Operatic Favorites (March 3, 2024)

March 3, 2024

Stéphane Denève, conductor
Melissa Brooks, cello
Erin Schreiber, violin

Toccata from L’Orfeo

Overture to The Marriage of Figaro

Overture to The Barber of Seville

Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut

“Casta Diva” from Norma

Melissa Brooks, cello

“Dance of the Hours” from La Gioconda

Intermission

Overture to Mignon

Les Toréadors from Carmen Suite No. 1

Erin Schreiber, violin

Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann

Can-Can from Orpheus in the Underworld
arranged by Manuel Rosenthal for the ballet Gaîté parisienne

Welcome to an Afternoon at the Opera! But wait, perhaps it should be an “Afternoon in the Opera Pit”? For this is a concert of opera highlights with not a singer to be seen. Today, Music Director Stéphane Denève will show how a fine orchestra is just as important to opera as great voices, conducting a program that traces the history of the artform through some of its most thrilling and beautiful symphonic moments.

Voices aren’t the only “given” in opera. The other traditional assumption is the language of opera: Italian. This is natural—opera as we know it was born in Italy and many of the great operas were composed to Italian texts, even when they were written in other countries. But Italian doesn’t hold a monopoly on opera. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also gave the world opera in German (Die Entführung aus dem Serail, or “The Abduction from the Seraglio”); Richard Wagner took German music-drama to its height. The French, too, made opera their own, and Denève has given today’s program a delightful French twist.

ACT I

We begin with L’Orfeo, composed in 1607 by Claudio Monteverdi. It’s not the first opera or even the earliest surviving opera (that honor goes to Euridice by Jacopo Peri), but it is the oldest opera you’re likely to see staged today. It takes its plot from the Greek myth of Orpheus, who braved the Underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice, charming the furies of hell with the sweetness of his music-making. None of the drama makes it into today’s concert, however. From L’Orfeo, Denève has chosen the famous Toccata. It’s a brilliant three-fold fanfare: the first sounding captures our attention; the second would have announced the Duke of Mantua, who’d commissioned the opera; the third signals the beginning of the play.

The Toccata is all the more famous because it also forms the prelude to Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. Was this a case of expedient recycling? Not really. As Harvard musicologist Thomas Forrest Kelly points out, this toccata would have been the standard fanfare for the Duke of Mantua, normally played by the ducal trumpets. It was used again for the Vespers because the duke was once again in attendance. And it survives for us to enjoy because Monteverdi had to write it down for the large and impressive orchestra participating in the opera.

From Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart comes a true opera overture, but again the brilliance of trumpets and drums comes to the fore, together with a bustling, scurrying single-mindedness that has long made the overture to The Marriage of Figaro a concert favorite. The opera was premiered in Vienna and sung in Italian but it provides the first French twist in today’s concert. In a daring move, Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte chose a play by Pierre Beaumarchais—a work so radical in its social politics that it had been banned.

In many ways, Mozart’s Figaro overture “is”

the spirit of Europe in 1786. It belongs to an opera about a philandering nobleman who gets his comeuppance (this to the sound of the guillotine being sharpened in Paris). Musically, it brought a new sophistication and individuality to the stock-in-trade, off-the-rack operatic overture.

To those who know and love the

opera—Mozart’s richest and most humane comedy—this overture will prompt smiles over the delights to follow. And its worth remembering Beaumarchais’s subtitle: La folle journée

(“the mad day”), a day that seems ideally prefaced by this inspired overture.”

As it happens, The Barber of Seville is based on another Beaumarchais play—it forms the prequel to the action in Mozart’s opera, even though Gioachino Rossini composed it 30 years later. During the first half of the 19th century Rossini was the most famous composer of his age, enjoying prestige, wealth, and popular and critical acclaim. His delightful comic operas are among the very finest representatives of the style and The Barber of Seville is easily the most popular of them all. Rossini clearly knew the winning formula!

In an opera overture recognition test, Rossini’s William Tell would be a clear winner, but only for its last two minutes, the rousing galop associated with the Lone Ranger. His overture to The Barber of Seville remains, as a whole, probably the most famous overture ever composed, not least because of Chuck Jones’s ingenious treatment of it in the Looney Tunes short Rabbit of Seville, when Bugs Bunny shaves Elmer Fudd.

Yet the association with barbers and beards is almost an accident. Rossini composed the overture in 1813 for another opera, Aureliano in Palmira. Then he recycled it for Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (Elizabeth, Queen of England, 1814), before linking it (inseparably) with The Barber of Seville (1816), where it makes so appropriate a curtain-raiser for an opera of crackling wit, with age-old comic themes. (The subtitle here is “The Useless Precaution.”)

The purpose of Rossini’s overtures was to electrify listeners, predisposing them to the sheer physical enjoyment of sound, and to declare from the start that the composer was in charge of proceedings. In many ways, a Rossini overture was a musical visiting card, displaying his musical trademarks: enlivening rhythm, brilliant orchestral writing, and the famous

“Rossini crescendo”—the piling up of instruments and volume.

Giacomo Puccini made his career almost exclusively as a composer for the stage—the undisputed successor of Verdi—and his operas are the foundation of his legacy, with works such as La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot standing as mainstays of the repertoire. Puccini’s operas are loved for their realism and the relatable and heartfelt romanticism of their scenarios as well as the poignant lyricism of his melodic style and colorful orchestral writing.

Puccini’s first major success, in 1893, was his opera Manon Lescaut, based on the Abbé Prévost’s novel. Beginning in 18th-century France and ending in Louisiana, it tells of the obsession of the Chevalier des Grieux for the naïve but captivating young Manon, with whom he elopes. In Paris, she leaves her young lover for a rich old man, but is sentenced for theft to penal servitude. 

The Intermezzo between Acts II and III covers the journey to the French port city of Le Havre. Des Grieux, still enthralled, follows Manon, who will embark there, together with other “fallen” women, for North America. Very much aware of Jules Massenet’s 1874 opera Manon, Puccini was determined to be different. Instead of the “powder and minuets” suggested by the 18th-century setting, his opera would have an Italian’s “desperate passion.” This can be heard in the Intermezzo’s big central tune, one of Puccini’s most memorable, and in the fate-laden motif that follows it.

Norma by Vincenzo Bellini was first produced at La Scala, Milan in 1831. The story, set in Gaul [France again] during the Roman occupation, dramatizes the conflict of love and duty. Norma, the High Priestess of the Druids, has violated her vow of chastity with an enemy of her people, the Roman Proconsul Pollione, and borne him two sons. When he deserts her for another priestess, Adalgisa, she resolves to revenge herself on Pollione by killing his children, and exposing Adalgisa. But she cannot bring herself to do either, and after confessing her guilt she dies on a funeral pyre where Pollione joins her.

Norma rests its achievement, more than most operas, on a single role, and in particular, a single number,

“Casta Diva”—the invocation to the moon (“Chaste goddess”) with which the heroine makes her entrance. When the original Norma, Giuditta Pasta, first heard this cavatina (or simple aria), she refused to sing it, finding it unsuited to her style. Bellini persuaded her to sing it through every morning for one week; if she still disliked it, he promised to compose a new cavatina for her to sing in its place. Pasta admitted her error, and Bellini was right to insist on the rightness of this number. 

“Casta Diva”embodies Bellini’s graceful melodic style at its most hypnotic—long and noble of expression. In this performance Melissa Brooks “sings” Norma’s part, revealing why the cello has long had a reputation as the instrument closest to the human voice in its color and expressive power.

Depending on your generation and whether or not you went to summer camp, the Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda will bring to mind either the dancing hippos in Disney’s Fantasia (1940) or Allan Sherman’s 1963 novelty song “Hello Muddah, hello Faddah.” Or perhaps both!

There are many operas famous for just one number, often instrumental: Norma’s “Casta Diva” can be joined by the (solo violin) Meditation from Massenet’s Thaïs and this ballet number from La Gioconda (1876). It’s Amilcare Ponchielli’s best-known opera, but it’s rarely seen outside Italy, barring occasional revivals at the Met Opera in New York. 

Although the setting is Venice of the 17th century, La Gioconda is a grand opera in the French manner. And in the 19th century that meant an obligatory ballet scene. Walt Disney knew exactly what he was doing when he turned the Dance of the Hours into an iconic ballet for Hyacinth Hippo, a corps of hippopotamuses and ostriches, and her willowy premier danseur Ben Ali Gator. And he took his visual inspiration from the leading choreographer of the day: George Balanchine’s “Water Nymph” ballet made for the 1938 film The Goldwyn Follies. (Look it up on YouTube.)

The “dance of the hours” was a standard ensemble dance in many ballets of the period (there’s an especially beautiful one in Coppélia). In Ponchielli’s, the “Daybreak” introduction leads to “Day” (the first appearance of the “Hello Muddah, hello Faddah” tune), “Evening,” and “Night”. Then harp flourishes and bells usher in a beautifully expressive section followed by an exhilarating can-can to take us into intermission. 

ACT II

Act I of this concert featured one member of orchestra as soloist. Act II begins—it seems—with solos for everyone else: clarinet with bassoon, flute with oboe, a rippling cadenza for the harp, an extended melody for the horn…

Mignon by Ambroise Thomas is based on a story by the great German writer Johann von Goethe, in which the waif Mignon, who knows little of her past or parentage, captivates the hero Wilhelm Meister. It’s rarely staged but has survived in the concert repertoire by virtue of its attractive overture. After the delicate and lyrical opening section, showcasing the “singing” quality of the orchestra, the overture launches into a buoyant polonaise, proving they can “dance” as well. 

Earlier overtures, such the one for The Barber of Seville, didn’t necessarily include any themes from the opera to follow; the Mignon overture represents an integrated approach. In the opera the harp is played by the old man who turns out to be Mignon’s father; the slow melody of the overture will be sung by Mignon, longing for a dimly remembered country; the polonaise represents Mignon’s flighty rival for Wilhelm’s affections. 

Thomas was 55 when Mignon gave him his first real commercial success as a composer for the theatre. Success when it came, however, was sensational—Mignon was praised for its elegance, its perfection of form, truth of expression, and variety of coloring. “Such an air of elegance surrounds everything he does,” wrote one critic, “that we feel no work of his ever goes upon the stage until entirely perfect.” In 1896 Mignon enjoyed its 1,000th performance and Thomas died, “full of years, as well as full of honors.” He had risen to the position of Director of the Paris Conservatoire, but none of his later operas matched Mignon in success, although his opera on Shakespeare’s Hamlet is sometimes revived. 

For his last opera, Carmen, Georges Bizet chose a disturbingly realistic story by Prosper Merimée. Audiences were shocked to see women fighting and smoking, not to mention the onstage murder of the heroine. Carmen ran at the Paris Opéra-Comique for 45 performances, a succès de scandale, but was declared a failure. Bizet himself died on the night of the 33rd performance and did not live to see the opera take its place as one of the most popular in the repertoire.

In Seville, Carmen is arrested for causing a disturbance among the women at the cigarette factory where she works. She persuades soldier Don Joséto help her escape and he falls for her, abandoning career and duty to follow her and a band of smugglers, only to be thrown over in favor of the bullfighter Escamillo. When she refuses to return to him, Don Joséstabs her in a fit of passion.

Following Bizet’s death, his Louisiana-born friend Ernest Guiraud compiled two concert suites of highlights from the opera. The first suite includes the preludes or entr’actes that Bizet wrote to precede each of the four acts, concluding with Les Toréadors and the exhilarating march tune associated with Don José’s rival, Escamillo.

Bizet never visited Spain but, like so many French composers, he captured the Spanish local color in music full of drama and vitality. Even so, his music for Carmen wasn’t heard in Spain until 1881, when the violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate performed his newly completed Carmen Fantasy in Madrid. (The opera itself received its Madrid premiere in 1887.)

The Fantasy takes the form of an operatic potpourri, giving a virtuoso treatment to key themes from Bizet’s opera. It begins with the rousing introduction to Act 4 (Aragonaise), but after this, Sarasate’s choices are notable for including only motifs sung by Carmen herself, which also happen to be some of the most characteristically Spanish numbers in the opera. From Act 1 we hear the Habanera (“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”), her teasing response to her arrest (“Tra la la”), and the Seguidilla in which she seduces Don José. The Bohemian Dance from Act 2 provides the finale.

Sarasate’s audiences—in Spain and elsewhere—were enraptured by the colors and brilliance of the Fantasy, even more so in the version for violin and orchestra, and it remains one of the most exciting violin showpieces in the repertoire. 

Jacques Offenbach, the great master of French operetta, earned from Rossini (a demanding judge) the sobriquet “Mozart of the Champs-Elysées.” Today, he takes this concert into the realm of fantasy, magic, and comedy, and we hear from both his first opera and his last. The Tales of Hoffmann, based on short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann (the author who gave us Nutcracker), was an opéra-fantastique that was begun in 1877 and left unfinished at Offenbach’s death. Completed by the Louisiana-born composer Ernest Guiraud, The Tales of Hoffmann enjoys a firm place in opera houses worldwide, and the Barcarolle is its most exquisite moment.

A barcarolle was traditionally a gondolier’s song (signaled by gently rocking rhythms)—cue a Venetian setting. In the opera it’s heard as an atmospheric duet for soprano and mezzo-soprano; its lyrics celebrate a “beautiful night of love” as Niklausse and the courtesan Giulietta arrive by gondola. (Offenbach originally composed the Barcarolle for another opera where it’s sung by a chorus of elves and represents the flowing of the Rhine—he was right to find a new home for it.) It’s not certain whether Offenbach himself or those who worked on the opera after his death decided to reprise the Barcarolle in the Epilogue of The Tales of Hoffmann, but the result is inspired, creating a sense of unity as well as making the most of the undoubted “hit” of the opera. 

At the other end of Offenbach’s career is Orpheus in the Underworld, an opéra-comique or operetta that satirizes the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, thus bringing today’s program full circle. In a topsy-turvy plot worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan, Orpheus is a put-upon violin teacher who’s glad to be rid of Eurydice, and has to be coerced into rescuing her. The opera ends with a party on the banks of the Styx, and when “head god” Jupiter insists everyone dance an old-fashioned minuet (boring!), there is general rebellion and gods and goddesses take to the floor to show off their legs in that “most immoral” of cabaret dances, the Can-Can. (“Oh, what a simply splendid, way the story’s ended, even though it’s not as Homer once intended. We, reckoned that we’d get a, better operetta, making up our own mythology.”)

Orpheus in the Underworld was a hit in the 19th century and remains Offenbach’s most successful operetta. In 1938, long after the composer’s death, French conductor and composer Manuel Rosenthal (1904–2003) compiled a one-act “jukebox” ballet based on highlights from ten of Offenbach’s works, calling it Gaîté parisienne (Parisian Gaiety). Created for the choreographer Léonide Massine and the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, Gaîté parisienne belongs to the same ballet tradition as Ottorino Respighi’s Boutique fantasque and Benjamin Britten’s Soirées and Matinées musicales (all based on Rossini), and Le beau Danube (based on Johann Strauss II).

Rosenthal, a protégé of Maurice Ravel, made his living both in the theater and the concert

hall—he conducted the first performances in France of works by Stravinsky, Bartók, and Prokofiev, and enjoyed success with operettas of his own. His savoir-faire and sense of the Offenbach style is apparent on every page of Gaîté parisienne, and the Can-Can (or “Danse infernal”) sequence from Orpheus in the Underworld forms its effervescent climax.

Adapted from program notes by Yvonne Frindle and David Garrett © 2024

Cellist Melissa Brooks has been a member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since 1992. She is a native of New York City, where from 1977 to 1988 she attended the pre-college division of the Juilliard School. She completed her undergraduate degree at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Laurence Lesser. She graduated from both schools with Distinction in Performance.

She has performed in chamber and solo concerts throughout the United States, including a duo concert with the late cellist János Starker. She has won numerous awards and honors, and in 1988 was nominated by Leonard Bernstein for an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has participated in numerous summer festivals, including Marlboro, Tanglewood, and Aspen, as well as the Portland Chamber Music Festival, Concert Artists Guild Summer Festival, and the Sun Valley Summer Festival.

Melissa Brooks has appeared as soloist with the SLSO under former Music Director Hans Vonk as well as with conductors frey Kahane, Nicholas McGegan, and Jun Märkl. She also performed Pierre Boulez’s demanding Messagesquisse (for solo cello and six other cellos) under the direction of former Music Director David Robertson. Her activities in the community include creating and participating in numerous benefit concerts throughout the year as well as engaging in advocacy work.

Violinist Erin Schreiber joined the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as Assistant Concertmaster in September 2008, at the age of 20, and was appointed the SLSO’s Associate Concertmaster in 2023. She has appeared in recital throughout the United States, as well as in London, Sweden, Italy, and Germany, and has toured with jazz legend Chris Botti all over the U.S. as well as to Shanghai, Mexico City, Canada, and Eastern Europe. Performance highlights include playing for Colin Powell and former President Jimmy Carter. An alumna of the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra, she also regularly participates in YO coaching and side-by-side events.

She made her SLSO solo debut with a performance of Berio’s Corale (on Sequenza VIII) in 2011, and played Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending for the Opening Weekend concerts of the 2014/15 season, both programs conducted by former Music Director David Robertson.

Erin Schreiber attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 2005 to 2008, studying with Joseph Silverstein, Pamela Frank, and Jaime Laredo. Her teachers have also included Roland Vamos, Almita Vamos, Elisa Barston, and Robert Lipsett.

Program Notes are sponsored by Washington University Physicians.