Oedipe (opera)

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Opera dates
Title: Oedipe
André Pernet (Oedipe) and Marisa Ferrer (Jocaste) in the premiere production in 1936

André Pernet (Oedipe) and Marisa Ferrer (Jocaste) in the premiere production in 1936

Shape: Tragédie-lyrique in four acts and six pictures
Original language: French
Music: George Enescu
Libretto : Edmond Fleg
Literary source: Sophocles : King Oedipus and Oedipus on Colonus
Premiere: March 13, 1936
Place of premiere: Salle Garnier of the Paris Opera
Playing time: approx. 2 ½ hours
Place and time of the action: Thebes , Corinth and Athens , mythical times
people
  • Jocaste ( mezzo-soprano )
  • Laïos , King of Thebes ( tenor )
  • Tirésias , blind prophet ( bass baritone )
  • the shepherd (tenor)
  • the high priest ( bass )
  • Créon , brother of Jocastes ( baritone )
  • a Theban woman ( old )
  • the sphinx (old)
  • Mérope , Queen of Corinth (old)
  • Oedipe , son of Laïos and Jocaste (baritone)
  • the guardian of the dead (bass)
  • Phorbas, former shepherd, later messenger to the Corinthian court (bass)
  • a Theban (tenor)
  • Antigone , daughter of Oedipes ( soprano )
  • Ismene ( silent role )
  • Thésée , King of Athens (tenor)
  • Theban women (up to four voices), virgins (up to four voices), warriors (up to six voices), shepherds (3 tenors), priestesses, vicarious clergy, women in the palace, the elders of the Athenians, eumenids behind the scene ( choir )
  • small choir: Theban men and women, of which solo: two women (soprano, alto), six men (3 tenors, 3 basses)
  • three groups of honorary escort (soprano, tenor)
  • Children's choir
  • a child as Tirésias' leader, Theban elders (extras)
  • Shepherds, Theban women and warriors (ballet)

Oedipe (Op. 23) is an opera (original name: " Tragédie-lyrique ") in four acts and six pictures by George Enescu (music) with a libretto by Edmond Fleg based on the tragedies of Sophocles . It premiered on March 13, 1936 in the Salle Garnier of the Paris Opera .

action

first act

Room in the palace of Laïos

Garlands of flowers between massive pillars; archaic marble sculptures; in the background a bronze double door; in the middle the house altar with holy fires and ancestral images. Blue light shines through a round opening in the ceiling onto a bronze basin filled with water. On the right, Jocaste rests on a bed of animal skins. Next to her, King Laïos sits on his throne next to the cradle of her son Oedipe . Theban warriors with créon , Theban women and shepherds have gathered around the altar. Priestesses help the high priest. On the left in the background the blind old Tirésias attends the ceremony, solemnly like the living spirit of fate.

Those present cheerfully celebrate the birth of the prince with dancing and singing. Suddenly a groan interrupts Tirésias' good mood. He predicts that the king's son will one day murder his father, who disregarded the voices of the gods, and marry his own mother. Laïos only hesitates for a moment. He gives the child to a shepherd and orders him to take it to the gorges of the Kithairon and kill it there. After the shepherd leaves, Laïos and Jocaste burst into tears.

Second act

Room in the Palace of Polybos in Corinth with a view of the sea and the Acropolis; dusk

The shepherd did not kill Oedipe as ordered, but handed him over to Phorbas. He in turn put him under the Corinthian king Polybos and his wife Mérope , whose child had died under his care. Twenty years later, Oedipe has grown into a young man. While an invisible choir is singing about Adonis and Aphrodite outside, it ponders sadly whether he should leave the country. When Phorbas asks him on behalf of the royal couple to take part in the celebration at the Acropolis, Oedipe sends him away. Shortly afterwards, his supposed mother Mérope enters to inquire about the reason for his tribulation. He tells her that a drunk man recently claimed he was a foundling. Mérope swears by the head of Zeus that she is his real mother. The real reason for Oedipes sadness is different: When he wanted to offer a sacrifice of thanks to the Oracle of Delphi for his victory at the Games, the god Apollo accused him of desecrating the temple as the future murderer of his father and his mother's husband. In order to escape this fate, he sees no other way out than to spend the rest of his life in exile.

Hilly light forest with pastures and rocks; a rough statue of Hécate at a fork in the road

Sitting on a small rock, the shepherd tends his goats and plays a plaintive melody on his flute. When distant thunder announces a storm, he asks the goddess Hécate for protection for himself and his animals. Oedipe arrives. The fork in the road seems like a crossroads in his own life. He quarrels with the gods because he does not understand why he has drawn their wrath. The shepherd starts his game again and shows himself on a steep rock. Oedipe hurries into the background, his club raised threateningly against fate. At that moment, King Laïos' chariot approaches with a coachman and a soldier. Laïos calls to Oedipe to evade. But he strikes with his club and kills Laïos. The soldier and the coachman suffer the same fate. The horses flee in the carriage. While the storm breaks out completely, Oedipe hurries away. The shepherd realizes with horror that the dead man is the king.

On the left the city walls of Thebes with a tower and a closed gate; right and in the background rocks; blue starry night

From the tower, the guard watches the sleeping sphinx Ekhidna, the daughter of fate, not far from the wall . When Oedipe approaches the city singing, the guard fears that the Sphinx might wake up. It poses unsolvable riddles to everyone who passes by and kills anyone who cannot solve it. Oedipe, however, is fearless. He wants to free the city from the monster and deliberately wakes the Sphinx. She immediately asks him her question: "What is stronger than fate?" Oedipe's answer "Man" is correct. The Sphinx dies with a mixture of laughing and crying. The guard wakes the city's inhabitants, who appoint their savior Oedipe king and give him Laïos' widow Jocaste as his wife.

Third act

Thebes public square; on the left a temple; on the right the palace of Oedipes

After another twenty years, Oedipe is firmly established as King Thebes. Jocaste gave him several children. Now a plague epidemic has broken out and the locals are begging him for help. But all he has left is prayer. In order to find out the will of Apollo, he sent Jocaste's brother Créon to Delphi. Créon reports that the plague is the punishment for the city hosting the murderer of Laïos. Oedipe immediately makes inquiries. The shepherd who observed the murder is called. The seer of Tirésia should also help. Oedipe declares that he will banish the culprit from the city if he voluntarily surrenders. Otherwise he should be cursed. When Tirésias arrives, he mysteriously promises that Oedipe will still see birth and death today, and adds that he himself is the wanted murderer and must take his own judgment. He will realize today that the old prophecy has been fulfilled. Now the shepherd appears and tells the story of the murder. Gradually, Oedipe realizes that he actually killed the old king. The old Phorbas reveals that Oedipe is not the real son of Méropes and Polybos. In addition, after some hesitation, the shepherd admits that he had once given the child to Phorbas instead of leaving it to die as ordered. Everyone now knows that Oedipe is actually the son of Laïos and Jocastes. The latter commits suicide, shaken. Oedipe himself sticks out his eyes. He leaves the city holding the hand of his daughter Antigone .

Fourth act

Parapet, the edge of a sacred grove; on the left a rock next to a spring; on the right a marble altar; a bronze plate in the ground at the entrance to the forest; bright, serene day

In the grove, King Thésée and a group of old Athenians make a sacrifice to the gods. A little later, the heavily aged blind Oedipe and Antigone arrive. Based on her description of the place, Oedipe recognizes that he has reached his final destination and can finally find peace. Then Créon appears with some Thebans and asks him, on behalf of his people, to return to Thebes and to take up his royal office again. When Oedipe refuses, Créon arrests Antigone in order to put her father under pressure. At that moment Thésée returns and Antigone begs him for help. Oedipe explains that he is not to blame for his actions, the course of which was set before he was born. He also committed his later offenses in ignorance. But now he has overcome his fate. The Thebans, on the other hand, would have driven him away, even though they knew he had saved them. He informs Thésée that he has chosen a certain place in this grove as his final resting place. Knowing that he is about to die, he says goodbye to his daughter, whom he leaves in the care of the Athenians. Then he leads Thésée to the place of his transfiguration. When there is a rumble of thunder, Oedipe enters a grotto from which a bright light then shines. Thésée falls on her knees and covers his face as the voices of the Eumenides proclaim that Oedipe's soul is pure.

layout

The content of the opera deals with the entire life of Oedipus , with the third act based on Sophocles ' tragedy King Oedipus and the fourth act on his Oedipus on Colonus . The first two acts represent the prehistory. The resulting many short appearances by secondary characters prevent, in the opinion of Carl Dahlhaus, "a continuous antagonism that acts as the backbone of the drama". He therefore considered the opera to be a “monodrama with secondary characters”, with the Oedipes monologue essentially functioning as a “commentary on a symphonic orchestral movement”. In contrast to what is customary in opera, the music takes precedence over the dramatic plot, which here only serves to justify an “epic-lyrical rhetoric”. It is an "orchestral work of immense proportions [...] intended as a symphony, but not possible as such".

Sophocles tragedies portray Oedipe as a man who will inevitably be destroyed by fate. With Enescu, on the other hand, in the end he succeeds in overcoming this fate and regaining his purity.

The formal structure with prologue, four acts and epilogue is traditional, but the musical language follows principles of the 20th century. The opera needs a modern orchestra, in whose extraordinarily differentiated setting many solo instruments are used. Rhythm and aesthetics are trend-setting. The harmony combines tonal and modal elements. There are also micro-intervals and allusions to Romanian folk music. Influences from Claude Debussy , Maurice Ravel , his teacher Gabriel Fauré and the music of German Expressionism are clearly audible .

In his 3rd symphony from 1918 and in his 1st string quartet from 1920, Enescu worked with motifs, sequences of intervals and note patterns, which he processed, changed and rearranged as thematic germ cells. This late style technique led in Oedipe to such a fine-grained use of leitmotifs that they are hardly noticeable when listening. Octavian Cosma identified 21 such motifs in the opera as part of a study. An exact assignment of the leitmotifs to certain people or symbols is not always possible due to the complex processing.

The course of action does not correspond to that of an ancient tragedy, but is based on Richard Wagner's ideas . Here, too, instead of an overture, there is a prelude that already introduces some of the main motifs of the opera: those of fate, parricide or Laïos and the victory of man or Oedipes, as well as a motif usually associated with Jocaste.

The festive music at the beginning of the first act is inspired by Romanian folk music. In the dance of the shepherds, for example, there are flute arabesques in the Doina style with quarter tones . After the fateful prophecy of Tirésias and the desperate reaction of the king, the music reminds us of the previous dances and the prelude with fragile allusions. The first image of the second act is marked by strong contrasts between the festive music for the celebration in the Acropolis and Oedipe's gloomy reflection. The second picture is dominated by the "patricide" motif. The awakening of the Sphinx in the third picture is accompanied by eerie sounds. In the third act there are some flashbacks on which topics from the previous acts are processed. Oedipe's admission of guilt at the end of this act comes in the form of a chant. Earlier themes are also heard in the fourth act. The incantations in the sacred grove are lavishly orchestrated and culminate in the apotheosis of Oedipe's death.

orchestra

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

Work history

Performance at the Royal Opera House London, 2016

In 1910, the composer George Enescu attended a production of Sophocles ' King Oedipus at the Comédie-Française in Paris , in which Jean Mounet-Sully played the title role. He was so impressed by this that he decided to set it to music. He began with his first compositional sketches before he even had a libretto. In 1913 he received a first version of the libretto from Edmond Fleg . It consisted of two parts and was so extensive that it could not be performed in a single evening. Enescu was not satisfied with this and asked Fleg for cuts. In 1916 and 1917 he created a complete piano reduction of the opera with an abbreviated version of the libretto. He then sent the manuscript to Moscow. However, since he did not get it back after the end of the First World War , he rewrote the opera from memory in 1922. In November 1922 he presented the work to a few friends in Sinaia , Bucharest and Paris. In April 1923 he presented it at the École Normale de Musique de Paris . In the same year, through the mediation of the French Foreign Ministry, Fleg also received the original manuscript back from Moscow. Enescu then needed another eight years to work out the score, which he completed on April 27, 1931. After two excerpts for orchestra were played in 1924 and 1925, the complete work was not premiered until four years later. Enescu's hope for Fyodor Chalyapin in the title role was not fulfilled.

The first performance took place on March 13, 1936 in the Salle Garnier of the Paris Opera under the musical direction of Philippe Gaubert . André Pernet sang the title role. Other contributors included Marisa Ferrer (Jocaste), Bertrand Etcheverry (Tirésias), Pierre Froumenty (Créon) and Jeanne Monfort (Sphinx).

Although the premiere was a huge success, the work only lasted until 1937 at the Paris Opera. In 1955, shortly after the composer's death, the French radio broadcast a new production on the radio. Since then there have been several other productions:

Recordings

literature

  • Daniel Ponder: George Enesco and his opera Oedipe. University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance Department of Musicology, 2009 ( online at Academia.edu ).

Web links

Commons : Œdipe (opera)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Carl Dahlhaus : Oedipe. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 2: Works. Donizetti - Henze. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-492-02412-2 , pp. 144-146.
  2. a b c d e f g h i John CG Waterhouse, Irina Boga:  Oedipe ('Oedipus'). In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  3. a b Noel Malcolm, Valentina Sandu-Dediu:  Enescu, George. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  4. Donald Jay Grout, Hermine Weigel Williams: A Short History of Opera. Fourth Edition. Columbia University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-231-11958-5 , p. 691.
  5. a b c d Bruce Burroughs: Oedipe. Georges Enesco. In: The Opera Quarterly. Volume 9, Issue 3, March 1, 1993, pp. 188-190, doi: 10.1093 / oq / 9.3.188 .
  6. a b Viorel Cosma, Sergiu Sarkisow (transl.): A life's work - rediscovered. George Enescu's “Oedipe” at the Vienna State Opera. In: Austrian music magazine . Volume 52, Issue 8, pp. 47-48, doi: 10.7767 / omz.1997.52.8.47 .
  7. Cast sheet for the performance in Weimar 1984 , accessed on March 3, 2019.
  8. a b Oedipe (Oedipus). In: Reclams Opernlexikon (= digital library . Volume 52). Philipp Reclam jun. at Directmedia, Berlin 2001, p. 1825.
  9. Opernwelt Jahrbuch 1996, p. 3 ff.
  10. ^ Oedipe. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , p. 242.
  11. Melissa Mitchell: American premiere of Enescu opera to take place at Illinois. Illinois 2015 performance announcement on illinois.edu, accessed March 3, 2019.
  12. Lanfranco Visconti: Review of the performance in Cagliari 2005 (Italian) on operatoday.com, accessed on March 4, 2019.
  13. Information on the performance in Bielefeld 2006 at theaterkompass.de, accessed on March 4, 2019.
  14. ^ European tragedy in London. Article from July 16, 2016 on Deutschlandfunk Kultur , accessed on March 3, 2019.
  15. Information about the performance in London in 2016 on the Royal Opera House website , accessed on March 3, 2019.
  16. Michael Klier: Enescu's complex Oedipe in Amsterdam. Review of the performance in Amsterdam 2018 on bachtrack.com, accessed on March 3, 2019.
  17. Joachim Lange: Blind in the labyrinth of knowledge. Review of the performance in Frankfurt 2013. In: Online Musik Magazin, accessed on March 3, 2019.
  18. Information on the performance in Thuringia 2018 on tpthueringen.de, accessed on March 3, 2019.
  19. Information on the performance at the Salzburg Festival 2019 at salzburgerfestspiele.at, accessed on August 17, 2019
  20. a b c d e George Enescu. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005.
  21. ^ Recording of the radio broadcast on March 2, 2010 on BR-Klassik .
  22. Information on the video recording from Bucharest 2009 on operapassion.com, accessed on February 20, 2019.
  23. Program information from August 17, 2019 at oe1.orf.at, accessed on January 6, 2019.