La chute de la maison Usher (opera)
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''La chute de la maison Usher'' (''The Fall of the House of Usher'') is an unfinished
opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
in one act (divided into two scenes) by
Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
to his own
libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...
, based on
Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
's 1839 short story "
The Fall of the House of Usher "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in ''Burton's Gentleman's Magazine'', then included in the collection ''Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque'' in 1840. The short story ...
". The composer worked on the score between 1908 and 1917 but it was never completed.


Composition

Debussy had long been fascinated by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, familiar to French readers through the translations by
Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
. As early as 1890,
André Suarès André Suarès, born Isaac Félix Suarèshttp://data.bnf.fr/11925703/andre_suares/fr.pdf (12 June 1868, Marseille – 7 September 1948, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés) was a French poet and critic. From 1912 onwards, he was one of the four "pillars" o ...
wrote in a letter to
Romain Rolland Romain Rolland (; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and Mysticism, mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary pro ...
that "Monsieur Claude Debussy ... is working on a symphony that will unfold psychological ideas based on the stories of Poe, in particular, ''The Fall of the House of Usher''." Nothing came of this plan but in the wake of the success of his only completed opera, '' Pelléas et Mélisande'' in 1902, Debussy turned to Poe for material for a potential successor. He worked on his first attempt at a Poe-inspired opera, the comedy '' Le diable dans le beffroi'', for several years before finally abandoning it in 1911 or 1912. By mid-June 1908 Debussy had begun another opera based on a Poe tale, the darker ''Fall of the House of Usher''. On 5 July he signed a contract with the
New York Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is operat ...
guaranteeing the house the right to stage the premiere of his projected Poe double-bill as well as another unwritten opera ''La légende de Tristan''. That summer he wrote to his friend Jacques Durand: "These days I have been working hard on ''The Fall of the House of Usher''... There are moments when I lose the feeling of things around me and if the sister of Roderick Usher were to come into my house, I shouldn't be very surprised." In 1909 Debussy wrote that he had almost finished Roderick Usher's monologue: "It almost makes the stones weep ... as a matter of fact it is all about the influence of stones on the minds of neurasthenic people. The mustiness is charmingly rendered by contrasting the low notes of the
oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. A ...
with the
harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...
s of the
violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
(a patent device of my own)." Debussy had believed he had been subject to
neurasthenia Neurasthenia (from the Ancient Greek νεῦρον ''neuron'' "nerve" and ἀσθενής ''asthenés'' "weak") is a term that was first used at least as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves and became a major diagnosis in North A ...
but around this time his doctor diagnosed him as suffering from the
rectal cancer Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer, is the development of cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of th ...
which was to kill him. According to
Robert Orledge Robert Orledge (born 5 January 1948) is a British musicologist, and a professor emeritus of the University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 ...
, "Debussy began increasingly to identify with Roderick Usher, whose mental breakdown Poe had identified with the crumbling House itself." Debussy made three attempts at writing a libretto. Only when he was satisfied with the third one did he produce a short-score draft of the music to the first scene and part of the second in 1916–17. He went no further with ''Usher'' before his death in 1918. The surviving manuscript of the libretto is held at the
Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...
.


Roles

There are four characters: Roderick Usher, his friend (''ami''), the doctor (''le médecin'') and Lady Madeline. Debussy assigned all three male roles to the
baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...
range. Jean-François Thibault writes: "One does not know what exact baritone ranges Debussy would have used for his three male characters, or if, as in ''Pelléas'', he would have graduated them from Deep Bass, to Bass-Baritone, to Baritone-Martin. The assignation of the three roles to baritones of the same range is significant in that it opens up the strong possibility that the characters are three incarnations of one single consciousness."


Synopsis

Roderick Usher is the last male descendant of his family. He lives in his crumbling ancestral home with his twin sister, Lady Madeline, who is afflicted by a wasting disease, and her doctor. Roderick's friend (the narrator in Poe's tale) has been summoned to the house. During his visit, Lady Madeline is found dead and is buried in a vault under the house. The friend reads Roderick a tale from a medieval romance in order to comfort him as a storm rages outside. As the friend reads the climax of the tale, Lady Madeline appears covered in blood. She had been buried alive and now turns on her brother, dragging him to his death. The House of Usher collapses as the friend makes his escape under a blood-red moon. Debussy follows Poe's tale but places more emphasis on Roderick's incestuous feelings for his sister and makes the doctor into a more prominent, more sinister character, who is also Roderick's rival for Madeline's affection.


Attempts at reconstruction

In the 1970s, two musicians made attempts at producing a performing edition of the incomplete opera.
Carolyn Abbate Carolyn Abbate (born November 20, 1956) is an American musicologist, described by the ''Harvard Gazette'' as "one of the world’s most accomplished and admired music historians". She is currently Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professo ...
's version, with orchestration by Robert Kyr, was performed at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
on 25 February 1977. In the same year the Chilean composer
Juan Allende-Blin Juan Allende-Blin (born 24 February 1928) is a Chilean composer and academic teacher who lives in Germany. Career Born in Santiago de Chile, Allende-Blin studied first with his uncle, Pedro Humberto Allende, and with , a pupil of Anton Webern. ...
's reconstruction was broadcast on German radio. Allende-Blin's version was staged at the
Berlin State Opera The (), also known as the Berlin State Opera (german: Staatsoper Berlin), is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic center of Berlin, Germany. The opera house was built by order of Prussian king Frederick the Great from ...
on 5 October 1979 with
Jesús López Cobos Jesús López Cobos (25 February 1940 – 2 March 2018) was a Spanish conductor. Early life and career López Cobos was born in Toro, Zamora, Spain. He studied at Complutense University of Madrid and graduated with a degree in philosophy. La ...
conducting, the
baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...
Jean-Philippe Lafont Jean-Philippe Lafont (born 11 February 1951) is a French baritone. He studied in his native city of Toulouse and later at the Opéra-Studio in Paris.O'Connor, Patrick He made his operatic debut as Papageno in ''The Magic Flute'' at the Salle Favar ...
as Roderick Usher, the
soprano A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261  Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...
Colette Lorand Colette Lorand (7 January 1923 – 26 April 2019) was a Swiss operatic soprano who made an international career. Known as a coloratura soprano, she created several roles in world premieres, including Sibylle in Carl Orff's '' De temporum fine como ...
as Lady Madeline, the baritone
Barry McDaniel Barry McDaniel (October 18, 1930 – June 18, 2018) was an American operatic baritone who spent his career almost exclusively in Germany, including 37 years at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He appeared internationally at major opera houses and fes ...
as the doctor, and the bass as Roderick's friend. Blin's reconstruction was later recorded by EMI – the music has a running time of approximately 22 minutes. In 2004, Robert Orledge completed and orchestrated the work using Debussy's draft. His reconstruction has been performed several times. It has also been recorded on DVD (Capriccio 93517) (see ''Recordings'' below). The first German staging of Orledge's reconstruction took place in
Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's 2 ...
in 2019, expanded to 90 minutes with other music by Debussy.Rolf Fath. "Report from Mannheim." ''
Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
'', November 2019, vol. 70, no. 11, p. 1412.


Recordings

*On the progressive rock album ''
Tales of Mystery and Imagination ''Tales of Mystery & Imagination'' (often rendered as ''Tales of Mystery and Imagination'') is a popular title for posthumous compilations of writings by American author, essayist and poet Edgar Allan Poe and was the first complete collection of ...
'' by
The Alan Parsons Project The Alan Parsons Project was a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of producer, audio engineer, musician and composer Alan Parsons and singer, songwriter and pianist Eric Woolfson. They were accompanie ...
the orchestral prelude to "The Fall of the House of Usher", is in fact – although uncredited – the opening music of Debussy's ''La chute de la maison Usher'' in an alternative orchestration made by band member and composer Andrew Powell. The album was released in 1976 and was therefore the first recording ever of music from ''La chute de la maison Usher''. *''La chute de la maison Usher'' (in the reconstruction by Juan Allende-Blin) Jean-Philippe Lafont, François Le Roux, Christine Barbaux, Pierre-Yves le Maigat, Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by
Georges Prêtre Georges Prêtre (; 14 August 1924 – 4 January 2017) was a French orchestral and opera conductor. Biography Prêtre was born in Waziers ( Nord), and attended the Douai Conservatory and then studied harmony under Maurice Duruflé and conducting ...
(EMI, 1984) *A video recording of the reconstructed opera (including a ballet set to ''
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' ( L. 86), known in English as ''Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun'', is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration. It was composed in 1894 and first performed ...
'' and ''
Jeux ''Jeux'' (''Games'') is a ballet written by Claude Debussy. Described as a "poème dansé" (literally a "danced poem"), it was written for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. Debussy initially objected to the ...
'') performed at the 2006
Bregenz Festival Bregenzer Festspiele (; Bregenz Festival) is a performing arts festival which is held every July and August in Bregenz in Vorarlberg (Austria). It features a large floating stage which is situated on Lake Constance. History The Festival beca ...
was released on 26 June 2007, with Lawrence Foster, Nicholas Cavallier, John Graham-Hall and Katia Pellegrino; the music was performed by the
Wiener Symphoniker The Vienna Symphony (Vienna Symphony Orchestra, german: Wiener Symphoniker) is an Austrian orchestra based in Vienna. Its primary concert venue is the Vienna Konzerthaus. In Vienna, the orchestra also performs at the Musikverein and at the Thea ...
. *Claude Debussy: The Edgar Allan Poe Operas : ''The Fall of the House of Usher'', ''The Devil in the Belfry''. Göttinger Symphonie Orchester William Dazeley 2016 Double CD


References

Notes Sources * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Chute de la maison Usher, La Unfinished operas Operas by Claude Debussy French-language operas Operas One-act operas Operas based on The Fall of the House of Usher