Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo
(27 January 1823 – 22 April 1892)
“Namouna” Ballett Suite Nr. 1 & 2
(1882)
Lalo’s ballet Namouna premiered at the Paris Opéra on March 6, 1882. It foreshadowed the early modern ballets produced by Sergei Diaghilev because it was memorable for its musical score, rather than being noted for its choreography. Auguste Vaucerbeil commissioned the work just after being appointed director of the Paris Opéra in 1879, and intended for the work to be presented in the Fall of 1881. Charles-Louis Etienne Nuitter took two years to develop the book of the ballet in collaboration with Marius Petipa, then in his prime as the leading choreographer of the late nineteenth century.
Lalo rushed to complete the work (which was already overdue), and suffered a hemiplegic stroke. Vaucerbeil pushed to have the work completed by another composer, but Charles Gounod came to Lalo’s assistance, contributing to the orchestration.
Librettist
Charles-Louis Etienne Nuitter (1828-1899) was a French librettist, translator, and librarian who practiced law in Paris from 1849-66. He co-authored approximately 500 theatrical pieces, including libretti for Offenbach, Hervé, Lecocq, and Lalo. He created the scenario for Léo Delibes’ ballet Coppélia and assisted Wagner and Verdi with French translations and revisions of their works. In 1866, he became the official (volunteer) archivist of the Paris Opéra, increasing its holdings from 350 volumes to almost 8,000 in twenty years. His dedication to the Opéra encouraged later directors, such as Vaucerbeil in the 1880s, to rely on him for dozens of projects; these often overlapped and conflicted with each other, sometimes greatly delaying productions.
Choreographer
Marius Ivanovich Petipa (1818/22-1910) was a French ballet dancer, teacher, and choreographer. Although born in France, he was trained primarily in Belgium (while his father Jean was the Maître de Ballet and Premier danseur at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie); he danced in the 1840s at the Comédie Française and then at the Paris Opéra where his brother Lucien was a Premier danseur. Marius traveled widely, dancing notable roles in Bordeaux and Madrid before settling in Russia. He held the position of Premier Maître de Ballet of the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg from 1871-1903 and influenced many modern choreographers such as Léonide Massine and George Balanchine.
Petipa created over fifty ballets, revived many early Romantic ballets, and partnered some of the great Romantic ballerinas, such as Carlotta Grisi. As one of the last students of the great Auguste Vestris (in Paris), he mastered classical and folk forms (especially Spanish dances). Petipa acted as Premier danseur for the Mariinsky from 1847-58, collaborating with the most celebrated choreographer in Europe, French ballet master Jules Perrot.
By the 1860s, Perrot had returned to France, and Petipa began to create lavish ballets on exotic themes: The Pharoah’s Daughter (1862, inspired by Théophile Gautier’s pseudo-Egyptian Le Roman de la Momie), Don Quixote (1871, with a score by Ludwig Minkus) for the Bolshoi in Moscow, and the virtuosic La Bayadère (1877). To this day his choreography for the scene entitled The Kingdom of the Shades remains one of the ultimate challenges for the classical ballerina and danseur, and particularly for the corps de ballet.
Petipa did not slow down in his seventies: he supported a large family and restaged older works with increasing regularity. His revivals of Le Corsaire (1880), Giselle (1884) and Coppélia (1885) served as the models for nearly every version staged thereafter. During the same decade he collaborated with Tchaikovsky to create The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake. His last original works include ballets for the Boshoi, the coronation of Tsar Alexander III, and the Paris Opéra, including Lalo’s Namouna of 1882.
Composer
Born into a family with Spanish roots, Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo (1823-1892) studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Berlioz’s rival François Habeneck, who directed the orchestra at the Paris Opéra from 1821-46. He was an active violist and second violinist with the Armingaud Quartet, which promoted the music of the Viennese Classicists and early Romantics. Lalo wrote a great deal of chamber music and many of his vocal works were composed for his wife, Julie Bresnier de Maligny (a contralto). His operas were considered both progressive and Wagnerian, although he publicly dismissed Wagner and his followers.
Some of Lalo’s orchestral works remain in the standard repertoire: his Symphonie espagnole for violin and orchestra (1874), known by many violinists as “the Lalo,” was composed for Sarasate and recorded by Menuhin, Heifetz, Perman, and Stern. His Cello Concerto in D minor (1877) is widely played. These works are notable for colorful orchestration, and some melodies from his Piano Concerto inspired Maurice Jarre’s 1962 score for Lawrence of Arabia. Lalo’s masterpiece, the opera Le Roi d’Ys, is based on a Breton legend. It played in 1888 at the Paris Opéra-Comique, and was praised for its “extraordinarily deft and varied” music, “full of brilliantly successful numbers.” Recent scholarly interest in Lalo’s music has resulted in the 2007 world premiere of his opera Fiesque (1866-68), based on a new performing edition of the work by Hugh Macdonald (Washington University of St. Louis).
Lalo’s ballets are part of the Romantic repertory established by Delibes and Massenet. Lalo used strongly diatonic melodies, piquant harmonies, and ingenious orchestrations. His works contrast highly with his Parisian colleagues, such as César Franck and his pupils.
Namouna
Based on Casanova’s Memoirs, and set on the western Greek isle of Corfu, Namouna revolves around a slave girl who is lost in a bet by her owner. The young playboy who wins her sets her free, and she falls for him. Dancers play cymbals and smoke cigarettes, taking advantage of the exotic Mediterranean setting so typical of late Petipa ballets.
Namouna demonstrates Lalo’s genius for extraordinary and unique orchestration: the ballet score was a synthesis of contemporary (Wagnerian) harmony and classical (French) melodic grace. The Prelude is marked by a complex and glittering string divisi that might have been inspired by the Rainbow bridge scene in Das Rheingold, although Lalo denied Wagner’s influence. Stentorian brass and multiple harps present the first climax, which dissolves into a cocktail of French melody and Spanish bitters.
Like his contemporary Délibes, Lalo included several lighter divertissements in the hour-long ballet in order to feature individuals from the large corps de ballet: these include the charming Fête foraine and the Pas de cymbals, in which dancers add percussion to the orchestral texture. Lalo’s score quotes real Mediterranean folk music, as he had heard Moroccan melodies at the 1878 Exposition Universelle, and incorporated several into his score.
The Danse des esclaves and the dreamy Dolce far niente, with its muted strings, atmospheric pedal points, soft taps on the tambourine, and parallel fifths paired with English horn, adumbrate Debussy’s orchestra as does no other work of its time. The Sérénade inspired the second movement (Assez vif et bien rythmé) of Debussy’s String Quartet.
The controversial Premiere
On opening night, (March 6, 1882), Lalo placed groups of instruments not only in the pit, but also on the stage and in the front boxes. The orchestra appeared uninvolved and unruly in the first two performances, after which they rejoined the rest of the players. The Valse de la cigarette movement required smoking and rolling cigarettes on stage, and provoked a sensation.
In a recent chapter in French Opera at the Fin de Siècle (Oxford, 2005), McGill University Professor Steven Huebner has explored critical hostility to Lalo’s music: nineteen-year-old Claude Debussy attended the premiere of Namouna and was led out of the theater for excessive applause. He loudly defended the work from the box reserved for Conservatoire students.
There was such a scene that the board of L’Opéra voted the next week to exclude composition students from future performances of the work. Debussy praised Lalo’s orientalist harmonies for Namouna as “a masterpiece of rhythm and color,” and even wrote to Lalo’s son in 1900 (after he wrote a favorable review of Debussy’s La Damoiselle élue) to remind him of his father’s work, and how it had been a cause célèbre among the young composers of their time.
Performances and Recordings
Lalo preserved a great deal of Namouna in two suites, recomposing and re-orchestrating much of the music. Individual numbers were also exquisitely arranged – the Andantino for violin and orchestra, and the Sérénade for strings – while some of the score’s most winning melodic materials were worked into a ravishing Fantaisie-ballet for violin and orchestra.
Two excellent recordings of the suites have been brought out recently: Yondani Butt’s remarkable 1994 work with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (ASV) and David Robertson’s 1994 recording with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo (released in a 2001 box set entitled Musique française: Ferrous, Lalo, Schmitt, Vieuxtemps, Tournemire). Martinon’s 1956 version of both suites (re-released by Naxos), and Paray’s 1957 recording of the Suite No. 1 (Mercury 434389) remain valuable historical documents.
In April 2010, the New York City Ballet notably revived Lalo’s ballet Namouna. Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky developed what he called “the clichés of classical ballets” in a way that evoked early modern art, combined with the props required by Petipa for the original 1882 production.
Laura Prichard, 2011
For performance materials please contact Otto Junne, Munich. Reprint of a copy from the library of the Conservatoire de musique Genève, Geneva.
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