Photo by Mishkin
Mary Garden as Louise
The story is simple. Louise, a working girl, loves Julien, an artist. Her father puts no trust in an artist of irregular life, so Louise leaves her family. The lovers are happy, but Louise is remorseful. She grieves for her father and reproaches herself for ingratitude. Finally she returns home. But free forgiveness does not make up for the freedom she has lost. Paris the city of pleasure tempts her again, and again she succumbs. Her family realizes that she is for ever lost to the home.
Charpentier himself described his work to F. de Menil. When asked why he called his opera a musical romance, he replied: "Because in a romance there are two entirely distinct sides, the drama and the description, and in my 'Louise' I wish to treat these different sides. I have a descriptive part, composed of decoration, scenic surroundings, and a musical atmosphere in which my characters move; then I have the purely dramatic part, devoted wholly to the action. This is, therefore, a truly musical romance." When asked whether the work were naturalistic, realistic, or idealistic, he answered: "I have a horror of words that end in 'istic.' I am not a man of theories. 'Louise,' as everything that I do, was made by me instinctively. I leave to others, the dear critics, the care of disengaging the formulas and the tendencies of the work. I have wished simply to give on the stage that which I have given in concert; the lyric impression of the sensations that I reap in our beautiful, fairy-like modern life. Perhaps I see this as in a fever, but that is my right for the street intoxicates me. The essential point of the drama is the coming together, the clashing of two sentiments in the heart of Louise—love, which binds her to her family, to her father, the fear of leaving suffering behind her, and, on the other hand, the irresistible longing for liberty, pleasure, happiness, love, the cry of her being, which demands to live as she wishes. Passion will conquer because it is served by a prodigious and mysterious auxiliary, which has little by little breathed its dream into her young soul—Paris, the voluptuous city, the great city of light, pleasure, and joy, which calls her irresistibly towards an undaunted future."
SALAMMBÔ
Reyer's "Salammbô" received a gorgeous production at the Metropolitan Opera House on March 20, 1901, with the following cast: Salammbô, Lucienne Bréval; Taanach, Miss Carrie Bridewell; Mathô, Albert Saléza; Shahabarim, Mr. Salignac; Narr'Havas, Mr. Journet; Spendius, Mr. Sizes; Giscon, Mr. Gilibert; Autharite, Mr. Dufriche; Hamilcar, Mr. Scotti. Mr. Mancinelli conducted. The exquisitely painted scenes were copies of the Paris models, and the costumes were gorgeous. Miss Bréval's radiant Semitic beauty shone in the title rôle. Flaubert's novel was made into a libretto by Camille du Locle. History supplied the background for romance in the shape of the suppression of a mutiny among the mercenaries of the Carthaginians in the first Punic war. Against this is outlined in bold relief the story of the rape of the sacred veil of Tanit by the leader of the revolting mercenaries, his love for Salammbô, daughter of the Carthaginian general; her recovery of the veil, bringing in its train disaster to her lover and death to both.
