ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY – A demagogue and religious fanatics impose a theocracy. What seems like a 21st-century story ripped from the headlines was portrayed by Giacomo Meyerbeer 175 years ago in “Le Prophète” and brought back in a compelling production at Bard’s SummerScape festival.
A hit at Paris’ Salle Le Peletier in 1849, “Le Prophète” became a worldwide hit only to fade away as Meyerbeer’s big hit. operas It lost popularity in the 20th and 21st centuries. Bard’s production, which opened Friday at the 900-seat Sosnoff Theater and runs through Sunday, is the first major U.S. production since the Metropolitan Opera’s performances in 1977 and 1979.
“There is no composer in the history of classical music and opera whose posthumous career was so astonishingly destroyed as Meyerbeer,” said conductor Leon Botstein, president of Bard College who conducts performances as music director of the American Symphony Orchestra. career is the seduction of the public by the illusion of realism: on the one hand, the realism of mythological fantasy that Wagner perfected, and finally, at the end of the century, verismo, when Italians transformed everyday life into a kind of psychological drama.
Even with cuts, the five-act performance lasts 4 and a half hours, including some intermissions. Botstein, musicologist Mark Everist and director Christian Räth restored the 11-minute overture, cut by Meyerbeer and librettist Eugène Scribe during rehearsals. The third act ballet “Les Patineurs (The Ice Skaters)” was performed at the Bard and excerpts of the music performed by a quintet in the lobby during intermissions.
“The play, unfortunately, looks very, very modern and rings a lot of bells for today,” said Räth. “Although it is set sometime in the 16th century, the original story only translates to our recent history or is presented perfectly,”
“Le Prophète” was groundbreaking, debuting the year after the 1848 revolutions and including the first staged use of electric light.
“In German-speaking lands in the early 1920s, Meyerbeer was caught in a kind of double fork,” Everist said. “On the one hand, the liberals of the Weimar Republic saw him as a kind of monarchist lackey – he was the general musical director at the Prussian Court, for example. On the other side, you have right-wingers who are punishing him for being Jewish.”
“Le Prophète” tells the story of John of Leiden (Jean), who became an Anabaptist prophet, led the seizure of the German city of Münster in 1534, proclaimed it “New Jerusalem” and declared himself king. Franz von Waldeck a year later and John was executed in 1536.
In the made-up opera love story, Berthe (soprano Amina Edris) meets Fidès (mezzo-soprano Jennifer Feinstein), Jean’s mother, and Berthe wants to marry Jean (tenor Robert Watson). Her request is refused by Oberthal (bass-baritone Zachary Altman), the count who controls the Dutch city of Dordrecht, who wants Berthe for himself.
Three Anabaptists think Jean resembles a portrait of King David in Münster Cathedral, and he becomes king in the great coronation scene, the opera’s best-known song. Fidès thinks Jean is dead, but when he finds him alive, he exposes him as a false prophet. Fidès recants, Berthe stabs herself to death and Jean sets fire to the castle, killing everyone.
Räth, who designed the set with Daniel Unger, set the action around three 20-foot-tall faux leather Bibles. Mattie Ullrich’s costumes ranged from historical to contemporary, highlighting relevance.
At the very moment Feinstein was on the Bard stage on Sunday, her husband, bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee, was making his Bayreuth debut as Donner in “Das Rheingold.” Feinstein studied with Marilyn Horne, who sang the role at the Met.
“I’m certainly not trying to imitate her. No one can be Marilyn Horne.” Feinstein said. “She is the absolute idol for a type of voice like mine. But I definitely admire her a lot. And since I went to the Music Academy of the West, I’ve been told this role is perfect for me.”
Singers worked with the creative team for months mixing and matching the two editions of the score, the original and the Brandus version.
“It is a cult of personality. Everyone is manipulating everyone,” Watson said. “It’s this kind of repeated historical theme, of the dangers of following these flawed individuals and what motivates these types of people.”
Botstein launched SummerScape in the Frank Gehry-designed theater in 2003 with the first U.S.-staged production of Janáček’s “Osud” and has proven to be a superior talent scout. Meyerbeer’s “Les Huguenots” performances at the 2009 SummerScape featured Erin Morley and Michael Spyres, who went on to important careers.
Botstein will soon turn his attention to next year’s opera, an increasingly rare work in Smetana’s “Dalibor.” He says part of SummerScape’s mission is to “protect and revise music history from unfair obscurity.”
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