Boulevard Solitude

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Opera dates
Title: Boulevard Solitude
Shape: “Lyrical Drama” in seven pictures
Original language: German
Music: Hans Werner Henze
Libretto : Grete Weil and Walter Jockisch
Literary source: Antoine-François Prévost : Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut
Premiere: 17th February 1952
Place of premiere: State Theater Hanover
Playing time: approx. 1 ½ hours
Place and time of the action: France, present (around 1950)
people
  • Manon Lescaut (easy, high soprano )
  • Armand des Grieux, student ( lyric tenor )
  • Lescaut, brother of Manon (lyric baritone )
  • Francis, friend of Armand (baritone)
  • Lilaque père, a rich gentleman (high tenor buffo )
  • Lilaque fils, his son ( bass )
  • a whore (dancer)
  • two cocainists (dancers)
  • Cigarette boy (dancer)
  • Flower girl (dancer)
  • Newspaper boys, beggars, prostitutes, police officers, students, travelers (dancers and actors)
  • Servant at Lilaque fils ( pantomime )

Boulevard Solitude is an opera (original name: "Lyrisches Drama") in seven pictures by Hans Werner Henze (music) with a libretto by Grete Weil and Walter Jockisch based on the Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by Antoine-François Prévost . It was premiered on February 17, 1952 at the Landestheater Hannover .

action

First picture: "Station concourse of a large French city"

In the middle of the hustle and bustle of the station, the student Armand des Grieux and his friend Francis are waiting for a train to read. When this is announced, Francis says goodbye and leaves. Manon Lescaut and her brother appear, and Manon sits down with him while Lescaut goes to the bar. Armand and Manon talk casually. She is on her way to a boarding school in Lausanne; he longs for a girlfriend, but the girls of the big city seem inaccessible to him. Both find that they are suffering from their loneliness. On the spur of the moment, they leave together. Lescaut observes this without intervening.

Second picture: "Small attic room in Paris"

Manon and Armand live together in a poor apartment. They are happy, but they are running out of money. Armand has given up his studies and his father stopped living. He goes to ask Francis for a loan. Lescaut appears and tells of his encounter with old Lilaque, a rich man who would be a good suitor for Manon and who is waiting in front of the house. He advises Manon to ruthlessly fulfill her wishes. The crueler she treats her admirers, the higher she will rise. After some hesitation, Manon agrees. She gives Lilaque the agreed sign at the window.

Third picture: "Elegant boudoir at Monsieur Lilaque"

Manon Armand writes a letter in her admirer's apartment and tells him about her new life in wealth. She regrets not being able to see him, but every afternoon she looks for him in the park from her car. Her brother steps in and reproachfully tears up the letter. Since she doesn't want to give him any money, he breaks into Lilaque's safe to help himself. However, he is caught by the host, who then throws them both out.

Fourth picture: "University Library"

Armand and Francis study in the library. While Francis is intrigued by the books, Armand can only think of Manon. Francis tells him that he saw her in the cafe the day before with a new suitor. Armand can't believe she's involved in a theft. Francis gets up and goes to the other students. Meanwhile, Manon sits down next to Armand and reads his book along - Catullus' love poems , the content of which corresponds to their own situation. Both assure each other of their love. As if nothing had happened, they leave the library together.

Fifth picture: "Kaschemme"

Armand escapes from reality with the help of drugs. Lescaut comes in with young Lilaque and sells him cocaine. Lilaque asks Armand to put in a good word for him at Manon. When Manon appears, Armand perceives her as a dancer in his intoxication. He considers himself Orpheus after the loss of Eurydice . Manon assures him that she continues to love him. Lilaque pushes Armand into his chair, where he falls asleep, and leaves with Manon. Lescaut follows them. A young girl hands Armand a letter in which Manon invites him to stay in Lilaque's apartment the next evening, as he is traveling. Armand falls asleep again.

Sixth picture: "In the house of Lilaque fils"

The split scene shows an anteroom with a telephone and Lilaque fils' bedroom with a large bed. It's a gray morning. Manon and Armand spent the night together. Lescaut enters with a servant and warns to leave. While the servant speaks on the phone, Lescaut advises the couple to use the back stairs to avoid being spotted. Lescaut admires a picture whose style reminds him of Picasso and cuts it out of the frame. The three are caught by Lilaque père, whom the servant had called. Lilaque is surprised to find Manon here. His old affection for her is reawakening and he wants to lead her into the bedroom. Manon is looking for excuses. Meanwhile, the servant succeeds in drawing his attention to Armand and Lescaut, who were hiding behind a curtain. Lilaque calls the police and locks the door. Lescaut hands Manon a revolver. A shot goes off and Lilaque collapses. Lescaut leaves the house with the picture while the others are petrified. Lilaque fils comes in and bends over his dead father.

Seventh picture: "In front of the prison"

Manon was arrested for murder. On a gray winter day she is to be transferred to another prison. For the desperate Armand, this is the last chance to see her again. While he waits leaning against the wall and indulging in his feelings, the gates are opened. Policemen lead out some tied girls. The square fills with passers-by and children singing “Jubilate, exultate”. The two Lilaques are also watching the scene from a car.

layout

The verses of the libretto were deliberately "artificially rhymed" by Grete Weil. It contains some quotations in French and Latin, which seem like foreign bodies in the otherwise German-language text and symbolize Armand's own alienation from reality. Unlike the original, the opera is not moralizing, but rather describes “the basic feeling of loneliness in relationships as in all social situations” ( Wulf Konold ). The plot has been adapted to the present (the 1950s). So the carriage was replaced by a train, Armand's gambling addiction by drug addiction, the monastery by the university library. The romanticizing death of Manon in the arms of her lover was deleted. At the end of the opera she walks past him in silence without looking at him. The figures are depicted as shadowy and distant. In accordance with the artistic ideal of the time they were created, they are highly objective. Any form of erotic expression is avoided. This Manon version stands in direct contrast to the sensual settings of Auber ( Manon Lescaut ), Massenet ( Manon ) or Puccini ( Manon Lescaut ).

Instead of a continuous dramatic development, Henze consistently relied on independent individual episodes, which he combined with orchestral interludes. He thus corresponded to the ideal of the epic theater .

Henze deliberately lined up clichés in both the scenic and the music. The opera contains, for example, set pieces of bel canto , ostinato shapes in the style of Igor Stravinsky or songs like Kurt Weill , a French folk song, as well as allusions to Johann Sebastian Bach , Jacques Offenbach , Jean Cocteau , the big band jazz of Stan Kenton , the Blues or the Paris Music Hall . A chord progression is borrowed from Puccini's opera La Bohème . It is descriptive music without direct identification with the protagonists. Only in the intermezzi are there occasional emotional outbursts. For the background noise of the train station at the beginning of the opera, Henze imitates the methods of musique concrète with the drums, i.e. purely instrumental means .

The loneliness ("solitude") of the characters is symbolized by the dancers accompanying some scenes. Ballet and pantomimes come in four pictures. In the first picture they depict the “hustle and bustle of travelers, waiters, cigarette boys”, in the fourth the actions of the students in the library, in the fifth the effects of cocaine and in the seventh, among other things, passers-by, boarding school children and several Manon and Armand figures as dancers or pierrots . The musical spectrum of the choir part ranges from spoken chants to homophonic movements. The swapping of the traditional voices of father (tenor) and son Lilaque (bass) also has a distancing effect.

The music is derived entirely from a single twelve-tone row , but shows a wide range of different styles. The orchestral pieces move freely between tonality and atonality . The vocal pieces are based on the musical forms of the 18th and 19th centuries. Twelve-tone structures are assigned to the "non-bourgeois" characters. The music of the “reactionary-corrupt society”, on the other hand, is more tonal and conservative. Henze himself wrote:

“ We also felt the dodecaphony as a liberation and like a hope and seemed to give us the opportunity to present human affects in a new and deeper way, because we found (not wrongly) that free tonality behaves like other achievements today of our century also, for example psychoanalysis , the free meter in poetry and its objective matter. It is therefore not surprising that the love scenes in 'Boulevard Solitude' are composed of twelve tones, because my dodecaphony wanted to describe a free, non-bourgeois world at the time, while the old, corrupt world had to present itself in the old tonality. "

- Hans Werner Henze

orchestra

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

Work history

After Henze met Grete Weil and Walter Jockisch in the summer of 1950 , they decided to write a ballet opera in the style of Boris Blacher's Prussian fairy tale . Like Massenet's Manon and Puccini's Manon Lescaut, it should be based on Antoine-François Prévost's novel Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut . There was no specific order. Jockisch designed the scenario and his wife wrote the libretto. A little later, Henze began with the setting and completed it for a year. The title is inspired by Billy Wilder's film Sunset Boulevard , which Henze saw in Paris.

After negotiations with Munich and Hamburg remained unsuccessful, the premiere took place on February 17, 1952 in the Landestheater Hanover under the direction of Walter Jockisch. The stage and equipment came from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle , the choreography from Otto Krüger . Johannes Schüler was the musical director . Sigrid Klaus (Manon Lescaut), Walter Buckow (Armand des Grieux), Theo Zilliken (Lescaut), Otto Köhler (Francis), Willy Schöneweiss (Lilaque père) and Walter Schneemann (Lilaque fils) sang. Henze's first full-length opera initially received little attention. The alienation of the familiar material met with resistance in the first performances. Later, however, the work proved to be very successful and there were many other productions at home and abroad. A list of the performances can be found on the Schott Music website :

Recordings

  • 1950–1960 - Kurt Schröder (conductor), choir and symphony orchestra of the Hessischer Rundfunk Frankfurt.
    Elfride Trötschel (Manon Lescaut), Josef Traxel (Armand des Grieux), Kurt Gester (Lescaut), Rudolf Gonszar (Lilaque père), Georg Stern (Lilaque fils), Gisela Litz (speaker), Hans Kasperzik (servant).
    Studio shot.
  • November 1987 - Ivan Anguélov (conductor), Orchester des Rencontres Musicales Lausanne, Chœurs du TML Opera Lausanne.
    Elena Vassilieva (Manon Lescaut), Jerôme Pruett (Armand des Grieux), Carl Johan Falkman (Lescaut), Jean-Marc Salzmann (Francis), Bruce Brewer (Lilaque père), Daniel Ottavaere (Lilaque fils).
    Live from Lausanne; 1st and 6th picture slightly shortened.
    Cascavelle VEL 1006 (2 CDs).
  • March 2, 9 and 13, 2007 - Zoltán Peskó (conductor), Nikolaus Lehnhoff (production), orchestra and choir of the Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona.
    Laura Aikin (Manon Lescaut), Pär Lindskog (Armand des Grieux), Tom Fox (Lescaut), Marc Canturri (Francis), Hubert Delamboye (Lilaque père), Paul Putnins (Lilaque fils), Basil Patton (servant).
    Video; Live montage from Barcelona.
    EuroArts 2056358 (1 DVD).

literature

Web links

  • Plot from Boulevard Solitude at Opera-Guide

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Schott Music : Hans Werner Henze - A guide to the stage works. P. 12 ( online ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Wolfgang Molkow: Boulevard Solitude. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 1: Works. Abbatini - Donizetti. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-492-02411-4 , pp. 778-780.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Wulf Konold : Boulevard Solitude. In: Rudolf Kloiber , Wulf Konold, Robert Maschka: Handbuch der Oper. 9th, expanded, revised edition 2002. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag / Bärenreiter, ISBN 3-423-32526-7 , pp. 283–285.
  4. ↑ a b VIII. Boulevard Solitude: First performance 1952. In: Deborah Hochgesang: The operas of Hans Werner Henze in the mirror of German-language, contemporary music criticism until 1966. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1995, ISBN 3-88476-078-5 , p. 136– 158.
  5. ^ Boulevard Solitude. In: Kurt Pahlen : The new opera lexicon. Seehamer, Weyarn 2000, ISBN 3-934058-58-2 , p. 271.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Boulevard Solitude. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 355-356.
  7. ^ Boulevard Solitude. In: Reclams Opernlexikon (= digital library . Volume 52). Philipp Reclam jun. at Directmedia, Berlin 2001, p. 348.
  8. ↑ a b Boulevard Solitude. In: Amanda Holden (Ed.): The Viking Opera Guide. Viking, London / New York 1993, ISBN 0-670-81292-7 , pp. 462-463.
  9. ↑ a b c Hanns-Werner Heister: “Moderate Modernity” and Mainstream. In: Silke Leopold (Ed.): Music theater in the 20th century (= history of the opera. Volume 4). Laaber, 2006, ISBN 3-89007-661-0 , pp. 448-449.
  10. ^ A b c Andrew Clements:  Boulevard Solitude. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  11. ↑ Supplement to CD Cascavelle VEL 1006, p. 5.
  12. ↑ February 17, 1952: “Boulevard Solitude”. In: L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia .
  13. ↑ a b c d Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. 20th Century II. German and Italian Opera after 1945, France, Great Britain. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1437-2 , pp. 89-92.
  14. ↑ Information on works from Verlag Schott Music , accessed on May 5, 2020.
  15. ^ Gerhard Persché: Henze: Boulevard Solitude. Review of the production in Graz 2015. In: Opernwelt , June 2005, p. 49.
  16. ^ Peter Reynolds: A Powerful Relic from Post-war Germany: Welsh National Opera's Boulevard Solitude. Review of the 2014 WNO production on backtrack.com, February 28, 2014, accessed May 6, 2020.
  17. ↑ a b c Hans Werner Henze. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005.