A Date with the Devil The Devil has long had a leading part to play in drama and in music, either menacing mortals in a medieval miracle play or leading...
A Date with the Devil
The Devil has long had a leading part to play in drama and in music,
either menacing mortals in a medieval miracle play or leading romantic heroes
and heroines into difficulties in the world of romantic opera. The nineteenth
century found a particular fascination in the character of the Devil, a
supposed source of diabolical inspiration for a Paganini or a Liszt or a
principal figure in Faustian legend.
Dr Faustus himself, perhaps based on the early scientist and
experimenter Paracelsus, found his place in German legend and in a moral
publication of 1587 that warned of the dangers of intellectual speculation.
This was the source of Christopher Marlowe's play, in which the good doctor,
true to story, sells his soul to the Devil in return for a period of youth and
consequent pleasure. In the following century the Devil acquires heroic stature
in Milton's Paradise Lost to
return with less ambiguity in Goethe's great poetic drama, the source of so
much else in music and opera.
It is Goethe who is the source of inspiration for the French composer
Hector Berlioz, with his >Eight Scenes from
Faust, written in 1828 and 1829 under the impact of the translation
of the first part of Goethe's Faust by
Gerard de Nerval, which had appeared in 1827. In 1845 Berlioz returned to the
subject, revising the earlier scenes and incorporating them into his dramatic
legend La damnation de Faust ('The
Damnation of Faust'), described as an opera
de concert, which has also lent itself to staging. The text for the
later work, still based on de Nerval, was adapted to its new purpose by Almire
Gandonnière and the composer, and the new composition was first heard in a
concert performance by the Opera-Comique in Paris in December 1846. The first
staging was in Monte Carlo in 1893. Berlioz considered, for a time,
commissioning a new libretto for an opera under the title Mephistophelès but the idea came to
nothing.
It was in February 1846 that Berlioz introduced the public in Pesth to
a new composition that had an immediate appeal to Hungarian patriotism, then
reaching a new pitch of enthusiasm. He had been advised to write something
based on a Hungarian national melody and had happily chosen Rakoczy, with its overt nationalist
associations, to create the Rakoczy March. This
was to form part of the work on which he was now working at every available
moment during his concert tour of Germany and Austria and in the months that
followed Faust is first found in Hungary, allowing the march a new place. In
the second part, rejuvenated by the Devil Mephistopheles, now his companion
until his final damnation, from which there is to be no redemption,
Mephistopheles entertains the students in Auerbach's cellar in Leipzig with Une puce gentille ('A delightful flea'), a
song taken unchanged from the Eight Scenes, The
Devil's Serenade, from the third
part, provides an interlude in Faust's courtship of Marguerite.
Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le diable
('Robert the Devil') deals with another kind of devilry. Staged
first at the Paris Opera in 1831, this grand
opera is based on a Norman legend. The Norman Duke of the title is
tempted to evil by his friend Bertram, who, in the third act, set in a dark,
misty countryside, calls on nuns from their deserted cloister to rise from
their graves and to help him in his task of luring Robert, through promise of
pleasures, to seize the magic branch, an act of sacrilege that will re-unite
him with his beloved Isabelle. The opera ends with Bertram, seducer of Robert's
mother and hence his father, swallowed by the earth, as Robert finds Isabelle
once more.
The legend of Faust found another treatment in the work of the poet
Nikolaus Lenan, published in 1836 and revised four years later, a poem in which
Faust finally denounces Mephistopheles, before killing himself. The great
pianist and composer Franz Liszt drew inspiration from Lenau for two episodes
from the poem, the second of which is generally known as the First Mephisto Waltz, >a dance in the
village inn, where Mephistopheles plays his fiddle and leads the couples into
the forest for their pleasure.
Arrigo Boito enjoys a reputation as a librettist, the author of the
texts for Verdi's later operas Simon
Boccanegra, Otello and Falstaff. As
a composer he won a final reputation for his opera Mefislojele, based on Goethe's Faust, a work first staged and ill-received in 1868, but
revised and staged again, with a more proficient cast, in 1875 and again, with
further revision, in 1876. In a Prologue in
heaven, Mephistopheles wagers in Ave Signor that
he can win the soul of Faust, a challenge accepted by the Almighty. In Faust's
study, as the old scholar reads, he is interrupted by a stranger,
Mephistopheles, who announces himself in Son
lo spirto che nega sempre tutto ('I am the spirit who denies
everything always'). Faust, transformed, is with Mephistopheles on a peak in
the Harz mountains, where witches celebrate their Sabbath. Mephistopheles takes
a glass globe and in Ecco il mondo ('Here
is the world') tells him of the emptiness of the world and its worthlessness,
before throwing the globe down and conjuring up a vision of Margherita, wearing
a blood-coloured neck-lace, while the dance of the witches grows in fury.
E.T.A. Hoffmann, known as Gespenster
Hoffmann (Ghost Hoffmann), was a man of wide and varied talents,
deployed in part in music and then, during the later part of his relatively
short life, largely in writing Jacques Offenbach used an earlier play derived
from some of Hoffmann's stories for his opera Les
contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann). In the play and the
opera, the latter first staged in Paris in 1881, Hoffmann himself is portrayed
as a lover, infatuated first with the mechanical doll Olympia, the creation of
old Dr Coppelius, then with a fated singer, Antonia, and finally with the
faithless Giulietta in Venice. At the heart of each succeeding disaster for the
fictional Hoffmann is the bass as Dr Coppelius, the spurious Dr Miracle, who
causes Antonia's death, and the magician Dapertutto. It is this last who seeks
the reflection of Hoffmann, as he already has the reflection and hence the very
soul of Giulietta's other lover, enticing her with the promise of diamonds in Scintille, diamant! (Sparkle, diamond!).
The famous Barcarolle, often
heard in instrumental isolation from its context, sets the scene in Venice.
Charles Gounod's opera Faust, first
staged in 1859 at the Paris Theatre Lyrique, remains the most popular
metamorphosis of Goethe 's poetic drama, based again on the French translation
by Gerard de Nerval of the first part of that work. In the first act of the
opera Mephistopheles has transformed the old scholar Faust into a young
nobleman and in the second they join a company of young men, drinking with them
Mephistopheles entertains the company with his blasphemous song Le veau d'or (The golden calf), before
revealing his diabolical power, when a quarrel breaks out. Seduced by Faust,
Marguerite gives birth to Faust's child, is shunned by her neighbours and
apparently deserted by her lover. Her brother Valentin returns from the war and
angrily bursts into the house, while outside Mephistopheles offers his own
satirical Serenade, a parody of
Faust's own wooing in the previous act.
It was with the commission from the Russian impresario Sergey Dyagilev
for music for the new ballet The Firebird that
Stravinsky had his first significant chance to make a name for himself. The
score, later revised, includes a vicious Danse
infernale for the evil Kashchey. Stravinsky returned to the Devil in
his Soldier's Tale, but it was
particularly in his neo-classical opera The
Rake's Progress, first staged in Venice in 1951, that the Devil came
into his own in the person of Nick Shadow, the tempter who lures the ingenuous
Tom Rakewell to his final doom in Bedlam. The libretto by W.H. Auden and
Chester Kallman is based on the moral series of paintings of the same title by
William Hogarth. Tom is persuaded to seek his fortune in London, deserting his
beloved Anne Trulove. Now tired of the pleasures in which he has indulged, he
is persuaded by his servant and companion Nick Shadow, in a recitative and
aria, to show his independence from social convention by marrying the bearded
lady, Baba the Turk, a proposal that appeals to the young man. Nick Shadow has
asked for no wages until a year and a day shall have passed. In a churchyard at
midnight Shadow reveals to Tom his true identity, claiming his soul. All is now
to rest on Tom guessing three cards, as Shadow cuts the pack. When Tom guesses
correctly three times, Shadow is defeated and sinks into the grave made ready
for his victim, finally condemning Tom to madness.
Samuel Ramey
The American bass Samuel Ramey was born in 1942 and studied in Wichita
and New York He made his debut with the New York City Opera in 1973 as Zuniga
in Bizet's Carmen. Later rôles
undertaken for the same company include those or Mephistopheles in the operas
by Gounod and by Boito and the darker villains of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. He appeared as Niek
Shadow at Glyndebourne in 1977, undertaking the same rôle at the Lyric Opera of
Chicago, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Teatro Colon and in 1992 for
Aix-en-Provence. He made his Covent Garden debut in 1982 as Figaro in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, a rôle in which he
had appeared in the previous season at the Vienna State Opera and at La Scala,
Milan. It was for him that Covent Garden devised a staged version or The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz and he
has also been heard there in Gounod's Faust and
in Offenbach's last opera. Samuel Ramey has won a name for himself in the major
bass rôles in Verdi and Rossini, making his debut at the Paris Opera in 1983
with the latter's Moses, followed
there two years later by the rôle of Bertram in Meyerbeer's Robert le diable. His international career
has continued with appearances in leading opera-houses throughout the world,
demonstrating his versatility, dramatic power and the resonance and flexibility
of his remarkable voice Samuel Ramey's Dote
with the Devil, which includes many elements at the heart of his
repertoire, was first heard in 1996 at A very Fisher Hall in New York, with the
St Luke's Orchestra, conducted by Julius Rudel. His many recordings include
complete releases of Faust, Mefistofele, The
Tales of Hoffmann and The Rake's
Progress.
Munich Radio Orchestra
Established in 1952, the Munich Radio Orchestra has developed, over the
fifty years of its existence, into a body engaged in a wide spectrum of musical
activity. There have been gala concerts and opera concert performances in
particular, under the direction or the Principal Conductor Marcello Viotti, as
well as a Paradisi Gloria series devoted
to the sacred music of the twentieth century, concerts for children and young
people, and theme evenings. From 1952 to 1967 the orchestra was under the
direction of Werner Schmidt-Boelcke, followed by Kurt Eichhorn until 1975, and
from then until 1981 Heinz Wallberg. From 1982 to 1985 the orchestra was under
the direction of Lamberto Gardelli, then, briefly, under that of Giuseppe
Patane. After a series of guest conductors the direction was assumed, in 1992
by Roberto Abbado, succeeded in 1998 by Marcello Viotti, with his particular
expertise in Italian and French operatic repertoire, and under whom the active
musical programme of the orchestra continues to prosper.
Julius Rudel
Born in Vienna on 6th March 1921, Julius Rudel received his earliest
musical instruction in his native city, where he also pursued advanced study at
the Academy of Music. At the age of seventeen he emigrated to the United States
and enrolled in the Mannes School of Music in New York. His long association
with the New York City Opera began when he joined the company as a rehearsal
pianist in 1943 He made his conducting debut in 1944 with Johann Strauss' Gypsy Baron. In 1957 Rudel was appointed
Music Director of the City Center Opera, which in lime developed into one of
the best and most enterprising companies in the United States. In 1979 he left
his post at the New York City Opera to extend his symphonic activities in the
United States and across Europe He became music director of the Buffalo
Philharmonic, a position he held until 1994, and forged a special link with the
Orchestra of SI Luke's, a collaboration which has led to a continuing series of
recordings. In addition to his orchestral and opera conducting, Julius Rudel
has served as an important musical administrator in a variety of venues. He
directed the opening seasons of Washington's Kennedy Center as its first music
director and was also the first music director of the Wolf Trap Festival. Other
posts he has held include music directorships of the Cincinnati May Festival,
the Caramoor Festival and music adviser to the Opera Company of Philadelphia.
He now continues to work with many of the world's finest opera companies
including the Metropolitan in New York, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Lyric
Opera of Chicago, Opera Bastille in Paris, Royal Opera in Copenhagen, Berlin's
Deutsche Oper and the Stadttheater in Berne, Switzerland. He has won a Grammy
Award and seven Grammy Nominations, and his many opera recordings include
Massenet's Manon and Cendrillon, Boito's Mefistofele, Verdi's Rigoletto, Bellini's I puritani, Weill's Silverlake and Last in the Star, Ginastera's Bomarzo, and Handel's Giulio
Cesare, which won the Schwann
Award for Best Opera Recording. He has also made several filmed
videos with such international artists as Kiri le Kanawa, Eva Marton, and
Frederica von Stade. Julius Rudel was made a Chevalier
des Arts et Lettres by France and has been decorated by the
governments of Austria, Germany, and Israel. He has also received a variety of
honorary doctorates from universities and colleges in the United States.