[Met Performance] CID:3250

Metropolitan Opera Premiere, New Production

Masaniello
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, December 29, 1884


In German, Translation by unknown



Masaniello (1)
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber | Eugène Scribe/Germain Delavigne
Fenella
Isolina Torri

Alphonse
Emil Tiferro

Elvire
Hermine Bely

Masaniello
Anton Schott

Selva
Joseph Miller

Pietro
Joseph Kögel

Borella
Ludwig Wolf

Moreno
Hermann Weber

Lady
Anna Stern


Conductor
Leopold Damrosch


Director
Wilhelm Hock

Choreographer
F. Baptiste Ceruti

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber



Masaniello received four performances this season.
Alternate Title: La Muette de Portici.

Review 1:

Review in The Evening Post

It is not often that a more interested and enthusiastic audience assembles in an opera-house than that which last evening was in the Metropolitan listening to Auber's "Masaniello," an opera which has not been heard in New York for more than a decade. It is said that Auber's masterwork has never been a special favorite in New York. If this is true, the fault must he entirely with the inadequate performances, as in the case of "Tannhäuser" and some other works that are this year produced for the first time in a worthy manner. No one can have witnessed the performance last evening without being stirred by emotions of various kinds, and without feeling anxious to hear the opera again at the earliest possible opportunity. The weakness of Herr Tiferro, the subordinate tenor, and Furl. Bely's inability to fill so large a house with her small but otherwise good voice, kept the first act below the level of the other four, which were as fine as anything that has been done at the Metropolitan. Herr Schott's Masaniello is in aspect and song cast in that heroic mould which his military training enables him to assume to perfection. The part of the dumb prima donna, Fenella, was entrusted to the ballet dancer Signorina Isolina, whose face and figure have the expressiveness required for this pantomimic rôle; and some of her gestures, as where she describes her escape from prison, and her pursuit by the soldiers, were as eloquent as words could be.

"Masaniello" was one of the first operas -if not the first-in which the .chorus was made to take a part in the action, instead of standing around like blasé spectators and commentators of the action. This was an epoch-making innovation, for in the modern music-drama the chorus only appears on the stage to play a real part, leaving the function of the old Greek chorus - that of commentator - to the orchestra. This new, or at least, enlarged function of the orchestra was also anticipated by Auber in those wonderfully eloquent orchestral measures, which help to interpret the gestures of the mute Fenella. It is well known that the oddity of assigning the leading role in an opera to a dumb performer was not premeditated by Auber and Scribe, but the result of an accident, there being at the time no good dramatic singer at the Paris Opèra, so that a happy thought induced the authors to modify their plot in such a way as to utilize the powers of a contemporary ballet dancer famous for her mimetic powers. To this accident the world owes one of the most interesting operatic experiments; and without it Auber would have never been able to reveal the depth of his genius and show the world how au orchestra can be made to speak. If the mannerisms in the closing bars of many numbers in "Masaniello" show the influence of Rossini, Auber's genius in turn had not a little to do with Rossini's "Tell," which followed a year after "Masaniello"" (in 1829) and Meyerbeer's "Robert," which came three years later (1831). The finest thing in Meyerbeer's operas is generally conceded to be the duo in the fourth act of the "Huguenots;" yet if any one will listen carefully to the orchestra during Masaniello's song at the [beginning] of Act IV he will discover where Meyerbeer got the motive of his duo bodily.

In the attention paid in it to the action scenic effects "Masaniello" had a still greater influence on the development of grand opera in France and elsewhere. And it must be said that the manner in which these scenic effects are presented at the Metropolitan is unprecedented in our operatic history. The animation of the fisherman's camp is surpassed by that of the market scene, the realism of which goes into such details as a real Punch and Judy show - in one corner and culminates in au attack of the soldiers, while the market men assume the defensive and make the air thick with cabbage heads and turnips. But the climax comes in the last act, representing the eruption of Vesuvius, which towers over a fine view of Naples. A lurid atmosphere hangs over the crowded stage when a thin volume of smoke begins to issue from the crater as it grows denser and the tumult on the stage greater, lightning flashes of various colors illumine the scene, and finally the fire breaks out in a broad column. Herr Hock showed himself in these matters a master of stage management, and he was deservedly recalled at the end of the third act.

Like all real works of genius "Masaniello" has preserved the freshness of its youth, and is almost as enjoyable to a lover of good music today as it was half a century ago. Its influence on Meyerbeer and Rossini has been referred to, but it left its mark on a much greater master, Richard Wagner, whose enthusiasm for "Masaniello" was unbounded. It may be said, indeed, that next to Weber's "Euryanthe" no opera had so great an influence in shaping Wagner's genius as this. Not that he cared to imitate the vivacious, champagne-like melody of Auber; but the direction of his aims was made clearer to him by Auber's treatment of the chorus, the orchestra, the action, and the scenery. "Masaniello" (or "La Muette de Portici") is in some of its details as Wagnerian as the "Flying Dutchman," and more so than "Rienzi." In one of his earliest essays, published in the first volume of his literary works, Wagner says: "French dramatic music culminated in Auber's La Muette do Portici," a national work such as every nation can show only once at most. This tempestuous vigor, this ocean of sentiment and passion, painted in the most vivid colors, mixed with the most original melodies, a mixture of grace and energy, elegance and heroism - is not all this the very embodiment of the recent history of the French nation." And that this was not the effusive enthusiasm of a youth is shown by the fact that in the ninth volume of his works are contained his reminiscences of Auber, in which "Masaniello" is referred to in similar terms, and the promise is made of writing a special essay on this opera, which, however, death prevented him from fulfilling.



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