Le roi malgré lui

Around May 1883 Chabrier wrote to his publishers that for his next stage work he was hoping to create something like Offenbach's successful 'grand fantaisie' Le roi Carotte.[4] According to Victorin de Joncières, Chabrier had confided to him that he was looking for an amusing book to set. Joncières had been sent Le roi malgré lui, an old vaudeville of 1836[5] written by Marguerite-Louise Virginie Ancelot (1792–1875), by Ancelot's daughter Mme Lachaud.[6] However, Joncières passed the play to Chabrier, and also introduced Chabrier to Léon Carvalho, to whom Chabrier played some 'audition' pieces, which convinced the Opéra-Comique director to stage his work.[7]

The title page of the vocal score of Le roi malgré lui

An article by Theodore Massiac[8] described in some detail Chabrier's composition process for Le roi malgré lui. He carefully supervised the work of the librettists Paul Burani and Emile de Najac in adapting the Ancelot work. Burani would send drafts of scenes and songs to de Najac who would send back comments and changes to Burani, and when, after some exchanges of correspondence de Najac was happy, he would send words to Chabrier to set to music. At his home at La Membrolle, Chabrier would read the words out loud in order to find the tone and rhythm of each piece and only after having played around with the text for some time would take up his pen and start composing. Chabrier did not compose at the piano – melody and rhythm came first with harmony later. He was particularly critical of being supplied with mute syllables. Finally, Jean Richepin, an old friend of the composer, had a major part in helping provide Chabrier with a libretto he could feel happy with.[9] Chabrier noted on his copy of the libretto "manuscript by three authors and even by me", going on to describe the libretto as "a bouillabaisse of Najac and Burani, cooked by Richepin, into which I throw the spices". Although much criticized, the stage situations of Najac and Burani are "dexterously handled and reveal a sense of variety and climax".[2]

The work is dedicated to Madame Victorin de Joncières. It was one of several works by Chabrier to benefit from a poster by Jules Chéret.[10]

Fire at the second Salle Favart on 25 May 1887 (engraving).

The premiere was on 18 May 1887 at the Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart) in Paris. After two more performances, on 21 and 23 May, the Opéra-Comique theatre was ravaged by fire on 25 May, although the full score and orchestral parts were saved.[11] The fourth performance was on 16 November in a revised version[12] at the Salle des Nations, where it had further performances up to 29 April 1888. This was the second time a premiere run of one of Chabrier's operas had been disrupted - Gwendoline had closed when the theatre went bankrupt.

The German premiere was in Karlsruhe on 2 March 1890 under Felix Mottl who also led a performance on 5 March at Baden, and this was followed by productions in Dresden on 26 April 1890 under Ernst von Schuch, and in Cologne on 15 October 1891 under Julius Hofmann. The opera was produced on 9 March 1892 in Toulouse under Armand Raynaud.[13]

In 1929 after a 41-year absence from the Opéra-Comique repertoire, Albert Carré revised the text, and a new version was performed there on 6 November to greater acclaim (the 50th performance at the theatre took place on 21 February 1937). Casts included Roger Bourdin as Henri de Valois, Yvonne Brothier as Minka and Vina Bovy as Alexina.[14] There followed productions in Hamburg (17 April 1931), Brussels (16 May 1931) and Prague (27 August 1931).[15] The first performance in Marseille took place during the war on 3 April 1942.[16] André Cluytens conducted a local premiere for Lyon on 25 February 1943, also conducting the work at the Opéra-Comique in 1947 with Roger Bourdin, Louis Musy and Jean Vieuille in the cast and in 1950 with Denise Duval joining the cast.[17] A 1978 production at the Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Plasson using the Carré edition[18] was subsequently broadcast on French television in 1979, with Michel Philippe, Georges Liccioni, Michel Trempont, Françoise Garner and Michèle Le Bris in the principal roles.

The American stage premiere was on 18 November 1976 at the Juilliard, conducted by Manuel Rosenthal, with choreography by George Balanchine.[19] The British stage premiere had to wait until the centenary of the composer's death, when it was produced in an adaptation by Jeremy Sams and Michael Wilcox at Opera North and also seen at the Edinburgh Festival.[20]

More recently, an Opéra de Lyon production of 2004 was adapted for a revival at the Opéra-Comique in April 2009. Leon Botstein led the American Symphony Orchestra in a concert version at Avery Fisher Hall in 2005, and in a fully staged production directed by Thaddeus Strassberger at Bard Summerscape in 2012, a co-production seen later that year at the Wexford Festival Opera.

Departure of Polish envoys for Henry Valois

Henri de Valois (1551–1589) was the third son of Henri II and Catherine de Medicis. In 1573, following the death of Sigismund II, Henri was elected King of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Five months after his coronation as King of Poland at Wawel Castle in Kraków, upon the death of his brother Charles IX (who died without leaving an heir), Henri secretly left Poland and returned to France, where he was crowned King on 13 February 1575, at Rheims Cathedral. He never returned to Poland, and was assassinated in 1589.

Albert Łaski was a Polish courtier at the time of his brief reign. Nangis is a small town around 60 km south-west of Paris.

In La Reine Margot, chapter LXV: Les Ambassadeurs, Alexandre Dumas, père conjures up the coronation of Henri in Kraków, and his unhappiness at being king.

Musically Chabrier entirely ignores the sixteenth century environment of the plot.[2]

The opening bars Le roi malgré lui, which according to Ravel "changed the course of French harmony"

The music has been greatly admired by musicians such as Ravel[3] (who claimed he could play the whole piece from memory) and Stravinsky.[22] Ravel claimed that "the premiere of Le roi malgré lui changed the course of French harmony".[23] Harmonic progressions which were completely new in French music at the time, are used – most notably the use of unprepared and unresolved chords of the seventh and ninth, such as the very first chords of the Prelude.[24] The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica declared it "one of the finest opéras comiques of modern times".[25] Blom stated "we discover in it the germs of much that we have come to look upon as belonging essentially to French music of the [20th] century".[2]

Grove comments, "the brilliance of Chabrier’s music, often reminiscent of Berlioz and sometimes of Bizet, rests on a superbly crafted structure. The balance between romantic and comic episodes, a striking feature of all Chabrier's opera, is at its most perfect in Le roi malgré lui."[1]

Chabrier's music shows the evidence of the two paths of the composition, of both libretto and music – from opérette to opéra-comique. The original plan, around 1884, a light work in the style of L'étoile was reinvigorated by Carvalho in 1886, into something grander and more dramatic with greater love interest.[26]

Broadly comic passages typical of operetta remain – especially the couplets for Fritelli – but the work by Richepin on both dialogue and lyrics improved the literary tone of the work. However the mutation from opérette to opéra-comique gave Chabrier the chance to provide music of a serious harmonic intent, such as Minka and Alexina's nocturne in Act 3 (described by Huebner as "one of the most beautiful numbers in fin-de-siècle French opera"), which flows lyrically over a large harmonic canvas. Likewise, in Act 1 Henri introduces himself through an air with has the character of a pavane.[26]

Early changes to the score after the first performance included removing Alexina's demanding air "Pour vous je suis ambitieuse" in Act 1[13] and re-casting a rondeau for Henri and Alexina in Act 3 as a duet for Fritelli and Alexina in Act 1.[26]

Musically the most diverse role is that of Minka; from the romance-like shape of her Act 1 entrance solo "Hélas, à l'esclavage" by way of the roulades, chromaticism and wide leaps of her 'Chanson tzigane' in Act 2, to the powerful operatic duet in Act 3 with Nangis.[26] On the lighter side, musical parody occurs several times. The 'Ensemble de la conjuration' was compared by contemporary critics to the 'Bénédiction des poignards' in Les Huguenots, while Fritelli's Act 3 couplets end each verse with a quote from the Hungarian March from La Damnation de Faust.[13]

Huebner concludes his exploration of Le roi malgré lui by proposing that the collision of the traditions of opérette and opéra-comique results in "an explosion of pastiche, quotation, allusion, archaisms, dance rhythms of all kinds, Wagnerian chromaticisms, modernist parallel chords, patter singing", and for musical pleasure brackets Le roi malgré lui with Verdi's Falstaff.[26] Paulson offers a comprehensive analysis of the music of the opera, arguing that these characteristics, among others, contribute to a sophisticated discourse of musical humour that operates on multiple structural and intertextual levels.[27]

Cover of transcription of the Fête polonaise

The opera was not to the taste of Cosima Wagner, who attended an 1890 performance in Dresden. She wrote to Felix Mottl: "What vulgarity and lack of ideas. No performance in the world could conceal for an instant these trivialities."[3]

Two orchestral extracts from the opera have from time to time found their way onto concert programmes and recordings : the Fête polonaise and the Danse slave.

• Erato, 1984: Gino Quilico (Henri de Valois), Peter Jeffes (Comte de Nangis), Barbara Hendricks (Minka), Isabel Garcisanz (Alexina), Jean-Philippe Lafont (Fritelli), Chris de Moor (Laski); Choeur de Radio France, Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Charles Dutoit, réf. 2292-45792-2.

Radio broadcasts of the opera have included:

• French radio, 1969. Bernard Demigny (Henri de Valois), Bernard Plantey (Comte de Nangis), Odile Pieti (Minka), Jacqueline Brumaire (Alexina), Aimé Doniat (Fritelli), Jacques Mars (Laski); Chœur et Orchestre lyrique de la RTF, Pierre-Michel Le Conte
• BBC broadcast, 1973. Henri Gui (Henri de Valois), André Mallabrera (Comte de Nangis), Odile Pieti (Minka), Christiane Stutzman (Alexina), Michel Trempont (Fritelli), Neil Howlett (Laski); BBC Northern Singers, BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Manuel Rosenthal.[28]

Notes

Sources

• Delage, Roger (1999). Emmanuel Chabrier. Paris: Fayard. ISBN 2213605084
• Huebner, Steven (2006). French Opera at the Fin de Siècle: Emmanuel Chabrier. Oxford Univ. Press, US. pp. 255–300. ISBN 978-0-19-518954-4.
• Paulson, Jennifer E.(2011) "Riddled Constructs: A Study of Musical Humour in Emmanuel Chabrier's Comic Operas." PhD diss. University of British Columbia.

• Casaglia, Gherardo (2005)."List of historic performances of Roi malgre lui". L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia (in Italian).
• Review of a 2005 performance.