the myth of Hero and Leander
Hero and Leander
Hero and Leander is a Byzantine myth, relating the story of Hērō and like "hero" in English), a priestess of Aphrodite who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Dardanelles, and Leander , a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero...
. The work was first performed at the Théâtre Favart
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...
, Paris on 6 May 1794. It is an important example of early Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
opera.
Background and performance history
Arnault derived his libretto from Gentil-BernardPierre-Joseph-Justin Bernard
Pierre-Joseph-Justin Bernard , called Gentil-Bernard by Voltaire for the measured grace of his discreetly erotic verses, was a French military man and salon poet with the reputation of a rake, the author of several libretti for Rameau...
's narrative poem Phrosine et Mélidore. In his memoirs, he describes the trouble he had with the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
ary censorship of the time. He submitted the libretto to the censor Jean-Baptiste Baudrais, who found "nothing innocent in it." Baudrais explained: "It's not enough...that a work is not against us, it must be for us. The spirit of your opera is not republican; the behaviour of your characters is not republican; the word 'liberty!' is not pronounced a single time. You must bring your opera in harmony with our institutions." Fortunately for Arnault, he was able to enlist the help of the writer Legouvé
Gabriel-Marie Legouvé
Gabriel Marie Jean Baptiste Legouvé was a French poet. He was the seventh member elected to occupy seat 4 of the Académie française in 1803....
who added a few more lines to the libretto, containing enough references to liberty to satisfy Baudrais.
The opera was a moderate success and divided the critics, some of whom saw it as a masterpiece, others complaining of its lack of simplicity. Arnault was unimpressed by the performance of the tenor Solié, who was subsequently replaced by Jean Elleviou
Jean Elleviou
Jean Elleviou was a French operatic tenor, one of the most celebrated French singers of his time.Born Pierre-Jean-Baptiste-François Elleviou, he made his debut at the Comédie-Italienne in Paris in 1790, as a baritone in the role of Alexis in Monsigny's Le déserteur, and the following year as a...
. In the troubled atmosphere in the weeks before the fall
Thermidorian Reaction
The Thermidorian Reaction was a revolt in the French Revolution against the excesses of the Reign of Terror. It was triggered by a vote of the Committee of Public Safety to execute Maximilien Robespierre, Antoine Louis Léon de Saint-Just de Richebourg and several other leading members of the Terror...
of Robespierre, Arnault continued to worry that the opera would attract unwelcome attention from the authorities, but Méhul was on friendly terms with the leading politician Bertrand Barère. Shortly after, the composer wrote his most famous work of Revolutionary propaganda music, the Chant du départ
Chant du départ
The Chant du Départ is a revolutionary and war song written by Étienne Nicolas Méhul and Marie-Joseph Chénier in 1794. It was the official anthem of the First Empire....
.
Roles
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, 6 May 1794 (Conductor: Henri Montan Berton Henri Montan Berton Henri Montan Berton was a French composer, teacher, and writer, and the son of Pierre Montan Berton.-Career:... ) |
|---|---|---|
| Mélidore | haute-contre Haute-contre The haute-contre is a rare type of high tenor voice, predominant in French Baroque and Classical opera until the latter part of the eighteenth century.-History:... |
Louis Michu |
| Phrosine | 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... |
Jeanne-Charlotte Saint-Aubin |
| Jule | 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... |
Jean-Pierre Solié Jean-Pierre Solié Jean-Pierre Solié was a French cellist and operatic singer. He began as a tenor, but switched and became well-known as a baritone. He sang most often at the Paris Opéra-Comique... |
| Aimar | bass-baritone (basse-taille) Bass-baritone A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende... |
Simon Chenard (sometimes spelled Chénard) |
| Chorus: Mélidore's friends, Jule and Aimar's servants, peasants, sailors, passengers | ||
Act 1
- Scene: A garden in Messina
Mélidore is in love with Phrosine but their marriage is forbidden by Phrosine's brothers Aimar and Jule, Aimar because he thinks Mélidore is not of a high enough social class, Jule because he nurtures incestuous feelings for his sister. The couple plan to elope so they can be married by a hermit on a nearby island but as they are making their escape, Aimar surprises them. In the ensuing fight, Mélidore apparently mortally wounds Aimar, who makes his followers swear revenge.
Act 2
- Scene: An island with a hermit's cave
Mélidore arrives on the hermit's island only to find him dead. He decides to assume the hermit's identity. Jule and Phrosine arrive to ask the hermit if he has seen the fugitive Mélidore. The "hermit" tells them that Mélidore has drowned. Phrosine is distraught but then she recognises Mélidore's voice. The two secretly make a plan to see each other again. Mélidore says he will light a beacon on the island every night which will guide Phrosine as she swims across the Straits of Messina to him.
Act 3
- Scene: Another part of the island
It is night. Mélidore lights the beacon just before a storm blows up. Mélidore prays for Phrosine's safety. However, the storm extinguishes the beacon. A boat arrives, but it contains Jule, not Phrosine. Jule explains how he had seen his sister swimming across the strait and pursued her in the boat. Phrosine swam towards him as she mistook Jule's torch for the beacon. Jule refused to let her get into the boat and left her to drown. Mélidore leaps into the sea to save her and drags her to land. The repentant Jule finally agrees to the couple's marriage, as does Aimar who turns out to have survived.
Music
Mélidore et Phrosine was a boldly experimental work. Elizabeth Bartlet, writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, comments : "Méhul’s experiments of the mid-1790s demonstrate how daring he was, particularly in a sometimes shocking use of dissonance, the deliberate incompletion of formal expectations for dramatic effect and the orchestral expression of extreme psychological states to a degree surpassing previous works. In Mélidore et Phrosine the composer achieved a musical unification through themes and motifs, tonal structures and modulation schemes not hitherto attempted in the genre." According to Winton DeanWinton Dean
Winton Dean is an English musicologist of the 20th century, most famous for his research concerning the life and works—in particular the operas and oratorios—of Handel, as detailed in his book Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques .Dean was born in Birkenhead...
, "The harmonic style of Mélidore et Phrosine is bolder than anything in Rossini, 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...
or Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
, and even than early Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
." Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
, an admirer of Méhul, praised the composer's innovative orchestration:"the music [of Mélidore et Phrosine] is often inspired and contains orchestral effects entirely new at the time, such as the use of four horns in their hollowest hand-stopped notes to accompany, like an instrumental death-rattle, the voice of a dying man."
Edward Dent
Edward Joseph Dent
Edward Joseph Dent, generally known by his initials as E. J. Dent was a British writer on music....
described the opera's place in the development of musical Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
: "Mélidore et Phrosine has in fact almost all the ingredients we look for in a typical Romantic opera; but perhaps we do not recognise them, because they are definitely French and not German. If that sort of descriptive orchestral writing which is called the 'music of Nature' is typically Romantic, we shall find that in Méhul too, at any rate as far as storms are concerned. As a Frenchman, he is concerned primarily with human beings and human feelings. The conception of man as the helpless victim of the invisible forces of nature, of man as something less than nature, was impossible for him, at any rate at this stage of his career."
Recordings
The overture appears on: Méhul Overtures, Orchestre de Bretagne, conducted by Stefan Sanderling (ASV, 2002) Catalogue number CD DCA 1140.Sources
- Adélaïde de Place Étienne Nicolas Méhul (Bleu Nuit Éditeur, 2005)
- The Viking Opera Guide, ed. Amanda Holden (Viking, 1993)
- Edward Joseph Dent The Rise of Romantic Opera (Cambridge University Press, 1979 edition)
- Winton Dean, chapter on French opera in Gerald Abraham (ed.) The New Oxford History of Music Volume 8: The Age of Beethoven 1790-1830 (Oxford University Press, 1988)
- Elizabeth Bartlet, entry on Méhul in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
- Hector Berlioz, Evenings with the Orchestra, translated by Jacques BarzunJacques BarzunJacques Martin Barzun is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United...
(University of Chicago Press, 1973; 1999 reprint) - Libretto in French: Mélidore et Phrosine; drame lyrique en 3 actes. Paroles du citoyen Arnault. Musique du citoyen Méhul, Paris, Maradan, 1794 (l'an second de la republique)