We’re showcasing another relatively forgotten opera on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/2 7:00 p.m.) but one that was incredibly popular when it premiered in 1900. About the only thing that’s remembered about Gustav Charpentier’s “Louise” is one aria for the title character titled “Depuis le jour” that appears on many operatic collections and concerts. However, Charpentier was attempting something Interesting in “Louise” that has been called a “musical novel” which is more concerned with its musical form than its content. Indeed, Charpentier tried extremely hard to include Paris as one of the work’s characters in order to paint his musical picture.
There is, slight though it may be, a plot, and this lack of a “robust” plot is often held against the piece. However, Charpentier’s music is simply glorious.
Louise (Elsa Dresig) is a seamstress who has fallen in love with her neighbor Julien (Adam Smith) to the objections of her parents (Sophie Koch & Nicolas Courjal). Julien begs Louise to run away with him, but she explains that she loves her parents too much. However, Louise’s love for Julien grows too strong, and after she’s teased at the dressmaking shop where she works, she decides that she’s had enough of her controlling parents and quietly runs away with him.
Louise and Julien lead an Idyllic life in Montmartre until her mother appears and tells Louise that her father is extremely ill and cannot work any longer. Julien tells Louise that she is free to go home to look after her father if she promises to return to him.
Back in her parents’ home, Louise’s father has made a remarkable recovery, and she is thrust back into her position as a go-between or pet to her parents, which she resents. One evening, she hears a merry waltz outside of the house and begins to madly sing along with it. Her father is infuriated that she still wants to be with Julien and attacks her, but Louise’s mother intercedes, and Louise takes the opportunity to run out of the house and back to Julien, leaving her father to curse Paris for stealing his daughter.
This production comes from the Aix-en-Provence Festival and features the Lyon Opera Orchestra, Chorus, and Children’s Chorus and is conducted by Giacomo Sagripanti.
After the opera, you’ll have the opportunity to hear a work that predated “Louise” but became the source material for its sequel, "Julien ou la vie du poete." La vie du poete (The Life of the Poet) is a self-titled symphonic-drama that is seen as a highly autobiographical representation of Charpentier’s life although much of it is a fantasy. It features soloists Alain Buet, Bernard Richter, Sabine Devielhe, and Helena Bohuszewicz with the Flemish Radio Choir and the Royal Symphonic Band of the Belgian Guides and is conducted by Herve Niquet.
We’ll close our time together with a work by a contemporary of Charpentier, Claude Debussy and his two-part Fantasie featuring pianist Jean-Yves Thiabaudet with the Orchestre National de Lyon and conductor Jun Markl.
