Rodrigue et Chimène is an unfinished 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 three acts 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...

. The French 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 Catulle Mendès

Catulle Mendès

Catulle Mendès was a French poet and man of letters.Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, he was born in Bordeaux. He early established himself in Paris and promptly attained notoriety by the publication in the Revue fantaisiste of his Roman d'une nuit, for which he was condemned to a month's...

, is based on the plays Las Mocedades del Cid by Guillén de Castro y Bellvís

Guillén de Castro y Bellvis

Guillén de Castro y Bellvis was a Spanish dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age.A Valencian by birth, he soon achieved a literary reputation. In 1591 he joined a local literary academy called the Nocturnos...

 and Corneille

Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

's Le Cid

Le Cid

Le Cid is a tragicomedy written by Pierre Corneille and published in 1636. It is based on the legend of El Cid.The play followed Corneille's first true tragedy, Médée, produced in 1635. An enormous popular success, Corneille's Le Cid was the subject of a heated polemic over the norms of dramatic...

which deal with the legend of El Cid

El Cid

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar , known as El Cid Campeador , was a Castilian nobleman, military leader, and diplomat...

 (Rodrigue in the opera). It was first staged in a version completed by Edison Denisov

Edison Denisov

Edison Vasilievich Denisov was a Russian composer of so called "Underground" — "Anti-Collectivist", "alternative" or "nonconformist" division in the Soviet music.-Biography:...

 in Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

 on 14 May 1993.

Composition

Mendès had begun work on his libretto in 1878, hoping to offer it to "one of the leading lights of the French school [of opera]". However, no composer took up the text until April, 1890 when Mendès handed it to the young Debussy. Mendès had predicted that Debussy would become "one of the great composers of the future" and had helped to promote his music. Although he was unimpressed by the literary quality of the drama he had to set, Debussy was encouraged by the prospect that his work would be performed at the Paris Opéra

Palais Garnier

The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...

 and earn him some money. Over the next two years Debussy's musical style developed in a radically new direction and his enthusiasm for the old-fashioned Rodrigue et Chimène began to flag. In a letter of January, 1892, he admitted, "My life is hardship and misery thanks to this opera. Everything about it is wrong for me." On 17 May 1893 Debussy attended a performance of Maeterlinck's Symbolist

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

 play Pelléas et Mélisande and realised that this was exactly the type of drama he had been looking for. When he played excerpts from the score of Rodrigue et Chimène to Paul Dukas

Paul Dukas

Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...

 in August of the same year, he confessed that Mendès' libretto was "totally at odds with all that I dream about, demanding a type of music that is alien to me." Debussy abandoned any idea of bringing Rodrigue et Chimène to the stage and later claimed he had accidentally burned it.

Completion and staging

The score did, however, survive and the various manuscripts were eventually assembled by the American collector Robert Owen Lehman. Excerpts from a vocal score prepared by the musicologist Richard Langham Smith were performed in 1987. Debussy had completed all but the orchestration of Rodrigue et Chimène (although two scenes of the vocal score have been lost). The Russian composer Edison Denisov

Edison Denisov

Edison Vasilievich Denisov was a Russian composer of so called "Underground" — "Anti-Collectivist", "alternative" or "nonconformist" division in the Soviet music.-Biography:...

 was asked to provide the orchestration for a stage performance to mark the opening of Opéra de Lyon's new auditorium, "Opéra Nouvel". Thus Rodrigue et Chimène finally received its premiere in Lyon on 14 May 1993.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast (Denisov completion, 14 May 1993) Conductor: Kent Nagano Kent Nagano __FORCETOC__Kent George Nagano is an American conductor and opera administrator. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bavarian State Opera.-Biography:...
Rodrigue	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...	Laurence Dale
Chimène	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...	Donna Brown
Iñez	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...	Hélène Jossoud
Hernan	tenor	Gilles Ragon
Bermudo	tenor	Jean-Paul Fouchécourt Jean-Paul Fouchécourt Jean-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...
Don Diègue	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 Courtis
Don Gomez	baritone	Jules Bastin Jules Bastin Jules Bastin was a Belgian operatic bass. Born in Brussels, he made his debut in 1960 at La Monnaie, singing Charon in L'Orfeo. He appeared at major opera houses throughout Europe, including the Royal Opera House, La Scala, and the Palais Garnier; he also sang at opera houses in North and South...
Le Roi	bass	Vincent Le Texier
Don Juan d'Arcos	tenor
Don Pèdre de Terruel	tenor

Act One

Rodrigue, son of Don Diègue of Bivar, is engaged to marry Chimène, daughter of Don Gomez of Gormaz. They meet for a tryst just before dawn outside Don Gomez's house. They are interrupted by the arrival of the men of Gomez, singing a drinking song. The young women of Bivar also appear and the men of Gomez try to carry them off. They are stopped by an outraged Don Diègue. A quarrel breaks out between Don Diègue and Don Gomez, who objects to Diègue striking his servants. The two draw their swords but Don Diègue proves too old and weak to fight.

Act Two

Rodrigue and his brothers are playing chess when they see an old beggar on the highway and offer him help. The "beggar" is Don Diègue and he demands, not alms, but the head of Don Gomez. He asks Rodrigue to avenge the slight on his honour by killing Chimène's father. Rodrigue reluctantly accepts the commission. Rodrigue challenges Don Gomez to a duel and fatally wounds him. Don Gomez dies in Chimène's arms, having told her the killer was her beloved.

Act Three

King Ferdinand assembles his army for a campaign against the Moors. He notices that Don Gomez is missing from the ranks of his warriors. Chimène steps forward and begs for justice for her dead father, but Don Diègue pleads equally passionately for the life of the son who has restored his honour. The king sends for Rodrigue. Chimène confesses to her maidservant Iňez that she still loves him, but family honour demands he should die. The grief-stricken Rodrigue tells Chimène she should kill him with the selfsame sword that slew her father. She is unable to strike him, but unable to forgive him. He asks one of the king's soldiers to kill him instead. Don Diègue tells Rodrigue he must live so he can fight and defeat the Moors. Rodrigue reluctantly agrees, hoping to be killed in battle.

Recording

• Rodrigue et Chimène (Denisov completion) Donna Brown, Laurence Dale, José van Dam, Choeur et Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon, conducted by Kent Nagano
  Kent Nagano
  __FORCETOC__Kent George Nagano is an American conductor and opera administrator. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and the Bavarian State Opera.-Biography:...
  
  (Erato, 1995)

Sources

• Booklet notes to the Nagano recording.
• Roles from Amadeus Online