La chute de la maison Usher (opera)
Encyclopedia
La chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) is an unfinished opera
in one act (divided into two scenes) by Claude Debussy
to his own libretto
, based on Edgar Allan Poe
's short story The Fall of the House of Usher
. The composer worked on the score between 1908 and 1917 but it was never completed.
. As early as 1890, André Suarès
wrote in a letter to Romain Rolland
that "Monsieur Claude Debussy... is working on a symphony that will unfold psychological ideas based on the stories of Poe, in particular, The Fall of the House of Usher." Nothing came of this plan but in the wake of the success of his only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande
in 1902, Debussy turned to Poe for material for a potential successor. He worked on his first attempt at a Poe-inspired opera, the comedy Le diable dans le beffroi
, for several years before finally abandoning it in 1911 or 1912. By mid-June 1908 Debussy had begun another opera based on a Poe tale, the darker Fall of the House of Usher. On 5 July he signed a contract with the New York Metropolitan Opera guaranteeing the house the right to stage the premiere of his projected Poe double-bill as well as another unwritten opera La légende de Tristan. That summer he wrote to his friend Jacques Durand: "These days I have been working hard on The Fall of the House of Usher...There are moments when I lose the feeling of things around me and if the sister of Roderick Usher were to come into my house, I shouldn't be very surprised."
In 1909 Debussy wrote that he had almost finished Roderick Usher's monologue: "It almost makes the stones weep…as a matter of fact it is all about the influence of stones on the minds of neurasthenic people. The mustiness is charmingly rendered by contrasting the low notes of the oboe
with the harmonics of the violin
(a patent device of my own)." Debussy had believed he had been subject to neurasthenia
but around this time his doctor diagnosed him as suffering from the rectal cancer which was to kill him. According to Robert Orledge, "Debussy began increasingly to identify with Roderick Usher, whose mental breakdown Poe had identified with the crumbling House itself." Debussy made three attempts at writing a libretto. Only when he was satisfied with the third one did he produce a short-score draft of the music to the first scene and part of the second in 1916–17. He went no further with Usher before his death in 1918.
range. Jean-François Thibault writes: "One does not know what exact baritone ranges Debussy would have used for his three male characters, or if, as in Pelléas, he would have graduated them from Deep Bass, to Bass-Baritone, to Baritone-Martin. The assignation of the three roles to baritones of the same range is significant in that it opens up the strong possibility that the characters are three incarnations of one single consciousness."
's version, with orchestration by Robert Kyr, was performed at Yale University
on 25 February 1977. In the same year the Chilean composer Juan Allende-Blin's reconstruction was broadcast on German radio. Blin's version was staged at the Berlin State Opera
on 5 October 1979 with Jesús López-Cobos
conducting, the baritone
Jean-Philippe Lafont as Roderick Usher, the soprano
Colette Lorand as Lady Madeline, the tenor
Barry McDaniel as the doctor, and the bass Walter Grönroos as Roderick's friend. Blin's reconstruction was later recorded by EMI — the music has a running time of approximately 22 minutes.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
in one act (divided into two scenes) by Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
to his own libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
, based on Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's short story The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque...
. The composer worked on the score between 1908 and 1917 but it was never completed.
Composition
Debussy had long been fascinated by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, familiar to French readers through the translations by Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
. As early as 1890, André Suarès
André Suarès
André Suarès was one of the pseudonyms used by Félix-André-Yves Scantrel a French poet and critic....
wrote in a letter to Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
that "Monsieur Claude Debussy... is working on a symphony that will unfold psychological ideas based on the stories of Poe, in particular, The Fall of the House of Usher." Nothing came of this plan but in the wake of the success of his only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande
Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)
Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...
in 1902, Debussy turned to Poe for material for a potential successor. He worked on his first attempt at a Poe-inspired opera, the comedy Le diable dans le beffroi
Le diable dans le beffroi
Le diable dans le beffroi is an unfinished comic opera in one act by Claude Debussy to his own libretto, based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Devil in the Belfry.-Composition:...
, for several years before finally abandoning it in 1911 or 1912. By mid-June 1908 Debussy had begun another opera based on a Poe tale, the darker Fall of the House of Usher. On 5 July he signed a contract with the New York Metropolitan Opera guaranteeing the house the right to stage the premiere of his projected Poe double-bill as well as another unwritten opera La légende de Tristan. That summer he wrote to his friend Jacques Durand: "These days I have been working hard on The Fall of the House of Usher...There are moments when I lose the feeling of things around me and if the sister of Roderick Usher were to come into my house, I shouldn't be very surprised."
In 1909 Debussy wrote that he had almost finished Roderick Usher's monologue: "It almost makes the stones weep…as a matter of fact it is all about the influence of stones on the minds of neurasthenic people. The mustiness is charmingly rendered by contrasting the low notes of the oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
with the harmonics of the violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
(a patent device of my own)." Debussy had believed he had been subject to neurasthenia
Neurasthenia
Neurasthenia is a psycho-pathological term first used by George Miller Beard in 1869 to denote a condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, neuralgia and depressed mood...
but around this time his doctor diagnosed him as suffering from the rectal cancer which was to kill him. According to Robert Orledge, "Debussy began increasingly to identify with Roderick Usher, whose mental breakdown Poe had identified with the crumbling House itself." Debussy made three attempts at writing a libretto. Only when he was satisfied with the third one did he produce a short-score draft of the music to the first scene and part of the second in 1916–17. He went no further with Usher before his death in 1918.
Roles
There are four characters: Roderick Usher, his friend (ami), the doctor (le médecin) and Lady Madeline. Debussy assigned all three male roles to the baritoneBaritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
range. Jean-François Thibault writes: "One does not know what exact baritone ranges Debussy would have used for his three male characters, or if, as in Pelléas, he would have graduated them from Deep Bass, to Bass-Baritone, to Baritone-Martin. The assignation of the three roles to baritones of the same range is significant in that it opens up the strong possibility that the characters are three incarnations of one single consciousness."
Outline of the plot
Roderick Usher is the last male descendant of his family. He lives in his crumbling ancestral home with his twin sister, Lady Madeline, who is afflicted by a wasting disease, and her doctor. Roderick's friend (the narrator in Poe's tale) has been summoned to the house. During his visit, Lady Madeline is found dead and is buried in a vault under the house. The friend reads Roderick a tale from a medieval romance in order to comfort him as a storm rages outside. As the friend reads the climax of the tale, Lady Madeline appears covered in blood. She had been buried alive and now turns on her brother, dragging him to his death. The House of Usher collapses as the friend makes his escape under a blood-red moon. Debussy follows Poe's tale but places more emphasis on Roderick's incestuous feelings for his sister and makes the doctor into a more prominent, more sinister character, who is also Roderick's rival in love.Attempts at reconstruction
In the 1970s, two musicians made attempts at producing a performing edition of the incomplete opera. Carolyn AbbateCarolyn Abbate
Carolyn Abbate is a musicologist whose research focuses primarily on the operatic repertory of the long 19th century, offering creative and innovative approaches to understanding these works critically and historically...
's version, with orchestration by Robert Kyr, was performed at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
on 25 February 1977. In the same year the Chilean composer Juan Allende-Blin's reconstruction was broadcast on German radio. Blin's version was staged at the Berlin State Opera
Berlin State Opera
The Staatsoper Unter den Linden is a German opera company. Its permanent home is the opera house on the Unter den Linden boulevard in the Mitte district of Berlin, which also hosts the Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra.-Early years:...
on 5 October 1979 with Jesús López-Cobos
Jesús López-Cobos
Jesús López-Cobos is a Spanish conductor.López-Cobos was born in Toro, Zamora, Castile-León, Spain. He studied at Complutense University of Madrid and graduated with a degree in philosophy...
conducting, the baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Jean-Philippe Lafont as Roderick Usher, the soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Colette Lorand as Lady Madeline, the tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Barry McDaniel as the doctor, and the bass Walter Grönroos as Roderick's friend. Blin's reconstruction was later recorded by EMI — the music has a running time of approximately 22 minutes.
Recordings
- La chute de la maison Usher (in the reconstruction by Juan Allende Blin) Jean-Philippe Lafont, François Le Roux, Christine Barbaux, Pierre-Yves le Maigat, Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Georges PrêtreGeorges Prêtre- Biography :He was born in Waziers , and attended the Douai Conservatory and then studied harmony under Maurice Duruflé and conducting under André Cluytens among others at the Conservatoire de Paris. Amongst his early musical interests were jazz and trumpet. After graduating, he conducted in a...
(EMI, 1984) - On the progressive rock album Tales of Mystery and Imagination by the Alan Parsons Project the orchestral prelude to "The Fall of the House of Usher", is in fact - although uncredited - the opening music of Debussy's "La chute de la maison Usher", in an alternative orchestration made by band member and composer Andrew Powell. The album was released in 1976 and was therefore the first recording ever of music from La chute de la maison Usher
- A video recording of the reconstructed opera (including a ballet set to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and JeuxJeuxJeux is the last work for orchestra written by Claude Debussy. Described as a "poème dansé" , it was originally intended to accompany a ballet, and was written for the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev to choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. Debussy initially objected to the scenario, but...
) performed at the 2006 Bregenz FestivalBregenzer FestspieleBregenzer Festspiele is a performing arts festival which is held every July and August in Bregenz, Austria.Founded in 1946, the festival presents a wide variety of musical and theatrical events in several venues:...
was released on June 26, 2007 with Lawrence Foster, Nicholas Cavallier, John Graham-Hall and Katia Pellegrino; the music was performed by the Wiener Symphoniker.
Sources
- Paul Holmes Debussy (Omnibus, 1991)
- Robert Orledge Debussy and the Theatre (CUP, 1982)
- The Cambridge Companion to Debussy ed. Simon Tresize (CUP, 2003)
- The Viking Opera Guide ed. Amanda Holden (1993)
- Jean-François Thibault "Debussy's Unfinished American Opera" in Opera and the Golden West ed. John Louis DiGaetani and Josef P. Sirefman (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994)