Act V. The gardens of Selika's palace. Again Selika makes a sacrifice of love. How easily she could compass the death of Vasco and Inez! But she forgives. She persuades Nelusko to provide the lovers with a ship and bids him meet her, after the ship has sailed, on a high promontory overlooking the sea.
To this the scene changes. On the promontory stands a large manchineel tree. The perfume of its blossoms is deadly to anyone who breathes it in from under the deep shadow of its branches. From here Selika watches the ship set sail. It bears from her the man she loves. Breathing in the poison-laden odour from the tree from under which she has watched the ship depart, she dies. Nelusko seeks her, finds her dead, and himself seeks death beside her under the fatal branches of the manchineel.
Meyerbeer considered "L'Africaine" his masterpiece, and believed that through it he was bequeathing to posterity an immortal monument to his fame. But although he had worked over the music for many years, and produced a wonderfully well-contrived score, his labour upon it was more careful and self-exacting than inspired; and this despite moments of intense interest in the opera. Not "L'Africaine," but "Les Huguenots," is considered his greatest work.
"L'Africaine" calls for one of the most elaborate stage-settings in opera. This is the ship scene, which gives a lengthwise section of a vessel, so that its between-decks and cabin interiors are seen—like the compartments of a huge but neatly partitioned box laid on its oblong side; in fact an amazing piece of marine architecture.
Scribe's libretto has been criticized, and not unjustly, on account of the vacillating character which he gives Vasco da Gama. In the first act this operatic hero is in love with Inez. In the prison scene, in the second act, when Selika points out on the map the true course to India, he is so impressed with her as a teacher of geography, that he clasps the supposed slave-girl to his breast and addresses her in impassioned song. Selika, being enamoured of her pupil, naturally is elated over his progress. Unfortunately Inez enters the prison at this critical moment to announce to Vasco that she has secured his freedom. To prove to Inez that he still loves her Vasco glibly makes her a present of Selika and Nelusko. Selika, so to speak, no longer is on the map, so far as Vasco is concerned, until, in the fourth act, she saves his life by pretending he is her husband. Rapturously he pledges his love to her. Then Inez's voice is heard singing a ballad to the Tagus River—and Selika again finds herself deserted. There is nothing for her to do but to die under the manchineel tree.
"Is the shadow of this tree so fatal?" asks a French authority. "Monsieur Scribe says yes, the naturalists say no." With this question and answer "L'Africaine" may be left to its future fate upon the stage, save that it seems proper to remark that, although the opera is called "The African," Selika appears to have been an East Indian.
Early in the first act of the opera occurs Inez's ballad, "Adieu, mon beau rivage" (Farewell, beloved shores). It is gracefully accompanied by flute and oboe. This is the ballad to the river Tagus, which Vasco hears her sing in the fourth act. The finale of the first act—the scene in which Vasco defies the Royal Council—is a powerful ensemble. The slumber song for Selika in the second act, as she watches over Vasco, "Sur mes genoux, fils du soleil" (On my knees, offspring of the sun) is charming, and entirely original, with many exotic and fascinating touches. Nelusko's air of homage, "Fille des rois, à toi l'hommage" (Daughter of Kings, my homage thine), expresses a sombre loyalty characteristic of the savage whose passion for his queen amounts to fanaticism. The finale of the act is an unaccompanied septette for Inez, Selika, Anna, Vasco, d'Alvar, Nelusko, and Don Pedro.
In the act which plays aboardship, are the graceful chorus of women, "Le rapide et léger navire" (The swiftly gliding ship), the prayer of the sailors, "Ô grand Saint Dominique," and Nelusko's song, "Adamastor, roi des vagues profondes" (Adamastor, monarch of the trackless deep), a savage invocation of sea and storm, chanted to the rising of a hurricane, by the most dramatic figure among the characters in the opera. For like Marcel in "Les Huguenots" and Fides in "Le Prophète," Nelusko is a genuine dramatic creation.
The Indian march and the ballet, which accompanies the ceremony of the crowning of Selika, open the fourth act. The music is exotic, piquant, and in every way effective. The scene is a masterpiece of its kind. There follow the lovely measures of the principal tenor solo of the opera, Vasco's "Paradis sorti du sein de l'onde" (Paradise, lulled by the lisping sea). Then comes the love duet between Vasco and Selika, "Ô transport, ô douce extase" (Oh transport, oh sweet ecstacy). One authority says of it that "rarely have the tender passion, the ecstacy of love been expressed with such force." Now it would be set down simply as a tiptop love duet of the old-fashioned operatic kind.