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This volume presents the various pieces of music from fragments, through complete pieces, to whole scenes that were not used in the final performing edition of Meyerbeer s L Africaine. The genesis of Meyerbeer s last opera is something of a legend. He had first considered the subject in 1837 when Scribe presented him with two new drafts, intended to clinch the triumphant successes of Robert le Diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836). The composer began composing Le Prophète immediately, but had the other project, L Africaine, ever in his mind. By 1843 a piano score was ready, but the subject as it stood then, concerning Fernando da Soto s explorations in West Africa, did not satisfy Meyerbeer. Scribe was asked to rewrite the libretto in 1851, with the hero changed to Vasco da Gama, and focussed on his epic voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India. A new contract was signed in 1857, and the greater part of the opera was written between 1857 and 1863, in spite of the Meyerbeer s growing debility. Meyerbeer died on 2 May 1864, the day after the completion of the copying of the full score of Vasco da Gama. The rehearsal period was always a time of radical revision and excision for the composer, and he left a verbal request that the work should not be produced if he were not alive to supervise it. Minna Meyerbeer and César-Victor Perrin, the director of the Opéra, however, entrusted the editing of a performing edition to the famous Belgian musicologist François-Joseph Fétis, while the libretto was revised by Mélesville. Because of the long public expectation, the editors restored the original title, and attempted to reconcile this to the Hindu elements of the action by shifting the action to the island of Madagascar. L Africaine was produced on 28 April 1865, a glorious posthumous tribute to Scribe and Meyerbeer. Much of the music and action was suppressed, in spite of the resultant strain on the internal logic of the story. The opera caused tremendous enthusiasm, and became enormously popular, being staged 60 times in the first four seasons, and eventually receiving 485 performances in Paris until the end of the century. The Ship Scene, the exotic Indian act, and the finale under the Manchineel Tree exerted a fascination on audiences, and elicited new praise. The work began a triumphal progress through the world, beginning with the big stages of London and Berlin. In its glorious vocal writing, resplendent orchestral colouring and fragrant exoticism, it was a source of delight to many like Franz Liszt, who produced two books of transcriptions from the work. Fétis edited a performing edition of the score, subsequently used all over the world. However, most of Meyerbeer s manuscript was reproduced intact in the orchestral score printed by G. Brandus & S. Dufour. But Fétis also collected all 22 of the unused variants and fragments in vocal score for publication as the so-called Deuxième Partie. These remain a crucial source of information for the history and future performing editions of this great opera. ... Read more

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This second volume of Meyerbeer's non-operatic work is devoted to his secular choral writing in part songs, songs with chorus, and later songs with instrumental obbligato and local colour. Choral writing - so much part of the operatic tradition, also of the genres of religious music, and integral to the public music of celebration - is fundamental to the next genre Meyerbeer wrote for, the part song, a typical German tradition. Meyerbeer's part songs for male chorus, most of which were written for the Liedertafel Friends of the Berlin Singakademie, use the age-old themes unity, friendship, patriotism, homeland, hunting: "Bundeslied" (1835), "Freundschaft" (1842), "Dem Vaterlande" (1842), and "Die lustigen Jagersleut" (1842). This set of four illustrate the composer's harmonic richness, his imaginative use of all the variants of vocal timbre and tessitura, in part-writing, textured unison and homophony. Rather different were two later numbers, "Der Wanderer und die Geister an Beethovens Grabe" (1845), and "Das Lied vom blinden Hessen" (1862).The first is a personal tribute to the memory of Beethoven, for bass solo and chorus, that uses the Platonic imagery of the music of the spheres as the transcendent ideal of beauty. The late Song of the Blind Hessian requiring a tenor soloist and chorus is a deeply felt lament in which the protagonist's blindness becomes the metonym for a series of variations on loneliness, exile and loss, and eventually a correlative of disenfranchisement and yearning for freedom - political and spiritual. In both songs, the chorus has a more dramatic role than in the part-songs, reflecting on the situation presented in the soloists' manifesto, sometimes serene and supporting, at others adding to the sense of anguish and aspiration. Throughout his career Meyerbeer wrote songs. These reflected the circumstances of his life, the various cultural milieux he moved in - particularly, of course, the German, Italian and French worlds. The majority of Meyerbeer's songs were composed between 1828 and 1860, in tandem with his illustrious operatic career and socially prestigious musical posts in Berlin.Meyerbeer's songs in whatever genre show influence of the Lied, especially in his subtle use of the piano parts. Unique among Meyerbeer's songs are two written with instrumental obbligatos: "Hier oben" (Des Schafers Lied or Hirtenlied) (Ludwig Rellstab) (1842) (for tenor, clarinet and piano, published in Paris in 1857), and "Pres de toi" ("Neben Dir") (Gustav Roger, translated by the poet and historian Joseph Duesberg) (1857) (for tenor with violoncello and piano, published in Paris in the same year). Meyerbeer adapted a strong sense of local colour in two songs composed in the 1850s: the Spanish bolero in the melodie written for the incidental music to Aylic-Langle's play "Murillo" (Ballade dans la comedie Murillo, ou Le Peintre mendiant un modele) (Paris, 1853); and the Italian barcarole in the canzonetta "A Venezia" (Pietro Beltrame) (1856) [Paris: Brandus, 1856; Cologne: Schloss, n.d.]. ... Read more

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The subject-matter of Meyerbeers second opera Wirt und Gast, or Aus Scherz Ernst (also called Alimelek), written in Munich in 1812, was taken from a tale in The Arabian Nights. The story of the man who would be sovereign, if only for one day, so frequently treated in the literature of all nations. The opera is an example of the Oriental or Turkish operas which were so popular in Germany during the second third of the eighteenth century. The orchestra includes, besides the strings, doubled wood-wind, and threefold percussion, only two horns, two trum¬pets, and one trombone. While Meyerbeers contemporaries were puzzled by the far-¬fetched singularity of the Alimelik music, and the work had no success in Stuttgart and Vienna (6 January 1813; 20 October 1814), Weber had the insight to recognize its true significance. He produced it Prague on 20 October 1815, and praised the ""active, alert imagination, the well-nigh voluptuous melody, the correct declamation, the entire musical attitude."" He was also impressed by the instrumentation: It is surprisingly combined, interwoven with great delicacy, and consequently demands almost the care of a quartet performance. Webers enduring admiration meant that he again produced the work in Dresden years later (1820), when he pointed out how this early opera bears witness to the composer's singular emotional capacity. ¬Meyerbeer shows astonishing maturity for a composer of twenty-one. Not only the psychic state of the leading characters, but also the conflict of the entire plot, is presented in concentrated style by the aid of recurrent themes. The specifically romantico-psycho¬logical modification of the leading-motive is met with here for the first time, i.e., two years before Wagner's birth (Edgar Istel). ... Read more

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This huge exploration of faith, tolerance, hatred, extermination, love, loyalty, self-sacrifice and hope in despair, is the first panel of a central diptych on the Reformation, and the heart of the wider tetralogy of Meyerbeer s grand operas, where issues of power, religion and love are examined in a variety of modes.For five years after the sensational première of Robert le Diable, Meyerbeer was thought to be resting on his laurels. Instead, he was drudging over a gigantic drama, partly adapted by Scribe from Merimée's Chronique de Charles IX.It was hardly believed possible that the esrlier success could be repeated. Most of the vivid details gleaned from every available document related to the time, were the composer's contribution to Les Huguenots. The music for this sombre tapestry of the Saint Bartholomew Massacre springsfrom the core of the vivid action and createsa panoramic alternation of moods, that capture the tragedy of religious intolerance and personal anguish in one of the most fraught events in history when some 30,000 French Protestants were murdered during the night of 24 August 1574. Meyerbeer s music rises to occasion, and reaches sublime heights of music drama, especially in the fourth and fifth acts, with the Benediction of the Catholic Daggers one of the most electrical scenes inall opera the more powerful Love Duet, and the trio of martyrdom in the last moments of the opera. Spectaclewas incorporated in the plot, in Meyerbeer s concern to conjure upthe couleur locale of those heroic times. The evocation of Marguerite de Valois s courtat Chenonceaux, the recreation of late Medieval Parisian life with its Gypsy revels and the religionists' riots in the Pré-aux-Clercs, the wedding fete in the Hotel de Nesle, all grow out of the central idea. Meyerbeer was also very successful in his characterizations of individuals: the dreamy idealist Raoul, the passionate and self-sacrificing Valentine, the fanatical and implacable St Bris, the rough stolid Marcel, the elegant and capricious queen, the somewhat flamboyant but always honorable Nevers. All come to life in this score.The opera became enormously popular, its various arias a touchstone of operatic lyricism, and by 1936 had been performed 1120 times in at the Paris Opéra alone. In spite of its overwhelming dramatic power and instrumental riches of the score, the most significant aspect of the work came to regarded the supremacy of the vocal parts. Performances at the Metropolitan Opera in new York during the 1890s were among thethe most famousin operatic history. Here performances attained a legendary status, the so-called nuits des sept étoiles ( the Nights of the Seven Stars ), as in 1894 with Nellie Melba, Lillian Nordica, Sofia Scalchi, Jean de Reszke, Edouard de Reszke, Pol Plançon, and Victor MaurelOnce again George Sand summed up with incomparable insight the essence of Meyerbeer s musico-dramatic achievement.From stone floors that no Protestant knee ever warms, solemn voices seemed to resound, the tones of a calm, secure triumph and theexpiring sighs and murmurings of a tranquil end, resigned, confident, without death-rattle or lamentation. It was the voice of Calvinist martyrdom, a martyrdom without ecstasy or delirium, a torment where suffering is stifled by austere pride and august certainty... These imaginary hymns naturally assumed in my mind the form of that fine canticle in your opera, The Huguenots; and, while I dreamt I heard the cries of Catholic indignation and a sharp volley of musketry outside, a tall figure passed before my eyes, one of the noblest dramatic figures, one of the loveliest personifications of the idea of faith that art has ever produced in our time: Meyerbeer's Marcel. And I saw that bronze statue standing clothed in buffalo hide, quickened by the divine fire the composer had ... Read more

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Don't buy it if you want the original French!
This is the Alfred Publishing reprint of the Kalmus edition.Kalmus included the French text and a German translation, but Alfred removed both and substituted Italian and English only.Be warned! ... Read more

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The genesis of Meyerbeer s last opera, L Africaine, is something of a legend. He had first considered the subject in 1837 when Scribe presented him with two new drafts, intended to clinch the triumphant successes of Robert le Diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836). The composer began composing Le Prophète immediately, but had the other project ever in his mind. By 1843 a piano score was ready, but the subject as it stood then, concerning Fernando da Soto explorations in West Africa, did not satisfy Meyerbeer. Scribe was asked to rewrite the libretto in 1851, with the hero changed to Vasco da Gama, and focussed on his epic voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India. A new contract was signed in 1857, and thegreater part of the opera was written between 1857 and 1863, in spite of the Meyerbeer s growing debility. A copy of thefull score was delivered to composer the day before he died on 2 May 1864.The opera was performed in a version prepared by François-Joseph Fétis a year later, 28 April 1865, and was a glorious posthumous tribute to its creators. It caused tremendous enthusiasm, and became enormously popular, being performed 60 times in the first four seasons, and eventually receiving 485 performances in Paris until the end of the century. In its glorious vocal writing, resplendent orchestral colouring and fragrant exoticism, it was a source of delight to many, like Franz Liszt. Even in the midst of his residency in the hallowed grounds of the Vatican inMay 1865, he was working at Meyerbeer s last opera:L Africaine was the newest sensation of the theatrical music. The heavy brassy Rococo of its strains, its military ensembles, the number of its figurants, as numerous and diverse as a circus train met with upon the road, these worldly contrasts were such a delight to Liszt that his fantasia upon the opera assumed double form and took up two volumes. 1 L Africaine also shows a progression, even a deepening, in Meyerbeer s style, with a melodic language that is more Italianate in concept and line, as if Meyerbeer s sojourn in Italy in 1856 had it subliminal effects.2 Tunes are more like recitatives in style, and come across as much loftier, more serene and aloof:3 It certainly appealed to the singers of the Golden Age, and during the first part of the twentieth century was a favourite of many great tenors (Caruso, Martinelli, Gigli, Bjorling, Piccaver), and later of Domingo.This facsimile of the composer s manuscript is particularly fascinating. It is clear and hardly annotated at all, and uniquely gives us Meyerbeer s original intentions before the process of editing and adjustment which he always undertook at rehearsals, in response to dramaturgical exigencies and pressures of time. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Writing to Meyerbeer in 1837 in the eleventh of her famous Lettres d un voyageur, George Sand observed of the opera Robert le Diable: . . .Though you are a musician, you are more a poet than any of us!... It was not long ago that you were on your knees in the sensuous darkness of Saint Mark s constructing your Sicilian cathedral on a scale even more vast, smothering yourself in Catholic incense at that dark hours when the candles are lit, making the gold and marble walls sparkle until you were overcome and bowed down by the tender and terrible ecstasies of that holy place....You have pieced the impenetrable silence of the tombs and...heard the bitter lamentation of the damned and the threats of the angels of darkness. You have grasped the hidden significance and sublime sorrow of all those strange and sombre allegories. Between the angel and the devil, between the fantastic heaven and hell of the Middle Ages, you have seen man divided against himself, torn between the flesh and the spirit...You have depicted these struggles, these fears and torments, these promises and raptures in solemn, touching strokes, while leaving them cloaked in their poetic symbols... These vividwords, written six years after the triumphant production of Robert le Diable, admirably sum up the power and impact of this important work, the principal operatic expression of French Romanticism. Its première on 21 November 1831 was one of the most sensational in the annals of opera, and its success throughout the nineteenth century universal and enduring. Not only did the composer sum up the various impulses of the splendid French lyrico-dramatic tradition of grand opéra, and introduce widely influential, structural, melodic and orchestral ideas into general operatic currency, but he seemed to address the very soul and aspiration of the people of his age. The opera based on a legend, became a legend in its own right.The facsimile edition of the manuscript of this famous work, for so long kept private and then thought lost after the Second World War, enables lovers of opera to examine for themselves the compositional procedure of its great and often misunderstood creator. The admired pieces like Bertram s Évocation, Isabelle s cavatina of grace, the sensational Ballet of the Nuns in the ruins of a moonlit cloister, the decisive trio of redemption in the last act, can allbe seen at their very inception. Meyerbeer produced a workthat changed the face of opera(William J. Collins). Thefull significance of this score in the history of opera must still be properly assessed. ... Read more

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This book reproduces the Ricordi vocal score of Meyerbeer's last Italian opera (Milan, c. 1825). More than hardly any other opera of the first third of the nineteenth century, Il Crociato in Egitto (Venice, 1814) appears as work standing between the epochs. In its engagement with the traditions of the melodrama, Meyerbeer exploited here to the full all the possibilities offered by the form, without actually questioning its nature. Whereas Rossini in his Neapolitan operas had undertaken a transformation of the genre, moving it in the direction of French grand opera, Meyerbeer on the one hand continued a heightened development of the generic tendencies, while on the other affecting a deliberate resumption of older forms, already obsolete at this time (like simple romance structures and the use of recitativo secco, especially to mark the closure of scenes). The disparate medium of presentation spans isolated individual numbers and highly integrated tableaux of solo and chorus, traditional lyrical virtuosity and the dramaturgy of modern instrumental colour, melodic models from the eighteenth century, and anticipation of middle Verdi, integrated only by the strongly imprinted force of the individual style. Even more than in Margherita d'Anjou and L'Esule di Granata, the Crociato opens up to the historical opera. The personal conflict still determines the dramaturgy, but this is projected onto historical circumstances and given a philosophical component through the figure of the religious fanatic Adriano. Throughout the whole opera, the antagonism between the Crusaders and the Egyptians, until their final magnanimous reconciliation, is depicted in contrasting dramatic terms as the confrontation between two cultures and religions. The formal structures for such a dramaturgy also shape the tableaux in this opera. ... Read more

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Le Prophète is the second panel of Meyerbeer s Reformation diptych, his darkest and most mysterious opera. It explores issues ofpower and religion, fanaticism and faith, betrayal and trust, the demonic forces of history and the witness of little people caught up in them the ultimate and enduring sacrificial power of love. In some ways it is almost like a political pamphlet or religious tract, and its oppressive but fascinating world can cast a compulsive spell.The plot is based on the revolt of the Westphalian Anabaptists under the leadership of the Leyden tailor Johann Bockholdt in 1537-38. Meyerbeer, as usual, studied the historical period carefully, and the operais especially remarkable for its vivid human portraiture, its psychological realism mixed with religious mysticism, prophecy, dreams, unconscious promptings, telepathy, aspiration, conversion, rich in mythical resonance. The composercreated a sustained atmosphere of menace and gloom by his dark orchestral colouring. This is contrasted with the pastoral escapism and orchestral brilliance of the famous SkatersBallet, a contersign to the actions of cruelty and betrayal that characterize the action.The draft of a letter by Scribe of 23 April 1836 gives the first clue to a the new opera and its theme: the original title of Les Anabaptistes. However, itwas held back in favour of another new project, L Africaine (1865), for which a contract was signed, but dissatisfaction with the libretto, as well as the vocal difficultiesof Marie-Cornélie Falcon meant that in the summer of 1838Meyerbeer decided to give Le Prophète immediate attention.Performances planned for the winter season of 1841-42 came to nothing because Meyerbeer could onlyprepare a provisional score by the stipulated contractual delivery date (27 March 1841).All further efforts by the director of the Opéra, Léon Pillet, to conclude a contract came to nothing because in June 1842 Meyerbeer was appointed Prussian Generalmusikdirektor and was consequently tied to his duties in Berlin most of the time.In December 1843 Meyerbeer further had the opportunity to convince himself that Guilbert Duprez was no longer suitable for the role of Jean.Only on 1 July 1847, with the departure of Pillet, and under the joint new directorship of Nestor Roqueplan and Edmond Duponchel, was contact with the Opéra resumed.Eventually Pauline Viardot-Garcia and Gustave-Hippolyte Roger were chosen for the principal roles.Meyerbeerbegan a revision of the libretto with Scribe in early 1848 (focusing especially on the psychological nuances in the tripartite relationship between Jean, Fidès and Berthe, while hardly touching thedepiction of the Anabaptists and the masses). and in early 1848, EmileDeschamps, who was sworn to secrecy, began putting Meyerbeer s special requirements into verse. Meyerbeer himself composed new pieces for the opera (while revolution raged on the streets of Paris), and then began a thorough overhaul of the score. In actual history, the 'Prophet' wasa complete wretch whose profligacy cast a stigma on his sect that deprived it of further political status, Yet his rise from a tailor's bench to the throne of 'Zion' and his subsequent execution in the Münster market place are the stuff of drama. Scribe's characteris, in his own right, an extremely interesting figure, spiritually speaking: he is a genuine man of faith, but also an imposter who is ruthless but not entirely despicable. The depth of his human dilemma is successfully realized. George Bernard Shaw described him as alive and romantic, and there can be no doubt that the composer succeeded in heightening the effect of the drama by his deepening of the hero's psychology. The heart of the action lies in the mysterious, indeed ambiguous nature of the Prophet, and his relationship with his peasant mother, Fid ... Read more

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The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B? clarinet, it is usually pitched in B? (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B?), but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B? clarinet. Bass clarinets in other keys, notably C and A, also exist, but are very rare. Bass clarinets regularly perform in symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, and play an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on December 1, 2000. The length of the article is 975 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer.(Review) (book review)
Author: Alan Armstrong
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 2000
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 57Issue: 2Page: 393

Article Type: Book Review

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