Principal Characters
Louise, a young Parisian working-class girl
Her mother
Her father
Julien, a young poet
Synopsis of the Plot
Setting: Montmartre, Paris
ACT I Louise and Julien are in love, but Julien has failed to gain Louise’s parents’ approval for their marriage. He tells Louise that he has written again to her parents but, if they still refuse to let them marry, she must elope with him. Louise’s mother mocks Julien, saying he is a lazy good-for-nothing who drinks too much, and they argue violently until Louise’s father comes home and opens Julien’s letter. He tries to be reasonable but his wife becomes increasingly vituperative about Julien, and Louise collapses in tears.
ACT II Early in the morning Julien and his friends are waiting near Louise’s workplace. When she arrives he manages to talk to her, but is angered by her refusal to leave her parents, without their blessing, to live with him. At work, the other girls tease Louise and then discuss the glories of love and romance. When Julien appears outside the window to serenade her, Louise can bear no more and abruptly leaves the workroom to join him.
ACT III Now happily living together and very much in love, Julien and Louise take part in the local carnival procession, during which Louise is crowned Muse of Montmartre. But when Louise’s mother appears it is as a very different person from the termagant of Act I; looking sad and anxious, she explains that Louise’s father is very ill and desperate to see his daughter. On the understanding that she can leave when she wants to, Louise finally agrees to go and see him, despite Julien’s suspicions.
ACT IV Louise’s father has recovered but he has changed and become irritable and dissatisfied with his life. Both he and Louise’s mother refuse to let her go back to Julien, in spite of her obvious sadness and longing. In the end Louise insists on leaving, pushing past her father as he tries to bar the way, and leaving him to curse Paris, which has stolen his daughter from him.
Music and Background
Bustling with the atmosphere of Montmartre street life, Charpentier’s score is rich in local colour and memorable for the avant-garde incorporation of sewing-machine noise, in the interests of realism. Otherwise, the music is more conventional for its time than is the Zola-esque story of free-living and loving it sets. Influences are basically Gounod and Massenet.
Highlights
This is effectively a one-number opera and the (very celebrated) number is the Act III romance with which Louise celebrates her happiness with Julien, ‘Depuis le jour’.
Did You Know?
Recommended Recording
lleana Cotrubas, Plácido Domingo, New Philharmonia Orchestra/Georges Prêtre. Sony S3K 46429. Nicely done and no real competition.
(1760–1842)
Lodoïska (1790)
Eliza (1794)
Médée (1797)
Les Deux Journées (1800)
Born in Florence to a musical father, Cherubini was a prodigy who began writing stage works in his teens, came to London in his twenties, and finally settled in Paris where he founded an opera company that somehow survived the traumas of the Revolution. A survivor himself, Cherubini perfected a genre of heroic rescue-opera with spoken dialogue, designed to please post-Revolutionary tastes after the old style of grand, static and completely sung Classical stories lost favour as a relic of the royal past. His influence in France was short-lived, but in Austro-Germany it was considerable and fed through to Beethoven’s rescue-opera Fidelio.
(Medea)
FORM: Opera in three acts; in French
COMPOSER: Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842)
LIERETTO: F-B. Hoffman
FIRST PERFORMANCE: Paris, 13 March 1797
Principal Characters
Medea, former wife of Jason
Jason, leader of the Argonauts
Creon, King of Corinth
Dirce, Creon’s daughter
Neris, Medea’s servant
Synopsis of the Plot
Setting: Creon’s palace and Corinth; mythological Greece
ACT I Jason has abandoned the murderous Medea and, with their two sons, has made his home in Corinth. He now wishes to marry Creon’s daughter, Dirce, but she has considerable doubts about the wisdom of the union, despite reassurances from her father that Medea will not harm them. A few moments later a stranger is admitted, to be revealed as Medea herself. Creon orders her to leave or suffer imprisonment. Left alone with Jason, Medea tries every means in her power to persuade him to come back to her, but he stands firm.
ACT II By the next morning the people, hearing of Medea’s presence, are demanding her blood. Creon warns her to escape while she can, but she begs him to let her stay just one more day so that she can see her children, and he agrees. Left alone, Medea plans her revenge as the sound of wedding music is heard in the distance.
ACT III Medea calls on the gods of the underworld to help her as a storm rages round the temple and the palace. Medea’s children are brought to her by Neris and, firmly repressing any faint stirrings of maternal feeling, she drags them into the temple and stabs them. From the palace come