“La bohème” – all those artists, creating and loving and freezing in their Parisian garrets. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take Paris in the spring!
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear highlights from Gustave Charpentier’s operatic masterpiece, “Louise.”
Charpentier himself was an inveterate Bohemian. Intoxicated by the artist’s life of Montmartre, he remained virtually suspended in time – the time, as a matter of fact, that is the setting of his most famous work.
Although “Louise” was not given its premiere until 1900, Charpentier had read an early draft of the libretto to a group of friends in the early 1890s. The action is set in 1885, the year Charpentier, like the poet Julien in the opera, fell profoundly in love with a seamstress. It was also the year he entered the composition class of Jules Massenet at the Paris Conservatory.
Charpentier was a surprise choice to win the Prix de Rome in 1887. He achieved several high-profile successes throughout the 1890s. “Louise” was finally completed in 1897. The composer’s fame, and the anticipated notoriety of the opera, with its independent heroine who follows her heart in defiance of convention, made “Louise” a box office smash.
The opera is touching in its conviction, and – although already a period piece at the time of its premiere – a prime example of Romantic subjective realism, actually conceived in advance of its verismo cousins by Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini. (Puccini composed “La bohème,” based on Henri Murger’s 1851 novel “Scènes de la vie de bohème,” between 1893 and 1895.)
Charpentier revised his libretto and music incessantly. We’ll enjoy selections from a 1935 recording, tailored specifically to the needs of the gramophone by the composer, who arranged and abridged the work in a manner he thought most conducive to listening at home. Soprano Ninon Vallin is Louise; tenor Georges Thill is Julien; bass André Pernet is Louise’s father; and mezzo-soprano Aimée Lecouvreur, her mother. The Raugel Orchestra is conducted by Eugene Bigot.
The enterprise was so highly regarded, both as an artistic and as a technical achievement, that it was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque in 1936. Charpentier was 75 at the time of the recording, and still living in his garret.
An abridged film version of “Louise” was made four years later, in 1939, again under the supervision of the composer. The esteemed Abel Gance directed, with Thill and Pernet again in the cast.
After “Louise,” Charpentier took one more stab at the theatre with his opera “Julien,” a sequel describing the artistic aspirations of Louise’s suitor, but thereafter he fell virtually silent as a composer, as if in acknowledgment that his earlier blockbuster success was a matter of luck, of his being perfectly in tune, for but a moment, with the spirit of the times. He lived out the remainder of his days in Montmartre, sporadically feted for his most popular achievement. Charpentier died in 1956, at the age of 95.
I hope you’ll join me for “Jeez, Louise” – highlights from Gustave Charpentier’s operatic masterwork, in an historic 1935 recording – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
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