Stradella (opera)
Encyclopedia
Stradella is a Grand Opera
in five acts by Louis Niedermeyer
to a libretto
by Emile Deschamps
and Emilien Pacini. Based on a highly romanticized version of the life of the composer Alessandro Stradella
(1639–1682), it was premiered at the Paris Opéra
on 3 March 1837.
had included an aria, (supposedly by Stradella but actually by Fétis himself), in an 1833 concert; the melody soon became extremely popular. In July 1836 the , run by Maurice Schlesinger
, had serialised a work by Jules Janin
, Stradella, or the Poet and the Musician, as 'advance publicity' (Schlesinger was to publish Niedermeyer's score in 1837). Moreover, a vaudeville
with music by Flotow on the same subject opened in Paris a month before Niedermeyer's opera.
The opera was Niedermeyer's first venture in the Grand Opera vein. The leading roles were taken by two of the Opera's strongest singers, Adolphe Nourrit
and Cornélie Falcon, both then at the height of their careers. However for both of them it represented some of their last appearances in Paris singing full operatic roles.
Falcon lost her voice catastrophically during the second performance of Stradella at the Opéra in March 1837. When Nourrit as Stradella asked her "Demain nous partirons – voulez-vous?", Falcon was unable to sing her line "Je suis prête", fainted, and was carried offstage by Nourrit. Hector Berlioz
, who was present, describes "raucous sounds like those of a child with croup
, guttural, whistling notes that quickly faded like those of a flute filled with water". Her career never recovered from this disaster, and after 1840 she never performed publicly again. Nourrit gave a farewell performance in April 1837 after the first performances of Stradella, and later that year travelled to Italy, where he committed suicide in 1839.
The opera had a mixed reception. In a letter Berlioz was more frank than he would be in a review, saying: "In a few days' time I have to find a way of writing indulgent nonsense about an appalling non-work called Stradella, of which I saw a rehearsal yesterday evening at the Opéra. A thousand reasons force me to, quite apart from the fact that it would not be decent, in my position, to slate a young composer [Niedermeyer] who has for a long time been in the same situation vis-à-vis the theatre as I am. But I must warn you not to believe a word I say." The opera was revised to suit Gilbert Duprez
when he took over the title role from Nourrit in 1837, and successfully revived in a three-act form in 1840. It is now almost totally forgotten
, about 1660.
In Act I, in Venice, Stradella shields Léonor who is pursued by the Duke of Pesaro. They plan to flee together but the Duke recaptures Léonor. In Act II Stradella rescues Léonor from the Duke by threatening him with a pistol. Act III takes place in Rome during Holy Week
, where Stradella is to sing during the celebrations amongst the pilgrims. Léonor rejects an offer of marriage from the Duke, conveyed by Spadoni, who secures two assassins to murder Stradella, but Stradella's singing of his hymn ('Pleure, Jérusalem') in the church of Santa Mara Maggiore so moves them that they drop their daggers and flee. In Act IV, preparing to be crowned with laurel for his singing and to marry Léonor, Stradella is captured by the Duke and conveyed again to Venice. In Act V, the Duke becomes Doge
of Venice, and condemns Stradella to execution. However he is forced to relent by the pleas of Léonor and of the people.
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...
in five acts by Louis Niedermeyer
Louis Niedermeyer
Abraham Louis Niedermeyer was a composer chiefly of church music but also of a few operas, and a teacher who took over the Ecole Choron, duly renamed École Niedermeyer, a school for the study and practice of church music, where several eminent French musicians studied including Gabriel Fauré and...
to a 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 Emile Deschamps
Émile Deschamps
Émile de Saint-Amand Deschamps was a French poet. He was born at Bourges. Deschamps was one of the chiefs of the Romantic school. To further the cause of romanticism he founded with Victor Hugo La Muse Française , a journal to which he contributed verses and stories signed "Le Jeune Moraliste." ...
and Emilien Pacini. Based on a highly romanticized version of the life of the composer Alessandro Stradella
Alessandro Stradella
Alessandro Stradella was an Italian composer of the middle baroque. He enjoyed a dazzling career as a freelance composer, writing on commission, collaborating with distinguished poets, producing over three hundred works in a variety of genres.-Life:Not much is known about his early life, but he...
(1639–1682), it was premiered at the Paris Opéra
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...
on 3 March 1837.
Background
The storyline of the opera is fashioned from the fanciful legend told by Pierre Bourdelot in his 1715 Histoire de la musique. Interest in Stradella in Paris had been growing in 1830s Paris, after the musician François-Joseph FétisFrançois-Joseph Fétis
François-Joseph Fétis was a Belgian musicologist, composer, critic and teacher. He was one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century, and his enormous compilation of biographical data in the Biographie universelle des musiciens remains an important source of information today...
had included an aria, (supposedly by Stradella but actually by Fétis himself), in an 1833 concert; the melody soon became extremely popular. In July 1836 the , run by Maurice Schlesinger
Maurice Schlesinger
Moritz Adolf Schlesinger , generally known during his French career as Maurice Schlesinger, was a German music editor. He is perhaps best remembered for inspiring the character of M...
, had serialised a work by Jules Janin
Jules Janin
Jules Gabriel Janin was a French writer and critic.-Biography:Born in Saint-Étienne , Janin's father was a lawyer, and he was educated first at St. Étienne, and then at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris...
, Stradella, or the Poet and the Musician, as 'advance publicity' (Schlesinger was to publish Niedermeyer's score in 1837). Moreover, a vaudeville
Comédie en vaudeville
The Comédie en vaudeville was a theatrical entertainment which began in Paris towards the end of the 17th century, in which comedy was enlivened though lyrics using the melody of popular vaudeville songs.-Evolution:...
with music by Flotow on the same subject opened in Paris a month before Niedermeyer's opera.
The opera was Niedermeyer's first venture in the Grand Opera vein. The leading roles were taken by two of the Opera's strongest singers, Adolphe Nourrit
Adolphe Nourrit
Adolphe Nourrit was a French operatic tenor, librettist, and composer. One of the most esteemed opera singers of the 1820s and 1830s, he was particularly associated with the works of Gioachino Rossini....
and Cornélie Falcon, both then at the height of their careers. However for both of them it represented some of their last appearances in Paris singing full operatic roles.
Falcon lost her voice catastrophically during the second performance of Stradella at the Opéra in March 1837. When Nourrit as Stradella asked her "Demain nous partirons – voulez-vous?", Falcon was unable to sing her line "Je suis prête", fainted, and was carried offstage by Nourrit. 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...
, who was present, describes "raucous sounds like those of a child with croup
Croup
Croup is a respiratory condition that is usually triggered by an acute viral infection of the upper airway. The infection leads to swelling inside the throat, which interferes with normal breathing and produces the classical symptoms of a "barking" cough, stridor, and hoarseness...
, guttural, whistling notes that quickly faded like those of a flute filled with water". Her career never recovered from this disaster, and after 1840 she never performed publicly again. Nourrit gave a farewell performance in April 1837 after the first performances of Stradella, and later that year travelled to Italy, where he committed suicide in 1839.
The opera had a mixed reception. In a letter Berlioz was more frank than he would be in a review, saying: "In a few days' time I have to find a way of writing indulgent nonsense about an appalling non-work called Stradella, of which I saw a rehearsal yesterday evening at the Opéra. A thousand reasons force me to, quite apart from the fact that it would not be decent, in my position, to slate a young composer [Niedermeyer] who has for a long time been in the same situation vis-à-vis the theatre as I am. But I must warn you not to believe a word I say." The opera was revised to suit Gilbert Duprez
Gilbert Duprez
Gilbert Duprez was a French tenor, singing teacher and minor composer who famously pioneered the delivery of the operatic high C from the chest. He also created the role of Edgardo in the popular bel canto-era opera Lucia di Lammermoor in 1835.-Biography:Gilbert-Louis Duprez, to give his full...
when he took over the title role from Nourrit in 1837, and successfully revived in a three-act form in 1840. It is now almost totally forgotten
Roles
| Role | Voice type | September 1840 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alessandro Stradella, maestro and singer | tenor | Adolphe Nourrit Adolphe Nourrit Adolphe Nourrit was a French operatic tenor, librettist, and composer. One of the most esteemed opera singers of the 1820s and 1830s, he was particularly associated with the works of Gioachino Rossini.... |
Marié |
| Léonor, young orphan, fiancée of Stradella | 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... |
Cornélie Falcon | Rosine Stoltz Rosine Stoltz Rosine Stoltz was a French mezzo-soprano. A prominent member of the Paris Opéra, she created many leading roles there including Ascanio in Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini, Marguerite in Auber's Le lac des fées, the title role in Marie Stuart, and two Donizetti heroines, Leonor in La favorite and... |
| Ginevra, mother of Beppo | Gosselin | — | |
| Duke of Pesaro Pesaro Pesaro is a town and comune in the Italian region of the Marche, capital of the Pesaro e Urbino province, on the Adriatic. According to the 2007 census, its population was 92,206.... , patrician and senator |
Prosper Dérivis Prosper Dérivis Nicolas-Prosper Dérivis was a French operatic bass. He possessed a rich deep voice that had a great carrying power. While he could easily assail heavy dramatic roles, he was also capable of executing difficult coloratura passages and performing more lyrical parts... |
Adolphe Alizard | |
| Spadoni, servant of the Duke | Nicolas Levasseur Nicolas Levasseur Nicolas Levasseur was a French bass, particularly associated with Rossini roles.Born Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur at Bresle, Somme, he studied at the Paris Music Conservatory from 1807 to 1811, with Pierre-Jean Garat. He made his professional debut at the Paris Opéra in 1813, as Osman Pacha, in La... |
Nicolas Levasseur | |
| Beppo, student and friend of Stradella | Ferdinand Prévôt Ferdinand Prévôt Ferdinand Prévôt was an French operatic baritone. His surname is also found spelt as Prevot or Prévost.... |
Mme Widemann | |
| Piétro, a hired assassin | François Wartel François Wartel Pierre François Wartel, was a French tenor and music educator. His wife was Thérèse Wartel, a talented pianist, and their son Émile was a bass who sang and created several operatic roles between 1857 and 1870 at the Théâtre Lyrique and later founded his own singing school.-Biography:In 1825... |
François Wartel | |
| Michael, a hired assassin | Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol was a French operatic tenor and later baritone who sang in the world premieres of many French operas.... |
Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol | |
| An officer | Charpentier | Ferdinand Prévôt | |
| Chorus: citizens, pilgrims, strolling players, etc. | |||
Synopsis
The opera takes place in Venice and RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, about 1660.
In Act I, in Venice, Stradella shields Léonor who is pursued by the Duke of Pesaro. They plan to flee together but the Duke recaptures Léonor. In Act II Stradella rescues Léonor from the Duke by threatening him with a pistol. Act III takes place in Rome during Holy Week
Holy Week
Holy Week in Christianity is the last week of Lent and the week before Easter...
, where Stradella is to sing during the celebrations amongst the pilgrims. Léonor rejects an offer of marriage from the Duke, conveyed by Spadoni, who secures two assassins to murder Stradella, but Stradella's singing of his hymn ('Pleure, Jérusalem') in the church of Santa Mara Maggiore so moves them that they drop their daggers and flee. In Act IV, preparing to be crowned with laurel for his singing and to marry Léonor, Stradella is captured by the Duke and conveyed again to Venice. In Act V, the Duke becomes Doge
Doge
Doge is a dialectal Italian word that descends from the Latin dux , meaning "leader", especially in a military context. The wife of a Doge is styled a Dogaressa....
of Venice, and condemns Stradella to execution. However he is forced to relent by the pleas of Léonor and of the people.