French Opera - The Twentieth Century and Beyond

The Twentieth Century and Beyond

The early years of the twentieth century saw two more French operas which, though not on the level of Debussy's achievement, managed to absorb Wagnerian influences while retaining a sense of individuality. These were Gabriel Fauré's austerely Classical Pénélope (1913) and Paul Dukas's colourful Symbolist drama, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue (1907). The more frivolous genres of operetta and opéra comique still thrived in the hands of composers like André Messager and Reynaldo Hahn. Indeed, for many people, light and elegant works like this represented the true French tradition as opposed to the "Teutonic heaviness" of Wagner. This was the opinion of Maurice Ravel, who wrote only two short but ingenious operas: L'heure espagnole (1911), a farce set in Spain; and L'enfant et les sortilèges (1925), a fantasy set in the world of childhood in which various animals and pieces of furniture come to life and sing. A younger group of composers, who formed a group known as Les Six shared a similar aesthetic to Ravel. The most important members of Les Six were Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc. Milhaud was a prolific and versatile composer who wrote in a variety of forms and styles, from the Opéras-minutes (1927–28), none of which is more than ten minutes long, to the epic Christophe Colomb (1928). The Swiss-born Honegger experimented mixing opera with oratorio in works such as Le Roi David (1921) and Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher (1938). But the most successful opera composer of the group was Poulenc, though he came late to the genre with the surrealist comedy Les mamelles de Tirésias in 1947. In complete contrast, Poulenc's greatest opera, Dialogues des Carmélites (1957) is an anguished spiritual drama about the fate of a convent during the French Revolution. Poulenc wrote some of the very few operas since the Second World War to win a wide international audience. Another post-war composer to attract attention outside France was Olivier Messiaen, like Poulenc a devout Catholic. Messiaen's religious drama Saint François d'Assise (1983) requires huge orchestral and choral forces and lasts four hours. St. François in turn was one of the inspirations for Kaija Saariaho's L'amour de loin (2000). Denisov's L'écume des jours (1981) is an adaptation of the novel by Boris Vian. Philippe Boesmans' Julie (2005, after Strindberg's Miss Julie) was commissioned by the Théâtre de la Monnaie of Brussels, an important center for French opera even in Lully's day.