Camille Erlanger: La sorcière (fp 1912)

[Droosbury]

My copy arrived too and I've only delved into the first act as yet and while it's obviously very well-crafted, nothing has really leapt out at me yet. Perhaps it will take time. As Alan says, the booklet - well, book really - is very thorough. Alongside a couple of good essays, there are about a dozen pages of musical analysis with excerpts from the score. It's similar to the packages put together by Bru Zane, but the in-depth analysis is something I've not seen before. It helps identify the motifs Erlanger uses, but as Alan also points out, you'll be looking in vain for the big tune. Nevertheless, it's great to have another rare French opera from this era. Perhaps we might dare hope for some more Erlanger - or Bruneau or Aubert or Dupont's rather fine Antar?

[Alan Howe]

While I'm glad to have the chance to hear such a rarity, it's easy to see why it's not survived in the repertoire. Having said which, there's always something to delight the ear even if it's not 100% memorable. This is what happens at the beginning of Act 3 (CD2) when Enrique meets Zoraya. Terrific hokum, superbly sung here by Jean-François Borras and Andreea Soare! The idiom? Somewhere between Massenet (on steroids), Florent Schmitt (La tragédie de Salomé) and Richard Strauss (Salome - almost)! The atmosphere's very powerful, but where's the killer memorable phrase? Mind you, the finale's a knockout.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

[Maury]

The use of "tunes" in opera is worthy of a large book. My own feeling is that the very late Romantic idiom 1900-1918 was rather poor soil for separable tunes leaving aside Italian opera, and even Puccini had some difficulty doing that in his more harmonically advanced scores such as La Fanciulla.  A big tune didn't really save Charpentier's Louise from never entering the standard repertoire either, just hovering at the far edge. And the even more obvious example is Die Tote Stadt (with Marietta's Lied and Pierrot's Tanzlied) that was regularly  and widely mocked and hammered  for 75 years. [ e.g. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-09-12-ca-21188-story.html ] It's the Late Romantic style itself which is somewhat difficult for regular classical music fans who have different expectations (Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Brahms) when they hear the word Romantic and a tune or two is unlikely to make it more immediately palatable.

Speaking only for myself, my expectation  for these very late Romantic works is more along the lines of a long floating wallow. I don't want something to jolt me out of that: poor orchestral craftsmanship, lack of idiomatic vocal writing (looking at you Respighi), and last and least, some tune thrown in to liven things up unless being generated organically from the operatic narrative.

[Alan Howe]

Puccini, however, seemed to be able to lob in the odd killer aria right to the end. What's the most sung tenor aria? Nessun dorma, probably. And Turandot was left unfinished - in 1924! Clever old Giacomo: he was always thinking about the commercial value of a 3-minute star turn...

[Mark Thomas]

True, but I do think Maury's post is perceptive in general and there's no doubt that even Puccini couldn't always come up with the goods - witness Fanciulla, as he says. From what I've heard so far of Erlanger it's all lusciously melodius but tunes themselves are few and far between.

[Alan Howe]

As he got older Puccini became adept at absorbing trends in the wider musical scene while remaining totally himself - a remarkable feat. But, yes, the percentage of hummable tunes from his pen dropped considerably over time. Nevertheless he was always mindful of the need to plant a 78-era record side's worth of memorable singing somewhere in his later operas.

I imagine that Erlanger was trying to achieve something different...

[Maury]

I think I could have been a bit clearer. The issue starting really in widespread fashion in the 20th C is that the music listener is hearing both new and older styles at the same time. In the past people only heard new music. Music listening is sort of a set of negotiated expectations between composer and listener, but these expectations vary by style (including national variants) and genre. Because we all listen to or at least hear multiple styles every day, it is easy to start judging and comparing styles with each other. In the past listeners just heard one style mostly and learned how to listen to it (manage their expectations) if they didn't outright reject it. So that was the logic behind my statement that when I listen to these very late Romantic works I don't expect to hear separable tunes. Rather I want a floating, soaring or liquid flow which either maintains my interest or not as such. If I want tunes I go to different styles.

[Alan Howe]

I think you have a point. In general the French tradition was probably more advanced than the Italian at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries; there's no contemporary equivalent of Debussy, d'Indy or Dukas in Italy, for example - although changes were certainly to follow, even in Italy.

By the way: in opera the changes started much earlier than we might imagine, mainly through the innovations of Wagner, turning what was regarded as primarily an entertainment into a cosmic drama.

This may be of interest:
<<Camille Erlanger belongs to the "belle époque" of opera composers such as Alfred Bruneau, Xavier Leroux, Georges Hüe and Henry Février. They all knew the ins and outs of writing for the theater, and dramatic music was a major part of their catalog. Yet none of them made a lasting impression on the operatic landscape of their time, even though the quality of their music deserves to occupy a significant place in the theater repertoire...
    Erlanger's musical style is characterized by dense writing, abundant conductive motifs and opulent orchestration. His harmonic language does not shy away from sometimes surprising audacities that can lead briefly to the frontiers of tonality. An outstanding orchestrator, he possesses an obvious gift for musical scenery, and knows how to set it in a striking manner in just a few measures. Lyrical outpourings and voluptuous melodic outbursts are rarely part of his vocabulary. His qualities as a dramatist crystallize around his remarkable sense of sound design. Through the singularity of a melodic design or harmonic sequence, he succeeds in creating a remarkably effective musical framework, with an evocative force that enables him to characterize his figures, their personalities and their states of mind. At the time, this highly theatrical yet unconventional approach seems to have disconcerted both lovers of traditional lyric art rooted in the Gounod-Massenet tradition, and those who championed the "new art" of opera represented by composers such as Debussy, d'Indy and Dukas.>> (my emphasis)
https://www.iemj.org/en/camille-erlanger-1863-1919/

In other words, Erlanger is a member of an 'in-between' generation which was soon overtaken and replaced by more revolutionary figures.