Delibes' unfinished opera "Kassya"

[adriano]

This will be this year's Monpellier-Radio France production (with broadcast):

http://lefestival.eu/evenements/246-186-Kassya,l'opérainachevé

- with an excellent cast and conductor!

On 11th July they also have a production of Offenbach's "La Périchole" conducted by Marc Minkowski:

http://lefestival.eu/evenements/236-182-LaPérichole-Minkowski

[mjmosca]

I had read in the past that "Kassya" was the last, unfinished opera by Leo Delibes and that Massenet completed it. In Demar Irving's [recent] biography of Massenet, he suggests that the libretto was flawed and the basic cause of the lack of success. I am delighted that it is going to be revived so that it can be heard again.

[adriano]

Of course it's Delibes, sorry for this mistake, but I feel dizzy due to strong painkillers and try to overcome another hard day like this :-)

[Alan Howe]

Not to worry, Adriano. I've changed the thread title. All the best to you!

[adriano]

Thanks very much, Alan!
The Montpellier management really deserves a Legion d'Honneur Medal for so many years of commitment to unusual operas!
I just hope one day they will produce an opera by Sylvio Lazzari! Not necessarily his "La Lépreuse" (which still, is very valuable), but "La Tour de Feu"!

[Collrec]

As one of the founding members of the American Massenet Society back in 1977, Kassya was the only opera that the society did not have a piano vocal score of. Since the society no longer exists here in the USA, I would hope that a download of the Radio France broadcast on Saturday, July 21, 2018 by a European UC member could be made and then uploaded to the UC website for all of us to hear.

In the meantime I have translated into English the Radio France announcement of Kassya and am copying it below. I hope some UC member can do the downloading and uploading as I do not have the facilities to do so.

LEO DELIBES  1836-1891

KASSYA

Opéra in 4 Acts and 5 Scenes
Completed and Orchestrated by Jules Massenet  (1842-1912)

Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille
Premiere Performance: Opéra-Comique, 24 March 1893

Concert Version
Saturday, 21 July 2018
Radio France Broadcast from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM (France Time)

Cast
   Kassya   Véronique Gens, Soprano
   Sonia   Anne-Catherine Gillet, Soprano
   Une Bohémienne   Nora Gubisch, Mezzo-Soprano
   Cyrille   Cyrille Dubois, Ténor
   Le Comte de Zevale   Alexandre Duhamel, Baritone
   Kostska   Renaud Delaigue, Bass
   Kolenati   Jean-Gabriel Saint-Martin, Baritone
   Mochkou   Rémy Mathieu, Ténor
   Un Sergent Recruteur   Anas Seguin, Baritone
   Un Buveur, Un Vieillard   Luc Bertin-Hugault, Bass
   Un Marchand (Soliste Radio Lettone)   Kārlis Rūtentāls, Ténor

Orchestre National Montpellier Occitanie
Chœur Opéra National Montpellier Occitanie, Chorus Master, Noëlle Gény
Chœur de la Radio Lettone, Chorus Master, Sigvards Klava
Michael Schønwandt Conducting

Chef de chant David Zobel

The Man of One Woman? Delibes, from Lakme to Kassya
Unlike Debussy, adored by younger generations, or Massenet, never forgotten performers, the name of Leo Delibes has long been associated with an opera, reduced to demonstrations of bravery sopranos emeritus and a unique heroine: the strange, evanescent Lakmé. It was not until the last part of the twentieth century to weaken stubborn clichés.

Kassya, the opera testament, is exemplary of this half-hearted inheritance: brilliant librettists, a fashionable subject taken from an outrageous author ... And eight performances before a complete disappearance of the opera scenes! Everything was brought together to guarantee the success of the project. But the vagaries of production at the time when European music was undergoing telluric changes explain its status as a cursed work. After Lakmé, the time seems finally come to recognize the subtlety of a musician too often reduced to his taste for coloratura.

From India to the Carpathians
"Where is the young Hindu, daughter of the pariahs, when the moon is played in the big mimosas? In 1883, the creation of Lakmé, a cruel evocation of relations between India and the West, enabled Delibes to establish a brilliant career, crowned by a post of professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire and by an appointment to the 'Institute. The innumerable recognitions that accompany such a success slow down the genesis of his new project, devoted to Eastern Europe. After India under the domination of the English, Central Europe of Galicia, between Poland and Ukraine, shaken by the class tensions between nobles and peasants. At the end of six years of a difficult genesis, Delibes died brutally in January 1891, leaving Kassya unfinished and his contemporary, Jules Massenet, to complete the orchestration.

The plot takes up the motive of the seductress, to whom Delibes gives an infinitely more cruel character than the innocent Lakmé. The amorous quartet proceeds by mirroring female figures (Kassya's ambivalence in the face of Sonia's loyalty) and social classes (aristocrats and peasants).

Two librettists, one of whom, Henri Meilhac, had made himself known to Carmen, and the other, Philippe Gille, had officiated for Lakmé ... and an unexpected author! Kassya's plot is directly borrowed from Sacher-Masoch's new Frinko Balaban, better known for his Venus fur, and later for being associated by the psychiatrists with the concept of masochism. Nothing sulphurous, however, emanated from Kassya, except the cruelty displayed by the most powerful against the weakest. If the original text was set in Central Europe, it is up to the librettist duo to have made Kassya a gypsy and to have added the character of Sonia in the love quartet. Given such a plot or the notoriety of librettists, no obvious answer to the preliminary questioning: why the long eclipse of Kassya?

An Eventful Genesis
If the official acknowledgments talk about the importance of Lakmé, they probably do not favor the efforts of Delibes to get back to work. Yet it was, as part of an official delegation, that the composer - who already announced his new project through the press - toured Hungary in the summer of 1885, at the invitation of the Hungarian Academy. In the company of the famous explorer Ferdinand de Lesseps, Delibes discovered the Carpathian mountains, those of Kassya, and became familiar with the world of Czardas - which probably explains the choice to make her heroine a bohemian, to facilitate the introduction of popular themes. Massenet was also part of the delegation, who contributed to the influence of France in Hungary. The premiere of Kassya at the Opéra-Comique was announced in the press for the 1887-88 season. But on May 25, the Favart Hall caught fire, canceling all of the musical projects. As the place of creation became uncertain, Delibes' health weakend. When he died, Kassya was completed in a partially orchestrated version for vocals and piano. Jules Massenet took it up again, and finished it but made a substantial change, transforming the spoken dialogue, initially planned by Delibes, into recitatives.

An Aesthetic Shift?
Exotism junk, superficiality of the plot ... The criticisms that fuse during the creation are severe with respect to the ultimate work of Delibes - the point, in a second time, to reflect on Lakmé. Beyond their vehemence, what do these judgments say about the aesthetics of the work?

Planned for the Opéra-Comique, associating spoken dialogues and sung numbers, Kassya is, as we have said, deeply modified by Massenet. This hybridization between two composers with different influences probably contributes to the misunderstanding. Even more profoundly, for the younger generation of musicians, she violently accuses the gap with what was then perceived as the pinnacle of modernity: the total Wagnerian work. "Wagnerism invades us, overwhelms us. In my composition class, at the Conservatoire, my students constantly think about it, talk about it with each other, tell me about it myself. What should we do, we musicians of another generation? Stay indifferent? Insensitive to this universal movement? Or to evolve with our time, to modify our ideas, our manners, our art finally? Thus questioned Edouard Lalo and Delibes in 1886 on the occasion of Le Roi d'Ys of Lalo. And Emmanuel Chabrier to see in a shock formula: "I find horrible everything that comes to me under the pen! I make up my mind to shut up ... Wagner killed me. If, in 1902, Claude Debussy were to bring specifically French solutions to the principle of continuous melody in Pelléas and Mélisande, ten years before the gap displayed by Kassya - whose structure in numbers, divided into recitatives, tunes and ensembles, the pronounced melodic vein is more of an Italian model - is massive. In a generation caught between iconoclastic adhesion to the musician of Bayreuth and desire to challenge the old masters, Delibes, by his inability to defend his Kassya, is an ideal outlet.

Bathed in the imagination of the Consuelo de Georges Sand, fantasy journey in a Europe of the confines, testimony of the pomp of the Opéra-Comique, class reflection on the overthrow of the powerful by the weak ... Such are today some of the many themes that can give Kassya the evidence of great French works.

Charlotte Ginot-Slacik

Brief Synopsis
At the foot of the Carpathian mountains, Kassya, a young gypsy girl, is in love with the peasant Cyrille, but leaves him for the Count of Zevale, who dominates the region. Winner but resentful, the Count forces Cyrille to enlist in the imperial armies. Two years later, on his return, Cyrille finds his father reduced to misery by the tyrannical aristocrat, accompanied by Sonia, who has never ceased to love her childhood friend. Cyrille, the hero, then convinces the peasants to revolt and they overthrow the Count. Kassya, becomes a Countess whose cruelty equals that of her husband. Cyrille saves the young woman, who is in a difficult situation, from being lynched. Kassya tries to revive the flame of her former lover, but the procession of his wedding with Sonia is heard. Faced with the refusal of Cyrille, who prefers onia, his faithful promised, Kassya kills herself.

[Mark Thomas]

Unfortunately I won't be able to record this broadcast, but I very much hope that someone else will be able to.

[adriano]

Will do so, Mark - as usual from my digital cable Radio and from my DAB station.
Hope there will be no disturbances...

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks very much, Adriano.

[Alan Howe]

Indeed - thanks.

[adriano]

My pleasure! Just returning from a stay in Basel - where I consulted and copied Fritz Brun's correspondence with Hermann Suter and with Felix Weingartner - and all the concert programs from there involving Brun as a composer or as a conductor.

[adriano]

Just listening (and recording) "Kassya". Certainly not another "Lakmé", but it has some beautiful music, especially the arias and two duets. Anyway, it cannot be compared to "Lakmé" because it's a much more dramatic affair.
There is no Overture. The plot is "Carmen"-like: Kassya (of course, a Bohemian girl), is causing problems to two different lovers -  this time among the Carpathian mountains...
My first impressions: The two leads Véronique Gens and Cyrille Dubois (the male lead's original name is also Cyrille) are excellent. Their parts are very dramatic; the tenor's is a very high one! The orchestra plays well, but is also dull here and there. In any case, the ballet music sounds very clumsy. The chorus is a bit shaky, sounds under-rehearsed and somehow unengaged; perhaps they have no idea what about they are singing; they just do their job.
The conductor does his best job in the last (and most dramatic) last act only.
Massenet did not only complete the work, apparently he also replaced spoken dialogues by accompanied ones.
The short "Trepak" has been once recorded by Naxos in 1990, on a full Delibes ballet album.
Will upload tomorrow :-)

A sensation: Next thursday, Johann Geortg Kastner's Symphony "Les Cris de Paris" will be performed and broadcasted from Montpellier. Kastner was a teacher of Berlioz; he lived from 1810 till 1867.
https://unsungsymphonies.blogspot.com/2010/10/impossible-symphony-kastners-les-cris.html

[Mark Thomas]

Huge thanks for the Kassya recording!

[Alan Howe]

Seconded!

[corellifan]

Will this opera be recorded and released on CD?  The cast looks like some of the same singers in previous recordings released by Montpellier.  Thanks.