Azara (opera)

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Azara
Opera by John Knowles Paine
Aucassin and Nicolette
by Marianne Stokes (1905)
LibrettistPaine
LanguageEnglish
Based onAucassin and Nicolette (12th–13th century)
Premiere
7 May 1903 (1903-05-07)
Chickering Hall, Boston

Azara is an English-language American opera in three acts with the music and libretto both by John Knowles Paine.[1] It is based on a anonymous medieval French story, Aucassin and Nicolette.[2] Paine began work on Azara in 1883 and finished in 1898.[3]

Azara, a drama set in Provence in the Middle Ages, "confronts daughter with guardian, son with father, and pursuer with fugitive."[4] The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera said the plot "is a classic conflict between Christians and Muslims, with the requisite opposing choruses, and a private story is set against the political background although the two spheres are never truly integrated."[5]

The work premiered in 1903 in a concert version at Chickering Hall in Boston.[6] Azara has never been fully staged.[7] Paine's biographer called Azara "the supreme effort of his life and caused him the greatest disappointment in its failure to reach production."[8]

Synopsis

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The French knight Maugis
fighting the Saracens (15th century)

Setting: Provence, around the time of the First Crusade.[9]

Act I

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Interior of Rainulf's castle.

Rainulf, king of Provence, awaits news of the battle between his forces, led by the king's son Gontran, against a Saracen army led by Mälek. Count Odo, a page, enters with news of Gontran's victory.

Rainulf notices the beautiful Azara, a Moorish girl who is the ward of Count Aymar, one of the king's vassals. Rainulf decides he wants to possess Azara. Gontran enters and announces his triumph and that he will marry Azara, to whom he has secretly been betrothed.

The king claims that Azara was pledged in a dynastic marriage in Spain. The king's knights argue it is improper for a prince to marry a non-Christian. Azara's guardian, Count Aymar, tells the king he found Azara on the battlefield when she was a child; even though she was born a Moorish princess, she has been baptized and raised a Christian.

Rainulf is angered. He orders Aymar and Azara to leave his sight and orders his son to depart for Spain. Gontran, furious that his father would thwart his marriage, brings in Mälek, returns his sword, and frees him. Amid fighting between the courtiers, Mälek disappears. Gontran and his father argue. Gontran alludes to Rainulf's past sins. The king disowns Gontran.[10]

Act II

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A forest glade near the sea at night.

Aymar and Azara have fled the castle and are preparing to go into exile. Garcie and Colas, shepherds, enter with the huntsman. They report that Gontran has fled the castle and is in the forest looking for Azara. The group sets off to find Gontran and encounters Mälek. Mälek is struck by the resemblance between Azara and the wife of his caliph. He realizes Azara must be the princess that was captured years before. He begs Azara to flee with him. Azara refuses and threatens to kill herself when Mälek insists she accompany him. Hearing Gontran's approach, Mälek flees.

Gontran and Azara are joyful to be reunited. Rainulf and his retinue enter. The king offers to forgive his son if he will give up Azara so the king may have her. Gontran refuses. Drawing his sword, Gontran announces Rainulf had murdered the queen and looted the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Gontran presents a document from Rome in which the pope has excommunicated the king.

Mälek returns with his army, surrounding Gontran, Rainulf, and Azara. The Saracens seize Azara and wound Rainulf. The king begs forgiveness of his son and dies. Gontran and Aymar watch the Saracens sail off, singing of their victory.[11]

Act III

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A year later, near the moat of Rainulf's castle, now Gontran's.

King Gontran laments Azara's fate. Aymar reassures him that as Azara was the caliph 's daughter, Mälek would not have harmed her. Cheered by that, Gontran announces that he will participate in the festivities for May Day. Courtiers, townspeople, minstrels, musicians, and dancers appear and begin the celebrations. One of the minstrels is Mälek in disguise. He laments Azara's escape from Spain to return to Gontran. He notices another minstrel, who is Azara in disguise. She approaches Gontran. When asked to sing, she tells her story of love, capture, and escape. Azara throws off her mantle. Upon revealing herself, Mälek advances and tries to stab her. Gontran stops him and takes his knife. Mälek is filled with remorse and bags Azara to forgive him. He pulls out a second knife and stabs himself to death. Gontran and Azara embrace.[12]

Composition

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John Knowles Paine

Paine (1839–1906) was a pioneering American composer who was known internationally, "the best composer of his time and the only one who attempted classical works." [13] Rupert Hughes said "before Mr. Paine there had never been an American music writer worthy of serious consideration."[14] Paine in 1875 was appointed a professor of music at Harvard College, the first music professor at any American university.[15]

Paine began work on Azara in spring 1883.[16] Paine focused his energies on the opera and his output of other musical compositions dropped off.[17] Offers were made by William Dean Howells and Thomas Bailey Aldrich, both editors of The Atlantic Monthly, to draft a libretto but Paine declined, writing it himself.[16] Theodore Thomas–who had premiered Paine's Symphony No. 1 in 1876–offered to produce Paine's opera through the new American Opera Company, but the company collapsed before Azara was produced.[18] After fifteen years of work, the opera was finished in 1898.[8] Walter Spalding, a fellow music professor at Harvard, said Paine's "words and music show genius of the highest order" with "striking harmonies and melodies, masterly orchestration, dramatic power and picturesque scenic features."[19] The title role was intended by Paine for soprano Emma Eames; like Paine, Eames was a Mainer.[20]

Azara had a running time of three hours.[21] The score called for three flutes, a piccolo, two oboes, an English horn, two clarinets, a bass clarinet, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, two trombones, a bass trombone, tuba, tambourine, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle and strings.[22] The work was "strongly suggestive" of Richard Wagner.[23] Emulating Wagner's style and the structure of his operas, particularly Der Ring des Nibelungen, was common for American operas of the time.[24] Paine, like Wagner, created leitmotifs for his characters.[25]

The libretto was published in 1898.[26] The vocal score was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1901, which included the words in both English and German.[27] The score was priced at $5.[28] A full score was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1908.[29]

Upon publication of the vocal score, one magazine observed that it was unlikely the opera would be performed in the composer's lifetime as American opera companies had a "No American need apply" policy.[30] A review in The Concert-goer faulted it as old-fashioned, finding it a "conventional opera of the old sort, in which the drama is nothing, the words excuses for a soprano solo here, a duet there, a grand ensemble of soloists and chorus at the end of each act. Such writing may have been very attractive fifty years ago, but to-day from a man who has felt the influence of Wagner and Verdi, we expect something different."[31]

Performances

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Chickering Hall, site of the 1903 premiere

Under conductor Wilhelm Gericke, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed "Three Moorish Dances," a suite from Azara, in two concerts on May 9 and 10, 1900.[32][33] Philip Hale, the critic for the Boston Herald, observed "the dances were heartily applauded" and that it was "a pity that a serious opera by an American composer of established reputation should not first see footlights in the land of his birth. Walter Damrosch was luckier with his 'Scarlet Letter'; he had his own opera company, but it is not every composer who can afford this luxury."[34] The critic for the Boston Evening Transcript, William Foster Apthorp, said Azara was a work for which "our cognoscenti have been smacking their lips for some time; it has been a curious experience to know that an American opera was gradually growing into completeness for years out there in quiet, academic Cambridge."[35] The dances were "bright and fascinating . . . brilliant and sparkling."[36] Theodore Thomas led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the "Moorish Dances" in October 1900.[37] Paine's publishers issued the sheet music of the "Three Moorish Dances."[38]

Azara was given a concert performance at Boston's Chickering Hall on May 7, 1903.[39] Ephraim Cutter, Jr., and Paine accompanied the singers on piano; there was no orchestra.[40] Apthorp in the Transcript said Azara was Paine's best work: "one wishes more than ever that one could hear the whole work, given as it should be, on the actual stage."[41]

For several years, there were reports that the Metropolitan Opera or a company in Germany would stage Azara.[42] For example, the Boston Evening Transcript reported in June 1905 that a production by the Metropolitan Opera under its general manager Heinrich Conried was expected in the following season.[43] That fall, The New Music Review said Conried was willing to produce the opera "if he can get the company to study it."[44] A 1907 report said Conried attempted to stage Azara that year but the Met was unable to find enough singers familiar with the English language in order to cast the demanding solo parts.[45] Conried also said the chorus of his company would not learn English-language lyrics.[46] The Providence Journal in 1907 editorialized about the "vague promises of Direktor Conried and others" for the staging of Azara.[47] Charles Sumner Hamlin, a Boston attorney who served as the first chairman of the Federal Reserve, wrote President Theodore Roosevelt about Hamlin's efforts to lobby both Andrew Dickson White, American ambassador to Germany, and the German ambassador to the United States to have Azara performed in Berlin; Hamlin asked Roosevelt to raise the matter with Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of Emperor Wilhelm II, during the prince's visit to the United States.[48]

A second concert version of Azara was performed April 9, 1907, at Symphony Hall in Boston by the Celia Society of Boston with an orchestra conducted by Benjamin Johnson Lang.[49][50] This performance came a year after the composer's death.[51] The cast included Alice May Bates Rice in the title role and Bertha Cushing Child as Odo.[52] Musical America wrote "there are several remarkably brilliant orchestral effects" and Azara was "a work of great merit."[52]

Just before Paine's death, an article in The Etude asserted "the first performance of this work, which must surely come soon, will be another peak in our musical history."[53]

Roles

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Roles, voice types, 1903 concert premiere, 1907 concert version
Role[54] Voice type[54] Chickering Hall, 1903
Director: Ephraim Cutter, Jr. 		Symphony Hall, 1907
Conductor:Benjamin Johnson Lang[55]
Rainulf, King of Provence bass Ralph E. Brown H.F. Merrill
tenor Ernest R. Leeman George Deane
Azara, ward of Aymar soprano Rebecca W. Cutter/Grace Lowell Bradbury Alice Bates Rice
Aymar, count & vassal of Rainulf baritone David Tobey/George A. Tyler Earl Cartwright
Odo, count & royal page mezzo-soprano Mrs. Vincent Lyman Bertha Cushing Child
Mälek, a Saracen chief baritone David Tobey Stephen Townsend
Garcie, shepherdess mezzo-soprano Rebecca W. Cutter Rebecca Howe[a]
Colas, shepherd contralto Mrs. Albert Thorndike Adelaide Griggs
Huntsman tenor Ernest R. Leeman James Rattigan

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ This is the same person as Rebecca Cutter.

References

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  1. ^ Griffel, Margaret Ross (2013). Operas in English: A Dictionary. Vol. 1. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 34. ISBN 9780810883253.
  2. ^ Griffel 2013, p. 34.
  3. ^ Faucett, Bill F. (2016). Music in Boston: Composers, Events, and Ideas, 1852–1918. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. p. 189. ISBN 9781498537391. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  4. ^ Kirk, Elise K. (2001). American Opera. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 131. ISBN 9780252026232. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  5. ^ Hibberd, Sarah (2003). "Grand Opera in Britain and the Americas". In Charlton, David (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 419. ISBN 978-0-521-64683-3. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  6. ^ Schmidt, John C. (1980). The Life and Works of John Knowles Paine. Studies in Musicology, No. 34. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press. p. 207. ISBN 0835711269. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  7. ^ Hall, Brad (2006). American Popular Music: Classical. New York: Facts on File. p. 14. ISBN 081606976X. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  8. ^ a b Schmidt 1980, p. 198.
  9. ^ Paine, John Knowles (1898). Azara, Opera in Three Acts. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press. p. 5. OCLC 20776957.
  10. ^ Paine 1898, p. 5–6.
  11. ^ Paine 1898, p. 6–9.
  12. ^ Paine 1898, p. 9–10.
  13. ^ Hubbard, William Lines, ed. (1908). The American History and Encyclopedia of Music. Toledo, Ohio: Irving Squire. p. 294. LCCN 08014362. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  14. ^ Hughes, Rupert (1914). American Composers: A Study of the Music of This Country and of Its Future, with Biographies of the Leading Composers of the Present Time (Revised ed.). Boston: Page. p. 146. LCCN 14020511.
  15. ^ Gleason, Harold; Becker, Warren (1982). Early American Music: Music in America from 1620 to 1920 (2nd ed.). Bloomington, Indiana: Frangipani Press. p. 152. ISBN 0899172652.
  16. ^ a b Schmidt 1980, p. 193.
  17. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 192.
  18. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 194.
  19. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 199.
  20. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 205.
  21. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 211.
  22. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 560.
  23. ^ Grout, Donald Jay; Williams, Hermine Weigel (2003). A Short History of Opera (4th ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. p. 571. ISBN 0231119585. Retrieved February 17, 2025.
  24. ^ Usai, Paolo Cherchi (2019). The Griffith Project: Films Produced in 1914-15. Vol. 8. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781839020155. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  25. ^ Kirk 2001, p. 132.
  26. ^ Paine 1898.
  27. ^ Paine, John Knowles (1901). Azara: Opera in Three Acts. Leipzig, Germany: Breitkopf und Härtel. OCLC 24621091. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  28. ^ Breitkopf & Härtel (November 1901). "Just Published! Azara". Musical Record and Review. No. 478. Boston: Oliver Dotson Company. p. 90. hdl:2027/nyp.33433085224230. OCLC 2448832. Retrieved February 17, 2025.
  29. ^ Boston Public Library (1972). Dictionary Catalog of the Music Collection. Vol. 13. Boston: G.K. Hall. p. 11. ISBN 0816109567. Retrieved February 22, 2025.
  30. ^ "Reviews and Notices". Music: A Monthly Magazine, Devoted to the Art, Science, Technic and Literature of Music. Vol. 21. Chicago: Music Magazine Publishing. January 1902. p. 178.
  31. ^ Marsh, Edward Clark (November 9, 1901). "An American Opera". The Concert-goer. No. 157. New York: Wilcox & Haigh. p. 6. OCLC 10073768. Retrieved February 22, 2025.
  32. ^ Faucett 2016, p. 190.
  33. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 200.
  34. ^ Hale, Philip (December 23, 1903). "Boston Symphony Orchestra, Eighth Concert". Musical Courier. Vol. 47, no. 26. New York. p. 40. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  35. ^ Apthorp, William Foster (March 12, 1900). "Music Hall: Boston Symphony Orchestra". Boston Evening Transcript. Vol. 71. p. 8. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  36. ^ Apthorp 1900, p. 8.
  37. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 201.
  38. ^ Paine, John Knowles (1901). Ballet-Musik aus der Opera "Azara" (drei maurische Tänze). Leipzig, Germany: Breitkopf und Härtel. OCLC 1323177087. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  39. ^ Paine, John Knowles (1903). Azara. OCLC 22159189.
  40. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 207.
  41. ^ Apthorp, William Foster (May 8, 1903). "Chickering Hall: 'Azara'". Boston Evening Transcript. Vol. 74. p. 11. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  42. ^ Schmidt 1980, p. 210.
  43. ^ "Honoring Professor Paine". Boston Evening Transcript. Vol. 76. June 27, 1905. p. 28. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  44. ^ "The Opera Season". The New Music Review and Church Music Review. Vol. 4, no. 47. New York: Novello, Ewer & Co. October 1905. p. 473. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  45. ^ Kirk 2001, p. 130.
  46. ^ Tewa, Nicholas E. (1991). The Coming of Age of American Art Music: New England's Classical Romanticism. Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance, No. 22. New York: Greenwood Press. p. 97. ISBN 0313277974. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  47. ^ Providence Journal (August 8, 1907). "English Opera". The Providence Journal. Providence, Rhode Island. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  48. ^ Letter from Charles Sumner Hamlin to Theodore Roosevelt, February 17, 1902, held by the Library of Congress, on-line at Theodore Roosevelt Center, Dickinson State University, accessed February 22, 2025.
  49. ^ "Performance of 'Azara': Opera by Late Prof. Paine to be Sung for First Time in Boston Tonight". The Harvard Crimson. Cambridge, Massachusetts. April 9, 1907.
  50. ^ Pratt, Waldo Selden, ed. (1922). "Cecilia Society, The, of Boston". Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians: American Supplement. Vol. 6 (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: Theodore Presser. p. 156. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  51. ^ Loomis, Delbert L. (April 13, 1907). "John K. Paine's Opera 'Azara' Sung by Boston Choral Society". Musical America. Vol. 5, no. 22. New York: Musical America Company. p. 5. Retrieved February 22, 2025.
  52. ^ a b Loomis 1907, p. 5.
  53. ^ Elson, Louis C. (March 1906). "John Knowles Paine: The First of the Great American Composers". The Etude. Vol. 24, no. 3. Philadelphia: Theodore Presser. p. 194. Retrieved February 22, 2025.
  54. ^ a b Paine 1898, p. 4.
  55. ^ Crimson 1907.

Further reading

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  • Schmidt, John C. (1980b). The Life and Works of John Knowles Paine. Studies in Musicology, No. 34. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press. ISBN 0835711269. A history of the composition of Azara and its performance history is at pages 193–215. An extensive discussion of the score appears at pages 559–635.
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