100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (5 page)

Time: legendary

Place: Thessaly

First performances at Vienna, December 26, 1767 (in Italian), and at Paris, April 23, 1776 (in French)

    Gluck’s operas—especially
Orfeo
and
Alceste
—meet the test of being classics better than any other composer’s. By this I mean that they are the oldest operas to receive repeated productions even today.
Alceste
, for instance, is nine years older than the American Revolution, and yet it is still part of the repertoire of almost every great opera house in the world. An opera really has to have something to survive so long, and so vigorously.

And this is what
Alceste
has: it has noble melodies and striking arias; it has vigorous and dramatic choruses—plenty of them, too; it has strong, striking orchestration, not just plunkety-plunk accompaniments like so many older operas;
and above all, it tells its great old story with dramatic and musical integrity. That great old story is based on the popular dramatic theme of a love that is faithful unto death. It is a part of classical Greek mythology which you will find in your Bulfinch and in Euripides.

When Gluck composed the opera, he was engaging in a sensational aesthetic war. He was trying to purge opera of some of those excesses that he believed made Italian opera absurd; and he made a special point of saying that the music should serve the drama, not get in its way. The arguments are clearly set forth in the famous preface to the published score, which is required reading for all serious students of the opera. (Actually, it was written by the librettist, Calzabigi, and only signed by Gluck.)

The opera was a huge success in Vienna, where it was given in Italian. For Paris, ten years later, Gluck made a drastically different version, one which stuck closer to his announced principles and which is the one always given today. It was a failure. Gluck took it philosophically and wrote:
“Alceste
can only displease when it is new. It has not yet had time. I say that it will please in two hundred years …” For once, an artist was right when he made such a prediction. At least, I hope that he was right. The prediction has less than twenty years to run.

ACT I

In the first act the people of the city-state of Thessaly are already mourning their good King, Admetus, who is on the point of death. They pray to Apollo, for the King had once done Apollo a great service. Queen Alcestis and her children are announced by the messenger, Evander. She joins in the prayer, singing the fine aria
Grands dieux du destin
, but it takes some time to get an answer. Finally, after the elaborate offering of sacrifices and a stately ballet, the High Priest announces the decision of the oracle of Apollo’s temple. Yes, he proclaims, Admetus may be saved, but someone must offer to take his place in death. No one is devoted enough to do this,
and all his subjects flee from the temple, leaving Alcestis alone. It is then that she has her greatest moment (and, incidentally, her greatest aria,
Divinités du Styx)
. She decides that she cannot live without Admetus, and that she herself must make the sacrifice and take his place with Death. It is on this noble note that Act I ends.

ACT II

The second act begins with the rejoicing of the people, for their beloved King Admetus is well again, spared by the gods. They sing; they dance; they rejoice; and Admetus joins in the thanksgiving. Yet he knows that
someone
must have laid down his life to meet the conditions of the gods, and he is troubled by the absence of his wife, Queen Alcestis. Presently she comes in and tries to join in the general tone of rejoicing; but as Admetus questions her, the truth slowly dawns on him. Finally she admits it: Alcestis has offered herself to the gods to take the place of Admetus. Horrified, he reproaches her, for he cannot think of life without Alcestis any more than she could think of it without him. But—as Alcestis points out—the decision is made: the gods have accepted her sacrifice; and, as the act ends, she starts on her way to the realms of Hades, of Death.

ACT III

Scene 1
Like the first act, the last one begins with the populace mourning. But this time the people of Thessaly are mourning the loss of their Queen Alcestis instead of their King Admetus. Now, in comes a new and refreshing figure. He is Hercules, the strong man, who has just finished the twelfth and last of his Herculean labors. An old friend of the family, he is profoundly shocked when Evander informs him of what has happened. Immediately he resolves to try to get Alcestis back from Hades. (His last labor, though he is too polite to refer to it, had been getting Cerberus back out of Hades. It
may therefore be assumed that he feels well trained for his new task.)

Scene 2
This scene takes us to the gates of Hades. Alcestis wishes to enter at once—to die; but the specters of Hades tell her she must not enter before nightfall. Admetus, who has followed his wife, now comes in, hoping to take her place, but Alcestis nobly refuses. The god of death, Thanatos, appears and gives Alcestis the chance to renounce her vow, to remain on earth, alive, and let Admetus take her place. Still Alcestis remains firm.

And now night begins to fall, and the specters of Hades call upon Alcestis to enter the gates. She is about to do so, when stout Hercules appears. He struggles against all the specters and appears at last to be triumphant, when the great god Apollo himself intervenes. So deeply impressed is Apollo with the devotion of husband and wife and with the valorous friendship of Hercules that he pronounces a happy ending to the tragedy. Hercules is given immortality, and Alcestis and Admetus are to return to earth, the models for all happily married people. The gates of Hades vanish; a host of people comes in; and the opera ends with a chorus of rejoicing led by Admetus, and with a grave and dignified, but happy, ballet.

AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS

Opera in one act by Gian-Carlo Menotti with
libretto in English by the composer

Time: the first Christmas Eve

Place: on the road to Bethlehem

First performance telecast from New York, December 24
,

First stage performance at New York, April 27, 1867

    
Amahl and the Night Visitors
is the first opera ever commissioned for television. The National Broadcasting Company telecast its premiere on Christmas Eve of 1951, and it elicited such a warm response that the performance has become an annual event. The effort has been made to retain the original cast year after year; but as the leading role is that of a boy soprano, certain obvious difficulties have arisen. Nevertheless, its audience for each of these performances has been estimated at several million; and thus
Amahl
has probably been heard by more Americans than any other opera—certainly more than any other American opera.

    The story takes place on the first Christmas Eve. In a small hut live an impoverished widow and her crippled son Amahl.
He hobbles on a crutch and loves to play his shepherd’s pipe. He is also very imaginative—always seeing things. That is why his mother does not believe him at first when he says there are three kings calling on them. He is also a very curious child. That is why he asks the kings quite personal questions—such as whether they have blue blood and what is in that box they are carrying. And the kings are very simple and honest men. That is why they give Amahl very simple and honest answers. And that is why they are very much pleased when the shepherds (Amahl’s neighbors) come and bring them simple gifts. The nicest gift of all turns out to be a shepherd’s dance.

The kings are also kindly and warmhearted. That is why they do not mind when they catch Amahl’s mother trying to steal their gold in the night. They decide that the child
they
are going to see (who is the Christ child, of course) does not need the gold. And that also is why they are so much pleased when the miracle happens and Amahl suddenly finds that he can walk.

Amahl and his mother love each other dearly. That is why Amahl, though crippled, attacks the kings’ page when he catches her stealing. And that is why, when the child leaves with the kings, you truly believe the mother and son as they sing their simple duet: “I shall miss you very much.”

As Amahl goes up the road with the three kings, he again plays his pipe—just as he had played it when the curtain went up.

L’AMORE DEI TRE RE

(The Love of Three Kings)

Opera in three acts by Italo Montemezzi with
libretto in Italian by Sem Benelli, based on
Benelli’s play of the same name

Time: 10th century

Place: Italy

First performance at Milan, April 10, 1913

    Once, during the last years of his life, which he spent in California, Italo Montemezzi set down his musical credo. Music without melody, he said, is inconceivable. Neither academic formality nor “realism” in music, he said, appealed to him. All he wanted to do was to clothe the characters in his operas in a musical atmosphere where they could live and express themselves.

It sounds like a modest enough ambition, but it is one that only the most sensitive composers have ever realized. In
The Love of Three Kings
he realized it with stunning success. It tells a violently dramatic story with a dignity and subtlety seldom reached by the more realistic “realism” of the verists, with whom he is sometimes classified. Yet it does not lose an ounce of dramatic impact thereby.

Oddly enough, his masterwork has been more generally appreciated in his adopted country, the United States, than in
his native Italy. Here he was invited to conduct performances repeatedly, and to coach the leading singers in their parts. He was a modest gentleman whom everyone liked as a human being and respected as a musical poet of unimpeachable integrity.

ACT I

Forty years before the action begins, Archibaldo had invaded Italy from the north and made himself King of Altura. As part of the peace pact, he had insisted that the beautiful Fiora, affianced to the local Prince Avito of Altura, should become the bride of his own son, Manfredo.

So it was done; and now Archibaldo, a blind old man, continues to live in the royal castle, suspicious of his daughter-in-law, and, despite his handicap, keenly sensitive in every other sense and nerve to what goes on about him.

When the opera opens, it is night in a hall of the castle. Manfredo is away at war, and old Archibaldo is uneasily hoping for his return. There is a lighted lantern for Manfredo, and after speaking with a guard, Flaminio, about the events of forty years back he instructs him to put out the light: Manfredo will not return tonight. Flaminio, who is faithful in the service of the new King, is yet a patriotic Alturan even after all these years. As dawn is approaching and he hears the sound of a rustic flute in the distance, he leads the blind old man uneasily away; for he knows the significance of the sound.

Almost as soon as they are gone, Fiora and Avito come into the hall from her room. Their guilty love is something that Archibaldo has seemed to sense, and Avito is made all the more uneasy when he notes that the light has been extinguished: someone, he feels, may have been spying on them. Fiora tries to reassure him; there is a short but passionate love scene; and suddenly the cry of “Fiora! Fiora! Fiora!” is heard off-stage. Avito makes good his escape just before Archibaldo returns. She, too, tries to take advantage of the old man’s blindness, but he guesses her presence; he hears her heavy
breathing; he demands to know to whom she has been speaking.

Blandly she lies to him: there has been no one, she says, but she senses, too, that he does not believe her. Fortunately, they are interrupted by Flaminio, who reports the approach of Manfredo. The uxorious warrior has left the war to spend a night with his wife. She greets him with more politeness than warmth, tells him that she has been waiting up for him (as Archibaldo will corroborate, says she), and takes him to her room. As they leave, the old man mutters to himself a bitter prayer: “O God, since Thou hast taken away my eyes, let me indeed be blind!”

ACT II

The next day Manfredo must bid farewell to Fiora and return to the siege. On a terrace, high on the castle walls, he asks for some token of her affection, but in vain. Then he pleads only that she wave a scarf to him till he is out of sight. She is moved—more by pity than by love-and when he has left, she takes a scarf from a servant and waves from the battlement. But when Avito comes, the weary waving ceases. He, too, wishes to leave, and forever, but their passion overpowers them; and in the midst of their duet Archibaldo returns with Flaminio. He cannot, of course, see Avito, who begins to attack him with a dagger. But Flaminio silently intervenes; Fiora signals him to leave; and he goes off.