The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta

John Adams

(1947–)

Nixon in China (1987)

The Death of Klinghoffer (1990)

I was looking at the Ceiling and then I saw the Sky (1995)

According to official statistics, John Adams is the most frequently performed of living American composers – his fame founded on an accessible style of writing known as Minimalism which involves the repetition of small groups of notes to a point where listeners are either mesmerised or driven crazy. An essentially West Coast American phenomenon, it was adopted by Adams in the early 1970s in reaction against an East Coast academic upbringing and meant that he was automatically associated with older Minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. But Adams has developed in a more eclectic way, providing himself with an escape route from what could otherwise be a restrictively dead-end musical language. Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer are striking examples of newsreel opera, their stories taken from real life and presented like televisual current affairs. Nixon deals with high-level politics; Klinghoffer (a treatment of the Achille Lauro hijack) with the personal consequences of political conflict. His most recent stage work, I was looking at the Ceiling and then I saw the Sky, is a dramatised song-sequence in something like the popular manner of the collaborations between Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill earlier this century. Looking critically at the lives of young Americans at the time of the last Los Angeles earthquake, it premiered with spray-paint set-designs by radical graffiti artists.

Nixon in China

FORM: Opera in three acts; in English

COMPOSER: John Adams (1947–)

LIBRETTO: Alice Goodman

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Houston, 22 October 1987

Principal Characters

Richard Nixon, American president Baritone

Pat Nixon, his wife Soprano

Mao Tse-tung, Chinese statesman Tenor

Henry Kissinger, American statesman Bass

Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife Soprano

Chou En-lai, Chinese statesman Baritone

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: China; February 1972

ACT I On their arrival in Beijing, Nixon and his wife are greeted by Chou En-lai. Nixon feels that this visit is of great symbolic significance – as much as the first moon landing, in fact, and he also expresses his pleasure that their arrival coincides with peak television viewing time in America, thus ensuring him maximum publicity. Then the President, Henry Kissinger, Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai each offer their individual views on world issues, during which the contrasting ideologies and philosophies of East and West become evident, and the first act closes with a banquet.

ACT II Pat Nixon is taken to visit a commune and the Summer Palace and later joins the President, Mao, Chou En-lai and Mao’s wife, Chiang Ch’ing, to watch a performance of the contemporary ‘political ballet’, The Red Detachment of Women. This depicts a courageous group of women soldiers successfully battling against an unscrupulous landlord (played by Henry Kissinger). When the ballet ends, Chiang Ch’ing presents her account of the Cultural Revolution and how she sees her own place in history.

ACT III On the last night of the visit Nixon, Pat, Mao, Chiang Ch’ing and Chou En-lai are each seen in separate beds. Nixon and Mao reflect on past events in their lives and on their struggles to succeed. Nixon’s wartime memories centre on the acquisition of his own hamburger stand while Mao’s most vivid memories are the struggles of the Revolution. It is left to Chou En-lai to unite the past with the present by asking the question common to all political ideologies: ‘How much of what we did was good?’, which brings the opera to a close.

Music

Nixon in China is a mixture of exhilarating upbeat rhythms, pounding through the endless repetitions that make up a Minimalist score, and moments of reflective poignancy in which potentially cardboard characters really come to life. It isn’t easy to show recent historical figures with credibility on an opera stage, and the mere idea of Nixon and Mao singing to each other raises an assumption that the tone of the piece will be satirical. But no. Despite forays into the surreal, this is straight-laced all-American drama which if anything veers toward Romanticism – with appropriately luscious music. Even the synthesiser which Adams insinuates into the orchestral textures is given a romantic treatment.

Highlight

A brilliantly energised orchestral sequence called ‘The Chairman Dances’, which has entered the concert repertoire as a stand-alone piece.

Did You Know?

Nixon in China is one of the most commercially successful of all modern operas. The Grammy Award-winning recording was named a ‘recording of the decade’ by Time magazine, and the whole thing broadcast on American TV as though it were a newsflash, introduced by Walter Cronkite – which is probably the only time Richard Nixon ever saw it. He declined an invitation to attend the Houston premiere, and is not known to have been present at any other live performance.

Recommended Recording

Sanford Sylvan, James Maddelena, Chorus and Orchestra of St Luke’s/Edo de Waart. Nonesuch 7559 79177-2. The only recording to date.

Samuel Barber

(1910–81)

A Hand of Bridge (1953)

Vanessa (1957)

Anthony and Cleopatra (1966)

Barber was an American who looked to Europe and the melodic abundance of European late-Romanticism for inspiration. Born into a WASP-ish East Coast family, he was one of the first students at the new Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where he studied singing as well as composition. Opera wasn’t a preoccupation, and his few stage works have tended to be overshadowed by concert scores like the Violin Concerto, the lyrically nostalgic scena for voice and orchestra Knoxville, Summer of 1915, and above all by the deathless Adagio, which must have featured on the soundtrack to more feature films and TV documentaries than anything since Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. But at Curtis he had met another young composer called Gian Carlo Menotti who was supremely a creature of the theatre. They went on to spend most of their lives together, and the first two of the three Barber operas were collaborations in which Menotti wrote the words. A Hand of Bridge doesn’t actually require many words: it lasts nine minutes and is no more than a brilliant little diversion. Vanessa, with its darkly Ibsenesque plot, is far more substantial, while Antony and Cleopatra is grander still, written for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Vanessa

FORM: Opera in four acts; in English

COMPOSER: Samuel Barber (1910–81)

LIBRETTO: Gian Carlo Menotti; after Isak Dinesen’s story

FIRST PERFORMANCE: New York, 15 January 1958

Principal Characters

Vanessa, a baroness Soprano

Anatol, a young man Tenor

Erika, Vanessa’s niece Mezzo-soprano

Old Baroness, Vanessa’s mother Contralto

Doctor Bass

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: A country house in an unnamed ‘northern country’ in the early 1900s

ACT I Vanessa waits alone in her sumptuous drawing room for a visitor to arrive. When he does at last come, Vanessa keeps her back turned to him, saying that she has waited twenty years for his return but, if he can no longer love her, then he must go immediately. As the visitor answers her, Vanessa whirls round, realizing that he cannot possibly be her lover, Anatol; he is much too young. Weak with shock she is taken to her room by Erika. Meanwhile, Anatol casts an acquisitive eye over the rich furnishings of the room. When Erika returns he explains that he is the son of Anatol, Vanessa’s lover who went away twenty years ago; his father is now dead. In view of the snowstorm raging outside, he begs Erika to let him stay the night and, carefully scrutinising the girl, calmly sits down to enjoy the meal prepared for his father.

ACT II A month has gone by. Erika confesses to the old Baroness that, although she and Anatol became lovers on that first night, she does not love him and will not marry him. Vanessa, aglow with happiness, returns from skating with Anatol and announces plans for a grand New Year Ball. Later, the old Baroness questions Anatol about his behaviour towards Erika and extracts his promise to marry her. Erika, however, knowing that her aunt, Vanessa, is in love with Anatol, rejects him.

ACT III The ball is under way and Vanessa and Anatol are about to announce their engagement. The pregnant Erika, shocked and disturbed, wanders unnoticed outside into the bitter cold as the music and dancing continue in the background.

ACT IV Erika has been found unconscious and has suffered a miscarriage, kept secret from Vanessa, who is now married to Anatol and preparing to leave for their honeymoon in Paris. After they leave, Erika is alone; she orders the mirrors to be draped and the gate to be shut, just as her aunt had done: ‘Now it is my turn to wait’.

Music and Background

A conservative piece for its time, Vanessa is richly scored in the manner of late Romanticism, owing much to Puccini and Richard Strauss, and with most of the formal ingredients of conventional 19th-century grand opera but translated into American terms. There is a fragment of a ball scene, ravishingly lyrical set-piece arias, and a sort of folk ballet – all of which contributed to the enormous success Vanessa enjoyed in its early years. It was the first opera in English ever to be heard at Salzburg, where it played with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit.

Highlights

Erika’s aria ‘Must the winter come so soon?’ is a winner, as is Vanessa’s ‘Do not utter a word’, and the final quintet is arguably one of the most effective climaxes in modern opera.

Did You Know?

The original production of Vanessa was a grand event with opulent sets and costumes by Cecil Beaton. It was intended that Maria Callas should sing the title role but she declined – allegedly because she thought Erika too much a rival part.

Recommended Recording

Eleanor Steber, Rosalind Elias, Regina Resnik, Nicolai Gedda, Metropolitan Opera/Dmitri Mitropoulos. BMG/RCA GD 87899. The original cast, and the only recording.

Béla Bartók

(1881–1945)

Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1918)

Born in a part of Hungary which is now Romania, Bartók was one of the pioneer figures of 20th-century music, forging a new musical style from the folk traditions of his native country that owes nothing to the two composer-giants who are generally considered the great originators of modernity, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Most of his work was instrumental and orchestral, with a set of six string quartets that rank as the most significant of their kind since Beethoven, and major concert scores like the Concerto for Orchestra and Music for Percussion, Strings and Celesta. His involvement with the stage was limited and Duke Bluebeard’s Castle his only opera, although he did subsequently produce two ballet scores, The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin. He left Hungary for America in 1940 and died there in financially straitened circumstances five years later.

Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

FORM: Opera in one act; in Hungarian

COMPOSER: Béla Bartók (1881–1945)

LIBRETTO: Béla Balázs; after a fairy tale by Charles Perrault

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Budapest, 24 May 1918

Principal Characters

Duke Bluebeard Bass

Judith, his wife Mezzo-soprano

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: Bluebeard’s castle; an unknown time and country

Bluebeard enters, leading his new wife into her home, a strange, dark Gothic castle which has seven doors but no windows. He asks her if she has changed her mind about staying with him and, on her reassurance that she has not, they embrace. The door behind them is shut and bolted. Judith then notices the doors for the first time and, saying she wants to let in light and air, asks the Duke for the keys. A strange, long sighing sound is heard throughout the castle as Bluebeard, on her insistence, gives her the key to the first door. As she opens it a vivid red light streams through; it is the Torture Chamber and the walls are wet with blood. Undeterred, Judith maintains that she is not afraid and proceeds to open the next four doors: the Armoury is characterised by bronze light, the Treasury by golden light, the Garden by bluish light and the vision of Bluebeard’s Kingdom by a brilliant white light. Bluebeard suggests that she has seen enough and takes her in his arms. But Judith is, by now, obsessed with knowing all his secrets and demands the sixth key. The haunting sigh is heard once more as she opens the door to find a Lake of Tears.

The final door, insists Bluebeard, must remain closed. But Judith begins to question him about his love for her. She wants to know about the women he loved before he met her, and asks what happened to them. Bluebeard stays silent and Judith opens the door, convinced that the truth lies behind it. Immediately the fifth and sixth doors swing shut and the stage darkens. Three beautiful women step out: they are his ex-wives, Bluebeard explains, and represent the morning, noon and evening of his love. Judith, he says, is his last love, that of the night, and after her is eternal darkness. Judith disappears through the seventh door and Bluebeard is alone.

Music and Background

As theatre, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is compact, with just one act and a playing time of an hour, but as music it has epic stature, grandly terrifying in its depiction of Duke Bluebeard’s dark domain and heavy with the gloom of Gothic horror. Bartók’s treatment of the story is, of course, symbolic – the opening of the doors is like an exercise in Freudian analysis, exposing the hidden secrets of the subconscious mind – and the counterbalancing of inner and outer worlds is echoed in Bartók’s key structures, which gravitate between F sharp for Bluebeard and C for Judith.

Highlight

This is not an opera with stand-alone arias, and there are, after all, only two singing characters: the dead wives behind the sixth door are mute. But there is a great musical climax at the fifth door when the vision of Bluebeard’s kingdom floods the stage – a heart-stopping moment that never fails in its effect.

Did You Know?

Bartók wrote this grim tale of domestic serial killing shortly after his marriage. He dedicated the score to his wife.

Recommended Recording

Samuel Ramey, Eva Marton, Hungarian State Orchestra/Adam Fischer. Sony MK 44523. Idiomatically conducted, with explosively strong performances from the two singers.

Ludwig van Beethoven

(1770–1827)

Fidelio (1805)

Born in Bonn but living and working in Vienna from his early twenties, Beethoven is one of the towering, pivotal figures of music history, with a massive output (nine symphonies, thirty-two piano sonatas, sixteen string quartets, seven concertos …). His work carried the Classical forms of Haydn and Mozart into the new territory of Romanticism and confirmed the potential of music to speak in spiritual as well as political terms. A radical humanitarian with revolutionary sympathies, he used his work as a public platform for the expression of personal beliefs about society and the individual, and his only opera Fidelio was exactly that: a statement of the power of the human spirit to triumph over tyranny and oppression which stands beside the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as an anthem to the ideals of universal brotherhood. Other scores express a more autobiographical struggle with human weakness: at the age of thirty he began to realise that he was going deaf, and as his hearing worsened he withdrew into a world of inner turmoil which found a mystical dimension in the late quartets.

Fidelio

FORM: Opera in two acts; in German

COMPOSER: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

LIBRETTO: Joseph Sonnleithner and Georg Friedrich Treitschke; after the play by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Vienna, 20 November 1805

Principal Characters

Florestan, a Spanish nobleman Tenor

Leonore, his wife, disguised as the male Fidelio Soprano

Rocco, chief jailer Bass

Marzelline, Rocco’s daughter Soprano

Jaquino, Rocco’s assistant Tenor

Don Pizarro, governor of the prison Bass-baritone

Don Fernando, the king’s minister Bass

Synopsis of the Plot

Setting: A fortress near Seville; 18th century

ACT I Florestan, a political prisoner and freedom fighter, has been flung into a dungeon by Pizarro and is slowly starving to death, while Pizarro spreads rumours that he has already died. Leonore, suspecting the truth, has disguised herself as a man, Fidelio, and has been taken on as an assistant by Rocco, swiftly becoming a trusted aide. Marzelline, Rocco’s daughter, is unaware of the disguise and has taken a considerable fancy to Fidelio, rejecting the overtures of Jaquino, her jealous former suitor. Leonore learns that Don Fernando, the king’s minister, is coming to inspect the prison, having heard that Pizarro is unlawfully locking up his own personal enemies. To Leonore’s horror, Pizarro gives Rocco money and instructs him to kill Florestan. Rocco declines to commit murder, but agrees to dig a grave in the prison dungeon if Pizarro will do the deed himself. Meanwhile Leonore has urged Rocco to allow the prisoners out for some light and air, but she is heartbroken to find Florestan is not among them. Rocco then tells her that she is to help with the gravedigging so at least she will be able to see Florestan and perhaps be able to help him; if nothing else she will die with him.

ACT II Rocco and Leonore enter the dungeon where Leonore is shocked to see her emaciated and chained husband, although she is careful to control her behaviour to avoid rousing Rocco’s suspicions. Leonore persuades Rocco to allow her to offer the condemned prisoner some bread and wine. Suddenly Pizarro bursts in, dagger in hand, and rushes towards Florestan – only to be stopped by Leonore who throws herself between them, declaring that she will shoot Pizarro, with a pistol she has kept hidden, before he kills Florestan. At this moment a fanfare is heard and Jaquino announces the minister’s arrival. Florestan is saved and, in a symbolic gesture, he is released from his chains by Leonore. The minister orders the immediate release of all the prisoners and the arrest of Pizarro. Justice is done.

Music and Background

Fidelio is a mixture of music and speech which can prove upliftingly sublime or stodgily leaden, depending on how it’s done and (critically) how much of the speech is left in. Beethoven had no previous experience of writing opera, and he took enormous trouble over it, passing through three different versions, a different name (Leonore) and four overtures before arriving at a final form. You could argue that the effort shows. There is also an uncomfortable relationship between the domestic and heroic elements in the opera, and a sense in which the great but static chorus of celebration at the end takes the whole thing out of the realms of theatre and into oratorio. But there is no denying the sincere depth of emotion involved, or the fact that Fidelio can be an exhilarating and radiantly affirmative experience – in the right hands.

Highlights

The canonic quartet ‘Mir ist so wunderbar’, Leonore’s aria ‘Komm, Hoffnung’, and the prisoners’ chorus ‘O welche Lust’ in Act I; the Leonore/Florestan duet ‘O namenlose Freude!’ and final chorus ‘Wer ein holdes Weib errungen’ in Act II.

Did You Know?

Fidelio’s subtitle is Die Eheliche Liebe (Married Love), and Leonore is very much the idealised woman Beethoven spent his life searching for but never finding. She also represents a comparatively rare example in opera of the female lead as active heroine rather than passive victim.

Fidelio is said to have been based on a true incident in the French Revolution.

Recommended Recording

Christa Ludwig, Jon Vickers, Philharmonia Orchestra/Otto Klemperer. EMI CMS7 69324-2. A classic 1962 recording with a warmth and dynamism that remain unmatched.