George Dandin

Data
Title:	George Dandin
Original title:	George Dandin ou le Mari confondu
Genus:	comedy
Original language:	French
Author:	Molière
Publishing year:	1668
Premiere:	1668
Place of premiere:	Palace of Versailles
people
George Dandin , rich farmer, husband of Angélique Angélique , wife of George Dandin Monsieur de Sotenville , rural nobleman, father of Angélique Madame de Sotenville , mother of Angélique Clitandre , lover of Angélique Claudine , servant of Angélique Lubin , farmer, servant of the clitandre Colin , servant of George Dandin Roles for choir and dancer: Four dancing shepherds Four shepherds playing the recorder Six boatmen Four shepherds Four shepherdesses Choir of Bacchus Chorus of love Dancing company of Bacchus Bacchants

George Dandin , original title: George Dandin ou le Mari confondu ( French George Dandin or the shamed / betrayed husband ) is a ballet comedy in three acts by the French poet Molière , with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully . The premiere took place on July 18, 1668 at a festival in the Palace of Versailles before King Louis XIV in honor of his new maîtresse en titre , Madame de Montespan , and to the dishonor of her still lawful husband. The public premiere was on November 9th of the same year at the Palais Royal in Paris . The play takes place in front of George Dandin's house, in the country.

People and action

George Dandin is a wealthy farmer. He has ceded his fortune to Mr and Mrs de Sotenville, an impoverished couple from the provincial nobility , married their daughter Angélique and acquired a title of nobility . He is now called "Monsieur de la Dandinière". However, the wedding took place against the will of Angélique; she feels in no way obliged to her husband and is willing to be seduced by the courtier Clitandre. George Dandin tries to react, but his aristocratic parents-in-law are not impressed by his reproaches and make fun of repeatedly humiliating their inferior son-in-law. Angélique is supported by her servant Claudine. The farmer Lubin is an admirer of Claudine and acts as a matchmaker to Clitandre.

Although the piece was originally announced as a "comedy", there is no happy ending . George Dandin is constantly being duped by representatives of the nobility and servants alike, with his wife, lover and servant showing sadistic behavior.

George Dandin, marked by loneliness and at the mercy of a tragic fate, speaks of suicide in his final monologue : "If you have married an evil woman like me, the best thing you can do is to plunge yourself into the water, head first."

Comedy, ballet comedy, or any comedy

Performers sometimes consider George Dandin "one of Molière's bitterest pieces". In a letter to d'Alembert in 1758, Jean-Jacques Rousseau lamented applause for a woman's infidelity. One can consider the play immoral, a comedy of the realistic genre, where even the comic retains a bitter aftertaste. First of all, however, the question is not whether the piece is a comedy at all, but whether it belongs in the category of ballet comedy. The views of literary critics and musicologists occasionally diverge on this. In 1931, Henry Prunières found it impossible to consider George Dandin as a ballet comedy. It takes goodwill to see any connection between the misfortunes of the farmer who has grown rich and the songs of shepherds and satyrs who celebrate love and Bacchus . Conversely, in 1931 too, shepherd poetry was important for Friedrich Böttger because Molière wanted to "illuminate the idealistic and realistic as brightly as possible". The comedy " absolutely takes the position of intermezzi compared to the pastorale ". A “real inner unity” had grown out of the artistic idea with which both works were conceived, and Molière had “been the first to assign the pastoral form its due place among the stage works”. The editor of the Gazette was embarrassed as early as 1668 and described the play as a comedy with a musical and ballet comedy mixed in between the acts. In fact, at first glance, both run so intertwined that Moliere could easily get rid of the completely sung and danced part when the music was resumed in the Palais-Royal, however interesting and in places perfectly beautiful Lully's music may be. But the George Dandin comedy is nothing more than a half-measure, and that's why many people don't like it without knowing why. If, on the other hand, the shepherd game is included, a contrast is created that changes the perspective and does not make Angélique look immoral.

The version of the premiere

Molière himself played the title role at the premiere. The plot was as follows:

Overture

Four shepherds dance a minuet , sometimes accompanied by a large five-part orchestra, sometimes by four shepherds playing the recorder . In the song L'autre jour (the other day) , two shepherdesses tell each other the story of one of their companions who had let herself be absorbed by love. Laissez nous en repos (Leave us alone) is her sung answer to the wooing of two shepherds who have arrived - “You told me a thousand times”, one of them gets to hear before the shepherdesses leave them standing. The two of them are left in love and decide to put an end to their worries and their lives alike.

Act I.

George Dandin learns from the clumsy, talkative Lubin, servant of the aristocratic clitandre, that he is courting his equally aristocratic wife Angélique and he gets angry. Even if they are rather impoverished landed gentry, the summoned in-laws let the farmer Dandin feel once again that he is actually not good enough for them - Angélique and Clitandre deny and George cannot avoid a humiliating apology.

First intermediate

In his speech of anger, the farmer is interrupted by a shepherdess who wants to tell him about the desperation of the two shepherds. Angry, he goes away and makes way for Cloris, who has found out that her shepherd actually went into the water. Desperate even now, she laments the death of her admirer with a sad lament , Ah! mortelles douleurs (Oh! fatal suffering) .

Act II

Again it is Lubin's stupidity that is why Gerorge Dandin learns of a visit from Clitandre to Angélique. He alerts the in-laws and hopes to catch his wife red-handed with them. But she feigns resistance, grabs a stick, with which she hits her beau, who takes cover behind George Dandin, who in turn takes all the blows - and is supposed to thank his wife for the virtues.

Second intermedium

The same shepherdess does not fail to address him again in his grief. She tells him that Tircis and Philene are not dead at all and shows him six boatmen who rescued them. They are happy about the reward received and dance with their boat hooks. But George Dandin doesn't want to pay attention to them for a moment.

Act III

Angélique and Clitandre meet in the garden on a dark night. The last time George Dandin sends his servants to the in-laws and locks his wife out. Because of the impending shame, she announces that she wants to kill himself and disappears into the darkness. He has no choice but to look for her and finds himself in the situation of being locked out of her himself - just as the Sotenvilles arrive. They hear from their daughter how the son-in-law often comes home at night and George Dandin has to apologize to her again - this time on his knees. His whining ends with the thought that it would be better to plunge headlong into the water.

Third intermedium

Since the married farmer's measure of suffering is now full, a friend finally advises him to drown all his worries in wine and goes with him to his group when the crowd of shepherds in love arrive. Last “Entrée” : All shepherds reveal their joy through dancing, until Bacchus appears with satyrs who sing chants in praise of the wine, which ends in a dispute between the followers of love and those of drunkenness.

The meaning of the shepherd's play

The third “intermède” makes up two thirds of the pastoral, and the intermedia between the acts are so short that the thread of the plot is hardly lost. The music stands for itself before and after the comedy. What started with a solo song ended with a concert with more than a hundred participants. The première saw the best flute players of the time on stage: Descoteaux, Philibert and two of the Hotteterres . Lully's lament to the sad shepherdess was then very well known as "La Cloris". Pastoral motifs were not uncommon at this time; on the contrary, they formed the content of the majority of all song texts in France in the first half of the 17th century - and were above all a matter of the nobility. Especially after the Fronde , the felt loss of meaning caused a life suffering, from which the escape into a fantasy world in which one was happy and could love. In Gerorge Dandin this area of ​​dreams forms a counterweight to the unfriendly subject of comedy, probably not by chance, because the “Grand Divertissement royal de Versailles” of 1668 was essentially based on the juxtaposition of two worlds. The role of lovers, as found in L'Avare , Le Malade imaginaire and Tartuffe , is played by the shepherds in this piece. Only Lubin and Claudine come close to them with their realization that it is often the husbands who make themselves what they are with their noise. George Dandin doesn't care about a woman's worries, doesn't listen to her. The difference between him and the shepherds: those want to drown themselves out of lovesickness, he out of annoyance, stupidity and selfishness. What causes George Dandin's suffering is his submission to the existing conditions, from which he wants to gain his personal, small advantage, while Angélique rebels against the prevailing order.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Uwe Schultz : The ruler of Versailles. Ludwig XIV and his time , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2006, p. 192.
2. ↑ Original French: "Lorsqu'on a, comme moi, épousé une méchante femme, le meilleur parti que l'on puisse prendre est de s'aller jeter dans l'eau, la tête la première. »
3. ^ ^{A b} Johannes Hösle: Molière. His life, his work, his time , Piper Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-492-02781-4 , p. 240 f.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Philippe Beaussant: Lully ou Le Musicien du Soleil , Gallimard / Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, [Paris] 1992, pp. 349–361.
5. ^ ^{A b c} Friedrich Böttger: The "Comédie-Ballet" by Molière-Lully , Berlin 1931, reprint Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim / New York 1979, ISBN 3-487-06689-0 , p. 117 f.
6. ^ Jérôme de La Gorce and Herbert Schneider (eds.): Jean-Baptiste Lully. Oeuvres Complètes. Series II. Volume 2 , Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim u. a. 2013, ISBN 978-3-487-11512-2
7. ↑ Jérôme de La Gorce and Herbert Schneider (Eds.) 2013: S. XLI
8. ↑ ^{a b} Jérôme de La Gorce and Herbert Schneider (eds.) 2013: p. XXII
9. ↑ Fabienne Darge: George Dandin, ce dindon de la farce . In: Le Monde , March 16, 2018, p. 15.

Web links

Wikisource: George Dandin ou le Mari confondu  - Sources and full texts (French)

• Score by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687)