Les mamelles de Tirésias
Encyclopedia
Les mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias) is a surrealist
two-act opéra bouffe
by Francis Poulenc
, based on the play of the same title
by Guillaume Apollinaire
, which was written in 1903 but first performed in 1917. The opera premiered at the Opéra-Comique
in Paris
on 3 June 1947.
Poulenc first thought of setting the opera in the 1930s, and began composition in 1939, finishing in 1944. He altered the setting from the real Africa
n island of Zanzibar
to an imaginary town called Zanzibar near Monte Carlo
(Apollinaire's childhood home) on the French Riviera
. This latitude, he said, was "quite tropical enough for the Parisian that I am."
The opera closes with the stern command, "Ô Français, faites des enfants!" ("O Frenchmen, make babies!"), and the success of this propaganda is perhaps seen in the fact that the first two sopranos cast in the role of Tiresias had to give it up before the premiere on account of pregnancy.
Meanwhile, a pair of drunken gamblers called Presto and Lacouf affectionately shoot one another and are mourned by the assembled townspeople. Thérèse marches off to conquer the world as General Tiresias, leaving her captive husband to the attentions of the local gendarme, who is fooled by his female attire.
Off-stage, General Tiresias starts a successful campaign against childbirth and is hailed by the populace. Fearful that France will be left sterile if women give up sex, the husband vows to find a way to bear children without women. Lacouf and Presto return from the dead and express both interest and scepticism.
The gendarme now arrives to report that, because of overpopulation, the citizens of Zanzibar are all dying of hunger. The husband suggests getting ration cards printed by a tarot-reading fortune-teller. Just such a fortune-teller immediately appears, looking rather familiar under her mask.
The fortune-teller prophesies that the fertile husband will be a multi-millionaire, but that the sterile gendarme will die in abject poverty. Incensed, the gendarme attempts to arrest her, but she strangles him and reveals herself as none other than Thérèse. The couple reconcile, and the whole cast gathers at the footlights to urge the audience:
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Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
two-act opéra bouffe
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
by Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
, based on the play of the same title
The Breasts of Tiresias
The Breasts of Tiresias is a surrealist play by Guillaume Apollinaire. Written in 1903, the play received its first production in a revised version in 1917...
by Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
, which was written in 1903 but first performed in 1917. The opera premiered at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
on 3 June 1947.
Poulenc first thought of setting the opera in the 1930s, and began composition in 1939, finishing in 1944. He altered the setting from the real Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n island of Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
to an imaginary town called Zanzibar near Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....
(Apollinaire's childhood home) on the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
. This latitude, he said, was "quite tropical enough for the Parisian that I am."
The opera closes with the stern command, "Ô Français, faites des enfants!" ("O Frenchmen, make babies!"), and the success of this propaganda is perhaps seen in the fact that the first two sopranos cast in the role of Tiresias had to give it up before the premiere on account of pregnancy.
Roles
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, June 3, 1947 (Conductor: Albert Wolff ) |
|---|---|---|
| Theatre director | 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... |
Robert Jeantet |
| Thérèse/Tirésias | 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... |
Denise Duval Denise Duval Denise Duval is a French soprano, best known for her performances in works by the composer Francis Poulenc. Duval created the roles of Elle in La voix humaine, Thérèse in Les mamelles de Tirésias and later excelled in the role of Blanche de la Force in Dialogues of the Carmelites, although she did... |
| Her husband | baritone martin | Paul Payen |
| Monsieur Lacouf | tenor | Alban Derroja |
| Monsieur Presto | baritone | Marcel Enot |
| A gendarme Gendarmerie A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as... |
baritone | Émile Rousseau |
| A newspaper vendor | mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above... |
Jane Atty |
| A reporter from Paris | tenor | Serge Rallier |
| The son | baritone | Jacques Hivert |
| An elegant lady | mezzo-soprano | Irène Gromova |
| A woman | mezzo-soprano | Yvonne Girard-Ducy |
| A bearded gentleman | bass | Gabriel Jullia |
Act 1
Thérèse tires of her life as a submissive woman and becomes the male Tirésias when her breasts turn into balloons and float away. Her husband is not pleased by this, still less so when she ties him up and dresses him as a woman.Meanwhile, a pair of drunken gamblers called Presto and Lacouf affectionately shoot one another and are mourned by the assembled townspeople. Thérèse marches off to conquer the world as General Tiresias, leaving her captive husband to the attentions of the local gendarme, who is fooled by his female attire.
Off-stage, General Tiresias starts a successful campaign against childbirth and is hailed by the populace. Fearful that France will be left sterile if women give up sex, the husband vows to find a way to bear children without women. Lacouf and Presto return from the dead and express both interest and scepticism.
Act 2
The curtain rises to cries of "Papa!" The husband's project has been a spectacular success, and he has given birth to 40,049 children in a single day. A visiting Parisian journalist asks how he can afford to feed the brood, but the husband explains that the children have all been very successful in careers in the arts, and have made him a rich man with their earnings. After chasing the journalist off, the husband decides to raise a journalist of his own, but is not completely pleased with the results.The gendarme now arrives to report that, because of overpopulation, the citizens of Zanzibar are all dying of hunger. The husband suggests getting ration cards printed by a tarot-reading fortune-teller. Just such a fortune-teller immediately appears, looking rather familiar under her mask.
The fortune-teller prophesies that the fertile husband will be a multi-millionaire, but that the sterile gendarme will die in abject poverty. Incensed, the gendarme attempts to arrest her, but she strangles him and reveals herself as none other than Thérèse. The couple reconcile, and the whole cast gathers at the footlights to urge the audience:
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- Ecoutez, ô Français, les leçons de la guerre
- Et faites des enfants, vous qui n'en faisiez guère
- Cher public: faites des enfants!
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- Heed, o Frenchmen, the lessons of the war
- And make babies, you who hardly ever make them!
- Dear audience: Make babies!
|}
Recordings
- Seiji OzawaSeiji Ozawais a Japanese conductor, particularly noted for his interpretations of large-scale late Romantic works. He is most known for his work as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Vienna State Opera.-Early years:...
conducting the Saito Kinen Orchestra with Barbara BonneyBarbara Bonney-Early life:Bonney was born in Montclair, New Jersey. As a child she studied piano and cello. When Bonney was 13 her family moved to Maine, where she became part of the Portland Youth Orchestra as a cellist...
, Jean-Paul FouchécourtJean-Paul FouchécourtJean-Paul Fouchécourt is a French tenor, mostly as an opera singer. He was born on August 30, 1958, at Blanzy in the Burgundy region. He is best known for singing French Baroque music, especially the parts called in French haute-contre, written for a very high tenor voice with no falsetto...
, and Wolfgang HolzmairWolfgang HolzmairWolfgang Holzmair is an Austrian baritone.Holzmair studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He won 2nd prize in the baritone class of the 's-Hertogenbosch International Vocal Competition in 1981, and a year later 1st prize in the Musikverein International Lieder Competition,...
(1998, Philips)
Includes Holzmair performing Le bal masque
- Ed SpanjaardEd SpanjaardEduard Philip Spanjaard is a Dutch conductor and pianist.-Early life:Ed Spanjaard his father was psychiatrist and amateur pianist, and his mother played the flute. Spanjaard studied at the Conservatorium van de Vereniging Muzieklyceum at Amsterdam and afterwards at the Guildhall School of Music...
conducting the Nieuw EnsembleNieuw EnsembleThe Nieuw Ensemble was founded in 1980 in Amsterdam. It has a unique instrumental structure, using plucked instruments such as mandolin, guitar and harp in combination with wind, string and percussion. Ed Spanjaard has been the principal conductor since 1982...
with Renate Arends, Bernard Loonen, Mattijs Van de Woerd and Opera Trionfo (2003, Brilliant Classics)
- André CluytensAndré CluytensAndré Cluytens was a Belgian-born French conductor who was active in the concert hall, opera house and recording studio. His repertoire extended from Viennese classics through French composers to 20th century works...
conducting the Chorus and Orchestra of the Théatre National de l'Opéra-ComiqueOpéra-ComiqueThe Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
de ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, with Denise DuvalDenise DuvalDenise Duval is a French soprano, best known for her performances in works by the composer Francis Poulenc. Duval created the roles of Elle in La voix humaine, Thérèse in Les mamelles de Tirésias and later excelled in the role of Blanche de la Force in Dialogues of the Carmelites, although she did...
, Marguerite Legouhy, and Jean GiraudeauJean GiraudeauJean Giraudeau, born Toulon, 1 July 1916, died 7 February 1995, was a French tenor, and later theatre director, particularly associated with the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and described as having a “lyrical voice” as well as being “a superb character actor”....
(1954, Angel Records)
Sources
- Amadeus Almanac (3 June 1947), accessed 4 February 2009
- Warrack, John and West, Ewan (1992), The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5