Teacher's Guide Cambridge Pre-U MUSIC Available for teaching ...

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Cambridge Pre-U Teacher Guide
Parisian operas were Lodoïska (1791), Médée (1797) and Les deux journées (1800). The last of these
(normally known in English by its subtitle of The Water Carrier) was a typical ‘rescue opera’ with a
strongly egalitarian political message. It was performed throughout Europe and became especially
popular in Germany, where it strongly influenced Beethoven when he came to write Fidelio.
Foreign composers continued to dominate operatic developments in Paris for many years. A second
Italian, Gaspare Spontini (1774–1851), arrived there in 1803 and soon came under the patronage
of the Empress Joséphine. In La Vestale (1807) Spontini combined a lyrical, Italianate style with
the seriousness of Gluck’s French operas. La Vestale is another ‘rescue opera’, but it also contains
a magnificent stage spectacle in the triumphal march in the finale of Act I, which points forward to
similar scenes in the grand operas of Meyerbeer. Spontini wrote two further tragédies lyriques for
the Paris Opéra: Fernand Cortez (1809) and Olimpie (1819), neither of which equalled the stature,
popularity or influence of La Vestale.
Another work that proved to be influential in the development of grand opera was La Muette de
Portici (1828) by Daniel Auber (1782–1871). This opera was noteworthy for having a dumb heroine
who mimes her thoughts to an orchestral accompaniment, and for being, according to Wagner, the
first opera with a tragic ending. When it was performed in Brussels in 1830 it instigated a riot which
turned into the full-scale revolution that eventually secured Belgian independence.
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) was a cosmopolitan musician and something of an enigma. He
was born in Berlin, as Jacob Liebmann Beer, to a wealthy family of Jewish bankers. Later he added
his grandfather’s name of Meyer to his own in exchange for an annual income of 300,000 francs. As
a pupil of Abbé Vogler he befriended a slightly older student, Weber, and together they dreamed of
establishing a truly German style of opera. Meyerbeer, however, saw greater opportunities elsewhere
and moved to Italy, where he assimilated himself as much as he could, even adopting the Italian form
of his first name. He wrote six operas for theatres in Padua, Turin, Venice and Milan and earned a
reputation second only to Rossini. The most significant of Meyerbeer’s Italian operas is Il crociato in
Egitto (1824), which was so successful that it was also performed in London and Paris. An invitation
to compose a work for the Paris Opéra soon followed.
From 1825 onwards, Meyerbeer spent much of his time in Paris, though he never moved there
permanently. The first outcome of his original invitation from the Opéra was Robert le diable (1831), a
grand opera with a libretto by Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), the leading French librettist of the time. It
was an immediate success and was performed all over Europe in the next few years. So great was its
impact that it was at least partly responsible for Rossini’s decision to compose no more operas. Robert le
diable set a pattern for grand opera that was continued in Meyerbeer’s later works and in similar operas
by other composers. The action, though entirely fictitious, has an historical setting and sometimes
involves one or more genuine historical characters; there are five acts (so these are often very long
operas); there are grandiose scenes involving complex sets and large numbers of people on stage; there
is a sensationalist element in the action; the vocal writing for the main characters is often extremely
demanding; and there is a ballet (usually in Act III, sometimes in Act IV, but never in Acts I or II). 1
1 The reason for the ballet coming at this point in the action is interesting, and historically significant in view of the failure of
the Paris version of Wagner’s Tannhäuser in 1861. Several members of the Paris Jockey Club, which was responsible for the
regulation of horse racing in France, rented boxes at the Opéra on a more or less permanent basis. They also kept mistresses
who were members of the corps de ballet. When they went on to the Opéra after dinner, they expected to see their mistresses
dancing at the earliest possible moment; however, they were not prepared to interrupt their dinner to be present at the start of
the performance. Consequently, the ballet was always placed late enough in an opera to take place when it was certain that the
Jockey Club members would have arrived.
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