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.
