…curtain is supposed to curtail at a tactful moment. The dual conversion of moll and monk has always been seen as inherently improbable, yet there were several real-life examples of courtesans, who, when their charms faded, transferred their affections from mortal males to the most uplifting bridegroom of all.

An unjustly neglected Massenet piece is a version of Alphonse Daudet’s novel Sapho, published in 1884. The story of an artist’s model who gets her claws into a good-looking young hick from Provence, the book titillated Paris – though its lesbian scenes and goings-on in painters’ studios are unfortunately omitted from the opera. What remains is a searching examination of a relationship between an older woman and a younger man, very close to the world of Colette’s Chéri – or perhaps an alternative Traviata in which death does not intervene. It is a passionate score, compact and full of strong situations and good tunes, eminently worthy of revival, were it not for the fact that the heroine’s real name is Fanny Le Grand … In extremes of passion the tenor repeatedly blurts out “O ma Fanny!” Premiered in 1897 the opera received a real PR boost by coinciding with Daudet’s death after prolonged suffering caused by syphilis.

The heart of the matter?

Massenet and Puccini fans may wonder why I have not invoked the name of Manon Lescaut, subject of a successful and durable opera by each composer (and who even inspired a sentimental sequel by Massenet). The thing is that Manon is emphatically not a tart with a heart. Originally created by Abbé Prevost in his novel of c.1733, she is a child of the less sentimental eighteenth century, and takes her place in a queue of very different femmes fatales – amoral, thoughtless, more man-devouring, perhaps deriving from Moll Flanders; charmante though she is, she points the way to the feral Carmen, and thence to the more predatory expressionist floozies – Wagner’s Kundry in Parsifal, Strauss’s Lolita-like Salome, and Berg’s monstrous Lulu.

The sentimental conceit of the ‘tart with a heart’ did not long survive the nineteenth century. So, why does Violetta retain her fascination in today’s society where her social dilemma, class and morality are now so totally irrelevant? Is it more to do with her renunciation of happiness for the supposed greater good?

Talking of which, The Greater Good – a recent opera (2006) by American composer Stephen Hartke, available on CD from Naxos, has caused a moderate stir. Based on Guy de Maupassant’s novella Boule de Suif, it takes place during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A prostitute shares a delayed carriage journey, and her bountiful picnic, with three respectable families. When the group is held to ransom, her travelling companions pressure her into saving the day by giving herself to a Prussian officer. The deed done, she is…

‹ First  < 1 2 3 4 > 

Recent

Prima Donnas and Picnics

Could it be magic?

Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House

Violetta and her sisters

Salome, Sacrilege and the Censor

Why Opera?

San Francisco's new beginnings

Arabian opera nights

Welser-Möst in Vienna

Opera's hot in Chile

Comments

There are currently no comments.