Opera Lafayette Leonore Souvenir Program

Influences and Enigmas

OPERA LAFAYETTE’S LEONORE PROJECT Developing a Modern Premiere and a Reimagined Aria

OPERA LAFAYETTE Reawakening Masterpieces for 25 Years

Table of Contents Letter from the Artistic Director.......................................................................................................3 The Leonore Project..........................................................................................................................4 Program Notes for Gaveaux/Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal by Julia Doe.........................5 Program Notes for Beethoven’s Leonore by Nizam Peter Kettaneh.................................................9 Synopsis and Commentary of Beethoven’s Leonore (1805)

by Nizam Peter Kettaneh and Ryan Brown................................................................................12 Imagining Florestan: An Attempt to Recover the Lost Aria of 1805 by Will Crutchfield...............19 Media – Books and Discography....................................................................................................35 Modern Premiere History..............................................................................................................37 Writer Biographies........................................................................................................................38 About Opera Lafayette...................................................................................................................39

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Letter from the Artistic Director Dear Friends, In exploring trends in late 18th century opera before and through the French Revolution, it was natural for Opera Lafayette to look at Beethoven’s early 19th century Fidelio as a work growing out of this period. Perhaps because Beethoven is so often seen as inspiring later 19th century composers referred to as the Romantic Generation, it seemed that approaching him by way of his predecessors might yield new insights and help us better appreciate the ways in which he was original. Performing Beethoven’s rarely heard first version of the opera from 1805, which he called Leonore, might especially bring us closer to his 18th century roots.

Opera Lafayette has had extensive experience performing works and modern premieres of Monsigny, Grétry, and Cherubini, composers who helped create the genre of the rescue opera into which Leonore/Fidelio fits. The most obvious choice of a predecessor to help us understand Beethoven’s only opera, however, was the work which provided his libretto, Gaveaux and Bouilly’s own Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal from 1798. This was a work that probably had not been performed in over 200 years, and so we set about to prepare it with the idea that we would be able to tell the story of both Gaveaux’s and Beethoven’s operas in a similar production, and that we would film each so that others would also have the chance to compare them.

Beethoven’s 1805 version presented several questions which scholars have been poring over for years, however. The most pressing was how to present the opening scene of Act 3, which was missing some of Florestan’s aria. Opera Lafayette was extremely fortunate to be able to interest Will Crutchfield in re-imagining the missing pieces of this aria.

As with all of Opera Lafayette’s projects that seek to rediscover lost works, we are indebted to a host of scholars whose research inspires us and makes our work possible. The enclosed program notes by Julia Doe and Nizam Kettaneh, and the essay by Mr. Crutchfield, represent just a few of those who were closest to our Leonore Project. In addition, the work of Michael Tusa and Helga Lühning was central to our understanding of Beethoven’s intentions in 1805, and we also received assistance from Kristina Muxfeldt and Kirby Haugland.

We are grateful to this community of scholars as much as we are to our creative team, cast, orchestra, staff, board, and donors, and hope with this project to make a small contribution to the field of opera on the occasion of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary.

Ryan Brown

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The Leonore Project Before Fidelio, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote Leonore, a version modeled on an opera by Pierre Gaveaux and Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, similarly titled Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal. Opera Lafayette committed to producing both these works, which are grounded in the tradition of the 18th century opéra comique, and was the basis for Beethoven’s Fidelio, a touchstone of the operatic canon.

Opera Lafayette premiered Gaveaux’s work in 2017 and performed Beethoven’s Leonore in 2020. The artistic teams and casts were intentionally similar to highlight the close relationship between the two works.

LÉONORE, OU L’AMOUR CONJUGAL

LEONORE

Composer

Pierre Gaveaux

Ludwig van Beethoven

Librettist

Jean-Nicolas Bouilly

Joseph Sonnleithner

Premiere Year

1798

1805

Language

French

German ARTISTIC TEAMS

Conductor

Ryan Brown

Stage Director

Oriol Tomas

Set and Costume Designer Lighting Designer

Laurence Mongeau Julie Basse

Rob Siler CASTS

Léonore/Fidélio: Kimy McLaren Florestan: Jean-Michel Richer Roc: Tomislav Lavoie

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Leonore/Fidelio: Nathalie Paulin Florestan: Jean-Michel Richer Rocco: Stephen Hegedus

Marceline: Pascale Beaudin

Marzelline: Pascale Beaudin

Pizare: Dominique Cộté

Pizarro: Matthew Scollin

Jacquino: Keven Geddes

Jaquino: Keven Geddes

Dom Fernand: Alexandre Sylvestre

Don Fernando: Alexandre Sylvestre

Program Notes for Gaveaux/Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal

By Julia Doe Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal, with a text by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly and music by Pierre Gaveaux, is one of the most famous pieces of lyric theater that virtually no contemporary audiences have ever witnessed. This opéra comique, which premiered at the Parisian Theatre Feydeau in 1798, is emblematic of a persistently neglected category of dramatic repertory – the dialogue opera of the French revolutionary period. It also, of course, provided the source material for an object of widespread renown and sustained scholarly fascination: Fidelio, the sole surviving (and much revised) opera of Ludwig van Beethoven. Bouilly and Gaveaux’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal is thus a work with a uniquely bifurcated historical identity. On the one hand, its plot and musical idiom are tied closely to the time and place of its creation; it betrays a clear debt to the conventions of Classical-era opéra comique and to the specific political circumstances of the late 1790s. On the other hand, the opera’s abstract and broadly generalizable themes – of the strength of conjugal devotion and the necessity for rebellion against unjust persecution – would prove eminently adaptable, exerting an enduring hold on the popular imagination in France and throughout nineteenthcentury Europe.

Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal was described by its librettist as a fait historique. The term refers to a sub-category of French opera developed during the final decades of the eighteenth century, featuring plots “ripped from the headlines” or otherwise based upon acts of contemporary heroism. In his (sometimes spurious) memoirs, Bouilly – a lawyer turned playwright – publicized the work by emphasizing its veracity. He claimed that the drama was inspired by an event that occurred during the revolutionary reign of Terror. While employed as a civil servant in central France, he had witnessed a “sublime deed of bravery and devotion by one of the ladies of the Touraine, whose noble efforts I had the happiness of assisting.” The details of the incident, while plausible, are impossible to verify. And it should be noted that the author’s own reputation stood to benefit in association with that of his theatrical doppelganger – if he “assisted” the efforts of a real-world Léonore, Bouilly implied that he himself served as the model for the libretto’s prime symbol of justice and authority, the benevolent minister Dom Fernand. Moreover, if Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal contains a grain of historical truth, it simultaneously (and rather conveniently) exemplifies many of the most popular plot archetypes of contemporaneous French theater. The theme of dramatic rescue from captivity was unsurprisingly ubiquitous in the years surrounding the fall of the Bastille, as was the dramatic condemnation of arbitrary tyranny. (Prison scenes abound in works of the period, from Monsigny’s Le Déserteur to Dalayrac’s Raoul, Sire de Créqui. The evil Dourlinski in Cherubini’s Lodoiska is but one obvious predecessor to power-mad villain Pizare in Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal.)

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Gaveaux’s score for Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal looks both backwards and forwards, blending tuneful, old-regime idioms with more complicated numbers reflective of the rapidly evolving aesthetic of the 1790s.

The stylistic language of Roc, Marceline, and Jacquino remains largely within the conventions of the pre-revolutionary age.

These comic characters express themselves in a rustic patois and in a series of popularlyinfused strophic forms. Case in point is Marceline’s opening love song, “Fidelio, mon doux ami,” a set of minor-mode couplets with major-mode refrain. But Gaveaux had also thoroughly absorbed the developments of Pierre Gaveaux the revolutionary decade, as evidenced, in particular, by his expansive approach to choral music and his inclusion of styles borrowed from the realm of lyric tragedy. (Gaveaux was both a composer and a star actor at the Theatre Feydeau. Originating leading roles in several touchstone works of the period, including Cherubini’s Lodoiska and Medée and Steibelt’s Roméo et Juliette, had granted him a firsthand fluency in the latest trends in modern operatic writing.) Notable in this regard is the ensemble that concludes the opera’s first act (“Que ce beau ciel”), which is sung by male captives who gradually fill the stage, and which provides a clear model for the famous “prisoner’s chorus” (“O welche Lust”) at the parallel moment in Beethoven’s Fidelio.

Also innovative are the serious, obbligato recitative and romance performed by Florestan as the curtain rises in Act II. The declamatory vocal style, dark C-minor tonality, and evocative orchestral effects create a foreboding tone reminiscent of the tragédie lyrique. (Gaveaux requests the horns play “bell to bell” – a technique that Gluck had used Jean-Nicolas Bouilly to represent the soundscape of the underworld in his Parisian Alceste.)

Indeed, the prison scenes of Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal were so somber that they threatened to compromise the very identity of the comic genre; as one commentator noted, it was a “strange verbal misuse” to categorize Bouilly and Gaveaux’s work as an opéra comique.

Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal was met with critical acclaim after its Parisian premiere. The Journal de Paris was hard-pressed to name another opera in memory that had achieved “so complete and universal a success,” while the Censeur dramatique highlighted the “astonishing” musical effects and the “nuanced” and “forceful” dramatic construction of the title character. The popularity of the work soon inspired a number of adaptations for export outside of France. Ferdinando Paer and Simon Mayr set Italian translations in 1804 and 1805, respectively; Beethoven received a German version of Bouilly’s libretto for production in Vienna that same year. (He would revise his opera, with new and altered texts, in 1806 and 1814.) What is perhaps most remarkable about Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal is the manner in which its themes have been successively and broadly reimagined, divorced from the very specific historical and geographical circumstances of their initial conception. Bouilly and Gaveaux’s opera was written in the aftermath of the Revolution’s most radical phase, the Terror of 1793-94. Its metaphors of liberation should thus be read not as commentary on the fallen regime of the Bourbon monarchs, but of that of Robespierre and the Jacobins. (The Theatre Feydeau had a solid reputation for royalist sentiments, and Gaveaux was the author of a well-known, 6

anti-terror anthem, Le reveil du peuple.) By 1814, the finalized Fidelio of Beethoven had acquired an entirely new political resonance: its plot was largely viewed as a paean to the toppling of Napoleon, and its exuberant finale as a hymn to the reinstatement of European stability after the Congress of Vienna. Central to both of these (and many subsequent) interpretations of Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal’s fundamental themes is what the historian Paul Robinson has called a “right-angled conception of history,” a transition from the old order to the new that is achieved only through struggle, and therein derives much of its enduring – and inspirational – appeal.

Top: Léonore (Kimy McLaren) in triumph is surrounded by Marceline (Pascale Beaudin), Jacquino (Keven Geddes), Florestan (Jean-Michel Richer), Roc (Tomislov Lavoie), and (Dom Fernand) Alexandre Sylvestre in the piano dress rehearsal of Gaveaux’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal. (@Pierre-Etienne Bergeron). Bottom: Le IX thermidor an II by Charles Monnet – End of the Reign Terror 1794.

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Program Notes for Beethoven’s Leonore (1805)

By Nizam Peter Kettaneh The German libretto of the Leonore of Beethoven is the work of Joseph Ferdinand Sonnleithner, who translated the French libretto of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly’s Léonore ou L’Amour conjugal, set to music by Pierre Gaveaux and created with great success at the Theatre Feydeau in Paris on January 19, 1798. (The work was performed by Opera Lafayette in 2017 and recorded on a DVD on the Naxos label.) The subject – the release to freedom of an unjustly imprisoned man by his devoted wife – shares in the genre of “rescue operas” which were very popular at the end of the eighteenth century. As defined by the musicologist Edward J. Dent, the rescue opera has: “a type of libretto in which the hero or heroine is shut up in prison by a villainous tyrant; the wife or the husband attempts to set the prisoner free, but generally makes the situation far worse, and the invariable happy end is brought about by the sudden entry of a chorus of soldiers who arrest the tyrant.”

Indeed, the prototype of rescue operas is Le Déserteur of Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, set to a libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine and created at the Comédie-Italienne in Paris on March 6, 1769. (The work was also performed by Opera Lafayette in 2009 and recorded on a CD on the Naxos label.) Such was the success of Le Deserteur that it was performed all over Europe, in particular in Bonn in 1787, where Beethoven’s father sang the role of Jean-Louis, the father who is responsible for Alexis being imprisoned and sentenced to death as a deserter. Beethoven must have been familiar with Le Deserteur, in the overture of which a trumpet call announces the arrival of the King who pardons Alexis just as he is about to face the firing squad. This is an idea he will use in the “Leonore” overtures and in the opera.

Left: Léonore (Kimy McLaren) protects her husband Florestan (Jean-Michel Richer) in Opera Lafayette’s production of Gaveaux/Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal. (Louis Forget). Top: Ludwig van Beethoven.

Bottom: Opera Lafayette’s performance of Monsigny’s Le Déserteur (Louis Forget @2009).

The success of Le Deserteur spun out a series of rescue operas of which the most noteworthy are Grétry’s Richard Coeur-de-Lion (1784), Le Comte Albert (1786), and Raoul Barbe-Bleue (1789), Lesueur’s La Caverne (1793), Cherubini’s Lodoïska (1791) and Les Deux Journées ou le Porteur d’eau (1800), and Boieldieu’s Beniowski ou les Exilés du Kamschatka (1800).

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Beethoven held Cherubini in high esteem and thought the libretto of Les Deux Journées ou le Porteur d’eau, as well as that of Spontini’s La Vestale, the two best libretti ever written. The fact that the former libretto was also written by JeanNicolas Bouilly may have caused him to pay special attention to Bouilly’s Léonore ou l’Amour conjugal.

On the other hand, his appreciation of La Vestale may be the reason why in 1803, Beethoven agreed to collaborate with Schikaneder, the author of the libretto to Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and to compose music for Schikaneder’s Vesta’s Feuer (The Fire of Vesta). However, after composing four musical numbers for the first scenes of the opera, Beethoven abandoned the project in December 1803, finding Schikaneder difficult to work with, while the language and verses were “such as could come out of the mouths of our Viennese apple-vendors,” as he confided in a letter to Johann Friedrich Rochlitz. However, all was not lost: the music of the trio of Vesta’s Feuer is the first version of the Leonore duet “O namenlose Freude,” when Leonore is finally reunited with her husband, Florestan.

While Vienna had a tradition of performances of French opera-comique dating back to Empress Maria-Theresa and her composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, there is no indication that Gaveaux’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal was ever performed in Vienna. On the basis of numerous similarities of musical treatment of the same situation between Gaveaux’s and Beethoven’s Leonore, some musicologists have speculated that Beethoven must have known the Gaveaux score, even though his library did not house a copy of it.

Beethoven started composing his Leonore in January 1804, while Ferdinando Paër was composing for Dresden an Italian opera on the same subject, Leonore ossia l’amore conjugale, which was created on October 3, 1804. The Paër opera would not be performed in Vienna until 1809, but Beethoven did possess a copy of its score, though it is not known when he acquired it. Sonnenleithner was slow in providing Beethoven with the translated text, so most of its composition took place in the summer of 1805. It was while working on his Leonore that Beethoven met Cherubini in July at Sonnleithner’s home. It is likely that the great number of surviving sketches that Beethoven wrote while composing Leonore is due to his ambition to rival Cherubini: his untiring industry making up for his lack of practice and experience in theatrical composition.

But while Beethoven was composing, political events were bringing disaster to Austria. On August 9, 1805, Austria joined Britain, Russia, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the Third Coalition against Napoleonic France and Spain, only to be beaten at the battle of Ulm on October 19. The nobility, the great bankers and merchants left Vienna and the Empress herself departed on November 9. The French army arrived in the villages West of Vienna on the 10th and the vanguard of 15,000 soldiers, led by the generals Murat and Lannes, entered the city at 11 o’clock on the 13th in order of battle, flags flying high and to the sound of military music. Napoleon entered on the 14th, a week before the premiere of Beethoven’s Leonore, and made a proclamation the next day from the palace of Schönbrunn, which he used as his headquarters.

Napoléon at the Battle of Austerlitz by François Gérard (Galerie des Batailles, Versailles).

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On December 2, he defeated the Russian and Austrian armies at the battle of Austerlitz. No wonder that the Theateran-der-Wien had been playing to half empty houses, despite the splendid decorations and costumes that were used for the creation of Schikaneder’s Swetards Zaubergürtel (music by Anton Fischer) on July 3, 1805 and Vestas Feuer (music by Joseph Weigl) on August 10, 1805. The patrons and fans of Beethoven had all fled or were in no mood to go to the theater, so it was to a sparsely populated parterre of French officers that

Leonore was performed on November 20, 21, and 22. Though Beethoven wanted the title to be Leonore, the directors of the theater overruled him and billed the work as Fidelio. The three acts of Beethoven’s first full opera proved too long for a public, the majority of which was unfamiliar with the German language and with Beethoven’s music.

There were also difficulties with the casting. The first Leonore/Fidelio, Anna Milder, (1785-1838) had a wonderful voice, but was just starting her career and had not acquired much stage experience. She would later create the title roles of Cherubini’s German opera, Faniska, (1806) and Joseph Weigl’s operas, Das Waisenhoaus (1808) and Die Schweizer Familie (1809). In 1812 she scored a huge success in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride and in the Vienna performance of Cherubini’s Médée. After creating the role of Leonore/Fidelio in Beethoven’s Fidelio of 1814, she left Vienna for Berlin where she created the operas of Spontini Olimpie (1821), Nurmahal (1822), and Agnes von Hohenstaufen (1827) and sang the soprano part in Mendelssohn’s revival of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1829). It is for her that Schubert composed Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shephard on the Rocks). Louise Miller (1784-after 1837), the Marzelline, was a good singer and actress, particularly in the comic roles. However, the first Florestan, the tenor Joseph Friedrich Christian Demmer (ca. 1788–1811) was weak; so was the Pizarro of Sebastian Meier [Mayer] (1773-1835), who had become in 1797 the second husband of Josepha Hofer (née Weber), the younger sister of Constance Mozart and the creator of the role of the Queen of the Night. Joseph Caché (1770-1841), who sang Jaquino, learned his role by having it played for him on the violin and Joseph Rothe (1759-1808), the creator of Rocco, was so insignificant that there is hardly any mention of him at all.

Thus, Beethoven’s first completed attempt at writing an opera resulted in a dismal failure with the public. He revised the score, shortened it to two acts instead of the original three before it was performed at the Theater-an-der-Wien on March 29, 1806 and repeated on April 10. It was rather well received and would have had a longer run if, in a fit of anger, Beethoven had not withdrawn it. Beethoven revised the score again in 1807 in the hopes of a performance in Prague, which did not materialize. It is only in 1814 that his final revision produced the opera Fidelio, which premiered with great success on May 23, 1814 at the Kärnthnerthor-Theater of Vienna.

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Synopsis and Commentary of Beethoven’s Leonore of 1805

By Nizam Peter Kettaneh and Ryan Brown Overture. Beethoven wrote the overture known as “Leonore No.2” first. It is in two movements: Andante con moto and Allegro con brio. For his revision of Leonore in 1806, which reduced the work from three to two acts, he composed the overture known as “Leonore No.3.” The overture known as “Leonore No.1” was composed in 1807 when he revised the work again, in anticipation of a performance at the Prague Theater which did not materialize.

ACT I No.1 Aria of Marzelline: O wär’ ich schon mit dir vereint (O were I already united with you) Marzelline is in love with Fidelio, the key-carrier (who is none other than Leonore, the wife of the unjustly imprisoned Florestan, and who is disguised as a man in order to gain access to save her husband). Marzelline awaits the return of Fidelio, sent on errands by her father, Rocco the jailer, and sings of the joys of being soon married to Fidelio.

In 1805 Beethoven placed this aria first, like Gaveaux and Bouilly. It established the importance of the key C Major, presaging the movement from c minor to C Major in the Finale of the opera and the theme of hope-love that will be associated with this key throughout the opera.

Jaquino, the doorman of the prison, is the jilted lover of Marzelline. He tries to speak to Marzelline and to express his love, but no longer interested, she rebukes him.

No.2 Duet of Marzelline and Jaquino: Jetzt, Schätzchen, jetzt sind wir allein (At long last, sweetheart, we are alone) Marzelline makes it clear to Jaquino that her heart is set on Fidelio. Whereupon Rocco enters and Jaquino pleads his case to him. Rocco sides with his daughter and tells Jaquino that Marzelline is not for him.

Pascale Beaudin as Marceline in Opera Lafayette’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal by Gaveaux and Bouilly. (Louis Forget).

This duet is also closely modeled on Gaveaux/Bouilly. In subsequent revisions Beethoven placed it after the overture and before Marcelina’s aria.

No.3 Trio of Marzelline, Jaquino and Rocco: Ein Mann ist bald genommen (A husband is soon chosen) Rocco warns that marriage is not something to be taken lightly; Jaquino is upset at Marzelline’s refusal, and Marzelline will not be swayed in agreeing to marry Jaquino.

This trio, not in the Gaveaux/Bouilly, was discarded in the 1806 revision of Leonore and does not appear in Fidelio.

Fidelio returns loaded with groceries and heavy chains. Rocco congratulates him on his diligence and promises that it shall be rewarded.

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No.4 Quartet of Marzelline, Leonore, Jaquino and Rocco: Mir ist so wunderbar (A wondrous feeling fills me) Marzelline expresses her happiness that Fidelio loves her, Leonore, her uneasiness that Marzelline loves her, Rocco, his satisfaction that Marzelline and Fidelio are meant for each other, and Jaquino, his bewilderment at Rocco’s favoring Fidelio over himself.

Because in 1805 the longer Act 1 (complete with the trio, #3) focuses on the domestic plot, Joseph Kerman has suggested that the meaning of this canon is less enigmatic than in 1814. About this original work by Beethoven,

Marceline (Pascale Beaudin) and Jacquino (Keven Geddes) in Opera Lafayette’s piano dress rehearsal of Gaveaux/Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’Amour Michael Tusa observes that “Like conjugal. (Pierre-Etienne Bergeron). peasant choruses in Figaro and Don Giovanni the Act I canon couples G Major with compound metre, in this case to evoke the idyllic dreams of the working-class Marzelline.” It also, of course, anticipates the other extraordinary moment of reflection, “O Gott, o welch ein Augenblick” in the Finale of the opera.

Rocco promises that he will marry Fidelio to Marzelline after the departure for Sevilla in a few days of Pizarro, the governor of the prison.

No.5 Aria of Rocco: Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben (If you do not have gold by you) Rocco warns that love is not enough for a happy life. One needs also to have gold.

This aria is very similar to that of Gaveaux/Bouilly. Unlike textual revisions found in 1814, it also includes biting social commentary about the shameful use of wealth.

Fidelio expresses her eagerness to help Rocco in his duties by accompanying him in his rounds of the prisoners because Rocco comes back from his rounds absolutely exhausted. Rocco tells him that the Governor has given strict orders that no one be allowed near the prisoner of State, but Marcelina pleads that her father must accept Fidelio’s assistance for her and Fidelio’s sake. Rocco agrees to seek Pizarro’s permission for Fidelio to accompany him, at the same time informing them that there is one prisoner who has been imprisoned for two years and whose ration of food has been diminished for the past month on orders of the governor and who will soon die. Fidelio senses that this could well be her husband, Florestan, but cannot get any more information from Rocco.

Marcelina fears that such a sight might be too much for Fidelio, but Fidelio assures her that he has might and courage.

No.6 Trio of Marzelline, Leonore and Rocco: Gut, Söhnchen, gut (Good, my son, good) Rocco congratulates Fidelio for his courage; Fidelio assures that his love will give him strength and courage, while Marzelline expresses her concern that Fidelio will suffer in seeing the pitiful condition of the prisoner of State. Rocco promises to speak to the Governor today to get his permission to have Fidelio accompany him and tells Fidelio to join hands with Marcelina, which they do, Fidelio, with misgivings, and Marzelline, with joy.

This trio closes the first of Beethoven’s 1805, three-act conception, and is not found in Gaveaux/Bouilly’s two-act work.

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ACT II No.7 March.

The Governor Pizarro enters and gives orders for sentries to keep watch and to warn him of anyone’s approaching the prison. He has learnt from an agent that the Minister is going to make a surprise visit to check on reports that there are prisoners detained without authority.

This short piece “alla Marcia” was formerly thought to be incidental music to the play Tarpeja, but scholars now believe it to be from the 1805 Leonore.

No.8 Aria of Pizarro with Chorus: Ha! Welch ein Augenblick!

Marceline (Pascale Beaudin) and Fidélio (Kimy McLaren) in the piano dress of Opera Lafayette’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal by Gaveaux/Bouilly.

(Ha! What a moment!)

(Pierre-Etienne Bergeron).

Pizarro is savoring his vengeance on Florestan. He will kill Florestan and bury his body before the Minister arrives. The soldiers comment on Pizarro’s agitation and decide to go about their duty, fearing reprisal.

Pizarro’s character in Gaveaux/Bouilly does not sing, and the textual material of this aria, the following duet #9, and the Act 3 Quartet No. 16 are newly set to music by Beethoven.

No.9 Duet of Pizarro and Rocco: Jetzt, Alter, jetzt hat es Eile! (Now, old chap, we must hurry!)

Pizarro tries to bribe Rocco into murdering Florestan, but Rocco refuses. Pizarro tells Rocco to dig a grave in the disused well in the dungeon where Florestan is imprisoned and, when done, to give him a signal, at which point Pizarro in disguise will enter the dungeon and murder Florestan.

No.10 Duet of Marzelline and Fidelio: Um in der Ehe froh zu leben (To be happy in marriage) Marzelline sings that one must above all be faithful to one and never give grounds to suspicion, to which Fidelio agrees. She then sings of the happy days that they will spend with their aging father and of the joys of motherhood. Fidelio expresses his misgivings at having to deceive Marzelline.

This duet closely resembles Gaveaux/Bouilly, but it has the effect of returning the plot to the theme of love (again, in the key of C Major), after the dramatic, newly-composed music for Pizarro and Rocco (No.8 and 9), so it was discarded in the revisions that led to Fidelio of 1814.

Marcelina leaves in order to let the prisoners come to take a breath of fresh air.

No.11 Recitative and aria of Fidelio: Ach, brich noch nicht / Komm, Hoffnung (Ah, do not break / Come, o hope) Left alone, Fidelio reflects on her imminent meeting with her husband and prays that hope will give her the strength successfully to save him.

This aria is set very similarly to Gaveaux/Bouilly, with a prominent use of horn(s), and with the mood established by the introductory recitative which follows the preceding duet. In the Fidelio of 1814, when the preceding Marzelline and Fidelio duet (No.10) was discarded, Beethoven wrote a new dramatic recitative to follow the Pizarro and Rocco duet (No.9), which serves as a prelude to this aria.

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No.12 Finale (Chorus of prisoners, Marzelline, Fidelio, Pizarro, Rocco): O welch Lust (Oh what happiness) The prisoners sing their happiness to breath in the light of the day and a prisoner expresses his hope to be freed one day. Another prisoner warns him to speak softly, because they are being watched. Rocco comes and pushes them back to their prisons; then he informs Fidelio that Pizarro has given permission for Fidelio to accompany him to the dungeon of the prisoner of State, Florestan.

He also tells him that he will have to dig a grave, because Pizarro will kill Florestan and they will have to bury him. Marzelline and Jaquino enter hurriedly to warn Rocco of the arrival of Pizarro in a bad temper. Pizarro arrives and berates Rocco for dawdling and sends him and Fidelio off to their duty; then, turning to the guards, Pizarro orders them to keep good watch, which they promise to do, while Pizarro savors his imminent revenge.

The opening of the prisoner’s chorus in this 1805 Finale is very similar to Gaveaux/Bouilly. In Beethoven’s revisions to this Finale, however, he deleted the blustering ending of Pizarro and his guards in favor of a quiet description of the prisoners’ returning to their cells, which echoes the structure of the Gaveaux/Bouilly Finale.

ACT III No.13 Introduction, recitative and aria of Florestan: Gott, welch Dunkel hier! / In des Lebens Frühlingstagen (God! How dark it is here! / In the Springtime of my life) Florestan remarks on the darkness and silence of his surrounding and submits his suffering to the will of God. Then, in the aria he recalls how the happy days with his wife were removed, because he did his duty by speaking the truth. He pulls out a portrait of his wife and tells her to sooth her grief with the thought that he has done his duty.

Florestan (Jean-Michel Richer) in Opera Lafayette’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal by Gaveaux/Bouilly (Louis Forget).

Much of the aria portion of this number has been lost except for a few bars that have survived the many revisions of the score. Using whatever remained of the original score and the many sketches left by Beethoven of this scene, musicologist, Will Crutchfield, has re-imagined the scene, assembling a near-complete draft of the melodic line, both vocal and instrumental, based on Beethoven’s material.

Beethoven’s existing 1805 recitative, however, is strikingly similar to Gaveaux/Bouilly in vocal range and character, and we know that in 1805 he gave new music to the different quatrains of the poetry in the aria. (Gaveaux set the different quatrains as a set of strophic variations.) Beethoven’s subsequent revisions were substantial, however, and, along with a new text for the final section in 1814, suggested a change not only to the vocal line, but to the character of Florestan. As Winton Dean has suggested, the original 1805 f minor conclusion “has a defiant stoicism that is not only most movingly expressed but enlarges our view of Florestan’s character.” It also creates an extraordinarily smooth transition to the subsequent Melodrama and duet.

No.14 Melodrama and duet of Rocco and Fidelio: Nur hurtig fort (Come, get to work) Rocco and Fidelio have arrived in the dungeon where Florestan is chained. Over the melodrama music, Fidelio and Rocco comment how cold it is and Rocco points at the sleeping Florestan, but it is too dark for Fidelio to distinguish Florestan’s features. Rocco then points to the disused well which needs to be freed from the rubble obstructing it.

In the duet that follows, Rocco enjoins Fidelio to get to work quickly, because Pizarro will soon arrive; they both set to work digging with much effort. This duet is very similar to the duet in Gaveaux/Bouilly.

Florestan wakes up. Rocco leaves the pit they have been digging to speak to Florestan, while Fidelio listens intently. Upon recognizing the voice of her husband, she becomes weak and keeps herself from falling by clinging to the rim of the pit. Florestan asks Rocco who is the governor of the prison. Upon learning it is Pizarro, he begs Rocco to go as soon as possible to Sevilla and tell his wife of his condition. Rocco tells him he cannot do it. Florestan then asks for water. Rocco tells him he can give him the wine he has in a flask and asks Fidelio to bring it.

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No.15 Trio of Fidelio, Florestan and Rocco: Euch werde Lohn (In better worlds you will be rewarded).

Florestan thanks Rocco for his kindness, Rocco feels sorry for the man who has only a little while to live; Fidelio feels great compassion and obtains permission to give Florestan a piece of bread that she has in her pocket, for which Florestan thanks her.

This trio too is remarkably similar to Gaveaux/Bouilly.

Rocco then tells Fidelio that he will give the signal. Pizarro enters and asks if all Léonore (Kimy McLaren) captures Pizare (Dominique Côté) in piano dress rehearsal for Opera Lafayette’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal by is ready. Rocco tells him that they only Gaveaux/Bouilly. (Pierre-Etienne Bergeron) need to open the well’s door. Pizarro tells Rocco to send Fidelio away; while Rocco motions to Fidelio to go, Pizarro comments that he will have to get rid of both of them later today so his deeds will remain uncovered forever. Rocco asks Pizarro if he wishes to have the prisoner unchained. Pizarro says no and draws a dagger.

No.16 Quartet of Fidelio, Florestan, Pizarro and Rocco: Er sterbe! (He shall die!)

Pizarro reveals to Florestan who he is and mocks him for having attempted to overthrow him. Now Pizarro will murder him. Fidelio thrusts herself between Pizarro and Florestan, revealing that she is Leonore, Florestan’s wife, to the consternation of Pizarro and Rocco and to the joy of Florestan. She pulls a pistol aiming it at Pizarro. A trumpet call is heard signaling the arrival of the minister.

Leonore and Florestan rejoice, Pizarro curses, and Rocco is dumbfounded.

Pizarro leaves hurriedly followed by Rocco who wrestles the pistol from Leonore’s hand. Emotionally exhausted and distraught for having lost her weapon, Leonore faints.

This quartet, not set to music by Gaveaux, ends in Beethoven’s 1805 version on an extraordinary note of dissonance; the fact that Florestan and Leonore do not know whether in fact they will for certain be saved retains a dramatic tension that was abandoned in the revisions of the finale for the 1814 Fidelio.

No.17 Recitative and Duet of Leonore and Florestan: Ich kann mich noch nicht fassen / O namenlose Freude! (I cannot believe it / Oh, joy beyond words!)

Florestan cannot believe that his wife has come and calls her to him. Leonore comes back to her senses and hurries to Florestan, who clasps her in his arms.

They sing of their joy to be reunited.

The duet has a predecessor in Gaveaux/ Bouilly. When Beethoven and his new librettist reconceived the end of the Fidelio of 1814, Beethoven discarded this extraordinary recitative while retaining the duet.

Léonore (Kimy McLaren) protects her husband Florestan (Jean-Michel Richer) in a piano dress rehearsal for Opera Lafayette’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal by Gaveaux/Bouilly. (Pierre-Etienne Bergeron).

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Leonore recounts to Florestan how she disguised herself as a man and got Rocco to hire her as the keykeeper to gain access to him.

Dom Fernand (Alexandre Sylvestre) acquits Léonore (Kimy McLaren) and her husband Florestan (Jean-Michel Richer) on the set designed by Laurence Mongeau in Opera Lafayette’s production of Gaveaux/Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal. (Louis Forget).

No.18 Finale (Chorus of prisoners, townspeople, Leonore, Marzelline, Florestan, Pizarro, Rocco, Don Fernando, Jaquino): Zur Rache (Vengeance) The voices of prisoners seeking vengeance are heard in the distance; Leonore and Florestan fear that their last moments have arrived and are ready to face death, which will put an end to their suffering and let them die in each other’s arms. Rocco enters followed by Don Fernando, Pizarro, Marzelline, Jaquino, the prisoners and townspeople. He asks Don Fernando to have mercy on Leonore and Florestan. Don Fernando says he came to avenge virtue and be their savior. Rocco returns the pistol to Leonore and tells her he took it away for fear that she may use it against herself in her despair. Don Fernando asks Rocco to hand the keys to Leonore so she may free her husband from his chains. All present praise the Lord and his justice. Don Fernando asks Rocco how long Florestan was imprisoned and tells Pizarro that he shall suffer the same fate. The chorus exclaims that the punishment is too light, while Florestan asks Don Fernando to be lenient. Don Fernando decides to leave the matter to the judgement of the king. All praise the courage and virtue of Leonore.

While the outlines of this Finale are similar to, and have a precedent in, two short final numbers by Gaveaux/Bouilly, as in all else, Beethoven greatly expands upon the dramatic material. In 1814, however, Beethoven and his librettist would take the final scene out of the dungeon and into the daylight, focus on the chorus and a new ode to freedom. In his first conception of 1805, the scene does not change, and the focus remains on the noble Leonore’s virtue.

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Imagining Florestan: An attempt to recover the lost aria of 1805

By Will Crutchfield Beethoven’s involvement with his only opera produced three distinct scores on three occasions in Vienna: • The 1805 premiere as Fidelio, the work revived in the present production • The 1806 revival as Leonore, with revisions and abbreviations • The 1814 revival as Fidelio, extensively re-composed, that has remained in repertory.

As though this were not enough, the composer left us four distinct overtures; the “extra” one, published as Op. 138 and now confusingly known as “Leonore No. 1,” was most likely written for a projected but unrealized Prague production in 1807 or 1808. It is a lot of music, yet every bit is of interest.

One important bit unfortunately went missing: the principal tenor aria of Beethoven’s 1805 opera was literally destroyed when the scores of it were cut up so that some pages could be recycled in the version of 1806. The pages lost on the cutting-room floor included a significant passage – a solo in F Major with obbligato flute as the imprisoned Florestan recalls happier days with Leonore at his side – of which no trace remained in the other versions. Also lost was the first version of the aria’s slow movement, “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen,” which was different, likely quite different, from the ones we know.

The paper trail of the dismembered scores tells us beyond doubt that these movements were present in the 1805 Fidelio, but the only evidence we have for their musical content comes from the composer’s sketchbooks, where he recorded multiple drafts of their melodic lines. For the current Beethoven anniversary year, Opera Lafayette invited me to edit these drafts and try my hand at devising an orchestral score to accompany them. The idea is to let audiences hear for the first time Beethoven’s original conception of the aria, even if we cannot hear the way he himself orchestrated it. Doing this meant also picking up the thread of a long-running musical detective story that scholars have been investigating for more than a century: just what happened, and when and why, to this problem aria? What follows is an account of that mystery and the process of developing the score heard at these performances.

I - The shape of the scene Florestan’s soliloquy in the dungeon is laid out on a plan that remained intact in all three versions of the opera, though the content was significantly different in each. Its components: an instrumental prelude, an expansive recitative, and a grand aria in two parts – a slow “cantabile” movement followed by a faster one.

Left: The Prisoner by Joseph Wright.

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This scheme had been standard for the principal solo of a star singer since roughly the youth of Mozart. The prelude was an optional component; long ones were typical if the character was alone on stage, while if others were present, the prelude might be short or even absent. The key element was the two-tempo aria, which from the middle-18th century had gradually displaced the venerable aria “da capo.” Familiar examples by Mozart are Donna Anna’s “Non mi dir” (Don Giovanni), the entrance aria of the Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), and – especially important for Beethoven – Fiordiligi’s “Per pietà, ben mio, perdona” (Così fan tutte). This form served opera for over a century: under Rossini’s hands the final allegro mutated into what we call a “cabaletta,” and was still being used by Verdi and his compatriots up to the early 1860s.

Leonore/Fidelio holds two such arias, those of the principal couple. Leonore’s was revised, but always by refining and concentrating the musical ideas present from the start. Florestan’s had a more complex history, which we can trace from Beethoven’s multiple sketches through to the 1814 Fidelio.

For grasping that history, the best starting point is Sonnleithner’s 1805 text for the aria (based closely on Bouilly’s libretto for Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal, discussed in the main program note about the opera).

1 2 3 4

In des Lebens Frühlingstagen Ist das Glück von mir geflohn!

Wahrheit wagt’ ich kühn zu sagen, Und die Ketten sind mein Lohn.

In the springtime days of life Joy has fled from me.

I dared boldly to tell the truth, And chains are my reward.

5 6 7 8

Willig duld’ ich alle Schmerzen, Ende schmählich meine Bahn.

Süßer Trost in meinem Herzen: Meine Pflicht hab ich getan!

Willingly I bear all sorrows, And take my path to a dismal end.

Sweet consolation in my heart: I have done my duty.

[er zieht ein Bildnis aus dem Busen]

[he draws a portrait from his breast]

9 10 11 12

Ach, es waren schöne Tage, Als mein Blick an deinem hing, Als ich dich mit frohem Schlage Meines Herzens fest umfing.

Ah, those days were fair When my glance hung upon yours, When, with heart beating for joy, I held you fast.

13 14 15 16

Mildre, Liebe, deine Klage, wandle ruhig deine Bahn, sage deinem Herzen, sage: Florestan hat recht getan.

Soften, love, your lament, Go your way in peace, And say, say to your heart: Florestan has done right.

Of these four balanced quatrains, the first two are familiar to opera-goers who know the 1814 Fidelio, but the last two are not.

They were replaced, in the end, with a new text by Georg Friedrich Treitschke, in which Leonore appears not as a memory but as a guardian angel leading Florestan to freedom in the afterlife. In the first two versions of the opera, the quatrains had been symmetrically disposed: two for the slow movement and two for the fast. And in 1805 – but not in 1806 – the last pair was also evenly divided: one quatrain for the lost F Major passage with flute (the “Flötenarie,” as Beethoven sleuths have been calling it for more than a century), and one more for a concluding section in f minor, the key of the prelude with which the scene had begun.

When the “Flötenarie” was cut out in 1806, its poetic text did not vanish; instead, the whole third quatrain was grafted into the f minor conclusion. It was laid over the music originally destined for lines 13, 15, and 16 (14 seems to have been skipped the first time around), which were thus left to be heard only at what would have been their repetitions (where line 14 finally takes its place).

The chart below summarizes the contents of the scene in the three versions of the opera (there was also an intervening stage between the 1805 and 1806 versions, discussed later).

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1805 [Fidelio]

1806 [Leonore]

1814 [Fidelio]

Prelude: Grave 4/4, f minor

Prelude (revised)

Prelude (again revised)

Recitative

Recitative (revised)

Recitative (largely rewritten)

Aria, first part: Adagio 3/4, A-flat major (lines 1-8 of aria text, music lost except first two bars)

Aria, first part: Adagio (revised; lines 1-8 of text).

Aria, first part: Adagio (again revised; lines 1-8 of text)

Aria, second part: Tempo indication unknown, 4/4, beginning F Major (“Flötenarie,” lines 9-12 of text, music lost), finishing f minor (lines 13-16 of text, partly retained in 1806)

Aria, second part: Andante un poco agitato, 4/4 f minor (final portion of the 1805 movement, revised; lines 9-16 of text)

Aria, second part: Poco allegro, 4/4 F Major (text and music entirely new)

The first question here is “what allegro?” Most have assumed that Röckel meant the familiar “Poco allegro” of the 1814 Fidelio - which may be correct, since in correspondence with later biographers he ascribed that passage to the wish of Giulio Radichi, the 1814 Florestan “to be applauded” at the end of his scene. Tusa, knowing that Röckel had performed the F minor “Andante un poco agitato” in 1806, hypothesizes that this movement was meant - but “major” for “minor” is an odd mistake for a musician to make at random. A third possibility is that Röckel meant the very passage we are discussing, the “Flötenarie.”

II - The backstory The best studies of the lost aria are contained in a series of papers published by Michael C. Tusa and Helga Lühning in the 1990s, of which the most comprehensive are: Michael C. Tusa: The Unknown Florestan: The 1805 Version of “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen.” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Summer, 1993) Ferdinand Ries

Helga Lühning: Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Arie des Florestan. In: Festschrift Christoph-Hellmut Mahling zum 65.

Geburtstag, ed. Axel Beer. Tutzing, 1997 These lay out the information at our disposal in full detail (including fresh discoveries), along with transcriptions of many of the relevant passages from Beethoven’s sketches. I recommend them to everyone with an appetite for musical archeology and thank both authors for making the task far easier for anyone following in their footsteps.

Published discussion of the mysterious aria, however, began more than 150 years earlier, when Beethoven’s sometime pupil Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) interviewed Joseph August Röckel (1783-1870), the tenor who sang Florestan in the 1806 revival. Röckel was the only new member of the cast, having been recruited to replace Carl Demmer (1766-1824), who had sung – and apparently been a bit of a problem – in 1805. The Röckel/Ries account was published in 1838; here is its musical portion in full (author’s translation):

August Röckel

Florestan’s aria, No. 11 (at the beginning of the second act), had in the first version concluded with the Adagio in 3/4 time.

The Allegro in F Major was added only later by Beethoven for a

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tenor who otherwise did not want to perform. In the first version, Florestan had to hold at the end a high F for four whole bars adagio, while the instruments slowly faded away. This the tenor could not do, and so, probably in the revision, the portion of the Adagio that returns to the tonic F Major or f minor was left out, since it now moves from A-flat major, 3/4 adagio, directly into an allegro, 3/4 [sic] in F Major. Herr Röckel narrated the matter thus to me; he also assured me that he still possesses the vocal part in Beethoven’s own handwriting.

This is a clear and straightforward narrative; the only trouble is that almost everything in it is demonstrably wrong. But why?

Lühning speaks for many when she says that the tenor, three decades after the premiere, “obviously scarcely knew any longer what he was talking about” (“offenbar wusste [...] kaum noch, wovon er sprach”). Most scholars have agreed that the account is too unreliable to be of much use for tracing the history of the piece. In the course of working through the aria, though, I came to a different conclusion: that Röckel most likely knew exactly what he was talking about, but was misunderstood by Ries on a crucial point from which almost all the other errors flow – and that those surface errors may conceal some important clues to the sequence of events in question.

Three things must be borne in mind. First, we are reading Ries’s paraphrases and interpretations of what Röckel said about a score that Röckel had seen but Ries had not. Second, when we ask “what was the aria in 1805?” we are really asking two questions: what did Beethoven put into production (having scores copied and orchestral parts made), and what was actually performed. It is possible that these were not the same. Third, we must recall the intermediate stage of revision between the 1805 performances and Röckel’s appearance on the scene, mentioned above but not yet discussed. Beethoven drew up a sketch/memorandum for re-casting the scene in various ways, including the reduction of the aria to just a single movement. The pared-down 1806 version of the Adagio may have been written while this plan was in Beethoven’s mind.

Details are given below where they are relevant to the mystery, and we will return to Röckel and Ries point-by-point, after first reviewing what we know from the manuscripts and sketches.

III - What is known and what must be guessed Our knowledge of the lost 1805 aria comes from two types of evidence. The first is the surviving shreds from a couple of dismembered copies of the original score. One of these (known as “Autograph 5” in a collection of Beethoven material found today in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) was used by the composer in the revision process. He marked the 1806 adjustments to the prelude and recitative directly over the 1805 readings, which is why we still have both versions of those passages today (though they have to be disentangled from still further revisions made for the 1814 prelude!). Then a new copy takes over for the aria proper - but the very first page of the old one was left in, because the end of the recitative was written on the other side of the same sheet.

This isolated page tells us two important things: first, that the aria had an instrumental prelude in 1805 (this was deleted in 1806); second, that there was a part for solo flute.

Even though all we see of it is two empty bars, it proves that some version of the “Flötenarie” had been present, because the flute has nothing to play elsewhere in the aria. (Its line vanishes from the score pages written afresh for the revised version.)

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Then there is a score possibly prepared for the unrealized Prague production, and in any case located there today. Once again part of an 1805 copy was left in place - this time, pages from the final f minor section, including some in which the music, but not the text, was the same for 1805 and 1806. A second hand adjusted the words, but the first layer proves that the f minor section originally contained only the fourth quatrain of verse. That proves in turn that this manuscript as well once contained the “Flötenarie,” and confirms that it was – in 1805 as in the sketches – the home of the third quatrain. (The

Prague copy also allows us to see some smaller revisions towards the end of the f minor section, including two bars that were left out in 1806.)

That is not much to go on, but it does at least leave us certain that the “Flötenarie” and some different version of the Adagio were actually present in the score prepared for 1805, not just in the sketches. And what do the sketches tell us?

The main source for the early versions of the opera is the so-called Leonore Skizzenbuch, 346 densely filled pages now bound together and housed in the same Berlin library. This contains multiple passes over the Florestan material and many isolated fragments, documenting many ideas that were incorporated into the eventual scores alongside many others that were not. Amidst many uncertainties, this much can be said: • Throughout the sketchbook, up until a few pages appended at the end reflecting Beethoven’s work after the 1805 performances, there is a clear and unvarying plan for the scene: Prelude; recitative; Adagio aria (almost all sketches in 3/4 time and A-flat Major); second movement in 4/4 time beginning in F Major (“Flötenarie”) and finishing in f minor.

• The Adagio is sketched bewilderingly many times, but several important phrases found in its newly-written 1806 score do not appear at all in the sketchbook, while on the other hand certain events present in nearly all the sketches fail to reappear in that score.

• The drafts for the “Flötenarie,” though they are often duplicative and sometimes contradictory, contain at least twenty-eight continuous bars of vocal and instrumental melody, plus a further passage that describes, in various alternative ways, the transition to the f minor section and its beginning. (A bit past that beginning, as we know from the Prague copy, the 1805 and 1806 versions tally up, with only slight revisions, so we no longer need to rely on the sketchbook.)

Already we are face to face with a glaring contradiction of the Ries/Röckel narrative: they say the original version ended at the Adagio, and every bit of concrete evidence tells us otherwise.

IV - What happened?

Both Ries and Röckel were close to Beethoven over a span of many years, and both were expert musicians. That is self-evident for Ries, who had his own strong career as a composer and virtuoso pianist. It is less to be taken for granted in the case of a tenor, but Röckel was not just a tenor; at various times he also worked as a copyist, chorus-master, and impresario, and he came from a large clan of prominent musicians. All three of his sons became composers; his sister Elisabeth (also a singer) may have been the “Elise” of Beethoven’s most famous short piano piece. Ries, meanwhile, ought to have been our most informative witness on the transformations undergone by the proto-Fidelio, since he had come under Beethoven’s wing as pupil, copyist, and companion early in 1803. But the same French invasion that soured the opera’s 1805 premiere had driven Ries out of Vienna two months earlier, for fear of being conscripted into the army. He did not return until 1807, thus missing the entire interlude between the two scores and the rehearsals and performances of both.

Still, there is no apparent reason either man should have been an unreliable narrator, so it is worth asking line by line why their account could have gotten so much so wrong. It is repeated here in numbered fragments (following Tusa’s example), this time accompanied by Ries’s original German (with modernized spelling). Each is followed by some new speculations on its problems.

[1] Florestan’s aria, No. 11 (at the beginning of the second act), had in the first version concluded with the Adagio in 3/4 time. Die Arie Florestans, Nr. 11 (Anfang des zweiten Aktes), hatte bei der ersten Bearbeitung mit dem Adagio im 3/4 Takt aufgehört.

The numbering was different in 1805 (No. 13, third act), but that is unimportant; Ries was addressing readers who knew the eventual 1814 Fidelio. What he says about it obviously cannot be true if by “first version” we mean the score prepared for 1805, in which the presence of both the “Flötenarie” and the f minor ending are securely confirmed. As Tusa observed, Ries’s assertion could well be true of the first version known to Röckel – if he was shown Beethoven’s above-mentioned interim plan and assumed it to be the original. But as we will see next, Röckel probably knew more, and it is possible that he is telling us something not about the first composed version but about the first performed one.

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[2] The Allegro in F Major was added only later by Beethoven for a tenor, who otherwise did not want to perform.

Das Allegro in F dur wurde von Beethoven erst später für einen Tenoristen, der sonst nicht auftreten wollte, hinzugefügt.

The first question here is “what allegro?” Most historians have assumed that Röckel, three decades after the events described, was confusedly imagining the familiar “Poco allegro” of the 1814 Fidelio. But if so, how could Ries have thought it had anything to do with the story he was drawing from the veteran tenor? Tusa, knowing that Röckel had in fact performed the f minor “Andante un poco agitato” in 1806, hypothesizes that this movement was meant – but “major” for “minor” is an odd mistake for a musician to make at random. A simpler explanation is that Röckel meant the very passage we are discussing, the “Flötenarie.”

If that has not occurred to everybody, it is probably due to a long history of calling the passage “the Moderato,” as Gustav Nottebohm did in the first extensive study of the “Leonore sketchbook” over 150 years ago. We do not know what tempo marking the aria’s second movement might have had in 1805. The heading “andante un poco agitato” for the f minor part dates from 1806 when it stood alone. As Tusa points out, the sketches for the missing F Major section have only one hint of a tempo indication, the abbreviation “Moder” at the start of one early fragment.

Naturally enough, there evolved a habit of discussing the lost aria as being in three movements (Adagio, Moderato, Andante). But in fact “moderato” was not generally used as a free-standing tempo indication. Beethoven employed it that way on only seven occasions in his entire output, and in almost all of those, there is a previous tempo in the same meter that is being “moderated.”

He used it quite often, though, as adjective after another indication – most often “allegro,” which was also the default tempo for the second part of the standard two-part aria.

Allegro and andante were not as far apart in the beginning of the 19th century as they later became; it had only been a couple of generations since composers of the late Baroque era could use the terms to modify one another (“allegro andante”). In the sketches, the f minor material seems to be a straightforward continuation – in the same meter and tonality, with shared melodic components – of the material in F Major. No sketch for the transition indicates a change of pace. An allegro held back by “moderato” and an andante pressed forward by “agitato” could easily be one tempo described in two ways, according to musical and dramatic character.

All this is to explain that the Röckel/Ries mention of “the Allegro in F Major” could easily mean that “the Moderato” was actually designated by something like “allegro moderato” in its finished score, or it could simply mean “the second movement,” identified by the generic designation of “allegro” – but could logically refer to the “Flötenarie” either way.

This speculative explanation still leaves the problem of “the Allegro” supposedly being added at the insistence of a tenor who “did not want to perform” without it. Again, we know from the sketches that this cannot be true. Tusa speculates that Röckel was being coy with his interviewer, and that the demanding tenor was himself – rejecting Beethoven’s proposal for a single-tempo aria and insisting that at least part of the final movement be restored. This is by no means impossible, but a somewhat simpler alternative can be suggested after we consider the remaining points in the account.

[3] In the first version, Florestan had to hold at the end a high F for four whole bars adagio, while the instruments slowly faded away. Bei der ersten Bearbeitung hatte Florestan am Ende vier ganze Takte Adagio das hohe F auszuhalten, wobei die Instrumente sich langsam verloren.

[4] This the tenor could not do, and so, probably in the revision, the portion of the Adagio that returns to the tonic F Major or f minor was left out, since it now moves from Ab major, 3/4 Adagio, directly into an Allegro, 3/4 [sic] in F Major. Dies konnte jener Tenorist nicht und so ist, wahrscheinlich bei der Umarbeitung, der Teil des Adagios, der wieder in den Grundton F dur oder F moll fällt, weggeblieben, indem es jetzt aus As dur, 3/4 Adagio geradezu in Allegro 3/4 F dur fällt.

“Allegro 3/4” is presumably a mere typographical error; the movement in the score “now” (i.e., ever since 1814) is in 4/4 time, as was the original second movement. The “hohe F” has flummoxed everyone. First of all, no sketch and no known finished version of the aria suggests any such thing, nor indeed any extraordinarily long note whatever for Florestan. Second – and this has not been taken into account before – the description is highly suspect on its own. The word “adagio” is ambiguous – it can be either 24

an adjective or a noun, and Ries capitalizes it either way – but the narrative clearly places the supposed note in the Adagio, i.e. the A-flat Major aria, and this is nearly out of the question. Even at the very fastest metronome mark ever set down by Beethoven for any adagio movement (and it is a controversially fast one), such a note would last fully twelve seconds. The ability of a tenor to hold an upper F so long, while not unknown, is rightly considered phenomenal, and there is no known example of any composer prescribing such a feat. Moreover and finally, no sketch for this Adagio gives any suggestion that it might “return to the tonic” established in the scene’s instrumental prelude.

Yet the scene did indeed modulate back to its opening key, and there is a clue in the phrase “am Ende [...] wobei die Instrumente sich langsam verloren.” The instruments have no occasion for such an effect in the Adagio movement, but they are given that exact instruction (“sempre perdendosi”) at the very end of the f minor segment:

Still, there is no long note – neither in the sketches for this passage, nor in the Prague copy derived (at this point in the piece) from the 1805 version, nor in the one that served Beethoven for his revisions in “Autograph 5,” nor in the 1806 score as published in 1810. But if we suppose that the story had some basis in fact, we might speculate that Beethoven had an idea not hinted in the sketches, but musically and vocally plausible. The clarinet and bassoon are indeed holding a long F at the moment the instruction appears. Might Florestan have joined them? Did Röckel perhaps say, or mean to say, “Taktschläge” rather than “Takte”? Not four whole bars at the end of “the Adagio” (nearly impossible), but four beats, and slow ones (“adagio”), in a rallentando at the end of the whole aria?

A possible guess is that the composer wrote something like the following, and in light of Demmer’s difficulties, revised it in rehearsals, in time for the less demanding version to be copied into the Prague score:

For a vocally struggling tenor who was (according to the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung) “almost always singing flat,” this could be problematic enough. And if the speculation is correct, it would mean something important for the story: a further indication that Röckel was talking about the aria we know to have been in the 1805 score, and not (as Ries supposed) about an unknown version of the Adagio.

[5] Herr Röckel narrated the matter thus to me; he also assured me that he still possesses the vocal part in Beethoven’s own handwriting. So erzählte mir Herr Röckel die Sache, der auch die Singpartie in Beethovens eigener Handschrift noch zu besitzen versicherte.

Of course, the question we would most like answered is: what became of that manuscript? It is perfectly likely that Röckel had such a thing – if not entirely in Beethoven’s hand, then most probably a role-book on which the composer had marked the changes transforming the 1805 version to that of 1806, perhaps with an Einlage for the new Adagio. Singers in those days learned their roles from a copyist’s short-score, usually just two staves giving the vocal part, instrumental bass, and verbal or musical entrance cues.

Theaters kept careful track of these books; if Leonore had not been abandoned from the repertory, the tenor would probably have been compelled to return his, if that is indeed what he had.

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Much more music fits on a single page in that format, so it is far less likely that any whole sheets would have been torn out as they were from “Autograph 5” and the Prague score. It is less likely still, given what we know about those and about theater practice generally, that a complete new role-book would have been written out afresh for Röckel: copyist’s hours were a resource to be conserved where possible.

In other words, it is not just plausible but probable that Röckel could have seen, albeit under cancellation marks, the whole of the 1805 aria – and his reported remarks make far better sense if we assume that he had. If, for the sake of argument, we try interpreting the various errors as “probable misinterpretation by Ries of correct information from Röckel,” we may find ourselves knowing more about the aria’s history than was previously thought.

Here are four clues, paraphrased from Röckel/Ries so as to allow “wiggle room” for things that might have been misunderstood in the original interview.

• There was reason for Röckel to think that the aria had a one-movement form (Adagio in a-flat) at some point before his own performances.

• There was some question of a tenor not wanting to perform such a foreshortened scene and insisting on an “Allegro in f major.”

• There were vocal troubles, involving (though probably not limited to) a long-held F “at the end.”

• Something that modulated back to “F Major or (and?) f minor” was “left out” (ist...weggeblieben).

To these we can add a resumé of Beethoven’s further work on the idea of a one-movement aria. We have already seen that he produced a shortened and revised score of the Adagio. Someone, probably Beethoven’s friend Stephan von Breuning, produced eight additional lines of text, printed in the 1806 libretto. They seem calculated to fit the music of the Adagio, and the revisionmemorandum mentioned above contains an otherwise cryptic isolated word, “twice” (zweimal). It looks as though Beethoven was planning to have the Adagio repeated as a two-strophe romance, while slenderizing the piece so that it would bear repetition. The verses were sent to the printer, but no known musical source reflects the plan. Meanwhile, he sketched a new postlude leading directly from the Adagio to the entrance of Rocco and Leonore, thus omitting any second movement – but again there is no evidence that he produced a finished score of such an adaptation. Nor is there any score reflecting the abbreviations and key-changes signaled in the memorandum for the prelude and recitative. Apparently, something persuaded Beethoven to drop the ideas he was working on.

Here is what I think happened – the known facts interwoven with speculation based on the above: • Beethoven completed the aria according to the plan laid out in the sketches: Adagio in A-flat, second movement beginning in F Major (“Flötenarie”) and continuing in f minor (“un poco agitato”).

• Demmer had trouble with it, particularly “am Ende,” to the degree that a blemish on the opera’s chance of success was foreseen.

• Beethoven – perhaps after first trying to ameliorate some of the difficulties – decided, or at least threatened, to cut his losses by omitting the aria’s second movement.

• The offended Demmer said he “did not want to perform” if his solo scene was to be so insultingly reduced.

• Whether this reduction was imposed before the premiere or only after is impossible to say, but the characterization of “the first version” as ending with the Adagio suggests that Röckel thought it was done before the opera was offered to the public.

• Such was in any case the plan for Demmer if he had remained in the cast; Beethoven set to work on a thoughtful re-conception of the scene, with a single-movement (but perhaps repeated?) Adagio aria, in anticipation of the 1806 revival.

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• With Röckel’s arrival to replace Demmer, these efforts became unnecessary; the ideas set out in the memorandum were abandoned un-realized, and the composer felt able to restore the original plan of a two-tempo aria.

• However – consistently with the general imperative to shorten the opera – he did so using only the f minor portion of the second movement, and retaining the abbreviated version of the Adagio that he had already prepared.

• The “Flötenarie” was thus abandoned – but Röckel knew of its existence, whether from the copy he mentioned or from the accounts of his fellow cast-members, who had all been in the 1805 production. He also knew of the single-movement plan, whether because Beethoven described it to him or because Demmer had actually performed without “the Allegro.”

• Röckel spoke to Ries of both versions, but the latter misunderstood a crucial point. Having surmised that “the first version” meant “Beethoven’s original conception” and not “what was performed the first time around,” Ries interpreted everything else the tenor told him about the 1805 aria (the return to the tonic, the problematic vocal F “am Ende,” the decision to make a cut) as though all of that should have happened within some lost version of the Adagio.

• The same error could explain the only remaining puzzle: the supposition that “a tenor” had induced Beethoven to compose the “Allegro” in the first place. My guess: either Röckel had jumped to the situation of 1814 and Ries failed to make this clear, or the latter made another assumption to make sense of what he thought he knew. The “original version” was supposed to be Adagio only, yet “a tenor” was refusing to sing unless he got his “Allegro”...it takes only a small further step to call up the standard image from so many opera tales, the vain singer dictating to the composer according to the prerogatives of his rank.

These are of course hypotheses, not settled facts.

A starting point for testing them would be a close re-examination of all accounts of the 1805 performances, to see whether any previously unimportant-seeming comment might be read differently in their light. It is also worth noting that thirteen volumes of Röckel’s handwritten diaries survive in a Düsseldorf museum library; the years covered are too late for Fidelio/Leonore, but as far as I am aware they have not been fully studied to see whether he might have written about his contacts with Ries or other Beethoven biographers.

At the least, it seems possible that an important late testimony by two men close to Beethoven deserves a better reputation than it has had so far, and that it may even now shed some new light on a fascinating episode.

In the meantime, if the speculation is correct that poor Demmer lost his allegro before opening night, it would mean that the sketches reanimated here are being heard in public not for the first time since 1805, but for the first time ever.

V - Preparing an arrangement Everyone who has spent time with Beethoven’s sketches knows the impossibility of reading them, in any ordinary sense of the word “reading.” They are fragmentary and disjointed. Verbal cues are few and cryptic. The composer rarely recorded any decisions among multiple alternatives. He was not at all careful about aiming his pencil precisely among the lines and spaces of the musical staff.

Clefs are left to be guessed, even if they change in mid-phrase. Clearly, he assumed that he could look back and remember what he had meant, but when someone else looks, there are puzzles in every line. One is forced to seek a mental conception of the thing being sketched before one can decide what notes are meant by the hasty scrawls – which may then, a few bars later, contradict the conception and send the reader back to start over.

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Above all: the sketches almost never lead to a “nearly-finished” destination. Notwithstanding the thousands of sketched themes and phrases, the most significant part of Beethoven’s process took place in his mind, with the sketches serving as reminders rather than drafts of a full score. So, when Opera Lafayette invited me to attempt such a score, my answer could only be that I would study the sketches closely, and if they suggested something to my imagination, I would try. Beethoven sketched mostly “upper voice” thematic ideas, while the elements that make his music sound like itself are hardly centered upon the upper voice. There would be little point in mechanically composing a bass and filling in harmonies if one could not sense at least a possible Beethovenian character latent within the melodic lines.

The first task was to get familiar with all the sketches. Not for the purpose of determining which bits Beethoven “probably” used – that does sometimes become clear, but in the end he might have used any, or come up with entirely new ones. The real search is for whatever can help an arranger imagine something: for ideas that suggest other ideas, harmonies, orchestral patterns, dramatic shapes, points of reference.

As it turned out, the melodies do contain enough hints to encourage an attempt. In some of the sketches for the “Flötenarie” there are thematic fragments that recall the Adagio, and others that are “answered” in the surviving f minor passage. These similarities gave starting points for the choice of harmonies, accompanimental textures, and figuration. There is a chromatic moment in the vocal line that resembles one in the instrumental part of the 1814 score and lends itself to being harmonized the same way. There is one burst of vocal coloratura – but just one, which suggests it might have been a stopping point, an internal “cadenza,” with melody and motion resuming afterwards. (Another sketch shows a fermata – though without the vocal elaboration – at this point.) This gave something to go on for the rhythmic structure.

Perhaps best of all, there is a line in the flute part (occurring twice, and sketched many times in slightly different ways) that practically jumped off the page as being a recollection of Tamino’s “Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön” from Die Zauberflöte:

Mozart was of prime importance for Beethoven, and never far from his mind as he confronted the opera stage for the first time.

Leonore’s big aria is a kind of “reply” to Fiordiligi’s – same key, emphasis on the same aspects of vocal virtuosity, and many musical resemblances even down to the concertante horn parts – but where Fiordiligi confesses an unfaithful heart, Leonore affirms fidelity at the risk of life itself. (Beethoven loved the music of Così but found the story distressing.)

There is a similar connection here, linked and contrasted at once. Sonnleithner’s libretto for Beethoven, just as the text of the “Flötenarie” begins, has the stage direction “Er zieht ein Bildnis aus dem Busen” (he draws a portrait from his breast). Tamino’s line in the “Bildnisarie,” just where the musical resemblance occurs, is “O wenn ich sie nur finden könnte” (Oh, if only I could find her!).

Both tenors are gazing rapturously at a portrait – Tamino’s of an enchanting maiden he has never seen; Florestan’s of a beloved wife he is sure he will never see again. That poignant association told me immediately where to look (that is, straight to Mozart) for the dynamics and accompaniment. It also suggests a kind of jubilation in Florestan’s memories – not just sadness over his loss – and that in turn influences the way one might compose around the rest of the fragments.

The Adagio is more difficult, partly because the sketches are so numerous, partly because so many details and gestures appear, disappear, and then return in the composer’s long journey through this passage. (As late as the 1814 aria Beethoven went back to some sketched choices that he may have rejected already in 1805). There are hints in the quotations from this aria found in three of the four overtures, and the one played at the premiere (now called “Leonore no. 2”) at least gives concrete proof that certain ideas had been developed by that time even if they are not found in the sketches.

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Two more clear facts can serve as anchors in the Adagio. One is that we have the composer’s definitive choices for the first two bars (in the “Autograph 5” mentioned above) and can thus gravitate to the possibilities most consistent with them. The other: in that much-discussed memorandum for revisions between 1805 and 1806, Beethoven wrote “ce moll statt es moll” (c minor instead of e-flat minor) by a sketch for the fourth line of text, “und die Ketten sind mein Lohn.” He did not put that plan into action; the cadence is in E-flat Major in 1806 and C-flat Major in 1814, and the sketches show him experimenting with c minor, f minor, and b-flat minor for a spot that obviously cost him great effort to decide. However, his annotation establishes that e-flat minor had been the choice in 1805, which guides an arranger to prefer the sketches containing such a cadence.

Finally, there is the fact that the 1806 aria required a new full score. It is the shortest of all versions we have (21 bars, as against 30 in 1814 and 36 in the last continuous sketchbook draft). But simple cuts and touch-ups could be written onto existing copies, as we have seen; the presence of the fresh copy suggests substantial rewriting. Indeed the 1806 Adagio contains several phrases entirely absent from all sketches, and these “new” ideas were kept in 1814. Some fifty years ago Willy Hess, editor of “Leonore” for the Beethoven critical edition, adopted the 1806 aria into the 1805 score and rather blithely suggested that its elements were probably in place already then. Both Tusa and Lühning find this unsatisfactory, and I agree: if so, then why the new copy? We can only guess, but my guess is that these themes were not present in 1805, and that our version should more or less ignore 1806 and follow the sketches instead. This choice also has the advantage of acquainting listeners with some striking dramatic gestures and a soaring final melody that Beethoven did not keep in the more restrained (but also very beautiful) 1806 version.

With these choices made, we have a near-complete draft of vocal and instrumental melody that is pure Beethoven. Our score is based mostly on what Tusa identifies as “continuity draft 5” for the Adagio and “continuity draft 3” for the “Flötenarie” – with the help of such fragments as we have of the finished music, and with recourse to other sketches when they offered more detail, or were more consistent with other clues, or simply yielded themselves more readily to my comprehension. What remained was to devise an accompaniment. It must be emphasized that this cannot be called a “reconstruction” of the aria; it is rather an attempt to compose around selected sketches. Though the result cannot possibly be half as good as the lost score, I hope it will serve to let Beethoven’s original conception of the piece, and some beautiful musical thoughts, speak at last after more than two centuries of silence.

VI - The score heard here On the following pages is a “reading score” of the realization, laid out with one line for Florestan, two for woodwinds, and two for strings. To recapitulate in brief: the first dozen bars are nearly all Beethoven (first two from the actual 1805 copy in “Autograph 5”; next four from the quotation in the 1805 overture; then six more lifted from the overture or the completed versions of the aria, slightly adjusted to fit the chosen version of the vocal line from the sketches). After that, from bar 13, the guesswork starts. Although the entire vocal line comes from one or another of the sketches, the orchestral part is all invented, except for the following hints or fragments from the sketchbook: • a written-out chord for the downbeat of bar 15 • the middle-register clash of E-flat and F-flat on the downbeat of bar 17 • the upper instrumental voices (including the A-natural) in bar 21 • a figured-bass notation for the chord used here in bar 35, found between early sketches for the Adagio and the “Flötenarie” • the topmost instrumental voice in bars 41-47 (downbeat) and 52-59 (downbeat); a different version of this, in another sketch, confirms that it is intended for flute • the return of the flute theme in bar 63 • the upper instrumental voice in bars 69-74 (once again a different sketch contains the assignment of this passage to clarinet), and the first off-beat in bar 71 Where this score breaks off, the known conclusion takes over (the Prague copy lets us restore the 1805 readings with only the most minimal speculation). As described above, the transcriptions of the sketches are not and cannot be exact. I read some of them differently from Tusa and Lühning, who also read them differently from one another; some guessing is inevitable. Various minor adjustments are necessary to make rhythms add up and barlines come out right. Sometimes – for instance when deciding whether one thinks Beethoven meant a flat or a natural, or whether he was aiming for a line or a space on the staff – there is no solution but to decide the harmony first and then interpret the sketch to fit.

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Media - Books and Discography Central to Opera Lafayette’s mission is creating a legacy of the forgotten repertoire the company brings back to life. Opera Lafayette released its first CD on the Naxos label, and now has 12 commercial audio recordings. In 2018, Opera Lafayette released its first DVD, and now has two video recordings on the Naxos label. In 2019 Opera Lafayette published its first illustrated book. These books complement Opera Lafayette’s discography and further bolster the legacy of baroque opera to new audiences.

Illustrated Retellings As told by Kelley Rourke and illustrated by Amy Severson

DVDs

Radamisto (2019) George Frideric Handel, composer Nicola Francesco Haym, librettist Based on L’amor tirrannico by Domenico Lalli and after L’amour tyrannique by Georges de Scudery

La Susanna (2019) Alessandro Stradella, composer Giovanni Battista Giardini, librettist Based on Susanna and The Elders from The Book of Daniel

Les Fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, ou Les Dieux d’Égypte (2019) Jean-Philippe Rameau, composer Louis de Cahusac, librettists Cover: Louis Forget

Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal (2018) Pierre Gaveaux, composer Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, librettist Also available on Blu-ray Cover: Pierre-Etienne Bergeron

Leonore (2020) Ludwig van Beethoven, composer Joseph Sonnleithner, librettist

COMING SOON

Leonore (TBD) Ludwig van Beethoven, composer Joseph Sonnleithner, librettist

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CDs L’épreuve villageoise (2016) André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, composer Pierre Desforges, librettist

Lalla Roukh (2014) Félicien David, composer Michel Carré and Hippolyte Lucas, librettists

Les Femmes Vengées (2015) François-André Danican Philidor, composer Michel-Jean Sedaine, librettist

Le Roi et le fermier (2013) Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, composer Michel-Jean Sedaine, librettist

Cover: Louis Forget

Cover: Restored 1780 set designs for Le Roi et le fermier Photo by J.M. Manaï

Le Magnifique (2012) André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, composer Michel-Jean Sedaine, librettist

The Tragedy of Armide (2008) Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer Philippe Quinault, librettist

Cover: Louis Forget

Cover: The Composer André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry by Jean-Baptiste Stouf (1724-1826) Purchase, Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation Inc. Gift and Charles Ulrick and Josephine Bay Foundation Inc. Gift, 1969 (69.77) • Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sancho Pança (2011) François-André Danican Philidor, composer Antoine-Alexandre-Henri Poinsinet, librettist

Cover: Louis Forget

Rinaldo and Armida by Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) (Louvre, Paris, France, Lauros / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library)

Rameau Operatic Arias (2007) Featuring Jean-Paul Fouchécourt Cover: Carol Rosegg

Cover: Louis Forget

Le Déserteur (2010) Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, composer Michel-Jean Sedaine, librettist

Oedipe à Colone (2006) Antonio Sacchini

Cover: Oedipus and Antigone by Johann-Peter Krafft (1780-1856) (The Art Archive / Musée du Louvre Paris / Dagli Orti)

Cover: The Deserter Pardoned by George Moreland (1763-1804) (The Holburne Museum of Art, Bath, UK / The Bridgeman Art Library)

Zélindor, roi des Sylphes (2009) François Rebel and François Francœur, composers Text by François-Augustin Paradis de Moncrif Cover: Louis Forget

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Orphée et Euridice (2005) Christoph Willibald Gluck

Cover: Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld, 1861 by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA / Bridgeman Art Library)

Modern Premiere History In its 25-year history, the company has built a reputation for returning to the stage important operatic works lost to the passage of time. Each modern premiere introduces works that were popular in their day, influenced the composers of today’s musical canon, and maintain contemporary relevance. This musical preservation requires rigorous research by musicologists at the forefront of today’s research. Will Crutchfield’s included article “Imagining Florestan” gives insights into the ways in which many historical sources are consulted in the process of bringing a lost work to life.

Since 2005, Opera Lafayette has performed 12 modern world- or American-premieres: Œdipe à Colone* by Sacchini (2005) Zélindor, roi des Sylphes by Rebel/Francœur (2007) Le Déserteur* by Monsigny (2009) Sancho Pança* by Philidor (2010) Le Magnifique by Grétry (2011) Le Roi et le fermier by Monsigny (2012) Lalla Roukh by David (2013) Le Femme Vengées by Philidor (2013-2014) L’Épreuve villagoise by Grétry (2015) Léonore, ou L’ Amour conjugal by Gaveaux (2017) Erminia* by Scarlatti (2018) Cerere Placata by Jommelli (2018) Central to Opera Lafayette’s mission is building a legacy for these significant works, which is accomplished through scholarly articles, mounting revivals, and recording an extensive discography. (See Recordings on pages 35-36.)

WHAT IS A MODERN WORLD / MODERN AMERICAN PREMIERE? A modern premiere is a professional performance of a work not presented in the modern era (since World War I) in either the world or in the United State of America.

* indicates modern American premiere

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Writer Bios Will Crutchfield, artistic director of Teatro Nuovo, has conducted opera in various theaters in the US and abroad, among them the Rossini Opera Festival (Pesaro), the Washington National Opera, Minnesota Opera, Florida Grand Opera, the Polish National Opera (Warsaw), and the Opera de Colombia (Bogotà), where he served as artistic director for a five-year term. He has also contributed musicological and journalistic articles to The Grove Dictionaries of Music, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Opera News, and many scholarly journals, and has edited Rossini’s Aureliano in Palmira for Ricordi.

Julia Doe received a Ph.D. in musicology from Yale University in 2013. She is a scholar of eighteenth-century opera, with particular emphasis on the music, literature, and politics of the French Enlightenment. Her first book, The Comedians of the King (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press, 2020), traces the impact of Bourbon patronage on the development of opéra comique in the final decades of the Old Regime. This monograph interrogates how comic theater was exploited in (and worked against) the construction of the monarchy’s carefully cultivated public image – examining the aesthetic, institutional, and political tensions that arose when a genre with popular roots was folded into the courtly propaganda machine. Essays and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Eighteenth-Century Music, Music & Letters, Current Musicology, and Renaissance Quarterly. With a tenure-track appointment at Columbia, she is the recipient of the Alfred Einstein and M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet awards from the AMS, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, the National Opera Association, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Musicologist and patron, Nizam Kettaneh is the founder of the American Friends of Les Arts Florissants. He is a regular collaborator with Opera Lafayette’s Artistic Director Ryan Brown, serving as an artistic advisor as well as sharing his expertise with the public through Opera Lafayette lectures and program notes. He was the recipient of a fellowship in orchestra management by the League of American Orchestras. He has held various positions at the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra in NYC, and at the Children’s Guild, a school for emotionally disturbed children in Maryland. He received his Master’s degree in Sciences from the American University in Beirut, a doctorate degree in biology from Purdue University, and a Master’s degree in Business from Loyola College, Maryland.

Ryan Brown is the founder and artistic director of Opera Lafayette, which is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary. Through his work with Opera Lafayette, he has gained an international reputation for his role in the revival and reassessment of significant works from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. His discography of twelve sound recordings for Naxos has focused on the French repertoire, including well-known works by composers such as Lully, Rameau, and Gluck, as well as premiere recordings of operas

by Rebel/Francœur, Monsigny, Philidor, Grétry, Sacchini, and Félicien David. He has also created two DVDs with Opera Lafayette for Naxos, including the modern premiere of Gaveaux and Bouilly’s Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal, the model for Beethoven’s Leonore, the latter which Opera Lafayette will present as this season’s centerpiece, as well as Rameau’s Les Fêtes de L’Hymen et de L’Amour, ou Les Dieux d’Egypte, a collaboration with the New York Baroque Dance Company, the Seán Curran Dance Company, and Kalanidhi Dance. He has also led performances of operas by Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Paisiello, and Cimarosa. He regularly appears in Washington, DC and New York with Opera Lafayette and has also conducted in San Francisco, Seattle, at The Glimmerglass Festival, and at the Opéra Royal de Versailles. He was raised in a musical family in California and performed extensively as a violinist and chamber musician before turning his attentions to conducting. His teachers included Dorothy DeLay and Gustav Meier. He is a recipient of La Médaille d’Or du Rayonnement Culturel from La Renaissance Française, and when not conducting spends his time in southwestern Colorado.

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About Opera Lafayette OPERA LAFAYETTE 921 Pennsylvania Avenue SE Washington, DC 20003 DC: (202) 546-9332 | NYC: (212) 634-9388 OperaLafayette.org Opera Lafayette, which performs its entire season in New York City and Washington, DC, is renowned for its performances of both forgotten works that were popular and significant to the cultural history of the 17th through 19th centuries, and early opera which is already part of the modern canon. Each program incorporates the latest research and musicological expertise, uses period instruments and artists performing at the highest level, and as appropriate, includes dance – an important, yet often neglected element of baroque opera. This attention to detail ensures that each rediscovered gem adheres closely to the way the composers originally intended their masterpieces to be heard. While preserving these historically significant works, Opera Lafayette stages each performance in imaginative and inventive ways which illuminate the music’s original appeal as well as its relevance in our modern world. Central to the company’s mission is building a legacy of the timeless repertoire Opera Lafayette brings back to life.

This is achieved through an extensive discography, mounting revivals, and inspiring a public appreciation for this repertoire through its audience engagement programs for audiences of all ages.

RYAN BROWN, Founder and Artistic Director | DIANA HOSSACK, Executive Director BOARD OF DIRECTORS Dorsey C. Dunn, Co-Chair Nizam P. Kettaneh, Co-Chair Ross Ain, Vice Chair Adrienne Jamieson, Treasurer Stephen E. Kitchen, Secretary Annelyse Allen, At-Large Member Cheryl Gorelick, At-Large Member Walter R. Arnheim Catia G. Chapin Marifé Hernandez Parker Jayne Susan A. Lynner Merri Moken Leonard H. Ralston Daniel B. Silver JoAnn Willis LIFE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD Yoko Arthur Joel Brenner Marie-Hélène Forget Bill Gradison

J. Cari Elliott Gradison Louis Hering Vivianne C. Lake Sophia Lynn Chris O’Flinn Joan Simon Brian Vogel NEW YORK ADVISORY COMMITTEE Nizam P. Kettaneh, Chairman Annelyse Allen Catia G. Chapin Janet Desforges Francis Dubois Dorsey C. Dunn Jean-Paul Fouchécourt Marifé Hernandez Vivianne C. Lake Anne Mackinnon Ishtar Méjanès Catherine S. Michaelson Annie Pampanini Theodora Simons 39

OperaLafayette.org