The Operas of Darius Milhaud

Extract

The list of Darius Milhaud's operas, leaving aside Les Saintes Maries de la Mer (a six-hundred-page score composed at the age of fifteen and subsequently burnt) consists of sixteen works, ranging from La Brebis Egarée (1910) to Bolivar (1943).

It is difficult—and probably useless—to try and make an a priori synthesis of this output, whose essential features stand out naturally from a panoramic glance even as rapid as this one. Indeed, Milhaud has never created in systematic fashion; his researches into the general domain of musical aesthetics and language have in no way been guided by preconceived ideas, and in particular he has never composed music for the stage (which is one of the most important aspects of his work) except as a result of chance meetings, either with poets or dramatists, or with poetical or dramatic themes and texts.