hervé, les chevaliers de la table ronde

PRESS KIT
The Palazzetto Bru Zane and the Compagnie “Les Brigands” present
HERVÉ,
LES CHEVALIERS DE LA TABLE RONDE
Touring production in France and in Italy during 2015-16 season
From 22 November 2015 to 22 March 2016
PRESS CONTACT
Eleventenths PR
Claire Willis
Ph - 07951 600362
claire.willis@eleventenths.co.uk
BRU-ZANE.COM
OVERVIEW
Cast .................................................................................................................................... p. 3
Touring production dates ................................................................................................ p. 4
Letter of the stage director ............................................................................................. p. 5
Pascal Blanchet, Sir Hervé the knight errant sets out to conquer
the Bouffes-Parisiens .......................................................................................................... p. 6
Synopsis ........................................................................................................................... p. 12
Statement of intent of the transcriber ......................................................................... p. 13
Arthurian legends and romantic music ....................................................................... p. 13
Who is Hervé? ................................................................................................................ p. 14
The operetta in context: symposia and editorial news ............................................. p. 16
CAST
Opéra bouffe en three acts, words by Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru
Music by Louis-Auguste-Florimond Ronger, known as Hervé (1825-1892)
First performed on November 17, 1866 at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens
Version for 13 singers and 12 instrumentalists
Compagnie Les Brigands
Musical director Christophe Grapperon
Stage director Pierre-André Weitz
Assisted by Victoria Duhamel
Costume and set design Pierre-André Weitz
Assisted by Mathieu Crescence and Pierre Lebon
Lightning Bertrand Killy
Rodomont, the duke Damien Bigourdan
Sacripant, marshal Antoine Philippot
Merlin, wizard Arnaud Marzorati
Médor, young minstrel Manuel Nuñez Camelino (dates of 2015) / Mathias Vidal (dates of 2016)
Totoche, the duchess Ingrid Perruche
Angélique, her stepdaughter Lara Neumann
Mélusine, sorceress Chantal Santon-Jeffery
Fleur-de-Neige Clémentine Bourgoin
Roland, knight errant Rémy Mathieu
Amadis des Gaules David Ghilardi
Lancelot du Lac Théophile Alexandre
Renaud de Montauban Jérémie Delvert
Ogier le Danois Pierre Lebon
Transcription for 13 singers and 12 instrumentalists by Thibault Perrine
First performance on November 22, 2015 at the Opéra National de Bordeaux
Decor made by the the Opéra de Reims’ workshops
Associate producer Palazzetto Bru Zane - Centre de musique romantique française
Executive producer Compagnie Les Brigands
Co-production Opéra de Reims / Le Centre des Bords de Marne – Le Perreux /
La Coursive – Scène nationale La Rochelle
With the support of Arcadi Île-de-France, SPEDIDAM, ADAMI and
DRAC Île-de-France
In partnership with Angers-Nantes Opéra
3
TOURING PRODUCTION DATES
> 30 concerts in France in 2015-2016
> 5 concerts in Venice at the Teatro Malibran
• Sunday November 22, Monday 23, Wednesday 25, Thursday 26 and Friday 27, 2015
Opéra National de Bordeaux, Bordeaux (France)
With the musicians of the Orchestre National de Bordeaux
• Saturday December 5, 2015
Opéra de Massy, Massy (France)
• Wednesday December 9, 2015
Théâtre La Coupole, Saint-Louis (France)
• Friday December 11, 2015
Opéra de Reims, Reims (France)
• Sunday December 13, 2015
Centre culturel Le Figuier Blanc, Argenteuil (France)
• Thursday December 17, Friday 18, 2015
Théâtre Liberté, Toulon (France)
• Saturday January 9, Sunday 10, Tuesday 12, Wednesday 13, Thursday 14, 2016
Théâtre Graslin, Nantes (France)
• Saturday January 16, Sunday 17 and Tuesday 19, 2016
Grand Théâtre, Angers (France)
• Thursday January 21, Friday 22, 2016
Maison de La Culture, Bourges (France)
• Tuesday January 26, 2016
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi (Belgium)
• Thursday January 28, 2016
Centre des Bords De Marne, Le Perreux-sur-Marne (France)
• Saturday January 30, 2016
Théâtre, Chelles (France)
• Tuesday February 2, Wednesday 3, 2016
La Coursive, Scène Nationale, La Rochelle (France)
• Sunday February 7, Tuesday 9, Thursday 11, Friday 12, Saturday 13, 2016
Teatro Malibran, Venise (Italy)
In partnership with the Fondazione Teatro La Fenice
• Friday March 18, Sunday 20, Monday 21, Tuesday 22, March, 2016
Opéra de Rennes, Rennes (France)
With the musicians of the Orchestre de Bretagne
4
LETTER OF THE STAGE DIRECTOR
An Opera W. G. G.
(Without Government Guarantee)
1 April 1866
Director’s note in the bass clef which may be summed up in a simple little phrase.
It is of vital importance (full of life), of crucial importance (full of crews) to stage Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde by the
maestro Hervé, adored by the maestro Wagner, a masterpiece of 1866. Why?
Dear Director,
Dear Jean-Paul Belmondo, Dear pure soul,
The story, or rather the subject, takes place somewhere between the Middle Ages and our own time. On a Saturday
evening. Or a Tuesday morning. But certainly not on a Thursday afternoon (because It’s a Knockout is on TV on
Thursdays, everyone knows that). And so it’s in period costume, armour and trainers.
It’s starting now.
Duke Rodomont, a ruined nobleman, offers his only daughter Angélique (who can read and write) as third prize in a
knightly tournament. She can in no circumstances be returned or exchanged. That goes without saying. The famous
enchantress Mélusine loves Roland of Roncevaux (above all his big horn), who loves Angélique, who loves Médor, who
loves music, who loves Merlin (second of that ilk, not the real one), who loves Duchesse Totoche (two pounds to the
kilo), who loves Sacripant, the Duke’s secretary (not his writing desk), who loves Lancelot du Lac (yes yes, the real
one), who loves candles and candlesticks by Diptyque®. And, just between ourselves, also the appropriately named
Amadis des Gaules . . .
Imagine a wooden fairground stall, a castle, as it were. A striped in-and-out booth where the zebra is totemic and
appearances are deceptive, because all is illusion in the theatre. Except the claques of slamming doors. Banished from
this eclectic aesthetic: video, micro, porno and lavabo. An ethnic world, a genuine ethical proposition.
There is the situation in a few words outlined on the croup of a galloping pony. Whence the importance of performing
this political and social opera rooted in a purely Breton reality. Let us not shrink from saying so, there will be butter
in it, and not low fat but organic and therefore fair trade. The legend of the Grail is not so far away. This opera is in
no sense, as you will have understood, an entertainment, but a profound meditation on the reality and the real of
our time. We must read as implicit in it the failure of the liberal world, the sufferings of the banlieues, as well as the
war in Syria and a bit of football. To that end, the singers will demonstrate to you, through their frenzied minimalist
acting notable for its admirable exacerbated (cerebral) interiority, their commitment and their... sincerity. But beware.
Any resemblance to characters or situations would be cow incidental and intended.
There, I have said all that can be said of the unsayable.
Hoping for a favourable answer, I assure you of my most devoted, most historical, most political, most improbable,
most musical, most amusing but most sincere wishes.
Pierrot (De La Lune, the real one) aka Pierre-André Weitz.
PS: (Parti Socialiste doesn’t necessarily mean Post Scriptum) I should emphasise that La Scala Djinns and the
Metropolitan Museum Unter Den Linden of Truchtersheim (Bas-Rhin) are already very interested in the project,
translated into the Alsatian language of course.
So don’t delay if you have your instructions!
Pierre-André Weitz
5
SIR HERVÉ THE KNIGHT ERRANT SETS OUT TO
CONQUER THE BOUFFES-PARISIENS
by Pascal Blanchet
‘It is one of my best scores, but the public doesn’t always crown the best things with success . . .’
Such is the humble view expressed by Hervé in his Notes pour servir à l’histoire de l’opérette, a memoir he wrote in 1881
for the dramatic critic Francisque Sarcey. In the course of a long career marked by dazzling successes and resounding
flops, the composer had had many opportunities to cultivate a philosophical frame of mind. The above quotation
concerns his opéra-bouffe Alice de Nevers, but he might have said the same of Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde: Alice was a
complete fiasco at its premiere in 1875, Les Chevaliers received a lukewarm reception when it was first given in 1866.
In both cases, we are dealing with works that deserve to be reassessed – Hervé was right!
Yes, these valiant Chevaliers who return today from a long exile are worthy of enjoying a rebirth. For the work is a
more important one than it may at first seem. Why? Because it constitutes a turning point, not only in Hervé’s career
but in the history of operetta: with it, the so-called ‘Crazy Composer’ (le Compositeur toqué), who is regarded as the
father of operetta, wrote his first full-scale opéra-bouffe in three acts, and he intended it for the Théâtre des BouffesParisiens, the stronghold of his rival Jacques Offenbach.
A certain amount of explanation is necessary if we are to understand the reasons why the evening of 17 November
1866, the date of the premiere, has the status of a historic event. We have to go back a little in time, to the early
1850s, when numerous restrictions weighed heavily on the Parisian theatres and on composers. Since the early
nineteenth century, only a few theatres had obtained the right to put on musical plays, and those who broke the
regulations were exposed to severe sanctions (as Hervé and Offenbach both found out to their cost). Artists were
desperately in search of venues where their works could be performed in public. After years of unavailing supplication
at the doors of the Opéra-Comique, Hervé at last obtained permission to open his own theatre in 1853: he was
authorised to put on one-act plays with two characters. Offenbach got the same privilege two years later. In the
meantime, Hervé had welcomed him into his theatre with Oyayaye ou La Reine des îles, a piece of musical buffoonery in
which the master of the house was obliging enough to play the leading role himself. Offenbach – who never returned
his colleague’s compliment – was subsequently granted various little concessions for his theatre: a third, then a
fourth character, a chorus, and finally the right to exceed a single act. He wrote an operetta in two acts, Mesdames de
la Halle, before making a major breakthrough in 1858 with Orphée aux enfers. This ‘opéra-bouffon’, as Offenbach called
it, marked the true beginning of the light operatic genre that is generally termed operetta.
During that time, what was Hervé up to? He was faring much less well. While dreaming of having his works
performed at the Opéra-Comique, he was working like a horse to keep his theatre going. He had resigned from his
post as organist of Saint-Eustache in 1854 in order to devote himself to his art (or rather his arts, since he often wrote
his own librettos as well as performing his works and those of others) and he had to feed his four children . . . Here is
how the composer described his schedule at this period:
1 I wrote the verse, the prose and the scenarios of my works.
2 I composed the music for them.
3 I orchestrated them.
4 I played most of the leading roles in my pieces or other people’s.
5 I directed them.
6 And, finally, I did all the administrative work, from buying the fabrics to writing the copy for the posters. I
won’t even speak of the trips to the Prefecture and the Ministry, not to mention toadying on bended knee to
the Censorship Commission, which was already almost as intolerant as it is today . . .
It is therefore likely that Hervé was suffering from what today we would call a burnout when he committed a crime
6
on 30 August 1856. And his misdemeanour was by no means a trivial one: corruption of a minor, an adolescent boy.
An ignominious and highly publicised trial left his personal and professional life in tatters. Thus, at the very moment
when Offenbach was throwing off a series of straitjackets, Hervé was rotting in prison. When he was released, a few
months later, he had to start again virtually from scratch, while Offenbach was soaring from success to success.
Far from the agitation of Paris, Hervé travelled through the French provinces, and even North Africa, with a view to
letting the fuss die down. When he came back to the capital, it was to wield the baton in a theatre of highly uncertain
prestige, the Délassements-Comiques. It was there, in 1862, that he performed his first piece in two acts (rather
than one), Le Hussard persécuté, an ‘opéra impossible’ of which he wrote both words and music, whose frenzied and
eccentric tone heralded the creator who was to take full flight in 1867 with L’Œil crevé. He gained an entrée to the
Théâtre des Variétés in 1864, at a highly propitious moment, since the ‘Liberté des Théâtres’ was at last proclaimed
– in other words, the end of the severe regulation that had stifled all composers’ creativity for more than half the
nineteenth century.
From that time on, any theatre could perform music, and none of them was going to let the opportunity slip by.
Hervé immediately scored a big success with Le Joueur de flûte, a one-act operetta on a subject from Antiquity that
foreshadowed another one – for Offenbach, never far behind, in his turn put on La Belle Hélène at the Théâtre des
Variétés, thus embarking on a cycle of major opéras-bouffes in three acts, all of them crowned with success. There
followed, at the same theatre, Barbe-Bleue (1866), La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), La Périchole (1868) and Les
Brigands (1869). In his Notes, Hervé declared, perhaps with a hint of paranoia: ‘Offenbach, who took a dim view of my
entering the Variétés, suddenly quarrelled with the Bouffes-Parisiens and came to offer La Belle Hélène to Cogniard
[director of the Variétés].’ It is true that Offenbach had been having difficulties with the management of the theatre
he had founded after giving up its directorship some years earlier in order to devote himself to his composing. But
that hardly mattered to him, in the end, since he was soon reigning over almost all the other theatres of the capital. In
addition to the Variétés, he gave the Théâtre du Palais-Royal another enduring hit, La Vie parisienne, before trying his
hand once more at the Opéra-Comique with Robinson Crusoë (as if to make up for the failure of Barkouf in 1861), while
preparing an extravaganza (grande féérie) for the Châtelet, which was never finished.
Hence, ironically enough, all that was left for Hervé was the Bouffes-Parisiens, now deprived of its founder. In
engaging him for Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde, the management of the Bouffes was looking for a substitute for its
house composer. The commission to Hervé occasioned much discussion; expectations were high, as is shown by an
article by Henri Moreno, published in Le Ménestrel six months before the premiere: ‘This composer [Hervé], gifted with
rare verve and facility, is exactly the man who is needed at the Bouffes; and perhaps it is due only to a whim of chance
that he does not occupy the most cheerfully in the world the place that someone else has so effectively taken over
in the field of comical music’ (6 May 1866). Hervé himself seems to have been conscious that the stakes were high
when he wrote to the vaudeville artist Siraudin in the summer of 1866 to refuse a libretto that the latter had offered
him: ‘I have had successes with one-acters and I’m looking forward myself to seeing what I can do in a work in three
acts.’ By having a work staged at Bouffes, Hervé was getting closer – at least geographically – to the Opéra-Comique,
whereas previously he had always worked outside the centre of Paris. A whole new public that did not frequent the
Folies-Nouvelles or the Délassements-Comiques would have a chance to discover him.
Did the management of the Bouffes-Parisiens ask Hervé to ‘do an Offenbach’? The medieval subject, at any rate,
recalls that of Offenbach’s Barbe-Bleue, successfully performed at the Variétés from February 1866; and Merlin’s
announcement of an absurd competition in Hervé’s opéra-bouffe seems like an imitation of Offenbach’s Popolani,
who does the same in Barbe-Bleue (with, in both cases, ‘une demoiselle en loterie’, a maiden as a prize). Act Three of
Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde also features a situation close to that in Barbe-Bleue, with characters on the run who
conceal themselves among their enemies.
The piece itself, a very skilfully constructed vaudeville, presents adventures similar to those experienced by the heroes
of Labiche: the cuckolded husband, the flighty wife, the deceptively naïve girl . . . It is the costume that constitutes the
main difference, summed up by Félix Clément in his Dictionnaire des opéras: ‘The parody, the antithesis, the vulgarity
of the details, which contrast with the nobility and grandeur of the names and the social status of the characters.’
A number of witticisms and droll situations punctuate the abundant dialogue, even if the critics of the time
complained that the text of Chivot and Duru lacked wit and remained content with a humour based almost solely on
anachronisms. This device, decried by some, is in fact a classic one, as Francisque Sarcey reminded his readers:
7
Long before this – on 13 June 1792, if you please – came the first performance at the Théâtre des Variétés of
Le Petit Orphée, book by Citizen Rouhier Deschamps, new music by Citizen Deshayes, ballet by Citizen BaupréRiché. This was a true operetta. The chorus sang to Orpheus:
Ah! le pauvre époux!
Il se plaint de coups
Qui frappent son âme.
Trop heureux époux,
Tu n’as plus de femme,
Que ton sort est doux!2 (Francisque Sarcey, Le Temps, Chronique théâtrale, ‘La formation des genres’, 25 July 1881)
Reading the description of the set at the start of the libretto, one also thinks of Orphée aux enfers: exactly as in Les
Chevaliers de la Table ronde, posters prominently displayed on elements of the decor at once establish the rules of the
game and the style of humour that will prevail. In Offenbach: ‘Aristaeus, honey manufacturer, wholesale and retail,
warehouse on Mount Hymettus. / Orpheus, director of the Orpheon of Thebes, lessons at monthly and individual
rates’; in Hervé, ‘Castle of the Lord of Rodomont. / Bill stickers will be fined. / Merlin II, wizard, successor to his
father. – Boarding school for young ladies, family education. / Mélusine, patented enchantress, without Government
guarantee. – Stock clearance sale. – Big reductions’.
Aside from these questions connected with the aesthetic of the piece, the reasons for its lack of success may perhaps
be found elsewhere. As an article of 1872 (written when the work was being revived at the Folies-Dramatiques)
pointed out, the situation of the theatre posed a problem: ‘Staged for the first time at the Bouffes-Parisiens by a
faltering management that was risking its last remaining funds, inadequately performed, Les Chevaliers de la Table
ronde had obtained only a lacklustre reception’ (Vert-Vert, ‘Chronique théâtrale’, Les Modes parisiennes, 16 March 1872).
If there were casting problems, they certainly did not concern the performer of the role of Duchess Totoche, Delphine
Ugalde, a seasoned singer who had been a star of the Opéra-Comique right from her debut in 1848, then of the
Théâtre-Lyrique in the 1850s. She abandoned these official institutions for the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1861, and was even
to become its co-director with her husband, François Varcollier, when the founder left. A contralto with impressive
vocal resources, she created, among others, the role of Roland in Les Bavards, in which Offenbach wrote cadenzas for
her that go up to top D flat. Hervé is scarcely less demanding, assigning her an air bristling with formidable runs,
‘parodying the Italian style’, to quote the score. Indeed, the composer indicates that this number ‘may be omitted,
having been composed with an eye to the exceptional talent of Madame Ugalde’. Hervé was writing for a firstclass troupe and was aware that he could ask a great deal of his performers while at the same time promoting his
ambitions as a composer.
This desire to demonstrate his skill perhaps explains the prominence of virtuosity throughout the score. The singer of
Mélusine also has to negotiate redoubtable intervals and difficult high notes. In the finale of Act Two, she and Totoche
are required to sing coloratura at high speed for several pages in a row; Hervé magnanimously offers the singer of
the role of Angélique the option of joining in with her two colleagues if she fancies doing so – and if her resources
allow her to. Médor also has his quota of top notes and must reach a top D in certain cadenzas. The singer playing
Rodomont needs to possess excellent diction, for his extended rage aria in Act One (‘Mon œil est assez vif’) unleashes
a torrent of machine-gun syllables recalling the rapid delivery required of buffo basses in Italian opera. One might also
mention the instruments of the orchestra, which (in the original version at least) are required to show great technical
prowess. For example, straight away in the Overture, the flute is called on to warble like a real coloratura soprano,
and it must execute a further bravura number in the Introduction to Act Three. The Prelude to Act Two is assigned to
the clarinet, which in its turn must play a veritable audition piece. Such demands were uncommon in works of this
type (as is proved by a comparison with those of Offenbach, which are much more reasonable) and may explain in
part why the operetta was not staged more frequently, notably in the provinces, where the theatres very often lacked
well-trained troupes capable of meeting them.
The cast was therefore faced with quite a challenge, and perhaps it was not up to the task. The only precise reproach
we know of was addressed to the performer of the role of Rodomont: Hervé had engaged Joseph Kelm, his old
sparring partner from the time of the Folies-Nouvelles, whose outrageous hamming may well have sat ill with the
acting of the members of the company of the Bouffes. Be that as it may, many critics in 1866 praised several numbers
1
Ah, the poor husband! / He complains of blows / That strike at his soul. / O fortunate husband, / You no longer have a wife: / How
happy is your fate!
8
in the score, for example Delphin Balleyguier, in La Semaine musicale dated 22 November, who asserted: ‘The music of
M. Hervé is more real music than that of M. Offenbach . . . The refrain for the knights, a sort of comical Marseillaise,
will soon be taken up by all of Paris, and the ballad “Isaure était seulette” can be repeated in every drawing room
without making mother or daughter blush. M. Hervé takes good care of his orchestra, and his overture is full of
vigour.’ Others even suggested that the music was a little too well made, among them Albert de Lasalle in Le Monde
illustré, for whom ‘the score of Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde displays pretensions to seriousness that are out of place.
People will cite the ariette sung by Mlle Castello [Angélique], the entr’acte charmingly performed by the flautist of the
orchestra, and an air whose details are cleverly pointed by Mme Ugalde; but it would appear that the music as a whole,
which lacks laughter, is ill suited to the burlesque tone of the words’ (1 December 1866).
The biggest obstacle that Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde had to overcome was the competition – but not the one in the
work’s libretto. The public was elsewhere in the month of November 1866: first and foremost at the Opéra-Comique,
where Ambroise Thomas’s Mignon was at the height of its success. The critic Albert de Lasalle even admitted that he
had not seen Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde, having preferred to go and hear the coloratura of Philine (‘Je suis Titania
la blonde’) rather than that of Duchess Totoche. Audiences also thronged to the Palais-Royal, where Offenbach was
enjoying a triumph with La Vie parisienne, the piece everyone wanted to see, an opéra-bouffe with a difference, based
on contemporary characters and not mythological or historical heroes. Louis Roger, in La Semaine musicale, summed
up the theatrical situation at that moment: ‘Mignon is a great success; Freyschütz [at the Théâtre-Lyrique] is a great
success; . . . La Vie parisienne is a great success. But Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde merely drags out its run with heavy
gait.’
In presenting a farce on a legendary subject, Hervé and his collaborators came up against two difficulties: a section
of the critics (and of the public) had already tired of parodic pieces on themes from mythology and history (Offenbach
had enjoyed a mixed reception when he tried to reproduce the success of Orphée aux enfers with Geneviève de Brabant
as long ago as 1859), while certain purists continued to scream sacrilege. The same people who had denounced the
profaners of Greek mythology (in Orphée and Hélène) were in full cry once more when they saw the heroes of the
Round Table ridiculed: ‘Sad! Sad! Operetta has killed the gods, has killed the heroes, has killed the barons of the
Middle Ages, and this evening, at the Bouffes-Parisiens, it is preparing to kill the knights of the Round Table. Lost
forever to the respect of the population, Médor, Amadis, Lancelot, Ogier and Renaud! Lost like the beautiful Angélique
and the fay Mélusine! . . . A curse on you, M. Hervé! A curse on you, M. Duru! A curse on you, M. Chivot!’ (X. Feyrnet,
Le Temps, 18 November 1866).
In spite of the censors, the opéra-bouffe genre would continue to flourish, but moving away from literal parody
of ancient subjects. Offenbach showed the way with satire of contemporary morals (La Vie parisienne) or military
authority (La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein), or by trying his hand at a new type of opéra-comique (La Périchole). Hervé,
for his part, followed his individual path by giving still freer rein to his zaniness, so personal in character, in what we
might call his ‘Tetralogy of the Folies-Dramatiques’ (the theatre where he took up residence from 1867 onwards): L’Œil
crevé (1867), Chilpéric (1868), Le Petit Faust (1869) – his most lasting success – and Les Turcs (1869) – his most neglected
masterpiece. Hervé was his own librettist in the first two of these; for the last two, he sought the assistance of Hector
Crémieux, one of the authors of Orphee aux enfers, with the collaboration of Adolphe Jaime.
The question of the libretto appears to be a key factor in the survival of a work. Where Offenbach could count on
the genius of his librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, Hervé very often could trust only to himself. His triple
talent as author, composer and actor-singer, far from giving him an advantage, seems unfortunately to have done
him a disservice. He even disowned those talents at one stage, when he wrote to Émile Perrin, director of the OpéraComique: ‘I have completely abandoning singing, which I used as a means of getting my music performed. I went off
on the wrong track, and I have gone back to the right one, I think, by returning to my old remit as a conductor and
deciding that from now on I will busy myself exclusively with composition’ (letter of 30 January 1862). But he soon
went back on this resolve in order to play the principal roles of Chilpéric and Le Petit Faust . . .
On the occasion of Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde, in any case, in order to look serious – and perhaps also to work less
and concentrate on the music – Hervé benefited from the assistance of two librettists who, without having the genius
of Meilhac and Halevy, were nonetheless talented writers, as witness their numerous hits with all the most successful
composers of the day. Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru were still at the start of their collaboration, which was to yield
its ripest fruits some years later with Les Cent Vierges (music by Lecocq, 1872), Le Grand Mogol and La Mascotte (music
by Audran, 1877 and 1880), and Madame Favart and La Fille du Tambour-major (music by Offenbach, 1878 and 1879),
9
to name only the best-known titles. Nevertheless, one guesses that the indefatigable – or incorrigible – Hervé took
a significant part in the work even when he did not sign the libretto. On this subject, his generally well-informed
first biographer, Louis Schneider, quotes Crémieux’s rejoinder to Hervé when the latter brought him some lines for
Le Petit Faust, advising him to modify them if necessary: ‘What do you expect us to change? You write the verse and
the couplets better than we do ourselves!’ (Le Petit Marseillais, 22 June 1925). It is in that very same Petit Faust that
one finds the grandiloquent lines placed in the mouth of the dying Valentin as he heaps reproaches on his sister:
‘L’honneur est comme une île escarpée et sans bord, / On ne peut plus rentrer quand on en est dehors’ (Honour is like
a steep island without a shore: / You can’t get back inside it when you’re outside’). One is tempted to see this as a
comic invention of the authors. Yet this severe distich is not a product of Hervé’s pen, but that of Boileau (Satires, X).
And before ending up in the later work, in 1869, it had already been sung by Duchess Totoche in Les Chevaliers de la
Table ronde. Hervé must have been attached to this phrase, since his own honour had been given a rough ride at the
time of his trial in 1856, and the Opéra-Comique must have seemed to him like the steepest of islands . . . When he
revised Les Chevaliers for the revival of 1872, he removed the distich, by that time too closely associated with Le Petit
Faust, whose success continued unabated.
Hervé is therefore always, at least to some extent, the author of the librettos he set to music. Among his specific
stylistic traits, one notices his persistent – and very amusing – habit of addressing the audience directly, in an offhand
manner that verges on effrontery. Thus Rodomont stops the action on his first entrance, while the other characters
freeze, and moves downstage towards the audience to ‘begin a lengthy digression’, as he says. One often encounters
asides in the theatre of this period, but this manner of radically knocking down the fourth wall is Hervé’s alone.
Similarly, further on, Rodomont seems to be giving the audience the recipe for a good operatic finale: ‘Jubilation and
sadness: let us mingle these twin sentiments with artistry!’ Chivot and Duru were to write many more librettos in
their long and fruitful career but were never to go as far with other composers. Did Hervé prompt them to write
specifically for him, or was he himself responsible for many of the lines?
The device of comedy in music that Hervé employs most frequently in his works consists in a wide variety of ruptures
of tone. At several points in Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde, he installs a mood comparable to that of a serious operatic
work, then suddenly shatters it by means of a surprise, the abrupt appearance of an element completely out of place
in the atmosphere he has just created. Nothing is so evocative of the serious genre as the recitative, grandiloquent
or elegiac, expressing lofty sentiments, which can then be demolished with a word or a familiar expression. Take, for
instance, the moment when Roland, right in the middle of a hitherto entirely respectable recitative, suddenly comes
out with the line ‘Que vient faire ici ce crampon?’ (What’s that leech doing here?) when he sees Mélusine. Or the
grand concertato of the Finale to Act Two, the music of which, for the space of a few bars, would not disgrace a Verdi
finale – ‘Il connaît le mystère / Et surprend mon secret / Évitons sa colère . . .’ (He knows the mystery / And has found
out my secret; / Let me avoid his rage . . .) – but is at once contradicted by the offhand ‘. . . Et faisons notre paquet’
(. . . and scarper). The same technique is at work in the Romance sung by Totoche, one of the score’s big hits (it was
encored, and commented on by the critics), where the music sounds like one of the real romances that Hervé also
wrote (such as Le Temps des roses), but the unseemly words (‘If not for your husband, at least do it for your family!’)
completely shatter the illusion. It is rather like seeing an artist painting pretty Mona Lisas and then amusing himself
by immediately adding a moustache to them.
To surprise his audience, Hervé also enjoys playing with the words, sometimes repeating them to the point of
giddiness (the ‘gar’gar’gar’gar’’ rapped out by Rodomont in the air mentioned earlier, first in quavers then in
semiquavers, ends up resembling an onomatopoeia illustrating a particularly vigorous bout of gargling). The words
are chopped up purely for pleasure, notably in the successful Ronde at the end of the first act, ‘Jamais plus joli métier /
Ne fut dans le monde! / Que celui de cheval, que celui de chevalier’ (Never was there a finer trade / In the world / Than
that of a horse, that of a horseman), or with a variant in Mélusine’s couplets, when Médor sometimes repeats the ends
of his partner’s phrases with surprising results:
Mélusine: Qui pourrait dire?
Médor: -rait dire?3
Later in the same number, Médor sings an astonishing onomatopoeic line, ‘Tra la la you piou’, which caricatures some
not easily identifiable instrument (further on there is an imitation of the bass drum with a heavily accented ‘boum
boum boum’). These syllables are even more amusing when they accompany a sinister allusion: ‘. . . dont il mourut!
[Of which he died!] Tra la la you piou!’ There are other instances of this, like Rodomont’s terrifying ‘tri la ti ta ta, tri
2
10
The repetition of the end of the original innocuous ‘Who could say’ is heard as ‘raidir’, ‘to stiffen’.
la ti ta ta’. But Hervé’s favourite onomatopoeias are certainly those that imitate the Tyrolienne or yodelling song.
Every time the opportunity presents itself, the composer allows his characters to ‘drop out’ of the action, suddenly
abandoning the situation to launch into unbridled cries of ‘tralala-itou’ featuring shifts of vocal register, from low to
high. This style of song, originating in mountainous regions, which seems intended to recall Germany – rather than
Switzerland – will almost be appropriate to the situation in Le Petit Faust, where a certain patriotic trio – the ‘Chant du
Vaterland’ – has recourse to valiant refrains of ‘trou la ou la ou’. But it is completely out of place (and thus hilarious)
in the finale of Les Chevaliers, after mock-glorious words, for the characters to utter ‘Laïtou! Laïtou! Trou la la!’ One
might note in passing two more charming penchants of Hervé’s, his taste for incorporating the staging in the score
(the ‘one, two, three . . .’ up to ten in the Ronde des Chevaliers are marked: ‘Shouted, and accompanied by gestures
conveying knightly and comic movement’) and his deliberately mangled prosody: ‘la table ron-on-de’, with the two
‘on’ strongly accented. Hervé pulls all these strings to disorientate his listener and subvert the plot, bringing it to the
brink of fragmentation, indeed chaos: he reveals the fictive nature of the narrative, whereas in Offenbach the comic
element is used to add spice to the plot, without compromising the illusion, the evasion of the spectator.
Hervé must have had faith in his score, for he offered a new version of it to the public in 1872. There was much praise
for the cast, headed by Mme Sallard in the role of Mélusine: a highly skilled singer, scarcely inferior to Mme Ugalde. The
role of Rodomont was assigned to the excellent Milher, one of Hervé’s favourite performers, who had already shone as
Gérômé (L’Œil crevé), Ricin (Chilpéric) and Valentin (Le Petit Faust). In the role of Médor, Hervé’s son Emmanuel Ronger
(who used the stage name of Gardel-Hervé) also garnered his share of the plaudits. Another notable member of the
cast was the variety artist Mathilde Lasseny, who offered a new characterisation of Duchess Totoche. Hervé knew her
well, having written the role of Fleur-de-Bruyère, alias Chapotarde, in Le Hussard persécuté for her ten years previously.
The indiscreet Hervé even tells us in his Notes that she had been his mistress in the early 1860s before throwing him
over: ‘A rich banker having offered her an investment superior to mine, after some slight hesitation she decided to
sacrifice the B flat to the banknote of the man of the south.’ She made a stage comeback in 1872, bringing with her a
slight whiff of scandal that was very welcome to the promoters . . .
Will our ironic era, as fond of parody as it is of the Middle Ages (one might instance the continuing success of Monty
Python and the Holy Grail), eager for musicological discoveries, give Hervé’s Chevaliers its chance? There have been
plentiful examples of happy surprises in the exploration of forgotten repertories; for a start, all those works of
Offenbach that were badly received for the wrong reasons, connected with the political climate – one need look no
further than the most recently revived, Fantasio, the premiere of which suffered from the proximity of France’s defeat
at the hands of Prussia. Hervé’s zaniness, his extravagance and his excesses, could nonplus his contemporaries;
they might well appeal to today’s spectators, who are much more inured to that sort of thing. Then we could hear
new versions of his best-known works (the historical recordings, delicious though they are, are insufficient), or else
rediscover Les Turcs, already mentioned above, Le Trône d’Écosse, or even Alice de Nevers – all works that fell victim to
unfavourable circumstances, and in which Hervé believed he had produced a masterpiece. And who knows – perhaps
Hervé was right again?
11
SYNOPSIS
(not terribly important really)
OUVERTURE
Once upon a time there was an unlikely land, somewhere between the years 800 and 2017, where everything was still
possible and wonderful.
ACT ONE
The knights Amadis, Ogier, Renaud and Lancelot discover that their former comrade Roland has renounced his adventurous
existence for the sake of the enchantress Mélusine: passionately in love with him, she keeps him a prisoner in her palace
and has thereby condemned the hero to a life of idleness. They wish to take advantage of Merlin’s announcement of a grand
tournament to snatch him from her authoritarian yoke. The jousting is organised by Duke Rodomont, who is offering the
hand of his daughter Angélique as consolation prize. A ruined man, he is counting on this marriage to boost the family
fortunes. He is astonished by the luxurious lifestyle flaunted by his wife, Duchess Totoche, and suspects her expenses are
being paid by a lover. Angélique, for her part, is impatient to discover the pleasures of love vaunted by her tutor Médor,
himself secretly smitten with her. Roland, having fallen for her charms in his turn, is prepared to join the fray in order to
win her hand, throwing Mélusine over for good.
ACT TWO
Totoche, Angélique and Sacripant (Grand Seneschal and... lover of Totoche) are working on the final preparations for the
tournament. The Duchess is distraught: she has sold Rodomont’s crown, the last remnant of his fortune, in order to finance
her wardrobe and thereby please Sacripant. No one can find Merlin, who has been told to bring an imitation crown of zinc
that has been made to cover up her crime. But now the tournament is beginning and Rodomont has been calling for his
crown. Alone with Sacripant, Totoche is telling of her fears. Interrupted by her increasingly impatient husband, she is on
the point of confessing that she has sold his most precious possession when suddenly Merlin arrives with the substitute.
Rodomont thinks he recognises his cherished crown. The tournament comes to an end: Roland has won Angélique as his
promised bride. While the heroes are being fêted, Rodomont surprises Totoche effusively embracing Merlin: he believes
he has identified his rival. Médor and Mélusine, both prompted by amorous pique, enter the castle disguised as minstrels.
They sing to distract the company’s attention while Mélusine slips a sleeping-draught into Roland’s goblet; he promptly
collapses. Rodomont goes off to fetch smelling salts to revive him and comes on a list of bills, all paid. Convinced that he
now has proof of the infidelity of Totoche, who can only have obtained the necessary money from her lover, he explodes
with rage. The assembled company, led by Sacripant, slips away to escape from the Duke’s anger. Mélusine takes advantage
of the general confusion to abduct the unconscious Roland. Rodomont demands a full confession from his wife. She thinks
the Duke is referring to the ruse of the fake crown and ends up naming her accomplice: Merlin. The bells sound for the
wedding: Médor appears wearing Roland’s armour to marry Angélique in his place. Rodomont gives orders to imprison
Totoche and Merlin, whom he takes for his wife’s lover, in the midst of the wedding festivities.
ACT THREE
Mélusine’s palace. The enchantress’s philtre has had a more radical effect than she intended: Roland has been sleeping for
the past fortnight. Enter three strolling players, actually Merlin, Totoche and Sacripant in disguise, Sacripant having freed
his two accomplices from their fetters. They are followed by Rodomont, who is trying to get hold of Roland. The latter (i.e.
Médor in disguise) mysteriously disappeared the day after the wedding, and the four knights who were sent in search of
him never returned, having been bewitched by the sensual delights lavished on them in Mélusine’s palace. After Rodomont
comes a tearful Angélique, accompanied by the unfortunate Médor, who has been obliged to resume his true identity. Madly
in love after the night he spent incognito with the Duke’s daughter, he has joined Rodomont’s service in order to stay
with her. When Roland finally wakes up, he has no recollection of the hours of delight evoked by the young woman – not
surprisingly, since he was not present! Everyone now wonders who was hiding beneath the armour. In Rodomont’s view
it can only have been Sacripant, who has also been missing without apparent reason for the past fortnight. The Duke now
comes upon his Grand Seneschal in his strolling player’s costume and asks him to explain his conduct, quite prepared to
forgive him. Sacripant, taken aback to find him so well disposed, blandly confesses that he is... Totoche’s lover. Rodomont
flies into a rage, but Totoche tricks him into yielding to his rival in order to bring about the denouement of the story. All
disguises are now removed and the couples are reassigned. A defeated Rodomont gives up Totoche to Sacripant, Angélique
finds fulfilment in Médor’s arms, and Roland in Mélusine’s. So all’s well that ends well: they all lived happily ever after and
had lots of children.
12
STATEMENT OF INTENT
OF THE TRANSCRIBER
‘The music of Hervé is subtle, light, full of wit. The melodies are simple and effective, the harmony natural, the
orchestration limpid. But the boundless energy that characterises it comes above all from rhythm: the rhythm of the
accompaniments, mostly derived from dance music; the rhythm of the vocal line, wholly at the service of a text full of
imagination and vivacity; and, finally, the rhythm of the formal structures, so important in the highly individual genre
of operetta.‘To transcribe this music for a smaller orchestra is above all to strive to preserve its essence: although it
is not possible for twelve musicians to reproduce the rounded sonority of a symphony orchestra (the original was
written for some thirty musicians, half of them string players), these forces do allow us to emphasise all the asperities
of the musical discourse, to underline its contours, to bring out its energy. That, at any rate, is what we have tried to
achieve in this new orchestration of Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde.’
Thibault Perrine
ARTHURIAN LEGENDS AND
ROMANTIC MUSIC
The Romantic reinterpretation of the medieval era – as instanced by the writings of Victor Hugo (Notre-Dame de Paris) or
Gérard de Nerval (Les Fragments de Nicolas Flamel) in the early 1830s – enjoyed a grandiose echo on the French operatic
stage of the time: Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829) and Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (1831) were the first manifestations of
a plethoric and highly popular output. Whereas Classicism had rejected the Middle Ages, accusing them of obscurantism, the artists of the nineteenth century engaged fully with the period in order to reinvent its heroism, exalt its values
and, above all, dream of supernatural tales set there. Legends of this kind flourished: Melusine is the heroine of Halévy’s
La Magicienne and of the cantata for the Prix de Rome set by the Institut de France in 1895. Les Chevaliers de la table ronde
is a reaction to this almost inordinate taste for Arthurian themes, which were later to be magnified in Chausson’s Le Roi
Arthus and the Lancelot of Victorin de Joncières.
13
WHO IS HERVÉ?
Hervé [Louis-Auguste-Florimond Ronger] (Houdain, 1825 - Paris, 1892)
Hervé, composer, librettist, actor, singer, stage director and opera company manager, is
generally considered to be the father of operetta, although this title is sometimes given
to his rival Jacques Offenbach, whose career ran in parallel to his.
When his father died, the ten-year-old Florimond Ronger moved to Paris, where he
became a choirboy at the church of Saint-Roch. His musical gifts led to his being
presented to the composer Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, then at the height of his fame,
who gave him private lessons. He was subsequently appointed organist of the chapel at
Bicêtre, and it was there that he composed his first small-scale opéra-comique, L’Ours et le
Pacha, for performance at that institution, then still known as a ‘lunatic asylum’. After
a few years he succeeded in obtaining a more prestigious organist’s post, at the church
of Saint-Eustache. Alongside his functions there, he embarked on a theatrical career,
initially as a chorus singer and bit-player in a number of suburban theatres. It was this
time that he adopted the pseudonym of Hervé.
In 1847 he composed a sketch called Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança, which has come to
be regarded as the first ‘operetta’; it was premiered in a small theatre on the boulevard
Montmartre, but soon transferred to the more prestigieus stage of the Opéra-National,
recently founded by Adolphe Adam. Having established himself as conductor of the
orchestra of the Odéon, then of the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, in 1854 he opened a
theatre on the boulevard du Temple which he called Les Folies-Concertantes, later
Les Folies-Nouvelles. Here he presented operettas that he composed himself (among
them Le Compositeur toqué, La Fine Fleur de l’Andalousie and Un drame en 1779), but
also early works by Offenbach (Oyayaye ou la Reine des îles, 1855) and Léo Delibes
(Deux sous de charbon, 1856). Trouble with the law and health problems forced him to
retire temporarily, and in 1859 he sold the theatre to the actress Virginie Déjazet, who
renamed it after herself.
A great traveller, Hervé then appeared in the provinces as a singer for a while before
re-establishing himself in Paris. He now took over the musical direction of the
Délassements-Comiques, where he performed a work whose eccentricity made a
striking impression on the public, Le Hussard persécuté. This was followed at the Théâtre
des Variétés by Le Joueur de flûte, a one-act opéra-bouffe on a subject prefiguring La
Belle Hélène. Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde, an opéra-bouffe in three acts on a libretto
premiered at the Bouffes-Parisiens, is the first of Hervé’s full-length operettas. After this,
in addition to working as conductor at the Eldorado, he became the house composer
of the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques, where he enjoyed great success with L’Œil crevé
(1867), Chilpéric (1868) and Le Petit Faust (1869).
14
The last two works provided Hervé with an opportunity to launch a fruitful English
career, since he went to London to stage them in person. The new works he gave in
Paris were less successful (Le Trône d’Écosse, 1871; La Veuve du Malabar, 1873; Alice de
Nevers, 1875). In 1878, he played the role of Jupiter in a revival of Orphée aux enfers under
the direction of Offenbach himself, and then began the cycle of vaudevilles-opérettes he
composed for Anna Judic, the star performer of the Théâtre des Variétés: La Femme à
papa (1879), La Roussotte (1881), Lili (1882) and finally Mam’zelle Nitouche (1883). This
last piece was based on his own beginnings in the profession, when he was an organist
by day and composer of operettas in the evenings. In 1886 Hervé left Paris for London
and composed a series of ballets for the Empire Theatre. He returned to France in 1892,
producing one final opéra-bouffe, Bacchanale, shortly before his death on 3 November
1892.
15
THE OPERETTA IN CONTEXT
SYMPOSIA
From 5 to 7 october 2015 – Lucca (Italy)
‘Light musical entertainment’ in Europe: from operetta to the music-hall
During the second half of the 19th century, another history of music was unfolding outside the official opera houses,
one which was subsequently ignored by researchers for a long time. Yet across Europe, cabarets, music-halls, variety
theatres and many other private performing spaces were putting on hugely popular entertainments (operettas,
revues, musical comedies) which demand being studied in order fully to understand the artistic life of the times.
In partnership with the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini.
CD
Extracts from Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde of Hervé
by Les Brigands and Christophe Grapperon
CD available on sale following performances
POCKET BOOK
Hervé par lui-même.
Documents and texts
presented by Pascal Blanchet
Release date: october 14, 2015 – 9,50¤
ACTES SUD / PALAZZETTO BRU ZANE
To invent a musical genre is not enough to achieve immortality.
Louis-Auguste-Florimond Ronger, known as Hervé (1825-92), a composer of crucial importance for the history of
French music, provides a cruel illustration of this adage. Though he was the true father of the operetta genre, which
he established in the mid-1850s, he was completely overshadowed by his great rival Jacques Offenbach (1819-80).
In spite of several sporadic and likeable attempts to do so, no one has yet managed to deliver him from this relative
anonymity or, above all, to make his music properly known. This short study aims, through the use of his own
words, to revive interest in the work of a figure who has long been best known for his nickname le compositeur toqué
(the crazy composer). A gifted writer, Hervé – like Wagner – often penned his own librettos, in which he sometimes
depicted himself; but he was also the author of articles and memoirs, including the fascinating ‘Notes towards the
history of operetta’. In addition, he wrote numerous letters, sometimes to newspapers but more often to theatre
managers. This correspondence, seldom if ever quoted by his biographers, presents precious contemporary insights
into the life of a mid-nineteenth- century composer; it also sheds new light on the life of Hervé, in whom we are
surprised to discover an anxious personality longing for recognition. Readers of this dossier will come to realise that
Hervé, the so-called ‘crazy composer’ (le compositeur toqué), was in reality – as he says himself in an astounding letter
– ‘no sillier than Wagner or Verdi’ . . .
Palazzetto Bru Zane
Centre de musique
romantique française
San Polo 2368, 30125 Venice - Italy
contact@bru-zane.com