Pigmalion (Rameau)

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Opera dates
Title: Pygmalion
Original title: Pigmalion
Title page of the score from 1748

Title page of the score from 1748

Shape: Acte de ballet
Original language: French
Music: Jean-Philippe Rameau
Libretto : Ballot de Sauvot
Literary source: Ovid : Metamorphoses
Premiere: August 27, 1748
Place of premiere: Palais Royal of the Opéra in Paris.
Playing time: about 45 minutes
Place and time of the action: mythical time
people
  • Pigmalion / Pygmalion ( Haute-Contre )
  • Céphise, his wife ( soprano )
  • L'Amour, love (soprano)
  • the statue (soprano and dancer)
  • Retinue of L'Amours, people ( chorus )
  • Graces , games, jokes, folk, grotesque country people, simple country people, a tambourine player (ballet)

Pigmalion (also Pygmalion ) is an opera in one act or a ballet one-act act (original name: "Acte de ballet") by Jean-Philippe Rameau (music) with a libretto by Ballot de Sauvot . The premiere took place on August 27, 1748 in the Palais Royal of the Opéra in Paris.

action

The scene depicts Pigmalion's sculptor's studio, with a statue in the middle.

Scene 1. Pigmalion blames Amor for falling madly in love with his own statue.

Scene 2. His wife Céphise complains that Pigmalion has lost interest in her and only cares about his statue. Pigmalion asks her for sympathy, because the gods themselves are to blame for his condition.

Scene 3. After Céphise has left the studio, Pigmalion despairs over his unthinkable feelings of love. L'Amour flies into the room unnoticed by him and shakes his torch out over the statue. To Pigmalion's amazement, she comes to life and, after a moment of confusion, confesses her love to him.

Scene 4. L'Amour explains to Pigmalion that his love and love deserve this reward. He summons his graces , who teach the statue various faster and faster dances. L'Amour himself withdraws. A slow air is followed by a minuet , a cheerful gavotte , a lively Chaconne , a lively Passepied of the Graces and a fast Rigaudon . Then the statue is ready for its own solo number, a sarabande . A tambourine concludes the “ballet figuré”, which is the climax of the opera.

Scene 5. The people come to watch what happens. Pigmalion calls for general praise to L'Amour. They dance a happy air. A slow and a fast pantomime are performed. After Pigmalion's last song of praise, the piece ends with an “Air gracieux” and a “Rondeau contredanse”.

layout

Rameau and his librettist Ballot de Sauvot changed the basic message when they arranged the previous libretto. Originally it was a praise of the art of love, which was given priority over all other arts. Now the focus is on the self-image of modern humans in the sense of the Enlightenment . While the gods rule over life, only man is capable of artistic activity. Thus both complement each other and can only achieve the ideal - represented in the statue Pigmalion - together.

The contemporaries and also Rameau's adversary Jean-Jacques Rousseau particularly praised the balanced proportions of the composition. The role of Pigmalion is varied and offers the singer a wide variety of forms of expression between “immediately touching astonishment” and the virtuoso final ariette “Règne, Amour”. Harmonization and instrumentation can only be viewed together. Rameau himself spoke of the term “triumphant” harmony in relation to the final chorus “L'Amour triomphe”. Its climax is a high a Pigmalions over a long F major triad that approximates the overtone series. The independence of the timbre prepared in this work was later to become a typical element of French music.

The lively second part of the overture describes Pigmalion's chisel with onomatopoeic sixteenth notes.

Instrumentation

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

Work history

In 1748 the board of directors of the Paris Opera, which was suffering from financial problems, asked Rameau for a new opera with as many dances as possible, as these were particularly popular with the public. Rameau hired the amateur writer Ballot de Sauvot (a brother of his notary) to prepare the libretto for his needs. It is based on the 5th Entrée “La Statue” of a libretto by Antoine Houdar de la Motte , which was performed in Paris in 1700 under the title Le triomphe des arts in a setting by Michel de La Barre . The content is taken from an episode from Book 10 of Ovid's Metamorphoses . Due to the many changes in the performance material, it is believed that the work was created under time pressure. Ballot de Sauvot only took about 30 lines of text directly from the original. In France, in contrast to other countries, it was not yet customary to develop foreign libretti in this way, and Ballot de Sauvot was accordingly criticized as a “corrector” of Lamotte.

At the premiere on August 27, 1748, Pierre Jélyotte (Pigmalion), Marie-Angélique Couppé (L'Amour) and Marie Fel (the statue) sang . The piece was combined with a revival of the comedy ballet Le carnaval et la folie by André Cardinal Destouches (1703). The performance, however, was not a great success, as the shortcomings of the text compared to that of the then well-known opera Destouches were abundantly clear. The music was only praised cautiously.

In 1751 there was a successful resumption with a new lavish production. After the opera in 1754 in the presence of King Louis XV. Having been played, it grew in popularity and became one of Rameau's most popular works. It was recorded again in 1760, 1764, 1772, 1777 and 1781 and performed more than 200 times during this period. The fact that it was parodied several times from 1751 at the latest speaks for its great popularity. The best-known parody version is the Brioché ou L'Origine des marionettes by Sulpice Edmé Gaubier de Barrault, performed in 1753 .

In 1913 a new edition of the score by Henri Büsser was published , on the occasion of which a new production was shown in the Parisian Théâtre des Arts. Since then, Pigmalion has been one of the most frequently staged operas by Rameau. Important recent performances have been at the Holland Festival Amsterdam in 1983 , the Brighton Festival in 1986, the Marymount Manhattan Theater in New York in 1987 and the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 1989 .

Recordings

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Mathias Spohr : Pigmalion. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater. Volume 5: Works. Piccinni - Spontini. Piper, Munich and Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-492-02415-7 , pp. 176-177.
  2. ↑ a b c Graham Sadler:  Pigmalion. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  3. ↑ August 27, 1748: “Pygmalion”. In: L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia ..
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Jean-Philippe Rameau. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all opera complete recordings. Zeno.org , volume 20.
  5. ↑ William Christie conducts Rameau's Pygmalion at the Aix-en-Provence Festival ( Memento from November 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on Mezzo TV , accessed on October 31, 2016.