3. Meyerbeer’s discourse: the grand historical operas.

At the time when Meyerbeer came to Paris with his first French projects, Joseph d’Ortigue, the leading representative of a school of music criticism orientated towards philosophy and history, was calling for fundamental reform of French opera. The aim was to combine German instrumental music, as exemplified by Beethoven, and the operatic bel canto of Rossini into a comprehensive Gesamtkunstwerk. This ‘art of the future’ would be expressive of modern society, whose technical and industrial foundations must undergo radical change. D’Ortigue regarded Rossini’s last French opera, Guillaume Tell (1829), as a stepping stone, and a little later he announced that his vision of the modern work of art was realized in Meyerbeer’s first grand opera, Robert le diable (1831): ‘The union that the author of this article prides himself on having proclaimed is now realized: that of the vocal genre created by Rossini and the instrumental genre developed by Beethoven and applied by Weber to dramatic music’ (D’Ortigue, 122–3).

When Meyerbeer died suddenly 33 years later, during rehearsals of his last opera L’Africaine, the character of opera as an art was established beyond dispute. The style of grand opera developed by Meyerbeer was the recognized international model for music drama for almost a century. There were many consequences of this aesthetic reassessment: the setting of a libretto, which once took merely a few weeks, became an intellectual collaboration between composers and librettists that might last years, even decades. New compositional techniques were devised for each work and adapted to the opera’s individual dramatic structure. Premières were staged after intensive historical and technical research by a whole staff of specialists, and the results of their labours were meticulously documented in a livret de mise en scène, or production manual. Above all, opera became a platform for the expression of metaphysical and philosophical ideas. Meyerbeer’s four main works may be seen as phases in a conceptual operatic discourse: Robert le diable shows humanity torn between entanglement in evil and metaphysical redemption. Les Huguenots sets a sceptical historical viewpoint against the contemporary eschatological philosophy of history. Le prophète shows the individual involved in the historical emergence of the modern European world, and L’Africaine relates the same theme to the history of colonization, this time on a global scale. Meyerbeer’s attitude is basically conservative and founded in his deep sense of religion. His historical operas are not simply based on historical subjects but take the historical process itself as their subject.

The fundamental modernity of Meyerbeer’s concept of opera was clear to his contemporaries. In discussing the première of Robert, Fétis described the work as ‘une production remarquable dans l’histoire de l’art’ (Revue musicale, 26 November 1831). Even in 1891 Hanslick could write of Robert and Les Huguenots that he found ‘the dazzlingly new and entirely unique impression they made unforgettable’ (Aus dem Tagebuch eines Musikers, Berlin, 1892/R, p.105). For Verdi, writing in 1852, Le prophète was a model for his own work: ‘I need a grandiose subject, impassioned, original; an imposing, dazzling mise en scène. I always have several in front of me … among others the coronation scene from Le prophète! In this scene no other composer could have done better than Meyerbeer’ (letter to Scribe of 26 July 1852; see Gerhard, 1992). However, Meyerbeer’s contemporaries did not perceive the consistent nature of his philosophical discourse of history, particularly its metaphysical foundations in Robert le diable; perhaps the historical experiences of the 20th century have been a spur to its full recognition. Nor can there be any doubt that the extreme modernity of his musical and dramatic methods of representation, and the novelty of countless individual effects, obscured the intellectual conception of the works. Meyerbeer’s operas define the beginning of the modern age: they are shaped by the perspectives of a mass urban society. Not only have their musical and theatrical techniques continued to influence music drama of the 20th century, for instance in the works of Schreker, Berg and B.A. Zimmermann; in their use of cutting and cross-cutting effects they point the way forward to film and other modern media.

Meyerbeer’s first collaboration with Scribe, the most famous librettist of the century, was in 1827. Robert le diable had originally been planned for the Opéra-Comique, with spoken dialogue. The later through-composed version, given its première at the Opéra on 21 November 1831 (see fig.2), shows clear traces of the original concept. The libretto is an example of Scribe’s pièce bien faite: each act presents a self-contained episode of the plot, and its resolution paves the way for the conflict of the next episode. The action is constructed on a single theme and a central quid pro quo: Bertram must win Robert’s soul for hell by midnight, and Robert does not know that Bertram is his father. Bertram’s efforts at temptation are motivated by paternal love, since he does not want to lose his son for all eternity. At the culmination of the plot in a scène à faire, Robert must decide between his father and his mother – the temptation of hell and the voice of heaven. The dramatic and musical structure, however, goes beyond the standard pièce bien faite: the opera makes the passage of time a central theme of the action by presenting the course of the day in ever shorter sections. The ambivalence of evil in the figure of Bertram certainly belongs to a literary tradition found in many variants from Cazotte’s Diable amoureux onwards, but on the operatic stage it created an entirely novel effect; Balzac, analyzing the work in his novella Gambara, saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni as the only comparable example. Finally, the hero’s scène à faire is unconventionally constructed: Robert is the modern type of the ‘irresolute hero’ in extremis, unable to decide between the mythic powers contending for his soul. Only the fact that time is finally running out saves him and seals the fate of his demonic tempter.

Like the general plan of the pièce bien faite, the exposition of preceding events in the form of a ballad is part of the formal repertory of opéra comique. The return of the ballad motif at central moments in the opera is also very typical of the genre. However, the dramatic function of such references is novel. They create an independent level of meaning, with the ballad motif identifying Bertram as a satanic figure (Act 1, no.2, recitative, and Act 5, no.21, recitative). In this respect, Raimbaud’s ballad (Act 1) can be seen as a model for Senta’s ballad in Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer. The Prince of Grenada’s motif (Act 2, no.8) also returns at key moments in the third and fourth acts. Its ‘surreal’ instrumentation, with four solo timpani used as melodic instruments, defines the figure’s phantasmagorical nature. Another innovation was the replacement of the traditional overture by a programmatic prelude, an idea also adopted by Wagner. Besides setting out the theme of the central ‘Evocation des nonnes’ (Act 3, no.15a), it introduces the demonic orchestral sonority that dominates the opera.

Meyerbeer developed the instrumentation, as well as the significance of the thematic motifs, into an independent strand of the drama. The libretto contrasts three spheres: the chivalrous world of courtiers and knights, the demonic world of Bertram, and the world of the heavenly powers opposing him. In response to the demand for ‘local colour’, as popularized by the works of Walter Scott, Meyerbeer raised the instrumental characterization of these dramatic spheres to the status of a fundamental structural principle. He gave each of the three spheres certain characteristic sonorities which permeate the entire opera. For instance, he employs timpani, with bassoons and brass in the lower register, to illustrate the demonic sphere. The confrontation of various facets of ‘local colour’ leads to instrumental distancing and stylization, with many new orchestral effects, such as the use of horns and solo bassoons in their pale middle register, frequently mentioned in works on instrumentation from Berlioz onwards (‘Evocation des nonnes: procession’, Act 3, no.15a), and the offstage demonic chorus singing through megaphones (Act 3, no.10). There are also dramatic reasons for the first use of an organ in the theatre (Act 5, nos.20 and 21), and the positioning of two trumpets below the prompter’s box to suggest the ‘voice from the grave’ of Robert’s dead mother (Act 5, terzet, no.23). Meyerbeer’s contemporaries saw the Wolf’s Glen scene in Weber’s Der Freischütz as the model for this advanced orchestral technique, and consequently regarded Meyerbeer’s own development of instrumentation to define character as specifically German. However, Meyerbeer also proved himself Rossini’s heir in his structuring of the singing parts, consistently putting vocal virtuosity to the service of the drama. In the aria in which Isabelle begs for mercy (Act 4, no.18c), the dramatic effect of coloratura is exploited, setting off the crucial moment of peripeteia: Robert is moved by the singing of his intended victim and abjures the demonic power at his command.

The modern concept of moving pictures, also found in the diorama of the period, is another factor determining the construction of the individual acts. The introductory tableau of the first act places the exposition – with Raimbaud’s ballad, Alice’s entrance and the identification of Bertram – in the epic context of an evocation of chivalric life in the 13th century. Consequently, the conventional Italian formal repertory is abandoned for musical structures of a more individual kind. The Opéra’s director, Louis Véron, wanted the action to be intelligible in pantomime, and here again Meyerbeer’s response was determined by the aesthetics of the tableau. A particularly good example occurs in the nuns’ scene in Act 3 (see Grand opera, fig.4, and Ballet, fig.17), where the central temptation episode is illustrated in ballet pantomime. The ballet, emancipated from its traditional status as a mere operatic divertissement, becomes an independent component of the drama. The entire plot is presented as a series of contrasting pictures, alternating between settings using the front of the stage and settings using its entire depth. New lighting techniques and special effects reinforced the visual impression. The pale, bluish light of the nuns’ tableau was a novelty in the era of gas lighting. At the end of the first act, and during the course of the fourth act, the authors also incorporated a tableau vivant into the action, presenting viewers with a static scene in the manner of the contemporary panorama.

This principle of visualization on stage called for new dramatic functions in the music. The composer approaches the tableau like a stage director, commenting on the action with relevant motifs and instrumental characterization. Details are picked out of the tableau, and musical light is cast on them. The stage itself is extended, as it were, by means of distant choruses and incidental music. Cutting and montage techniques allow simultaneous cross-cutting between the various musical strata. The beginning of Act 5 (nos.20 and 21) provides an example. The distant choruses of the faithful at prayer and the offstage organ are cross-cut with the dialogue, and they participate interactively: Robert is prevented from signing a pact with the Devil by the musical evocation of the heavenly sphere. The following terzet (no.23) is of historical importance because this was the first time Meyerbeer introduced into a score the technique for heightening tension described by Charles Asselineau as ‘tenir l’esprit en suspens’, and often known as the ‘suspense effect’ in 20th-century cinematic thrillers. At the moment when a decision must be made, the action suddenly freezes. Robert is held spellbound, unable to decide between the opposing metaphysical powers. As the allotted span runs out, time itself is felt as the sole force of dramatic momentum. In contrast, the real climax of the action, Bertram’s fall into hell, is of very short duration; because of the work’s metaphysical structure, Meyerbeer required another closing image for the final apotheosis of the victorious heavenly power. In his next two operas, the ‘suspense effect’ is introduced with increasing dramatic force into the final climax.

On 28 February 1831 Véron had been appointed the first private director of the Opéra, although he still had access to considerable state subsidies. No expense was spared to make his first première as director an outstanding theatrical event. He had the services of leading experts in Edmond Duponchel (theatrical director), Pierre Ciceri (stage designer), Filippo Taglioni (choreographer) and François-Antoine Habeneck (conductor). The leading roles were created by Adolphe Nourrit (Robert), Nicolas Prosper Levasseur (Bertram), Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Isabelle) and Julie Dorus-Gras (Alice), with the prima ballerina Marie Taglioni (Hélène). Its success was unparalleled in operatic history: by 1893 Robert had been performed 756 times at the Opéra alone, and it was very soon being produced in all the leading opera houses of the world, as well as in countless provincial theatres.

The revolutions of 1789 and 1830 in France made it possible for the first time to see history as a dynamic process determined by social groups rather than individual rulers. The revival movements of the 1820s and 30s reacted by formulating new philosophical concepts of history. The neo-Catholic philosophy of Félicité Robert de Lammenais, and the Saint-Simonians with their concepts of a social utopia, propounded the notion of a self-perfecting human history to replace Christian ideas of redemption. The Opéra had a long tradition of concerning itself with historical events. Revolutionary incidents had already been reflected in Auber’s La muette de Portici (1828) and Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829); the dangerous nature of collective mass hysteria was also a theme of the choral pogrom scenes in Halévy’s La Juive (1835). It was not surprising, therefore, that after considering and rejecting various projects Meyerbeer came to an agreement with Scribe and Véron, on 23 October 1832, for an opera centred on the bloody events of the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572. However, difficulties soon arose. Meyerbeer thought that Scribe’s outline lacked the ‘colour of the chosen period’ (Briefwechsel, ii, 232), and stopped work on the opera. He broke his contract with Véron, paying the stipulated penalty of 30,000 francs, which was repaid to him when the contract was reinstated on 29 September 1834. Meanwhile, he had been revising the concept of the opera with his Italian librettist Rossi. The character of Marcel, in particular, was reassessed so as to make him an advocate of the ideas behind the plot, and in this context Meyerbeer sought an authentic traditional melody to provide Protestant colour. He studied the Huguenot Psalter but eventually decided on Luther’s chorale ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’. Rossi’s revisions were translated into French by Emile Deschamps, who also provided all the other alterations made necessary by objections from the censor. In addition, Meyerbeer developed ideas suggested by the director Duponchel and the tenor Nourrit, for whom he rewrote the duet in Act 4 (no.24).

This was the complex genesis of the first opera to present a modern concept of history. Traditionally, opera had represented history essentially as intrigue between rulers; Les Huguenots shows history following a dynamic of its own, largely conveyed by anonymous massed choruses. In a genre that depended on dramatic conflict between soloists, this approach called for the creation of an entirely new kind of drama. Scribe’s libretto offered the usual treatment of soloists that was typical of the genre: a tragic love story between two people belonging to hostile groups, the Protestant Raoul and the Catholic Valentine. The idea that had already proved its worth in Robert, of letting the action spring from a failed intrigue, was skilfully combined with the historical background in the failure of Queen Marguerite’s attempt to reconcile Catholics and Protestants through arranged marriages. However, two new techniques were necessary to make it clear that this private intrigue had been wrecked by the independent dynamic of the historical situation: the musical and dramatic flow of time had to be given its own momentum and a final ‘shock effect’ was required.

Meyerbeer constructed the first three acts of the work as historical tableaux, richly varied in themselves and mutually contrasted, but intentionally thin in conventional plot elements. The composer’s art consisted instead in illustrating the growth of the underlying tension between the two groups, a tension apparently no longer capable of control by individuals, however high their rank. The resultant failure unfolds in a new kind of dramatic dynamic – one that will finally bring all involved, without distinction, to ruin. This is clear as early as the first act, when Marcel, servant to the Huguenot knight Raoul, tries to provoke Raoul’s Catholic hosts by singing the Lutheran chorale. Although he then strikes up a Huguenot war-song, Marcel’s provocation has no effect on the plot. Nonetheless, the principle of the ‘idyll disturbed’ as a central dramatic element in the first act is already present here – and the topos of interrupted festivities was subsequently taken up again and again, from Verdi’s Rigoletto to Schreker’s Der ferne Klang. In this first act of Les Huguenots, the idyllic atmosphere is particularly well realized in the page’s aria (no.6b). Its coquettish profusion of coloratura and rocking rhythm display the refined courtly colour that is evoked in Act 2 against the setting of the château of Chenonceaux. On the occasion of her own marriage, arranged to bring peace, Queen Marguerite wishes to marry her lady-in-waiting Valentine to Raoul. So far the audience is presented with an entirely traditional attempt to depict politics as a matter of private intrigue on the part of rulers. The failure of this attempt is shown on stage in a reversal of fortune deriving from the quid pro quo of the action: Raoul wrongly believes Valentine to be the mistress of the Catholic nobleman Nevers. At this point the queen has difficulty in preventing this twist of the plot from leading to open battle between the parties. The fragility of the courtly idyll arises from the way in which private misunderstandings caused by the opposition of hostile groups immediately assume political significance.

This state of affairs is displayed in Act 3 in a kind of sociological panorama involving all classes of society. The perspective of the urban masses dominates the act (see Gerhard, 1992). As the soloists retreat into the background, the depiction of collective confrontation comes to the fore, twice rising to a climax which is prevented only at the last moment from turning to bloody slaughter. On the first occasion the entrance of a troupe of gypsies momentarily distract the crowds; here again the ballet is incorporated into the action. The second threatened clash between the hostile parties is prevented by the queen, who appears by chance. In terms of music drama, Meyerbeer builds up this group confrontation by contrasting the simultaneous sounds of a Huguenot soldiers’ chorus and a litany sung by Catholic maidens, and by accelerating the distribution of phrases in the four sections of the ‘Choeur de la dispute’ (no.20). The construction of the first three acts transforms the dynamic of dramatic suspense, from provocation with no result (Act 1), to the failure of a courtly scheme (Act 2) and so to double confrontations (Act 3). The Consecration of the Swords scene (Act 4, no.23) intensifies mass hysteria to the point of ritual fanaticism. The mediant modulations of this scene are regarded as a fine example of advanced 19th-century harmonies. Meyerbeer enhances the harmonic effect by extreme dynamic contrasts and the louring combination of horn, bassoon and trombones. The final suspense scene before the dramatic catharsis is underpinned psychologically: Valentine lets slip the confession of her love for Raoul at a moment of the utmost danger (duet, no.24). Meyerbeer reacts to this extreme situation with a freely through-composed structure determined by the psychological situation in the dialogue. The central section, ‘Tu l’as dit’, has been analysed as the paradigm of a self-contained melodic period, representing a specific ‘musical culture’ (Dahlhaus, 1980, p.10). In its dramatic context, it signals the psychological parting of the characters at the moment of greatest peril: Raoul must leave at once to warn the Huguenots. As in the terzet in Robert, the passage of time becomes dramatically crucial. With time running out, a utopian scene emerges from this moment of extreme tension: a tragic love that can never be realized is conjured up as a dream of happiness in a moment of fulfilment.

The constant energizing of the musical passage of time culminates in the closing catastrophe, which dramatizes the historical core of the action, the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day (Act 5, no.27). In the foreground Valentine and Raoul are united by Marcel in an impromptu wedding. Meyerbeer used the newly invented bass clarinet for the first time to accompany this plane of the action. At the back of the stage, the Huguenot women and children have taken refuge in a chapel and are singing the Lutheran chorale as fanatical bands of Catholic murderers enter the chapel. The final moment of drama grows from Meyerbeer’s ingenious idea of introducing the chorale at key moments throughout the scene at a progressively accelerated tempo. The tune is taken up by the protagonists just as the murderers reach them. The final stage of acceleration ends with the melody disintegrating into fragments, together with the chorus of murderers. The principle of progressive quickening determines the spatial and temporal construction of the entire scene, and the various stages of acceleration correspond to precise stage directions: the gradual spread of the massacre is expressed simultaneously in terms of space (as the murderers approach), drama (the interaction between the murderers and the protagonists) and music (the disintegration of the chorale melody). Meyerbeer emphasizes the fact that this structural concept embodies the work’s central philosophical statement by introducing the sequence described above in the opera’s orchestral prelude: the dynamics of the historical process become perceptible in the acceleration of the chorale melody.

The inclusion of the murderers’ chorus in the disintegration of the chorale indicates that the perpetrators as well as the victims of the massacre are being overrun by the unleashed forces of the historical process. This is confirmed in the stage action of the final scene: Valentine, who alone has survived the massacre unharmed, is shot by her father, and in a last silent entrance the queen is confronted by the body of her favourite lady-in-waiting, riddled with bullets. With the theatrical means available in the 19th century, the negation of any heroic concept of history could not have been more shockingly staged. The historical pessimism evident in this work undoubtedly also has its roots in Meyerbeer’s own history. As a devout Jew, and often enough the subject of anti-Semitic attacks himself, he was well aware of the ever-present danger of new pogroms. Fear of mob hysteria, however, was something that all his contemporaries could imagine: the bloody scenes of the July Revolution had taken place just six years before the opera had its première, and those of the French Revolution were only 40 years in the past. The radical nature of the opera’s historical and philosophical dimensions, however, was not evident to Meyerbeer’s contemporaries, who usually understood it to be identifying with the Protestants, the victims of the story.

In his instrumentation, Meyerbeer had broken with the Italian layout of the orchestra and created the Franco-Italian synthesis often erroneously attributed to Wagner. Fétis mentions the fact in his discussion of the première: ‘The novelty of the instrumentation gives the ensemble a character of creation’ (Coudroy, 153). Meyerbeer’s writing for wind developed into an independent stratum that could no longer be reduced to the four-part framework of the setting for strings. Novel sonorities appear with increasing frequency; for instance, an english horn is used instead of oboes between the flutes and clarinets in the orchestral prelude. There is an extreme contrast of register in the ‘Chanson Huguenote’ (no.4) between a piccolo and bassoon, double bass, bass drum and cymbals, emphasizing the frenetic character of the song.

In spite of its success with the public, the première of Les Huguenots on 29 February 1836 initially baffled the critics. They could see that the work was basically innovatory, but it was thought by many to present an unfortunate contrast between the poverty of action at the beginning of the opera, and the extremely rapid progress of the plot in the two closing acts. Subsequent performances, however, established its success, and it was received with increasing enthusiasm at every performance. The leading roles were taken by Dorus-Gras (Marguerite), Cornélie Falcon (Valentine), Nourrit (Raoul) and Levasseur (Marcel), with Habeneck as conductor. Nourrit was also responsible for the stage direction and this time the settings were painted by four different designers. The work became the most successful opera of the 19th century; it was the first to have over 1000 performances at the Opéra, a record that to this day has been broken only by Gounod’s Faust. Its dissemination through the rest of the world was delayed particularly in Catholic countries by censorship, but it eventually had an international success to match that of Robert.

Meyerbeer was aware that with the epic dramatic writing of Les Huguenots he had reached the utmost limits of what was possible within the genre’s conventions in the 19th century: in the printed score of the Paris production, not even the heroine Valentine has an aria to herself. Soon after the première he determined to base his ‘dramatic system on indestructible pillars with a third work’ (letter of 20 May 1836, Briefwechsel, ii, 527). However, he encountered significant difficulties. Although he considered a number of subjects, he finally settled on two possible projects: L’Africaine and Le prophète. The genesis of these works is closely interwoven. Meyerbeer began work first on L’Africaine, but abandoned it on 1 August 1838 when Falcon, for whom he had intended the title role, had lost her voice. A first version of Le prophète was deposited with a Parisian notary on 25 March 1841. Difficulties in the casting, however, delayed production. Meyerbeer had intended the exalted, missionary character of the title role for the leading tenor, Duprez, who sang with full chest voice in the upper register. In December 1843, when it transpired that Duprez was no longer up to the demands of the part, Meyerbeer deferred composition, and over the next four years he conducted fruitless negotiations with the Opéra over alternative singers, coming to an agreement only when Roqueplan and Duponchel took over the directorship on 1 July 1847. When he heard Pauline Viardot, Meyerbeer revised his ideas of the part of Fidès; it is a unique role, one of the great parts of the century, demanding the vocal range of mezzo-soprano and soprano in its dramatic coloratura. In contrast, the tenor part was simplified for Gustave Roger, and as a result the entire original dramatic concept was revised. During rehearsals, Meyerbeer made more cuts, and the opera had its première in this form on 16 April 1849 (fig.4).

Between 1851 and 1853 Meyerbeer resumed work on the first version of L’Africaine, the ‘vecchia Africana’, which he had abandoned in 1843. He made basic revisions to Acts 1 and 2, and transferred the action of Acts 4 and 5 from Central Africa to India. After a brief period of work on the score in 1857, he again let it lie until 1860. Despite another interruption as a result of Scribe’s death on 20 February 1861, Meyerbeer completed his rehearsal score on 29 November 1863. However, he was unable to put his own finishing touches to the work since he died a few weeks after rehearsals began. Fétis made a performance version from the extensive score material, and the opera had its première on 28 April 1865.

The dramatic parallels between the operas are obvious: in both, the historical action is presented from the viewpoint of a paradigmatic individual. There is a charismatic leader at the centre of each: Jean de Leide (John of Leiden), leader of the Anabaptist movement of the Reformation period, and the seafarer Vasco da Gama. Like Robert before them, the protagonists seem to be motivated by metaphysical powers, as is evident from the fact that their respective missions are revealed in dream scenes. In Le prophète, Meyerbeer was the first composer to use the leitmotif as an indication of what lies ahead, a function described later by Wagner as Ahnung or premonition: the themes of the coronation scene in Act 4 have already been introduced in instrumental form, and distanced. In both operas, the moment of peripeteia is marked by a spectacular stage effect: in Le prophète it was the first successful use in any theatre of an electric spotlight, which Meyerbeer had specially made by the physicist Léon Foucault. Meyerbeer’s multi-media conception caused him to reject older notions of tone-painting at this point. His contemporaries felt they were blinded by a ‘real sun’. Technologically, the sunrise effect resulted from the most developed technology of the time, and the work itself became a synonym for a new age; the prophet was seen, as Wagner put it, as the ‘prophet of a new world’.

L’Africaine featured the first completely revolving stage set, on which the ship of Vasco da Gama’s rival could be shown changing course. Both these stage effects marked crucial moments in the action: Jean’s final guilty involvement in the historical process, and the premature failure of Vasco’s mission of colonization. The change of fortune also forms part of analogous scenes: Sélika saves Vasco by forcing Nélusko to testify, falsely, that she and Vasco are married, while conversely, in the coronation scene, John forces his mother to disown him. Meyerbeer realized this dramatic climax of the opera on a variety of scenic and musical levels: the themes of the stretta of the aria, a ritual Anabaptist chorus and the contrasting chorus of the people are interwoven phrase by phrase (no.24d). There are also similarities in the protagonists’ respective opponents. Nélusko, as the embodiment of specific ideas, is most closely comparable to Marcel in Les Huguenots. He stands for the unconditional rescue of his people from colonization and is thus opposed to Vasco’s metaphysically based mission. Similarly, Jean’s mother Fidès is the opponent of his mission as prophet of the Anabaptists: she symbolizes divine providence and forces him to give up his blasphemous ambition. The instrumentation of the two operas is also comparable. Differentiation of the woodwind in tutti is now the rule. In the autograph score of Le prophète, Meyerbeer usually began by setting the middle registers (horns, clarinets) very densely and did not thin the writing out until later. The coronation scene (Act 4, nos.23–4) calls for a children’s chorus (with soloists), two mixed choruses, a complete saxhorn family and an organ for four hands. In L’Africaine, Meyerbeer adds only a few exotic touches connected with the subject of the opera. The grand air (Act 4, no.15) brings in a saxophone, which Meyerbeer had already planned to use in Le prophète. There is also three-part writing for strings combined with three flutes (Act 5, finale, no.22).

However, the specific concepts in the dramaturgy of the two operas are very different. Le prophète combines the philosophical view of history seen in Les Huguenots with the metaphysical image of humanity in Robert. To provide the historical colour of the Anabaptist revolts, Meyerbeer composed the chorale ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’, repeated many times over in the course of the opera, like the chorale of Les Huguenots. The sacred colour becomes unctuously grotesque when the chorale is given to the trio of Anabaptist preachers.

The idyllic strand of Les Huguenots is also continued. Meyerbeer found the contrasting colour of the idyll in the realm of the pastoral, evoked by the dialogue between two clarinets at the beginning of the opening tableau. The thematic structure of the score is considerably more dense than in Les Huguenots, however, owing to the function of pastoral themes in the discourse. The ‘idyll disturbed’ becomes not merely an external dramatic pattern, as in the first act, but provides metaphysical motivation for the protagonist. Directly after his dream vision, evoking his vocation to become a prophet, John describes the dream of idyllic private happiness with his bride Berthe in his pastorale (Act 2, no.8), as a counterbalance to the Anabaptists. This idyll symbolizes the second of the metaphysical forces between which John is torn, like Robert before him. For a time Meyerbeer even thought of repeating the melody of the pastorale as a leitmotif whenever the action of the opera referred to Berthe or Jean’s mother Fidès, who embodies the power of heaven (Briefwechsel, iii, 539). Consequently the pastorale is quoted in the army camp scene in Act 3 (scène, after no.16), when John, longing for his mother, wishes he could give up his prophetic calling. The reference to the closing terzet (Act 5, no.28) was originally to be played on an E saxophone, both here and in the suicide scene. The theme of the pastoral passage in the final trio is derived from an inversion of the leitmotif. When the three principals – for the first and only time in the opera – meet in happy circumstances, the pastoral passage symbolizes the utopia of an idyllic simple life.

Here the dramatic treatment of suspense arises not from the passage of time, as in the analogous passages of Meyerbeer’s earlier works, but from the extreme instability of the situation. At any moment Berthe will discover that her lover and the hated prophet are one and the same; in the event the revelation is made quite casually by a minor character. The action of Le prophète culminates in an extreme example of the final drama of the ‘shock effect’, previously encountered in Les Huguenots: Berthe, having set out to kill the prophet, stabs herself in horror. Extensive cuts were made to this strand of the plot during rehearsals and a version of Berthe’s dying monologue, which at one time Meyerbeer had intended to be accompanied by the saxophone, was also cut, with the consequent abandonment of saxophone instrumentation for the leitmotif in the third act.

Despite these cuts, Berthe is far more clearly drawn as an active female principal than her predecessor Valentine. Her character develops from a simple country girl to a figure of avenging authority. If Fidès incarnates the principle of divine forgiveness, Berthe is driven by a positively Biblical anger that eventually becomes self-destructive. In the eponymous heroine of L’Africaine, who is the determining figure throughout the action, Meyerbeer created a synthesis of these two types of female character. In the closing tableau of Le prophète, the topos of ‘festivities disturbed’ grows to apocalyptic dimensions. The music constantly presents the idea of bacchanalian festivities, and the bacchanal itself (no.29a) was reduced to its essential elements only just before the première. John’s drinking song (‘Couplets bachiques’, no.29b) functions as a symbol of the catastrophe, and light is cast on the metaphysical motivation of his downfall when the pastoral theme of the terzet is heard in its orchestral introduction: John’s ruin is shown to be the outcome of sin against the divine power, symbolized by the pastoral colour. The spectacular explosion of the palace is realized in purely scenic terms, while the text of the drinking song, still heard, identifies this apocalypse as purgatory. As in Les Huguenots, both parties to the historical event, the Anabaptists and the army of the legitimate emperor, are destroyed. This philosophical dimension is not suited to the closing scene of L’Africaine. Sélika’s Liebestod under the manchineel tree remains a private tragedy with no meaning outside itself, and of no significance for Vasco’s mission. Of the two operas, it is L’Africaine that points the way forward more clearly; the drame lyrique of the second half of the century can be sensed in the dramatic writing of the closing scene. Like Wagner’s music dramas, L’Africaine concentrates exclusively on the action of the principals. The media art and video clips that shape our viewing habits in the early 21st century seem like an aesthetic step backwards from the mature Meyerbeer’s multi-media projects.

The première of Le prophète was a triumph of theatrical history, and its success was undoubtedly heightened by its unintentional political topicality following the 1848 revolutions. The main roles were sung by Viardot (Fidès), Roger (Jean) and Jeanne Anaïs Castellan (Berthe); Eugène Scribe directed the production, and the orchestra was conducted by Girard. Like Meyerbeer’s other grand operas, Le prophète retained its place in the repertories of all the major international opera houses for decades, and was in the repertory of the Paris Opéra until 1912. The spectacular Paris première of L’Africaine was created by Marie Sasse (Sélika), Marie Battu (Inès), Emilio Naudin (Vasco) and Jean-Baptiste Faure (Nélusko), in a production directed by Alexis Colleville and conducted by Georges-François Hainl (see fig.5). Being so clearly conceived as a work for soloists, it was the most frequently performed of Meyerbeer’s operas in the 20th century, and has been produced wherever adequate interpreters could be found, although most such performances have embodied disfiguring cuts.