Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Cheval de bronze
Editor: Robert Ignatius Letellier
Date Of Publication: Apr 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2729-4
Isbn: 1-4438-2729-0
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Le Cheval de bronze was premiered at the Opéra-Comique on 23 March 1835. It was described as an opéra-féerique in three acts. The librettist, Scribe, derived the plot from the tale “Les Sept Fils du Calender” in The Arabian Nights. The scene is set in Shantung province in China in legendary times. The magical Bronze Horse of the title, which has appeared mysteriously on a nearby hill, will transport any man who climbs onto its back to the planet Venus, where a group of female sirens, led by the lovely Princess Stella, live. If the traveller in space can resist the sirens’ advances, he can return to earth with the lady of his choice; if not, he is whisked back alone, and turned to stone if he speaks of his experiences.

The witty libretto, that with its exotic subject perfectly captured the taste of the time, offers differentiated characterizations, much situational comedy, and some eroticism in the Venus scenes. The score is among Auber’s best achievements, brimming over with invention: fantasy and comedy are captured perfectly, while the big love duets allow the expression of genuine feeling to break through the burlesque situations. The exotic and fairytale tone is achieved without obvious musical chinoiserie, being rather transmuted into instrumental and harmonic richness, especially in the big ensembles. This is one of the most precisely and carefully controlled of all the composer’s scores. The sense of detail and care is everywhere apparent, as in the short but beautifully crafted entr’actes to acts 2 and 3. The ensembles in act 1, especially the brilliant quintet, and the act 2 finale are remarkable. The thematic integration is extraordinary, and in some instances achieves a genuine use of Leitmotif.

The overture presents all the essential elements of the story in powerful symbolic summary. It is dominated by the central image of the Bronze Horse, the agent of magical adventure and transformation. The enterprising Péki, as the heroine and a redemptrix figure, shares something of the Horse’s dynamism. The most obvious motif of the Bronze Horse and its magic power comes from Péki’s act 1 ballad in which she explains the mysterious presence of the mythical creature on its high promontory: “Là-bas, sur ce rocher sauvage”.

The roles were created by Auguste Féréol (Tsing-Sing), Louis-Benoît-Alphonse Révial (Prince Yang), Jean-Francois Inchindi [Hinnekindt] (Tchin-Kao), Étienne-Bernard-Auguste Thénard (Yanko), Félicité Pradher (Péki), Sophie Ponchard (Tao-Jin), Marie Casimir (Princess Stella), and Mlle Fargueil (Lo Mangli). The opera was initially a hit, with 84 performances in the first year, and over the next few years was staged in numerous countries from London (Covent Garden 1835) to Russia (St Petersburg 1837) and the United States (New York 1837), but then sank into an undeserved obscurity. The work was revived in expanded form at the Opéra on 21 September 1857, and famously by Engelbert Humperdinck at Karlsruhe, in his own arrangement (10 November 1889). It was performed in concert in Vienna (1953), Berne (1969) and Paris (1979).

This edition reproduces the vocal score published in Paris by E. Troupenas (1835).

Robert Ignatius Letellier has specialized in the music and literature of the Romantic Period. He has studied the work of Giacomo Meyerbeer (a four-volume English edition of his diaries, a collection of critical and biographical studies, a guide to research, two readings of the operas, as well as compiling and introducing editions of the complete libretti and non-operatic texts, and a selection of manuscripts facsimiles). He has also written on the ballets of Ludwig Minkus, compiled a series of scores on the Romantic Ballet, and produced a study of the opéra-comique.

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