Musings about Les Huguenots 2002 Martina Franca

Musings about Les Huguenots 2002 Martina Franca

by Stephen A. Agus

"It is only a very fortunate circumstance that this production was saved by the masterful conducting of Maestro Palumbo, and the excellent skills and talent of all of the singers"

Musings

Several towns near Martina Franca bear exotic names. Alberobello perhaps is the most famous, for it is the place most associated with the Trulli, those white cylindrical buildings with conical grey slate roofs found all over the countryside of this region of the Puglia. The Puglia (or Appulia) is in the heel of the boot of the peninsula which is Italy. A Trullo can be found here and there all over the region, in Martina Franca and the surrounding farmland of the valley as well; but in Alberobello, or at least, in a portion of Alberobello, there is a large area which contains one Trullo after another, as far as the eye can see, built one next to another along a slope, along impossibly narrow and picturesque streets.

Recognizing its unique architectural character, the local authorities have turned the entire neighborhood into an automobile-free pedestrian zone; and to visit it, one must park the car in a lot below the slope and walk up into the Trulli-lined streets. Judging from the considerable traffic in the parking lot, it seemed to us that the whole area is quite popular to both local and foreign tourists, even though we are a good five hours’ drive from Rome. True, the exotic and quaint character of this Trulli zone has to some extent been compromised and cheapened by the very commercialization that has aided in preserving this area. And yet, despite the proliferation of gift shops and Trulli souvenir stores in this alley and that byway, when we are there, surrounded entirely by Trulli, we can forget that we are living in the 21st century. Though we are not quite sure where to place these Trulli in time, we feel transported back to another era, an era of a simpler way of life. As for the Trulli, not all of them are old; some in fact are built new, but all are built in the old style, all whitewashed spotlessly clean, with those grey conical roofs.

Trulli in Alberobello
Copyright © 2002 Meyerbeer Fan Club

And so too, in the town of Matera, 100 kilometers to the northwest of Alberobello, in the region known as Basilicata, which borders Puglia, there is much of interest to the traveller. It is a region of magnificent natural beauty, with deep gorges and steep rocky hills, holding the secrets of thousands of years of civilization; for here, humans dwelt in caves long before written history, and here too, humans known as Sassi dwelt in homes built into the steep rock slopes until they were evicted in the 1950's because of unsanitary conditions. But here, after a few decades, wiser minds eventually prevailed, and the 15,000 people who are Sassi and descendants of Sassi are now returning to their old homes, after restoration, but with appropriate sanitation. Here too, we could stand alone among those rocks or in those dwellings built into the cliffs and imagine ourselves transported in time and space to another era.

Houses built into the rock at Matera
Copyright © 2002 Meyerbeer Fan Club

We remark on this because of the surprising relationship this all is to the world of drama and opera, which is the very reason for our 5,000 mile journey to this out-of-the-way place from New York. In the same way that we feel ourselves transported when we stand among the trulli of Alberobello and the Sassi of Matera, we have always felt that a magnificent opera beautifully presented and performed transports us in time and space. This in fact was the intention of the creators of the art. Working much like the great novelists of the period, the librettists and composers of the most successful operas of the 19th century created, on stage, a tableau of a period in time within which the audience was able to envelop themselves. Readers used to the idiom of contemporary fiction are sometimes astonished when they return, after a period of years, to read again the classics of such writers as Dickens, Hugo or Dostoyevsky. When you read novels by these writers, you feel consumed in a way that few modern works can make us feel. For what we are experiencing is a powerful element of the fiction of the 19th century that captures the very essence of that great but misunderstood era in art, literature and music that we call Romanticism. A phenomenon of the western world, Romanticism broke out in the early part of the 19th century, and still wields its influence on our entire culture, our art, our music, our stage works and even our film industry.

Meyerbeer did not invent Romanticism, nor did he, by himself, invent French Grand Opera. But based upon the foundations set down by such composers as Beethoven, Auber, Rossini and Weber in the 1820's, and by the librettist Eugene Scribe, these forces culminated in the birth of Meyerbeer's Grand Opera Robert le Diable in 1831, which is rightly called the very first Romantic Opera, and stands as a cornerstone of French Grand Opera. Five years later with Meyerbeer's masterpiece, Les Huguenots, French Grand Opera reached its zenith. Les Huguenots recreates the story of the 16th century massacre of French Protestants by the ruling Catholic majority; on the way, extraordinarily complex characters are created on stage. The opera, following its premiere in 1836 Paris, was destined to become the most popular opera in history, and played every major venue in the world for nearly a century, and for thousands upon thousands of performances.

Few can explain precisely why Meyerbeer was so successful, nor why this opera in particular outstripped all others in the degree of its success. What is clear, however, is that Meyerbeer, as composer, developed an uncanny ability in scene after scene to combine a mis en scene with specific music that evoked the bygone era portrayed on stage. Many of his contemporaries, including his critics, grudgingly agreed that few composers could match Meyerbeer's ability to paint "couleur locale" (local color) on stage. And along with the "local color" set by the music, the "mis en scene" the scenic effects (if you will, the artistry of the stage presentation), including the stage depth, stage effects (what today in the movie industry we might call "special effects") and costuming; all of this was accomplished with the single aim, successfully executed, of enveloping the audience, transporting them back to that era of 16th century France. Les Huguenots (and other successful operas of the period) accomplished what today's "multimedia" moguls can only hope to accomplish in their dreams.

But following 100 years of non-stop performances around the world, the Nazis came to power and for more than a decade they and the Fascists dominated and controlled the "big three" countries of the European continent (Italy, Germany and France) which were, and still are, the fountainhead of all opera; and thereafter the works of the Jew Meyerbeer were shelved, hidden and in some cases destroyed. By the close of the war in 1945, many of the manuscripts were no longer to be found; but more importantly, there was no longer a "performance continuum"; on the contrary, when thoughts of resurrecting the operas of Meyerbeer were entertained in the 1950's and 1960's, it was found that an entire generation of singers, musicians, stage managers, directors and conductors knew not Meyerbeer. For World War II left a terrible legacy:-- the magnitude of the Shoah was so enormous in terms of lives lost, that repair of the the cultural destruction wrought by the Nazis took a back seat for many decades.

And so, since then and right up to the present day, few and far between have been performances of Les Huguenots, and the same can be said for Robert le Diable, Le Prophète, L'Africaine, indeed, it is the case with all the works of Meyerbeer. To be sure, its greatness was not entirely forgotten by some. The great coloratura soprano Dame Joan Sutherland was a devoted fan of Meyerbeer, and she chose Les Huguenots as the vehicle for her farewell performance at the Sydney Opera House in 1990. Even as an aging Diva, her portrayal of Queen Marguerite is masterful. Despite this, the last fifty years have witnessed no more than a pitiful handful of revivals, and among them, some such as the 2001 Opera Orchestra of New York revival were of a single performance in concert form.

Therefore, we looked forward to the summer of 2002 at Martina Franca, to see Les Huguenots staged, we hoped, as it was meant to be. But our enthusiasm was short-lived. Just a few weeks before we left New York, we heard reports that the setting of the opera was to be “contemporized”; that is, the scene was to be taken out of the 16^th century France and placed in Weimar Germany. In an interview published in one of the Italian newspapers, it was said by the artistic director of the festival that the Huguenots massacre was found to be no longer “relevant.” In this manifestation of the story, the Catholics were to be Nazis and the Huguenots were to be Jews.

Beyond noting the fact that the Nazi-Jewish conflict bear almost no relationship to the Catholic-Huguenots conflict of 400 years earlier, except perhaps for the fact that blood was spilled in both cases, I will not go into any great detail. There was no change in the libretto whatsoever, so try to imagine, if you can, the preposterous situation of the Huguenots zealot Marcel, wearing a black hat and tallis (the garb of not only Jews, but Hassidic Jews on their way to synagogue) singing out, at every opportunity, the famous Protestant hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” that great hymn said to have been composed by Martin Luther himself. It would have been more appropriate for Marcel to have sung “White Christmas”; at least that was composed by a fellow Jew.

And sure enough, not only did I hear of a Frenchman, a Huguenot himself as it turns out, who drove a thousand miles to Martina Franca to see a rare portrayal of the sufferings of his ancestors, who was confronted with this; I also heard from another of Huguenot heritage who wrote to advise me of his horror when he heard about this travesty.

Must we contemporize everything?

The Trulli of Alberobello and the Sassi of Matera teach us the value of preservation of the past as a lens to a world different than our own. Their very existence transports us in the same way that the scenes portrayed by Scribe and Meyerbeer transported us to 16^th century France and that unique tragedy that was the St. Bartholomews’ Day massacre. For all time, that day stands as a unique historical tragedy for the Huguenots people, and as a lesson to the world concerning tolerance, religious fanatacism, and religious and political opportunism. It was not the holocaust of the Nazis; and any attempt to say otherwise trivializes both tragedies.

Though I applaud artistic freedom, I find that putting this much power in the hands of an artistic director is a form of artistic tyranny. Though I have stated my belief in other papers that the staging at Martina Franca did not detract from the music in the manner that was done to Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète at Vienna in 1998; nevertheless, I deplore the wasted time and money for all concerned. With the same effort or even less, a production completely in tune with the artistic expression of Meyerbeer and Scribe might have been accomplished. It is only a very fortunate circumstance that this production was saved by the masterful conducting of Maestro Palumbo, and the excellent skills and talent of all of the singers.

Two individuals are directly responsible for the travesty that was Les Huguenots at Martina Franca: Arnaud Bernard, who is listed as “regia” or director; Alessandro Camera, “Scenografo”. Let us try to forget their names, and hope that neither find any work in the world of opera again. To them I say: “What kind of arrogance do you have that you make this travesty of the perfect art of Meyerbeer and Scribe? You are not fit to walk in their shadows.” To Maestro Sergio Segalini, who is overall director of the festival, I shall be more kind, as he is a known supporter of Meyerbeer. But I say, nevertheless, “Maestro, you have permitted an injustice to take place before your eyes. Perhaps you delegated too much artistic control to others, but you must take that control back.” To Maestro Palumbo, I say, “Well done Maestro. You have honored the name of Meyerbeer with the beautiful music you extracted from your orchestra and singers.”

Stephen A. Agus, webmaster

August 19, 2002