Holmès: La Montange Noire

 Opera no 176

Opera no 176

Holmès: La Montagne Noire

Soloists

This is a real curiosity. Augusta Holmes had Irish routes but settled in France , where she acquired the accent on her name. She was one of the very few women composers whose operas reached the stage in the 19th century, although it has to be acknowledged that she wrote three others which were never performed.

This was a big full-blooded work on a large scale. To start with I felt that it was rather stiff and old fashioned, looking back perhaps 50 years to the work of Auber and Meyerbeer. But as the work progressed I sense that Holmès found her own voice and the idiom became much more akin to the works of the late 19th century. Part of it could have passed for Massenet and Saïnt-Saens and I suspect that Carmen was never far way from the composer’s mind. Some of the impassioned writing for the main female character was very disincentive and leapt off the page in this performance. Although it was an uneven work - rather like the symphonic poem of her’s that I included last year, at its best this was an opera of real distinction and certainly was worthy of performance at the Paris Opèra.

This recording is rather odd. It is on a private label and has never been issued commercially. It stems from a recent revival (the first in over 100 years) where the director, for some reason that I can’t fathom, decided that it needed a framing reference, so the performance starts with dialogue in Japanese with accompaniment by a tradition Japanese instrument. That recurs later in the opera. Fortunately it is no superimposed on the music of the opera so it doesn’t detract from the performance, but it threw me completely when I started listening to the opera. People so such strange things - the opera in perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet.

Poulenc: Les Mamelles de Tiresias

 Opera no 170

Poulenc: Les Mamelles de Tiresias

Soloists

Saito Kinen Orchestra

Seiji Ozawa

Last year’s project included Poulenc’s superb Figure Humaine https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/03/poulenc-figure-humaine.html which was a reminder that he was not just a composer of fripperies but was capable of the most profound and serious expression. But I have to say that I do adore the lighter side of his music and this little (40 mins) opera is a lovely example of Poulenc at his most witty and charming. It was an absolute delight. The opening narration by the ringmaster was more serious than I expected but after the curtain went up it was all great fun. Poulenc had a great melodic gift and an ability to inflect simply melodies with quite delicious twists and turns and unexpectedly piquant harmony. The whole thing was real fun and at times left me laughing out loud with the sheer exuberance of the invention. A lovely start to this final segment of the project.

Hérold: Zampa

 Opera no

Hérold: Zampa

Soloists

Munich Radio Choir and Orchestra

This is the latest recording in the invaluable Bru Zane series of neglected 19th century French operas. It arrived just in time to round of this series of French operas, though there will be another round before the end of the year.

I thought it was a fabulous work: an opera that I have enjoyed more than almost any more in this project to date. I was impressed by Herold’s Pre aux Clercs last year but this was even better. It has everything - catchy tunes, gorgeous vocal writing, humour and high drama. The idiom owes much to Auber, particularly La Muette but there are also hints of Rossini and perhaps the earlier generation of composers such as Boileudeu. But there is also a strong dept to the Mozart of Don Giovanni in the supernatural scenes - given that these feature a statue coming to life that is perhaps hardly surprising. The excellent notes (such a feature of these Bru Zane recordings) remind us that Don Giovanni was still a comparatively new work as far as French audiences were concerned. The extended organ solo which ends the second act inevitably brought the Phantom of the Opera to mind.

The overture to Zampa was at one time one of the most popular overtures and was often heard in bandstands as well as in the concert hall. These days such overtures don’t get performed much, but this one still gets the occasional airing. It is very much a pot pouri of some of the best tunes in the opera and it was fascinating to hear such familiar melodies in context. 

So a delightful way to end this series of French operas.  Next I am turning to territory which is much less familiar to me and which I have struggled with in the past - post Wagnerian German opera. 

Ibert: Angelique

 Opera no 145

Ibert: Angelique

Soloists

Teatro Massimo de Palermo

Yoram David

This was thee briefest opera so far in this project. The whole thing lasts about 40 mins but a significant part of that time - perhaps a third - was spoken dialogue, so there was certainly less than 30 mins music., I found it entertaining in a diverting sort of way. This is very much in a 1920s Stravinsky manner with touches of les Six and perhaps the merest hint of Ravel. The harmony is very much of the french ‘wrong note’ style and the rhythms are full of syncopations influenced by Latin American folk music and perhaps early jazz.  Nothing lasts long enough to become routine and the whole thing is quite infectious. It is very much a jeux d’esprit and is a product of its time. I don’t know how well it would go down in a modern revival - it might be possible to do it in a double or triple bill with some Poulenc or Milhaud.

Roussel: Padmâvatî

Opera no 144

Roussel: Padmâvitî

Soloists

Toulouse Capital Orchestra

Michael Plasson

I wasn’t much impressed by the Roussel I included in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Roussel but I enjoyed this a lot. It is a hybrid work - almost as much a ballet as it is an opera. It seems to me that Roussel was consciously evoking the spirit of the works of Rameau and Lully.  There is nothing old-fashioned about the music itself, which is very much of its time. There are distinct traces of Stravinsky but also of Ravel and Debussy.  I thought that the combination of dance and sung much worked well (as far as one can judge by just listening) and the piece did cause me to rethink my view of Roussel. 

This is another, very late, example of the fascination that French composers had with the ‘exotic’ - in this instance India. I do wonder whether any of them could be performed today in anything like a ‘straight’ version in which the opera spoke for itself, or would the only hope of revival be in some form of ‘distancing’ - the director effectively using the peice as a piece of social commentary. I hope not but I suspect that that would be the only acceptable way of performing them nowadays.

Fauré: Pénélope

 Opera no 143

Fauré: Pénêlope

Soloists

Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra

Charles Dutoit

Fauré doesn’t seem a natural fit for opera. Opera are written in broad brush strokes - Fauré was a master of detail. Operas are extrovert: Fauré is introvert. Opera is on a large scale: Fauré was a master of the two minute melodie.

This is a slightly unfair view of Fauré of course - he did write some pieces on a larger scale and could be extrovert and expansive when he wanted. But this dichotomy does, at least to me, show through in this opera. There is some lovely music here - the passage where Pénélope unwinds the braids that she has painstakingly put together was particularly notable. But some of the larger-scale music seemed to me to misfire and was unconvincing. Altogether however it was fascinating to hear the opera and see how Fauré tackled a large--scale work. The ethos and sound world are very reminiscent of other French operas of the time - particularly those of Chausson and Dukas which I included in last year’s project. On any objective basis Fauré is a greater composer than Meyerbeer but in purely theatrical terms there is no doubt which one of the two had a greater grasp of the operatic medium.

Bertin: Fausto

 Opera no 142

Bertin: Fausto

Soloists

Les Talens Lryiques

Christophe Rousset

This was an interesting opera in many ways. To start with it was one of the few operas by women composers which was staged during the 19th century. Secondly although it is unmistakably French in its musical idiom it is actually written to an Italian Libretto. This is because it was written for performance at the third opera house in Paris, the Théâtre-Italien, which was largely devoted to works by Italian composers (particularly Rossini) but which did also produce works by native French composers.

I thought that this was an uneven work. The general style is derived from Cherubini and his contemporaries but there are some more modern touches which might be derived from Spontini or even Rossini. Part of the opera were certainly impressive - the opening makes quite an impact in its classical solemnity - but elsewhere I felt that Bertin wasn’t quite sure how to develop and shape her material. Good ideas seemed rather to peter out.  So certainly an opera with listening to and a good example of how composers were developing the language of French opera during this period, but although it would be very satisfying to say that this is a forgotten masterpiece I can’t really say that it is . Perhaps more than a mere curiosity but nothing that compels repeated listening.

Massenet: Cendrlllon

 Opera no 141

Massenet: Cendrillon

Soloists

Philharmonia Orchestra

Julius Rudel

I’m gradually getting to know the operas of Massenet. He was perhaps the leading opera composer of the fin du siècle and although Manon remains a repertory piece many of his opera operas have disappeared from the repertoire or at best managed only a tenuous hold. There is great variety in his output, from old-fashioned French grand opera to Verismo and most points in between. This operas is his version of the Cinderella story. I thought that it was a lovely piece. Full of grace and elegance with some throwbacks to the classical and even baroque eras, some highly attractive dance music, plenty of lighthearted moments and some surprisingly impassioned love duets. Altogether it made very attractive listening. The performance here used a tenor rather than a mezzo in which should be the trouser role of the prince. To me that worked OK, but I would like to hear it sometime with female voices in the two main roles. That creates a certain frisson, which I am sure Massenet deliberately set out to create. It would certainly have appealed to the men in the audience…. 

Spontini: Milton

Opera 140

Spontini: Milton

Soloists

Milan Radio Symphony Orchestra

Alberto Paoletti

My interest in French grand opera started when I took part in a performance of Spontini’s La Vestale at University. I got to know the other grand operas (Fernand Cortez and Olympie) some time later and last year I included one of his last operas Agenese Von Honenstafen in my 365 project. This year’s opera is an earlier work, more in the Opèra Comique style (though this performance in Italian had recitatives rather than spoken dialogue). Milton, which is based on the life of the poet, is a fairly short one-act work. It was the opera which Spontini wrote immediately before La Vestale. In many ways it seemed almost like a preliminary sketch for that work. It doesn’t have the scale or the elaborate set pieces of the later work, but the harmonic language and melodic style is very similar and at least some of the numbers in this opera would not have been out of place in la Vestale. There is even an aria with a prominent horn obligato which closely foreshadows one of the arias in the later work.

I enjoyed this piece a lot - it gave a real sense of where Spontini was coming from as a composer in his early career. There are certainly traces of Mozart and Gluck but perhaps also some throw back to the earlier French operas of people like Dalayrac. Perhaps there are even some distant echoes of Rameau. So this really was a fascinating insight into the development of the grand opera style which Spontini and those that came after him developed into such an important part of 19th century musical discourse. 

Meyerbeer: L’Étoile du Nord

Opera no 139

Meyerbeer: L’Étoile du Nord

Soloists

Wexford opera

Wladimir Jurowski

For somebody like me with an interest in 19th century French Opera Meyerbeer is one of the key figures. His four grand operas were the cornerstone of the operatic repertoire in France for most of the middle years of the 19th century and spread his fame throughout the world. But he also wrote two late operas in the Opéra Comique tradition - this is one of them. I knew it by name and that it had a mad scene with obligato parts for two flutes but I don’t think that I had heard any of the opera before.

It was a real delight. It has all of the characteristic touches one expects from Meyerbeer, though on a slightly smaller scale. The rhythms were infectious and the comic moments were nicely balanced with the more serious episodes. I’ve commented before that Meyerbeer was not a master of transition - in this opera with spoken dialogue you, fortunately, don’t get quite as many of those jarring joins between sections as you do in the through composed works.  I said that I hadn’t heard any of the music before but in fact some of it was familiar from the ballet Les Patineurs. That was largely based on the ballet in Le Prophet, but in putting the score together Constant Lambert also took some music from this opera, including the.big tune for the soprano soloists.

Then there is the mad scene. This was the most gloriously over the top mad scene I have ever heard and was quite irresistible in its bonkers way. I knew that it involved two flutes but I thought for a while that I was mistaken because it went on for ages with just one flute - eventually the second flute joined in and the piece went on even longer. I’ve not heard anything like it before. It was written especially for Jenny Lind and must have created a sensation when she first sang it.  

So I thoroughly enjoyable experience  - there’s another late opera Dinorah which I need to catch up with. I look forward to that but I can’t break my rule in this project by having more than one opera by the same composer so it may have to wait a while.

Reyer: Sigurd

Opera no 138

Reyer: Sigurd

Soloists

ORTF Orchestra Philharmonique

Manuel Rosenthal

This is one of the operas I had been most looking forward to including in this project. Last year I was impressed by Reyer’s Salammbô https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1115302661835546773/7844049923808258817 and said that I wanted to hear Sigurd. I managed to track down a recording of the radio broadcast from 1974. The recording has quite significant cuts but even so is still long, spreading over three CDs.

Sigurd is Reyer’s version of the Nibelungen legends - apparently he was aware that Wagner was writing the Ring while he was working on his opera. The opera was hugely successful for the years up to the beginning of the First World War, but then fell completely out of favour.

I enjoyed it immensely and thought that it was a superb piece. Had it not been for the similarly of subject matter with the Wagner it could have stood a chance of remaining in the repertory. It is very much in the Meyerbeerian grand opera tradition but with significant influence of Berlioz. There are some Wagnerian influences, though these are from the earlier operas, particularly Lohengrin. There is a great sense of propulsion throughout the score and one can see why the work was so effective on stage. I’m so pleased that I finally got to hear the opera. I’ve know about it for years and have always been intrigued by what is might sound like.  

Joncières: Dimitri

Opera no 137 

Joncières: Dimitri

Soloists

Brussels Philharmonic Ochestra

Hervé Niquet

This is another in the series of French operas on the splendid Bru Zane label, which has enabled enthusiast like me to hear some long-forgotten operas in good sound with excellent performance standards and superb notes.

I was quite impressed by a piece by Joncières in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Jonci%C3%A8res and I mentioned that this opera has now been recorded. I was glad of the opportunity to hear it. It took a while for me to get into the piece - I though that there was too much routine material in the first act but the work definitely improved as it went on and there was very appealing music towards the end. The style is reminiscent of Meyerbeer but there are some touches of Wagner here and there. This is no lost masterpiece but like almost all of the works in this project well worth listening to.

Grétry: La Caravane du Caire

Opera no 136

Gretry: La Caravane du Claire

Soloists

Ricercar Academy

Marc Minkowski

This is another French opera with a taste for the exotic. It is a much earlier work that the ones I have featured so far in this little segment of the project and its orientialism is characteristic of the Turkish music one finds in works like Mozart’s Seraglio.

My knowledge of Grètry is limited to Richard Coeur De Lion, which was one of the works we performed at the Nottingham University Opera Group. That was a charming work - this opera is perhaps slightly more substantial. The influence of Gluck is everywhere but there are also strong hints of Haydn and Mozart - indeed more than once I was reminded of the comendatore scene in Don Giovanni.  I don’t think that the work is a forgotten masterpiece = there are some odd passages where Grétry’s sense of harmony seems rather wayward - but it was well worth hearing. It is a reminder of just how influential Gluck was to a whole series of French composers. When I first started learning about Berlioz I couldn’t make out why he placed Gluck on such a pedestal, but I see it now. This, along with many operas, would be unthinkable without the example of Gluck.

Gounod: La Reine de Saba

Opera no 135

Gounod: La Reine de Saba

Soloists

Toulouse capital orchestra

Michael Plasson

Gounod is so associated with Faust that is sometime difficult to remember that he wrote several operas. Romeo and Juliet gets the occasional revival but the rest of his operatic output had almost sunk without trace. This is  another example of a French opera with an exotic setting although this one has fewer exotic features than some of the others I have listened to in this series. This is a post-Faust opera but seems more old fashioned - it is very much in the grand opera tradition with little of the elegance which one associates with Faust. Much as I enjoy French Grand Opera there was not much where which grabbed the attention - even the obligatory ballet music seemed to be rather routine.  This was an old live performance from the 1970s with lots of distracting stage noise and almost comically prominent bass drum and cymbals . So perhaps I didn’t really get the best listening experience - but even so I don’t think that this is an opera which I will be returning to.

Delibes: Lakmé

 

Opera no 134

Delibes: Lakmé

Soloists

Monte-Carlo opera orchestra and chorus

Richard Bonynge

To the older generation Lakme meant the Bell Song: now of course it is associated with the British Airways Duet. I also knew one aria from the opera but otherwise it was new to me. Popular opinion is not always right, of course, but here I think it has picked correctly - these two pieces the highlights of the score. It was good to hear them in context: the duet particularly is referenced several times after the initial hearing and there is a lovely passage when it gradually fades into the background as the two singers lave the stage.

There was much to enjoy in the rest of the opera but I am am not sure that it is strong enough to become a repertory peice. There is an elegance about the score and some attractive melodies but I was surprised how often Delibes seems to be on autopilot in the more dramatic music - he’d clearly mastered all of the cliches of French romantic opera but I am not sure that he had put his own stamp on them. Still I am glad to have heard the opera and seen how the famous moments fitted into the whole..

David: Lalla Roukh

Opera no 133

David: Lalla Roukh

Soloists

Opera Lafayette

Ryan Brown

If the previous opera in this project marked the end of Frnech operatic orienttalism this opera, by contrast, was one of first to experiment with the idea. Last year I wrote about David’s importance in the development of the genre https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search?q=David and this is another good example of the style. I thought that this was a delightful work. The oriental touches were gently sketched in rather than laid on with a trowel and the whole opera worked splendidly. It is very musch in the opéra comique tradition with attractive melodies, lively ensembles and some touching moments. It came up as fresh as a daisy in this recording - which was probably 100 years since the last time it was heard. Such a delightful score should never had been allowed to be forgotten. I’m glad to see that there has been a stage revival since this recording was made. Because this project only allows one work per composer I will have to wait before I hear some more of David’s music but there are recording available and they will certainly be on my listening list. 

Rabaud: Mârouf

 Opera no 132

Rabaud: Mârouf

Soloists

French radio orchestra

Pierre-Michael LeConte

This was fun! Henri Rabaud is completely forgotten now but around the turn of the last century he was an important figure in French musical life and this opera, in particularly, was widely performed. Its name has a distant resonance because it was one of those piece from which excerpts were often recorded in the early days of the gramophone.

Ir is a good example of the fascination that French composers had with all things oriental. In fact, daring from 1914, is is probably one of the last examples.  The operas is based on a tale from the thousand and one nights and is full of exotic touches. The start is unexpected - a solo song from the poor shoemaker Mâouf who pretends to be a rich man in order to marry the sultan’s daughter. So long as you don’t take it too seriously the opera works very well - it is full of colour and nice ‘oriental’ touches. Some of it does now seem almost ‘Disneyfied’ - the cliches of oriental French opera found their way in to the vocabulary of film composers and now it is them, rather than the original operas, that are the point of reference music in this idiom. This won’t be the last of the operas with oriental tinges which I will cover in this part of the project. 

Chabrier: Gwendoline

 Opera no 131

Chabrier: Gwendoline

I thought that this was an absolutely gorgeous piece. I shared my enthusiasm for Chabrier in last year’s blog https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Chabrier when I listened to one of his shortest and small scale operas. Gwendoline by contrast is a full scale work with a large orchestra, multiple choral lines and several meaty solo parts. I’ve know the overture since my student days (may have even been when I was at school) because it was on the reverse side of my first recording of España - I seem to remember that it was on a 10 inch LP. I’d not heard the rest of the opera until now.

Gwendoline is described in the text books as Chabrier’s attempt to write a Wagnerian opera to show that he was a ‘serious’ composer. There are certainly some Wagnerian overtones in the choice of an Arthurian legend as the basis for the libretto but I didn’t detect many Wagnerian echoes in the music itself. The music is unmistakably French from the outset, both in its colours, its melodic shape and its harmonic language. The choral music throughout was sensual and highly perfumed. It recalled the opening scene of Chabrier’s unfinished opera Briséïs and his Ode to Music for women’s voices and looks forward to some of the use of voices in Debussy and Ravel. The more martial music shows another side to CHabrier - it is full blooded and exciting with perhaps a nod towards Meyerbeer and French grand opera, although the harmonic language is more sophisticated.

All in all then a fabulous work which will sure feature in the list of 1op 10 operas which I will compile at the end of this project. 

Berlioz: Les Francs juges

Opera no 130

Berlioz; Les Francs juges

Soloists

New Philharmonia Orchestra

Colin Davis

I start this phase of the project devoted to 19th and early 20th century French operas with a piece which only exists in fragments. Les Francs-Juges was Berlioz’ first attempt at an opera. He started it in 1826 when he was in his early 20s and tinkered with it several times over the next few years. There is conflicting information about whether it was actually completed, but it was never performed and only fragments of the score remain. The overture is of course famous but the rest of what remains of the score appears never to have been commercially recorded. But the BBC did record these fragments many years ago and they have been posted on line so that it is possible to hear them. 

Altogether, excluding the overture, there is about 25 mins of music here in about half a dozen separate numbers which were scattered about the entire score - this is not a case of the composer starting an opera and then giving up. I thought that the music was well worth saving as it gives a really good sense of the composer’s early development in the years before the Symphonie Fantastique..The choral writing owes something to the French Revolution generation of composers and there are also strong indications of the huge importance that Gluck played in Berlioz’s musical thinking. Altogether I thought that this music was well worth preserving - to me anything by Berlioz is likely to be of real interest. Had the opera been completed and performed who knows how Berlioz’s operatic career might have developed -as it was he was always something of an outsider in the French operatic establishment.

Mondonville: Titon et l’Aurore

Opera no

Mondonville: Titon et l’Aurore

Soloists

Les Musiciens du Louvre

Mark Minkowski

For the last Baroque opera in this part of the project we go over to the other side of the Guerre des Bouffons. In fact this opera was was at the centre of the dispute and the story is, I don’t know how true it iw, that the French supporters guaranteed its success by arranging for the army to keep Italian supporters away from the premiere.

Be that as it may this opera deserved success on its own merits. Mondonville was said to be the only composer who could rival Rameau and one can see why. This has all the characteristics that one finds in a Rameau opera - innovative orchestration, dance music, rich textures, impressive choral sections and some heroic arias as well as some comic moments. Altogether it is a very impressive work which I am very glad to have heard. It took me a long time to appreciate French Baroque opera but now I find myself returning to it time and time again.

This is a suitable point to finish this part of the project in which I have been exploring 18th century opera. Next I am picking up where I left off in Italian opera and will be listening to some late 19th and early 20th century operas by the composers who followed Verdi.