OPERAWISE: OPÉRA COMIQUE

Seattle Opera · OPERAWISE: Opéra Comique

In this series of podcasts, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean gives listeners a taste of nine different types of traditional opera. Opéra comique, a native French form of lower-brow musical theater, features spoken dialogue, catchy tunes with easy-to-sing refrains, and middle-class values. Many of the opéra-comiques still performed today (including Carmen, The Daughter of the Regiment, and Beatrice and Benedict, as well as opéra-comique derivatives such as Faust and The Tales of Hoffmann) deal, sentimentally or ironically, with a way of life and a value system which now belongs mostly to ancient history.

Berlioz and Beatrice Come to Seattle

By Jessica Murphy Moo



Welcome to Seattle’s world re-premiere of Beatrice and Benedict.

World re-premiere? you ask. Is that a thing?

Well, not exactly. I just made it up. But in the case of this production the usual categories don’t really fit, so allow me to explain.

To Adapt or Not to Adapt…

On the one hand Berlioz was a purist who didn’t want anyone messing with the intentions of the masters. In his Memoirs he gives a few examples of how he reacted when hearing music altered from the way his idol, Gluck, had intended it.

In the middle of a performance of Iphigénie en Tauride, for example, he shouted from the audience, “There are no cymbals there. Who has dared to correct Gluck?” and “Why aren’t the trombones playing? This is intolerable.”

Then he sat with much contentment (and one would presume, self satisfaction) through a later performance, with the same conductor, where the cymbals were quiet in the right place and the trombones sounded.

At one concert, Berlioz shouted his critique in a similar fashion and essentially started a riot. The curtain came down, people started throwing chairs, then jumped into the pit and damaged instruments.

So that’s one approach.

Berlioz also revered Shakespeare. But when he transformed Much Ado About Nothing into Beatrice and Benedict, the composer seemed OK with making cuts, changing the story, and adding some language of his own.

Some of these changes were practical, to be sure. There is no iambic pentameter in the French language, and as Aidan Lang says, only Dave Brubeck seems to work effectively with a five-beat meter. And a libretto can contain only a fraction of the word count of a play.

But Berlioz also deleted whole characters from Much Ado about Nothing. He cut Shakespeare's dark subplot, including the climactic wedding scene in which Claudio accuses Hero of betraying him.

“The nature of Berlioz’s Beatrice and Benedict,” says John Langs, Artistic Director of ACT Theatre and stage director of this production, “is a light, frothy exploration of the resistance we feel to giving over to the feelings of love. For the people who may have been burned before, who may live ‘above’ falling in love—until step by step you find you can’t stop thinking about someone.”

The opera premiered in Germany, with Berlioz conducting. Then at its second outing, a few months later, also in Germany, Berlioz also conducting, the opera was performed in a German translation.

A German translation of a French translation of an adapted English play.

Revising and adapting a piece he was in the midst of performing appears to be something Berlioz did quite often. “Berlioz was conducting a lot,” says Seattle Symphony Music Director and this evening’s maestro Ludovic Morlot. “He had a lot in common with Mahler and Beethoven. He wouldn’t hesitate to rewrite or double something in the theater to strengthen the piece. Berlioz knew that by making these changes the opera would have a better chance of success.”

Which then raises the question: How would the opera have the best chance of success in Seattle?

All Seattle’s a Stage…

When the city announced plans for the 2018 Seattle Celebrates Shakespeare festival, nearly two dozen art organizations jumped on board. Aidan Lang, who played the role of Leonato in university, thought Berlioz’s opera would be a great addition to the 2017/18 season. Seattle Opera has never presented Berlioz before. He also saw this as a great opportunity to work with some of our sister arts organizations, particularly with John Langs, who has a lot of experience directing Shakespeare, and Ludovic Morlot, who has in many ways brought French music to Seattle and particularly Berlioz this season.

They got together and realized that the work might benefit from some of that adaptation that Berlioz did at the outset.

“Berlioz loved theater,” says Aidan Lang, “but he wasn’t sophisticated theatrically. Essentially, he needed a dramaturg.”

This assessment is more or less corroborated by Berlioz in his Memoirs. After the world premiere, he writes: “The critics who had come from Paris to hear the work praised the music enthusiastically, [Beatrice’s] aria and [the Nocturne] duet [between Hero and Ursula] in particular,” writes Berlioz. “One or two of them, however, decided that there was a good deal of scrub and dead wood in the rest of the score, and that the spoken dialogue was dull. This dialogue is taken almost word for word from Shakespeare.”

The way I read this last line is that Berlioz is thinking the critics must be wrong, because Shakespeare never could be.

Morlot admits it took him a little time to come around to the idea of adapting Beatrice and Benedict. Berlioz has earned a special place in his heart. The composer grew up only miles away from Morlot’s hometown, and they share a birthday. Morlot thinks of Berlioz as France’s Beethoven. “He is one of the composers who was writing music that mattered to him more than to the audience. He was pushing boundaries. I love the individuality of his voice,” Morlot says. The more he thought about Berlioz, the more he thought that the adaptations were in step with Berlioz’s own practices.

“Then I became interested,” Morlot says.

If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On…

Dramatically, John Langs thought it made sense to add back in the crisis moment for Hero and Claudio, where Claudio believes he has seen Hero betray him and he publicly humiliates her on their wedding day. This moment raises the dramatic stakes, and pushes Benedict to choose between his friend Claudio and his love Beatrice. Benedict chooses Beatrice.

If Claudio is back in with these dramatic moments, he’d need something to sing. John Langs and Ludovic Morlot decided he needed a “vertical moment.” In Shakespeare, that might be a monologue. In opera, he gets a rage aria.

Morlot turned to Berlioz’s earlier music to see if anything might work. He chose excerpts from La damnation de Faust, Benvenuto Cellini, and L'enfance du Christ. Then John Langs mined Shakespeare’s play for suitable imagery and language for those dramatic moments.

So with the Shakespeare back in, additional Berlioz musical excerpts in, and Berlioz’s French dialogue out, we have what John Langs calls both “a grand adventure,” and “a new form.”

Or…Seattle’s world re-premiere. We hope you enjoy it!

AIDAN LANG INTRODUCES BEATRICE & BENEDICT

Listen to or read this downloadable podcast by General Director Aidan Lang. To kick off Seattle Celebrates Shakespeare, we're proud to offer our first-ever opera by Hector Berlioz: Beatrice and Benedict, an operatic amplification of Much Ado About Nothing. Conducted by Seattle Symphony's Ludovic Morlot and directed by ACT Theatre's John Langs, this one-of-a-kind, all-new and all-Seattle production plays for only seven performances, February 24-March 10.

Hello, everyone, it's Aidan Lang here, and this time I'm here to talk about Berlioz's Beatrice and Benedict.

AN OPERA AND COMPOSER NEW TO US

We do like to give our audiences in every season one opera they've never seen before. This is the first time not only that Seattle Opera will be performing Beatrice, but also an opera by Berlioz.

What is Beatrice and Benedict?

Philip Newton Photo

Dozens of opera composers have drawn inspiration from Shakespeare over the years. Here at Seattle Opera we’ve often presented Verdi’s great operas based on Shakespeare, but never before have our audiences heard Beatrice and Benedict, French composer Hector Berlioz’s ravishingly beautiful operatic riff on Much Ado About Nothing. This production marks the first time Berlioz will be performed at Seattle Opera. His most stageworthy opera, Beatrice and Benedict builds upon the solid dramatic foundation laid by England’s greatest playwright. Berlioz’s music adds fascinating new emotional and lyrical dimensions to Shakespeare’s brilliant play of wit and intrigue.

For this unique production, ACT Theatre’s Artistic Director, John Langs, will make his Seattle Opera debut directing Beatrice and Benedict, while Ludovic Morlot, Music Director of the Seattle Symphony, conducts for his first time at Seattle Opera. The ensemble includes singers beloved by Seattle Opera audiences as well as non-singing actors cast by John Langs, including several actors from ACT Theatre’s 2018 Core Company. Returning singers from our just closed Cosi fan tutte include Hanna Hipp, Craig Verm, Laura Tatulescu and Kevin Burdette. The Seattle-based design team– including Robert Dahlstrom, Deborah Trout, Matthew Smucker, and Connie Yun–conjures a sunny Sicilian setting sure to brighten up your winter.

Philip Newton Photo

Berlioz translated the original Shakespeare text into French when he made Much Ado About Nothing into an opéra comique, a popular French form of light opera with lots of dialogue. Berlioz included much of the original play text in the spoken dialogue, translating it into the language of his audience (originally, French, but later German as well). Seattle Opera is presenting Beatrice and Benedict in English, so our audiences can enjoy the genius of one of our own language’s greatest writers directly, from lips to ear. We figured you’d prefer this approach to reading a Shakespeare play on the supertitle screen while it’s being spoken in French! We’re using the English singing translation developed by the opera librettist Amanda Holden for English National Opera. Amplified dialogue plus supertitles for the sung text will guarantee you don’t miss a word.

Berlioz’s fantastic love music in Beatrice and Benedict focuses on the playful bickering and irresistible attraction of the title characters. But Seattle Opera is also restoring the intense drama of Shakespeare’s dark subplot, in which Don John tries to ruin Claudio’s faith in the innocent Hero (greatly abridged in Berlioz’s opera). In Seattle Opera’s Beatrice and Benedict, music taken from other Berlioz works will contribute beauty, passion, and color to the villainy of Don John and the jealousy and remorse of Claudio. Turns out, Shakespeare knew what he was doing! The subplot not only adds depth and contrast; it forces Beatrice and Benedict to grow up and embrace their full humanity.

Given Maestro Morlot’s expertise with Berlioz, and director Langs’ rich experience with Shakespeare and Much Ado About Nothing, all the pieces are in place and the stage is set for a once-in-a-lifetime game of words vs. music, women vs. men, and love vs. hate. Light as a soufflé yet rich and deep as a fine wine, Beatrice and Benedict is sure to charm your ears and enchant your heart.

Beatrice and Benedict plays February 24-March 10 at McCaw Hall, and is part of the Seattle Shakespeare Festival. Tickets and more information at seattleopera.org/Beatrice