By ordering, like The duty recounted last September 12, to the Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets an opera about the struggle of Ukrainian mothers to recover their children kidnapped and detained by Russian forces, the Metropolitan Opera and the Lincoln Center Theater deliver a political message. This initiative gave us the idea to look at some examples of the entanglements of opera and politics throughout history.
No later than Saturday evening, at the Montreal Opera, an archetype of subversive opera will be presented: The Marriage of Figaro.
We are at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1786, three years before the French Revolution. Beaumarchais wrote The Crazy Day or The Marriage of Figaro in 1778. Although the play was the subject of several public readings, notably at the Comédie-Française in 1781, it was censored by Louis XVI in 1781 and the public premiere did not take place until 1784.
The two faces of Mozart
It was Mozart who absolutely wanted to deal in music with this subject which denounces the privileges of the nobility and the aristocracy. But, in Austria, the emperor banned the piece in 1785. It was Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, who was responsible for convincing the sovereign to give the green light to the opera.
Music will help spread the message. This message that Louis XVI was so afraid of and who declared: “It’s detestable!” This will never be played! […] The Bastille would have to be destroyed so that the performance of the play would not be a dangerous inconsistency. » As Piotr Kaminski notes in his work A thousand and one operasarriving in Prague in January 1787, Mozart wrote: “The city only speaks of Figaroonly plays, rings, sings, whistles Figarowill not see any other opera than Figaro. »
Opera was also used by Mozart to curry favor with the powerful. Let’s return to Prague. Leopold II, newly crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, on September 30, 1790 in Frankfurt, somewhat snubbed Mozart. The coronation mass is led by Salieri. In September 1791, the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia was to be celebrated in Prague.
Mozart then chose the subject of The clemency of Titus, an opera celebrating the leniency and benevolence of the Roman emperor Titus. By ricochet and analogy, the opera is intended to be a tribute to the new king by glorifying one of the virtues attributed since the 16the and XVIIe centuries to the Habsburg dynasty, from which Leopold came: the “ Clementia Austriaca », which wants “clemency to be the virtue which makes man a god, the queen of virtues, which encompasses all the others”. These efforts were unsuccessful; the opera was a failure, Leopold II was not interested in Mozart, who died three years later. months later. As for the coronation, Salieri was housed at the royal palace, while Mozart slept at the inn.
Verdi and Wagner
Among the best-known examples of the entanglement of lyrical art and politics, there is obviously the figure of Verdi, whose surname had become the anagram of Vittorio Emanuele Re D’Italia, in the slogan ” Viva Green! » chanted by Italian patriots.
Italy, mid-19th centurye century, is a peninsula divided into small kingdoms or duchies often under Austrian control. The choir of Nabucco (1841), “ Go think» (the Hebrews mourn their lost homeland), will become a significant anthem of the Risorgimento , the movement leading in 1870 to the unification of Italy. That said, the first phase of Risorgimentodates from 1848-1849, therefore seven years after the composition of Nabuccowhich was not written as a political work, but as an opera on a biblical subject.
On the other hand, Verdi composed a true political opera: The Battaglia of Legnano , precisely during the events of 1848-1849. We see at the end of Act III the leader of the warriors of Verona throwing himself out of the window, shouting “ Viva Italia! », and Act IV is surtitled “Die for the Fatherland”. At the premiere, this last act will have to be replayed in full to satisfy the delirium of the supporters.
If we examine the case of a composer whose work was monopolized a posteriori by a cause, we will not find a better (or worse) example than Wagner. Recently, on YouTube, the American critic David Hurwitz asked the question “ Is Wagner’s music toxic?“. He replied: “No. »
In my musical work, I have been and am stimulated by Theresienstadt, because we do not allow ourselves to lament on the banks of the rivers of Babylon, and our desire for civilization merges with our desire to live
Even if the composer’s writings are pestilential in their anti-Semitism, even if Bayreuth became in the 1930s and 1940s, with the open complicity of certain members of the Wagner family, the summer cultural gathering of swastika worshipers, the music remains non-political.
Is it totally “non-ideological”? The answer is clearly “no”, as Jean-Jacques Nattiez demonstrated, notably in his work Wagner anti-Semitic. There are many examples of anti-Semitic caricatures in operas: Alberich who steals the Rhine gold to dominate the world, for example. In his book, Nattiez shows and analyzes above all why and how anti-Semitism is instilled in lyrics or in their musical treatment. Thus, for the character of Beckmesser in The blackmailersNattiez proves that his famous serenade is the caricature of a prayer entitled Retzai .
The question remains: was Wagner the cause of the Shoah? In unison with Jean-Jacques Nattiez, we reiterate that it is not because Hitler was fascinated by Wagner that Wagner is a source or cause of the rise of Nazism and its worst atrocities.
The hero of Terezín
Many musicians suffered from these atrocities and died. The Nazis interned some of them in a so-called “model” camp in Theresienstadt (or Terezín). This is where an incredible opera was composed:The Kaiser of Atlantis(The Emperor of Atlantis ) by Viktor Ullmann, an allegory denouncing fascism, which features Emperor Überall, a corrupt despot, grappling with death who has decided to go on strike.
This chamber opera in one act and four scenes, found in 1972, was created in 1975 and will be staged at the next Classica Festival. Arriving in Terezín on September 8, 1942, Viktor Ullmann composed sixteen works there, before being transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau on October 16, 1944 and gassed on the 18th, one day after the composers Haas and Krása and the brilliant librettist of his opera, Kien .
“In my musical work, I have been and am stimulated by Theresienstadt, because we do not allow ourselves to lament on the banks of the rivers of Babylon, and because our desire for civilization merges with our desire to live. », Ullmann wrote. Although repeated in Terezín, The Kaiser of Atlantis was not created there. A camp guard understood his subversive message.
In the 20the century, politics took a growing place in opera. This is obvious when it comes to topics, if we consider Nixon in China OrThe Death of Klinghofferby John Adams, certainly, just as the greatest Canadian opera deals with the story of Louis Riel. But political-historical events have always been a potential substrate. Thus the assassination of King Gustav III, in 1792, during a masked ball in Sweden, inspired Verdi as much (A masked ball) than Auber (Gustave III or The Masked Ball ).
From a different angle, opera was also the vehicle for the political ideas of certain composers. We are thinking here of the stage action of Intolleranza 1960 by Luigi Nono, on texts by Brecht, Sartre, Eluard and others. Committed to the Italian Communist Party, Nono uses news items (mining accident, interrogation with torture, demonstration, escape from a camp) in which anonymous people are immersed to denounce “exploitation, capitalism, fascism and colonialism”.
Nono’s direct manner was allegorical in the United States in Gian Carlo Menotti, who in The consul(1950), in fact denounced the McCarthyite witch hunt. The allegory will be virulent in Hans-Werner Henze, whose The Raft of the Medusa , “popular and militant oratorio” (1968), embodies a “musical counter-revolution” which uses the parallel with Géricault’s painting to depict what he thinks, among other things, of American politics and the war in Vietnam. A recording has just been released by Capriccio.
But all these examples are based on individual commitments. Outside of totalitarian countries, we have rarely seen an institution piloting an ideological struggle in such a determined manner through “soft power“.