Meyerbeer, one of the 19th century’s most popular composers, is out of fashion today. But his work is receiving a rare revival at Bard College.
Giacomo Meyerbeer was the toast of Paris in the 19th century. Nowadays, when he’s mentioned at all, he’s the object of backhanded compliments.
“The man may not have been a genius, but he was a craftsman,” the critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times when one of Meyerbeer’s grand operas, “Le Prophète,” came to the Metropolitan Opera in 1977.
Long on spectacle and long on length, “Le Prophète” has five acts with ballets and choruses galore; a coronation scene; and a grand finale in which an entire palace goes up in flames and kills, well, everyone. Based on a historical event, it tells the story of an Anabaptist uprising in 16th-century Germany led by Jean of Leiden, who is declared a prophet and king. The world premiere is remembered for its coups de théâtre, which included ice-skating (indicated with roller skates) and a sunrise (the first use of electricity on the Paris Opera stage).
The notion of Meyerbeer’s exploitation of the public’s taste for dazzle persists. To give you an idea of how severely he has fallen out of fashion, the Met performed three — yes, three — of his operas in its first six months of operation in 1883-84, and hasn’t staged any of them since 1979.
Fortunately, there are opera die-hards like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College and the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra, who has a penchant for reappraisal. He mounted a persuasive argument for “Le Prophète” at the Fisher Center at Bard College on Friday. Because of modest resources, the spotlight was less on the staging and more on an often-overlooked element of Meyerbeer’s art: his fantastic instincts for vocal writing.
For nearly all of Act IV, the mezzo-soprano Jennifer Feinstein held the stage as Fidès, the pious mother of the false prophet Jean (John) and the opera’s richest role. Mad with anguish and thinking her son dead, Feinstein’s Fidès stitches together an unforced, just-hefty-enough sound from a mellow bottom to a ringing top in writing that was vocally gracious and terrifically exciting.
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Source: Music - nytimes.com
