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Literary motifs, musical form and the quest for the ‘Sublime’: Cherubini's Eliza ou le Voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Michael Fend
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Extract

A common feature of Cherubini's Parisian operas of the 1790s is the displacement of one or more of the protagonists. They are out of sorts with their environment, experiencing a need to escape that prevents the traditional unity of place from focusing the drama. The heroine of Lodoïska (1791) is imprisoned in a tower; in Eliza ou le Voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard Florindo travels to Mont St Bernard to forget his beloved Eliza, who pursues him and saves him from suicide. For the heroine of Médée (1797), Corinth represents unhappiness: she returns to her former home only to take revenge. In Les deux Journées (1800), Armand and Constance flee Paris to save their lives; even in the comic opera L'Hôtellerie portugaise (1798) the central location serves merely as a rendez-vous for the two lovers on their way to evade the wicked plans of Donna Gabriele's stepfather. These operas do not, in other words, unfold in reassuring environments where characters feel at home; nor are there neutral backgrounds that enable the drama to concentrate on personal interaction. What is more, although placing protagonists in such unhappy circumstances is widespread in late eighteenth-century opera, and ‘rescue operas’ in particular, it is at least arguable that Cherubini exploited their restlessness in a uniquely successful manner.

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Research Article
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Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 17 - 38
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 This pattern does not, however, apply to La Punition (1799)Google Scholar and La Prisonnière (1799)Google Scholar, the other two comic operas from this period.

2 Hohenemser, Richard, Luigi Cherubini (Leipzig, 1913), 185.Google Scholar See also Schemann, Ludwig, Cherubini (Stuttgart, 1925), 355.Google Scholar More recently, Klaus Hortschansky has confirmed the originality of the plot: ‘in Eliza ist die Natur erstmals in der Musikgeschichte als “superbe tableau”, aber auch mit den Gefahren, die sie in sich birgt, mit der Wildheit und Erbarmungslosigkeit der Schnee- und Eiswelt, konstituierend für die Handlung’. See ‘Eliza’, Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters, ed. Dahlhaus, Carl and Döhring, Sieghart (Munich, 1986), I, 558.Google Scholar The popularity of Cherubini's Alpine drama is suggested by two further operas on the same topic composed by Winter, Peter von, Eliza (1797)Google Scholar, and Kuhlau, Friedrich, Elisa (1820).Google Scholar

3 Basil Deane points out that Cherubini was hampered more than once by a poor libretto; see ‘Luigi Cherubini’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, Stanley (London, 1980), IV, 206.Google Scholar

4 In the libretto the scene is described as follows: ‘Le Théâtre représente les glaciers du Mont-Bernard. Des précipices, des chemins pratiquées dans les glaces et des rochers, indiquent les diverses routes qui arrivent à l'hospice. Au moment indiqué dans le deuxième acte, les vents et les nuages annoncent qu'un orage va éclater; les torrents rompent les glaces qui les retenoient, ils coulent impétueuesement de toutes pans, les avalanches partent, et, dans leurs cours rapides, emportent tout ce qui s'oppose à leur passage.’ Saint-Cyr, (see n. 5), Elisa, 3.Google Scholar

5 Saint-Cyr, Jacques Antoine De Révéroni, Elisa, ou le Voyage au Mont-Bernard, opéra en deux actes, paroles du citoyen R.S.C. (Paris, n.d.).Google Scholar In this edition the word ‘saint’ is left out from the name of the mountain, the abbot of the hospice is referred to as ‘econome’ and the friars are mere ‘travailleurs’. In the full score the original religious titles were re-introduced. For a facsimile of the printed score see: Cherubini, L., Eliza ou le voyage aux glaciers du Mont St. Bernard, ed. Rosen, Charles in Early Romantic Opera, 34 (New York, 1979).Google Scholar On Saint-Cyr's, adventurous life (1769–1829)Google Scholar, see the article by Michaud, Louis-Gabriel junior in Michaud, , Biographie Universelle (Paris, n.d.), XXXV, 494–5.Google Scholar According to Michaud, Saint-Cyr made the plans to defend the Tuileries in August 1793, luckily escaped the terreur, served for Napoleon but had to give up his military career because of failing health. Instead he became a prolific writer of librettos, novels and on military matters. For an updated listing and evaluation of his work, see Saint-Cyr, Jacques Antoine De Révéroni, Pauliska ou la perversité moderne, ed. Didier, Beatrice (Paris, 1976), 7–16.Google Scholar

6 The sensational rescue of Florindo and the predominance of visual effects over verbal communication is reminiscent of mélodrame as represented in the early nineteenth century by Guilbert de Pixérécourt. See Howarth, William Driver, Sublime and Grotesque, a Study of French Romantic Dram (London, 1975), 63ff.Google Scholar; Lacey, Alexander, Pixérécourt and the French Romantic Drama (Toronto, 1928)Google Scholar; and Thomasseau, Jean-Marie, Le Mélodrame (Paris, 1984).Google Scholar Saint-Cyr's Heléna ou les Miquelets, first performed at the Théâtre de la rue de Louvois on 6 October 1793, contains an even more sensational climax with the explosion of a barrel of gunpowder. Using his military expertise, Saint-Cyr described in detail how such an explosion could be effected on stage (p. 32).

7 See Dahlhaus, Carl, ed., Die Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts (Laaber, 1985), 346Google Scholar; a different definition of ‘rescue opera’ was given in Dent, Edward, Opera (Harmondsworth, 1940), 62.Google Scholar For a discussion of the term, see Charlton, David, ‘On Redefinitions of Rescue Opera’, Music and the French Revolution, ed. Boyd, Malcolm (Cambridge, 1992), 169–88.Google Scholar

8 See Griep, Wolfgang and Jäger, Hans Wolf, eds., Reise und soziale Realität am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1983), 7Google Scholar; also Griep, Wolfgang, ‘Reiseliteratur im späten 18. Jahrhundert’, Hansens Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, ed. Grimminger, Rolf (Munich, 1980), III, 739.Google Scholar However, Wilhelm Heinsius's dictionary of books compiled in 1810 lists 483 books on travel published between 1700 and 1810, 388 of which appeared between 1780 and 1809, indicating the soaring production at the close of the century. See his Allgemeines Bücherlexikon oder vollständiges Verzeichnis der von 1700 bis zu Ende 1810 erschienenen Bücher (Leipzig, n.d.).Google Scholar

9 In his Briefe aus der Schweiz, letter of 27 10 1779Google Scholar, wrote, Goethe: ‘Hier und da auf der ganzen Reise ward soviel von der Merkwürdigkeit der Savoyer Alpen gesprochen, und wie wir nach Genf kamen, hörten wir, es werde immer mehr Mode, dieselben zu sehen’. Werke, ed. Beutler, Ernst (Zürich, 1949), XII, 20f.Google Scholar See also Lacoste-Vesseyre, Claudine, Les Alpes romantiques. Le thème des alpes dans la littérature française de 1800 à 1850, Bibliothèque du Voyage en Italie, Etudes, 4 (Geneva, 1981), 7.Google Scholar

10 They were followed by a more scientific expedition to the same mountain in August 1787, led and described by Saussure, Horace Bénedict de, Relation abrégée d'un voyage à la cime du Mont-Blanc en Aout 1787 (Geneva, n.d.).Google Scholar For a biographical summary of de Saussure see Engel, Claire-Elaine and Vallot, Charles, Ces Monts affreux, 1650–1810 (Paris, 1934), 90–3.Google Scholar

11 Napoleon clearly followed in Hannibal's footsteps when, in Spring 1800, he used the path over St Bernard to invade Italy.

12 My account follows Saussure, de, Voyages dans les Alpes (Neuchatel, 1779–1796), II (Geneva, 1786), 433–43.Google Scholar A similar account may be found in Bourrit, Marc-Théodore, Nouvelle description générale et particulir`re des Glacières (Geneva, 1785), III, 271–2.Google Scholar

13 ‘There are days when one can find 600 people at the hospice. One evening in 1782 there were 561 travellers who needed 4 oxen, 20 sheep and 3 sacks of wheat.’ See Bourrit, , Nouvelle description, III, 274.Google Scholar

14 LaBorde, Jean Benjamin de, Tableaux topographiques, pittoresques, physiques, historiques, moreaux, politiques, littéraires de la Suisse, (Paris, 1780–86), I, viii–ixGoogle Scholar: ‘A friar in charge of receiving travellers, attentive through his honesty and courtesy, drew us out of the state of ecstasy and admiration into which we had fallen when looking at the majestic images of nature’. ‘At the moment there are twelve canons of the order of St Augustine living at the hospice. They give shelter to all travellers, irrespective of their sex or religion, and treat them with much compassion. … During the period of four months thirty horses are used to transport wood for provisions.’ See also Saussure, de, Voyages (n. 12), II, 433 and 443.Google Scholar

15 Saint-Cyr, (see n. 5), 31.Google Scholar These lines were omitted in Cherubini's score.

16 Carbonnières, Ramond de, ‘Observations du Traducteur’, in Lettres de M. William Coxe sur l'état politique, civil et naturel de la Suisse, traduites de l'Anglais (Paris, 1781), I, 197.Google Scholar Similarly, in Cherubini's opera the Guide leading the Savoyards to Paris (II.1) professes a degree of Alpine experience that he could have obtained, historically, only a few years before the opera was written: ‘L'aut'hyer au Mont-Blanc j'leus ai servi de guide / Avec plaisir! … je'marchois en avant … intrépide!’ Saint-Cyr, (n. 5), 24.Google Scholar These lines were omitted in Cherubini's score.

17 Cherubini, (see n. 5), 93.Google Scholar In Saint-Cyr's libretto, Florindo merely states ‘Quels objets pour mon art!’ (p. 4). The change from singular to plural suggests that the librettist had second thoughts on the possibilities of the non-visual arts in representing Alpine nature.

18 Florindo's invocation of Poussin in this scene – ‘Poussin, viens m'inspirer’ – should be understood as a reference to the French painter who probably enjoyed the greatest reputation at the time, not to the style of Poussin's landscape paintings. Alpine landscapes were a relatively new topic at the end of the eighteenth century, and its painters still unknown.

19 Saussure, De, Relation abrégée, 13–29Google Scholar; Saussure, de, Voyages and Letter from Col du Géant, 7 07 1788Google Scholar, quoted in Lacoste-Vesseyre, , Les Alpes romantiques (see n. 9), 32–3.Google Scholar Lacoste Vesseyre emphasises that de Saussure and other scientists did not see such sensations as an end in themselves: ‘The nature of a rock, the form or position of a fault in the ground are more important to him than introspection. Nevertheless, the feelings aroused in him are too powerful to be suppressed. But if they are not completely ignored, de Saussure expresses them in a very sober and meticulously accurate fashion’ (p. 29).

20 LaBorde, De, Tableaux (see n. 14), I, ii.Google Scholar

21 LaBorde, De, Tableaux, I, ix.Google Scholar

22 See Carbonnières, Ramond de, Lettres sur Ia Suisse, II, letter XVIIIGoogle Scholar, quoted in Engel, and Vallot, , Ces Monts affreux (n. 10), 135f.Google Scholar

23 Ramond de, Carbonniéres, Lettres sur la Suisse, II, letter XVIIIGoogle Scholar, quoted in Engel, and Vallot, , Ces Monts affreux, 137f.Google Scholar The term ‘sublime’, which occurs here and in other quotations, will be discussed in the last section of this article.

24 See, for example, Bourrit, , Nouvelle description (n. 12), I, xif.Google Scholar; and also Lacoste-Vesseyre, , Les Alpes romantiques (n. 9), 8.Google Scholar

25 See Engel, and Vallot, , Ces Monts affreux (n. 10), 152Google Scholar; and Bourrit, , Nouvelle description (n. 12), I, xiii.Google Scholar

26 Bourrit, , Nouvelle description, III, 198 and I, x.Google Scholar

27 Bourrit, , Nouvelle description, III, 280.Google Scholar

28 See Selden, Margery J. S., The French Operas of Luigi Cherubini, Ph.D. diss. (Yale University, 1951), 281–2Google Scholar; Ballola, Giovanni Carli, ‘Le Escursioni di Elisa’, in I vicini di Mozart, ed. Muraro, Maria Teresa, Veneta, Studi di Musica, 15 (Florence, 1989), I, 313f.Google Scholar

29 See Rousseau, Jean Jacques, La Nouvelle Héloïse, ed. Coulet, Henri and Guyon, Bernard, in Œuvres complètes, II (Paris, 1961), I, 23Google Scholar; p. 78. Although the hero considers committing suicide later in the novel (III, 21; pp. 377ff.), his motive is different from Florindo's, as St Preux' gloomy thoughts are a reaction to Julie marrying de Wolmar (III, 18; p. 354). Moreover, the suicidal mood bears no relationship to exterior nature.

30 See Rousseau, , EmileGoogle Scholar, ed. Wirz, Charles and Burgelin, Pierre, in Œuvres complètes, IV (Paris, 1969), 604f. and 624f.Google Scholar

31 Since Paisiello's Il barbiere di Siviglia was not performed in France before 1784, LaBorde probably had in mind a song by Antoine-Lauront Baudron, who composed the music to Beaumarchais' comedy in 1775. The music was published in the same year. Considering the content and metre, LaBorde could well have been thinking of the romance of the Comte, ‘Vous l'ordonnez, je me ferai connaitre’ (I, 6), which also formed the melody to Mozart's piano variations KV 354, the title of which, ‘Je suis Lindor’, is derived from the second stanza. For the score see RISM, A, 1, s.v. Beaumarchais, B 1449–50; see also Honschansky, K., ‘Mozarts “Lindor“-Variationen KV 354. Zu Beaumarchais’ Couplet-Text und dessen musikalischer Bearbeitung’, in Liedstudien. Wolfgang Osthoff zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Just, Manin and Wiesend, Reinhard (Tutzing, 1989), 203–28.Google Scholar

32 See LaBorde, de, Lettres sur la Suisse (Geneva, 1783), II, 103ff.Google Scholar According to Cunningham, Peter, editor of Goldsmith's Works (London, 1854), I, 24Google Scholar, the ballad was written and first printed privately in 1764, before Goldsmith incorporated it into his novel, the first edition of which appeared in 1766. For a modern edition, see The Vicar of Wakefield (Oxford, 1974), 39–44.Google Scholar The ballad was adapted by Elihu Hubbard Smith as Edwin and Angelina or The Banditti (New York, 1797)Google Scholar as a libretto for Victor Pelissier's opera, first performed in New York on 19 December 1796. For a musical excerpt, see Pelissier, Victor, Columbian Melodies, ed. Kroeger, Karl, Recent Research in American Music, 13/14 (Madison, 1984), 32–5.Google Scholar

33 See Saint-Cyr, (n. 5), I, 7Google Scholar or Cherubini, (n. 5), 209ff.Google Scholar

34 Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘Aporien der Dialogoper. Cherubinis “Elisa” und der symphonische Stil’, in Carl Dahlhaus and Norbert Miller, Europäische Romantik in der Musik: Oper und symphonischer Stil 1770–1850 (Munich, 1993). IGoogle Scholar would like to thank Prof. Miller for providing me with a manuscript of this text. It could, however, be argued – as David Charlton pointed out to me – that in the opera Paul et Virginie (see n. 43) nature is already represented as a force which takes revenge on those who attempt to escape from its realm to civilisation.

35 Just before the final chorus Florindo says: ‘J'aime à présent la vie! et je l'aurais perdue! / Mes bons amis, ä vous qui me l'avez rendue, / Je vous dois tout’ (‘Now I enjoy my life! And I would have lost it! / My dear friends, you have given it back to me, / I owe you everything’). See Saint-Cyr, (n. 5), 40Google Scholar or Cherubini, (n. 5), 369.Google Scholar

36 The political overtones of the opera are not weakened by Cherubini's letters of 10 June and 13 October 1793 pointing to an earlier version of the libretto and some of the music: ‘L'hospice St Bernard est presque achevé, car il me reste à faire que cinq morceaux’. The letters are transcribed in: Willis, Stephen C., Luigi Cherubini: A Study of his Life and Dramatic Music, Ph.D. diss. (Columbia University, 1975), 330 and 332.Google Scholar

37 Arnold, Ignaz Ferdinand, Cherubini: Seine kurze Biographie und ästhetische Darstellung seiner Werke (Erfurt, 1810), 46.Google Scholar

38 See Rossi, Gaetano, Il Monte di San Bernardo (London, 1820), 49.Google Scholar Mayr and his librettist also described their work simply as a ‘farsa sentimentale’ or ‘dramma sentimentale’. See Schiedermair, Ludwig, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Oper (Leipzig, 1907), II, 31.Google Scholar

39 Dent, Edward, The Rise ofRomantic Opera, ed. Dean, Winton (Cambridge, 1979), 40.Google Scholar

40 Similarly, in Jean Paul Egide Martini's Sapho, which had its première one day before Eliza on 12 December 1794 at the Théâ;tre Feydeau and which ends with the suicide of the heroine, ‘the finale, 138 bars, is a unified piece in D, exploring no other regions’. Charlton, David, ‘The Tragic Seascape: “Sapho” and its 12-note Chord’, Jahrbuch für Opernforschung, 1 (1985), 55.Google Scholar

41 The arithmetical irregularity is caused by the fact that each unit of the section is introduced by a two-bar fanfare while the final eight-bar unit is reduced to six bars. Strictly speaking, the section consists of 8 + 8 + 8 + 6 bars.

42 The sections are obviously dovetailed. Already in bar 53, five bars before the end of section B, both the semiquaver movement of the first violin and the quaver figure in viola and cello stop, the instrumentation is increased and thunder begins; however, the motif in the piccolo flutes is kept for five further bars.

43 See, for example, Kreutzer, Rudolph, Paul et Virginie (Paris, 1791), 179Google Scholar: ‘L'orchestre seul occupe les spectateurs et peint l'orage dans toute sa force. Le tonnerre, les éclairs redoublent’. The dramatic situation in Kreutzer's and LeSueur's operas, based on the novel Paul et Virginie (1786)Google Scholar by Bernardin de St Pierre, may have served as another model: Virginie appears on the deck of a ship about to be wrecked by a hurricane, noticing her beloved Paul's desperate attempts to swim towards her from the coast of Mauritius.

44 A sense of disquiet is still felt by means of a tremolo on d in the viola (bars 196–213), which only ceases when Laure's energetic plea is taken up by the orchestra.

45 Engel, Johann Jacob, ‘Über die musikalische Malerei’, Reden, Ästhetische Versuche (Reutlingen, 1803), 234 and 241f.Google Scholar

46 Dahlhaus, , ‘Aporien der Dialogoper’ (see n. 34).Google Scholar The sublime character of nature in this opera was already identified by Hohenemser, , Cherubini (see n. 2), 180Google Scholar, and Schemann, , Cherubini (n. 2), 350.Google Scholar

47 Burke, Edmund, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. Boulton, James T. (Oxford, 1987), II, 6–7; p. 71f.Google Scholar

48 See Burke, , I, 7; p. 39.Google Scholar

49 Sulzer, Johann Georg, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (Leipzig, 1792), II, 97f.Google Scholar; the first edition appeared in 1771–4. The English translation is taken from Huray, Peter le and Day, James, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1988), 113.Google Scholar

50 ‘Man kann die Majestät der Natur in den Alpen nicht ohne Bewunderung sehen; und wer solche Gegenstände würdig malen oder beschreiben kann, der erreicht das bloß sinnlich Erhabene.’ Sulzer, , Allgemeine Theorie 99.Google Scholar The phrase ‘das bloß sinnlich Erhabene’ indicates that for Sulzer nature forms only the lowest degree of the sublime. By contrast, French writers of the eighteenth century associated the sublime primarily with a state of mind ‘beyond passion and the common virtues’, achieved by courage and moral perseverance. See, for example, Louis de Jaucourt, ‘sublime’ in Diderot, Denis and d'Alembert, Jean le Rond, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, arts et metiers (Neufchastel, 1751–80), XV, 568Google Scholar; Tour, Abbé Seran de la, L'Art de Sentir et de Juger en Matière de Gout, ed. Rolland, M. (Strasbourg, 1790), 115Google Scholar; Marmontel, Jean-Francois, ‘Sublime’, in Diderot and d'Alembert, Encyclopédie, Supplément, IV (Amsterdam, 1777), 834.Google Scholar

51 See , Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie (n. 49), II, 102.Google Scholar

52 ‘By 1776, when Hawkins wrote that Handel's “greatest talent” was the “sublime in music”, the epithet had become routine.’ Johnson, Claudia L., ‘“Giant HANDEL” and the Musical' Sublime’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 19 (1985–1986), 515–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 517. See Stendhal, , Vie de Rossini, ed. Brunel, Pierre (Paris, 1987), 248, 327 et passim.Google Scholar

53 See Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘E.T.A. Hoffmanns Beethoven-Kritik und die Ästhetik des Erhabenen’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 38 (1981), 83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Burke, , A Philosophical Enquiry (see n. 47), III, 25, pp. 122–3.Google Scholar That Burke considered the former criteria as producing a sublime feeling can be concluded from similar phrases on p. 82.

55 Burney, Charles, Dr Burney’s Musical Tours in Europe, ed. Scholes, Percy A. (London, 1959), II, 206Google Scholar; quoted in Schwarz, Judith L., ‘Periodicity and Passion in the first movement of Haydn's “Farewell” Symphony’, in Studies in Musical Sources and Style. Essays in Honor of Jan La Rue, ed. Wolf, Eugene K. and Roesner, E. H. (Madison, 1990), 321.Google Scholar

56 Michaelis, Christian Friedrich, ‘Einige Bemerkungen über das Erhabene der Musik’, Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung, I, no. 46 (1805), 179–81.Google Scholar Michaelis published a longer version of this anicle in the Deutsche Monatsschrift in 1801.Google Scholar The English translation is taken from le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics (see n. 49), 202–3.Google Scholar Michaelis's text is also discussed in Schwartz, , ‘Periodicity and Passion’ (see n. 55), 325–30.Google Scholar

57 See Dahlhaus, , Die Musik des 18. Jahrhunderts (n. 7), 352.Google Scholar

58 Jean-Francis Marmontel, Elémens de Litterature in Œuvres completes, IX (Paris, 1787), 110f.Google Scholar Marmontel had adopted a similar line of argument in the 1770s when he championed Piccinni's music against Gluck.

59 Here I employ the term ‘sublime’ as used by Burke and Michaelis.

60 Pougin, Arthur, ‘Chérubini: Sa vie, ses œuvres, son rôle artistique’, Le Ménestrel, 47 (1881), 402.Google Scholar Contemporary reviews of Eliza and other Cherubini operas are transcribed and analysed in Charlton, David, ‘Source Readings of Cherubini's French Operas (1791–1800)’, to be published in the Proceedings of the Cherubini Conference, Ravenna 1991Google Scholar, ed. Francesco Degrada. The reviewer for the Journal des théâtres, quoted by Charlton, states that Saint-Cyr had himself travelled to the Alps and witnessed a story similar to that of the opera. I would like to thank David Charlton, Anselm Gerhard, Bernard Harrison, Arnold Lillie, Jean Mongrédien, Michel Noiray and Patrick Taïeb for generously sharing information.