When we hear of Paul Dukas, we generally think of one thing: “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” And when we think of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” we think of Mickey Mouse.
Dukas was an intensely self-critical artist, who wound up destroying most of his own works. Eventually he gave up composition altogether. Rather, like Shakespeare’s Prospero, he broke his staff and drowned his book to become a respected teacher of music, taking up posts at the Paris Conservatory and the École Normale de Musique. Among his students were Carlos Chávez, Maurice Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen, Manuel Ponce and Joaquin Rodrigo.
Would that this creator of such vivid, brilliantly orchestrated works had left us more. But since all anyone knows is “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” I suppose it hardly matters.
Here’s a suite from his rarely-heard opera, “Ariane et Barbe-Bleue,” after the Bluebeard story. Bluebeard, of course, is the fairy tale uxoricide whose castle rooms reveal increasingly horrible secrets. But since Dukas’ libretto was taken from a play by Maurice Maeterlinck – whose “Pelléas et Mélisande” Debussy was only just in the process of finishing up – there is less blood, and more layers of airy ambiguity. In fact, Maeterlinck essentially turns the tale on its head, making Ariane a pluckily resourceful, would-be liberator.
Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony and Princeton’s own Westminster Choir:
“O mes clairs diamants” (“O my clear diamonds”):
Those expecting a darker, more disturbing, psychologically twisted account of the fairy story should stick with Bartók’s Bluebeard.
Zut alors! Look what I found! Silent film master Georges Méliès’ adaptation of Bluebeard:
Mommy! Where’s Mickey Mouse???
Why, right here…
Happy birthday, Paul Dukas (1865-1935)!
PICTURED: The key to a dysfunctional marriage; and Mickey Mouse, axe-murderer
