Ossian, ou Les bardes is an opera

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 five acts by the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 composer Jean-François Le Sueur

Jean-François Le Sueur

Jean-François Le Sueur was a French composer, best known for his oratorios and operas.-Life:...

. The 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...

, by Alphonse François "Paul" Palat-Dercy and Jean-Marie Deschamps, is based on the Ossian

Ossian

Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...

 poems of James Macpherson

James Macpherson

James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems.-Early life:...

 (specifically the poem Calthon and Colmal), which had been translated into French by Pierre-Prime-Félicien Le Tourneur.

Performance history

Le Sueur probably began work on the opera as early as 1795. It was first performed at the Opéra

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...

, 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 10 July 1804. The premiere was a huge success, especially with the Emperor Napoleon

Napoleon I

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

, who was a great admirer of the Ossian poems. Napoleon was so enthusiastic, he invited the composer to join him in the imperial box at the third act and the next day he sent Le Sueur a gold casket engraved "The Emperor Napoleon to the author of Les bardes", containing the cross of the Légion d'honneur

Légion d'honneur

The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...

. The opera received almost 70 performances over the next 12 years.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, July 10, 1804 Conductor: Jean-Baptiste Rey Jean-Baptiste Rey Jean-Baptiste Rey was a French conductor and composer.Rey was born at Lauzerte. He remains the longest-serving conductor of the Paris Opera; his tenure spans from the last years of the monarchy to Napoleon's Empire...
Ossian	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...	Étienne Lainez
Duntalmo	bass	Augustin-Athanase Chéron
Rosmala	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...	Marie-Aimable Armand
Mornal	tenor	Roland
Rozmar	bass	Martin-Joseph Adrien
Hydala	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...	François Laÿs
Salgar	bass	Jean-Honoré Bertin
A bard	tenor	Jean-Blaise Martin Jean-Blaise Martin Jean-Blaise Martin, full name Nicolas Jean-Blaise Martin was a French operasinger whose tessitura lay between tenor and baritone, which became later known as "baryton-martin"....
A Caledonian woman	soprano	Jannard
A soldier	tenor	Casimir Eloy

Plot

The opera is set in an imaginary Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 in the third century AD. Caledonia

Caledonia

Caledonia is the Latinised form and name given by the Romans to the land in today's Scotland north of their province of Britannia, beyond the frontier of their empire...

 has been invaded by the Scandinavians

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

 under their leader Duntalmo. He oppresses the Caledonians and imposes the worship of Odin

Odin

Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....

 on them. He also plans to marry his son Mornal to Rosmala, daughter of the bard

Bard

In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland...

 Rozmor, who is already betrothed to the bard and warrior Ossian. Finally, a group of Caledonians defeat the Scandinavians and Ossian is able to marry Rosmala.

The work

The opera is on an epic scale and contains many experimental elements. For instance, in Act Four has visions of heroes and bards in a cave behind a backlit curtain of gauze. The score also calls for 12 harps as the bards hymn the rising sun. According to the musicologist David Charlton, Les bardes turns away from the classical aesthetic of Gluck (the dominant operatic influence of the time in France) and prefigures grand opera

Grand Opera

Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...

. The work had an influence on Le Sueur's most famous pupil, Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...

.

Sources

• The Viking Opera Guide ed. Holden (Viking, 1993)
• Amadeus Online
• From Gaelic to Romantic: Ossianic Translations edited by Fiona J. Stafford (Rodopi, 1988)