Iris (opera)
| Work data | |
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| Title: | iris |
Poster of the world premiere by Adolf Hohenstein |
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| Shape: | Melodramma in three acts |
| Original language: | Italian |
| Music: | Pietro Mascagni |
| Libretto : | Luigi Illica |
| Premiere: | November 22, 1898 |
| Place of premiere: | Rome, Teatro Costanzi |
| Playing time: | approx. 2 ¾ hours |
| Place and time of the action: | Japan towards the end of the 19th century |
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Iris is an opera (original name: "Melodramma") in three acts by Pietro Mascagni based on a libretto by Luigi Illica , who together with Giuseppe Giacosa also wrote the texts for Puccini's La Bohème , Tosca and Madama Butterfly . The premiere took place on November 22nd, 1898 in the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
action
first act
The setting is Japan, an idyllic flower garden in rural seclusion. Iris, a young girl, lives here with her blind old father. It is morning, the sun is rising (choir “Son io! Son io la vita!” ). Iris steps out of the house and ponders a bad dream that haunted her at night: Her beloved doll was enormously threatened and Iris was unable to protect her ( “Ha fatto un triste sogno pauroso” ). The wealthy stranger from the city Osaka and his friend, the brothel owner Kyoto, are secretly watching her. Osaka desires Iris, and Kyoto wants to kidnap her for him ( "È lei! È lei!" ). Iris works in the garden while her father says the rosary and enjoys the sunshine ( "Voglio posare ove è più caldo il sole!" ). Young girls appear and do their laundry in the river ( “Al rio! Al rio! È il pleniluio!” ). While her father thanks God that his daughter has replaced his eyes (chanting), Iris is busy with her plants ( “In pure still, gaie scintille scende la vita!” ).
Kyoto appears disguised as a puppeteer; Osaka, also in disguise, accompanies him ( "Io son Danjuro Il padre dei Fantocci" ). Iris is extremely curious about the doll story, her father tries in vain to hold her back. The performance begins, the piece tells the story of the girl Dhia, who is kept in poverty by her evil father and then sold by Shimonoseki in the market ( “Misera! Ognor qui sola!” ). Osaka slips into the role of the sun son Jor, who promises to love the girl and to accompany her to nirvana. Osaka's aria, "Apri la tua finestra!" , Is the most famous of the opera.
The curtain falls, and during the ensuing dance by three geishas, Iris, who has admired the spectacle with the greatest naivety, is seized by samurai and kidnapped into town. Stunned, the father discovers that Iris has disappeared ( "Questo dramma è menzogna tutto!" ). Beggars appear and take part in his fate. One of them discovers a note, apparently from Iris, stating that she has gone to Yoshiwara. Money was also left behind. The father believes that Iris abandoned him of her own free will.
Second act
In Kyoto's brothel. Kyoto scolds the geishas who let Iris sleep and are supposed to prepare for paying guests ( “Là che ci fate ancora mascherate?” ). Osaka appears, lifts Iris' veil and is carried away by her beauty. Kyoto encourages him to make her submissive with gifts. Iris wakes up and neither knows where she is nor why she is wearing a transparent robe ( "Ognora sogni, sogni e sogni ..." ). Then she remembers the puppet theater and the dancing geishas and thinks she has died. She tries to play shamisen , but the instrument doesn't obey her; she tries to paint a flower, but only produces a blood red snake. She finally bursts into tears at the thought of her father.
Osaka appears with presents and tries to seduce Iris ( "Oh, come al tuo sottile corpo" ). Iris, who recognizes his voice, takes Osaka for the sun son Jor. Since she has never heard compliments and words like the Osakas, she begins to laugh with embarrassment. Osaka tries to explain to her that he is not Jor, that he kidnapped her and that everything is only about his pleasure. Iris remembers how a priest once told her terrible things about lust and begs Osaka to let her return to her father (“Un dì, ero piccina, al tempio vidi un bonzo”). Osaka is unnerved by so much prudishness but continues to try to seduce her. Iris begins to cry, she wants to go home to her father and her flowers, Osaka's gifts cannot replace them. Osaka loses interest, leaves the girl to the brothel owner and leaves ( “Da un'ora essa m'attedia!” ).
Kyoto decides to make Iris the model lady for his brothel; if she obeyed him, he would give her the Jor doll ( “Colle piccine gran maestra è natura” ). Iris thinks the doll is the real Jor and expects that he will love her and lead her into nirvana ( “Apre la tua finestra!” ). Then it is exhibited in front of the suitors; these overturn with enthusiasm (chorus: “Oh, maraviglia delle maraviglie!” ). Osaka regrets leaving Iris Kyoto and is promoting her again ( "Indietro! Indietro! Indietro! Iris, son io!" ).
Iris' father appears, led by two beggars, who thinks the girl is guilty, curses her and throws dirt at her ( "Iris? Essa è qui dunque?" ). Iris is broken and jumps out of the window into the gutter in front of everyone present.
Third act
Night. Garbage collectors who rummage in the gutter for useful items find the unconscious, badly injured Iris and consider her dead ( “Ad ora bruna e tarda la Luna è tutta gaia” ). They rob her of her precious dress and move on. Iris wakes up and hallucinates the voices of Osaka, Kyoto, and her father's; all three say goodbye to her ( "Ognun pel suo cammino va spinto dal destino di sua fatal natura!" ). With pain, Iris remembers the happy world of her flower garden, which she has irrevocably lost. The sun rises and reminds Iris that she has never turned away from her ( "Un gran'occhio mi guarda! Il Sole? È il Sole!" ). In the sunlight, iris, the flowers also appear. She dies reconciled.
Instrumentation
The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:
- Woodwinds : piccolo , two flutes , small oboe, two oboes , English horn , two clarinets , bass clarinet , two bassoons , contrabassoon
- Brass : four horns , three trumpets , three trombones , bass trombone
- three timpani , percussion : bass drum , cymbals , triangle , Japanese carillon, gong, big tam-tam , tambourine
- Shamisen
- two harps
- Strings
- Stage music: flute, small oboe, four trumpets, four tenor trombones, two Japanese timpani, two small Japanese tam-tams, two unspecified percussion instruments, harp (= second harp of the orchestra), viola , violoncello , double bass
Work history
Apart from concert performances, Mascagni's Iris has rarely been seen on stage in German-speaking countries in recent decades. The premiere in 1898 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome was a great public success, which had already reached the hearts of many opera friends six years before Puccini's Madama Butterfly and which served as a trigger for further Japanese opera works. For this, Mascagni dealt with Japanese music, but created his own view of a fictional Japan, which is accompanied by very emotional music, which contrasts the strength of men with the fragile iris, their love for the sun, flowers and nature in general.
The first performance on November 22, 1898 took place under the direction of the composer. Giuseppe Tisci Rubini (the blind man), Hariclea Darclée (iris), Fernando de Lucia (Osaka), Guglielmo Caruson (Kyoto), Ernestina Tilde Milanesi (geisha), Eugenio Grossi (peddler) and Piero Schiavazzi (rag dealer) sang
For the German premiere in Frankfurt am Main in 1899, Max Kalbeck provided the translation. The opera was probably seen for the last time in decades as a stage work in Germany in 1924. In the Chemnitz Opera House had Iris in a new production on February 3, 2007 premiere and was designed by MDR Figaro and Germany Kultur transferred in broadcasting live. In 2016 the Neuköllner Oper (Berlin) brought the opera to the stage under the title Iris Butterfly as a chamber opera reduced by Alexandra Barkovskaya with a chamber orchestra of seven instruments and electronic sounds conducted by Hans-Peter Kirchberg .
From June 7 to 18, 2016, Opera Holland Park in London showed Iris in a new production, after the work was performed there with great success in 1997. Before that time, Mascagni's opera had not been seen in London for 90 years.
The Bulgarian soprano and ECHO Prize winner Sonya Yoncheva sang the title role at the Montpellier Radio Festival on July 26, 2016. The recording was broadcast from the Opéra Berlioz at Le Corum Montpellier. The Orchester national Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon played under the baton of Domingo Hindoyan .
In July 2016, the Bard Summer Festival presented Iris in Annandale, New York. The American Symphony Orchestra played under the direction of Leon Botstein .
literature
- Carl Dahlhaus (Ed.): Piper's Encyclopedia of Music Theater: Opera, Operetta, Musical, Ballet . Vol. 3: Henze - Massine works. Munich; Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-492-02413-0
- Alan Mallach: Pietro Mascagni and his Operas . Northeastern University Press, Boston 2002, ISBN 1-55553-524-0 .
- Alan Mallach: The Autumn of Italian Opera. From Verismo to Modernism 1890–1915 . Northeastern University Press, Boston 2007, ISBN 1-55553-683-2 .
Web links
- Iris : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Libretto (Italian), Rome 1898. Digitized in the Internet Archive
- Work information and libretto (Italian) as full text on librettidopera.it
- Iris (Pietro Mascagni) in the Corago information system of the University of Bologna
- Discography of Iris (opera) at Operadis
- Joachim Lange: Exotic rediscovery. Pietro Mascagni's opera “Iris” in Chemnitz , review by Klassik Heute , February 9, 2007, accessed on December 6, 2014.
Individual evidence
- ^ Rein A. Zondergeld : Iris. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 3: Works. Henze - Massine. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-492-02413-0 , pp. 713-716.
- ↑ November 22, 1898: "Iris". In: L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia ..
- ↑ Oliver Kranz : Neukölln Opera - "Iris Butterfly" ( Memento from April 15, 2016 in the web archive archive.today ) on Kulturradio rbb, April 15, 2016