The Meyerbeer Libretti: Opéra Comique 2 Le Pardon de Ploërmel
Editor: Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier
Date Of Publication: Oct 2008
Isbn13: 9781847189691
Isbn: 1-84718-969-5
Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This eleven volume set provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's libretti, the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use.

The tenth volume is devoted to Dinorah (1859), the second of Meyerbeer’s opéras comiques. Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, whose libretto for Gounod’s Faust made them famous, devised an idyll, with large parts of the libretto planned by the composer himself. The feathery bravura and rainbow colouring of the score proved eminently acceptable to the Opéra-Comique, and Meyerbeer could have kept to the “comic” vein if he had chosen. The work is unusual in being an opera by a Jewish composer built around the mystique and person of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the pious practice of a pilgrimage of pardon in her name. Dinorah is the product of a composer's most mature gifts. Meyerbeer's determination to compose this opera, its themes and technical perfection, suggest its closeness to his heart, to something vital in his artistic imagination. While on the surface of things it appears merely as the whim of an old man, a slight tale about a peasant girl, a goatherd and a hidden treasure, the simplicity belies a rather more complex subtext. The Breton tale and its milieu provided an excellent opportunity for Meyerbeer's penchant for couleur locale. The French title Le Pardon de Ploërmel combines the pastoral location with a strongly religious intention, the Breton custom of an annual pilgrimage of grace to a local shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, events that were then so much part of the traditional life of rural communities in certain regions of France. The combination of remote country place, religious belief, and the seeking of treasure, provide the essential contours of the symbolic concerns of the story. Dinorah, with its return to the legend and folktale, in fact conjures up something of the modality of Robert le Diable, with its medieval universe of angels and devils, and its quest for redemption. The première on 4 April 1859 was another of Meyerbeer's great triumphs: the principal singers were enthusiastically praised, and the work again brought the composer a great and enduring success all over the world.

Richard Arsenty, a native of the U.S. midwest, received degrees from the University of Illinois in Biology Education and Library Science. After teaching for seven years at the high school, college and university levels, he took advantage of a unique opportunity and went to work as a libretto translator for MRF Records in New Jersey. Eight years later he decided to return to academia, accepting a position as Science Reference Librarian at Purchase College near New York City. At the end of 2002, after sixteen years of service to the college, he took an early retirement and returned to Illinois where his family is located. Richard has translated more than 160 libretti for organizations such as Opera Orchestra of New York, The New York City Opera, The Waterloo Festival, Hungaraton Records, Orfeo Records and Opera Rara. His translations include all of Meyerbeer’s operas (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2004), Nerone (Boito), Das Liebesverbot (Wagner), La Juive (Halévy), Marino Faliero (Donizetti), Salammbô (Reyer), Jérusalem (Verdi), Crispino e la Comare (Ricci) and many others.

Robert Ignatius Letellier was born in Natal, and educated in Grahamstown, Cambridge, Salzburg, Rome and Jerusalem. He is a member of Trinity College (Cambridge), the Salzburg Centre for Research in the Early English Novel (University of Salzburg), the Maryvale Institute (Birmingham), and the Institute for Continuing Education at Madingley Hall (Cambridge). His publications include books and articles on the late-seventeenth-, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novel (particularly the Gothic Novel and Sir Walter Scott), the Bible, and European culture, with emphasis on the Romantic opera and ballet. He has specialized in the work of Giacomo Meyerbeer (a four-volume English edition of his diaries, a collection of critical and biographical studies, a guide to research, and two readings of the operas, as well as compiling and introducing editions of the complete libretti and non-operatic texts). He has also written on the ballets of Ludwig Minkus.

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