Giacomo Meyerbeer’s 1831 opera Robert le Diable has taken on almost mythic proportions in the history of opera. After its brilliant initial run, it became the most performed opera of the 19th century: within 50 years, 69 European theaters had mounted it and by 1893 it had been performed 754 times. It quickly became the blueprint for French Grand Opera, leaving Gluck, Rameau, and Lully in the dust.
A large cast of principal singers, grand ensembles, arias and choruses, a large orchestra, and a bevy of accompanied recits, not to mention an obligatory ballet or two, became de rigueur for success at the Paris Opera. Even Verdi and Wagner, when they subsequently composed for Paris, had to include ballets wherever they could fit. By the 20th century, with Wagner’s and the Verismo composers’ successes, Robert was almost forgotten, save as an anecdote about the third-act ballet for dead nuns, which even now sounds like a punchline.
It is revived every few years and has been recorded before, mostly from live performances (as this one is, although the lack of audience reaction makes one suspect that there were many make-up sessions). There is even a DVD from Covent Garden that is visually stupid but boasts the Robert of Bryan Hymel, who is simply brilliant vocally, as is Patrizia Ciofi. In fact, much of the singing there is fine, but amazingly, it doesn’t help the overall effect of the opera. One’s attention lags and is tried after almost four hours of music–and bear in mind that there are cuts in this new performance.
Here is the plot, as briefly as possible: We are in 13th-century Sicily. Robert, the Duke of Normandy, has come to compete in a tournament for the hand of Princess Isabelle. Robert’s newly deceased mother, a saintly woman, had been barren but, desperate for a child, made a deal with the Devil to have a child, and that child is Robert. Robert is traveling with Bertrand, who (unknown to Robert) is his father and the Devil. Also in attendance is an aide to Robert named Raimbaut, who coincidentally is engaged to Robert’s half sister, Alice.
Who will save Robert’s soul? The lovely Isabelle? Or Alice, who discovers the truth in Act 3 (as do we, when Bertram enters and leaves a scary cave)? We travel to the ruins of a church; we enter a grotto full of dead nuns who have given up their vows. Robert gets a magic branch that lets him control people. He confesses this to Alice and she prays for him. He almost signs away his soul to Bertram but Alice gives him a letter from his mother telling him to run from Bertram. All ends happily. After almost four hours. A huge problem is that we never care about Robert or the struggle for his soul.
Well, milestone in the history of opera or not, this is a clumsily plotted work peopled by stereotypes about whom we don’t care. Operatic “numbers” by the score keep the action slow. We have lots of arias and ensembles: drinking songs that more than foreshadow Offenbach, a gambling scene, etc. Oddly, the arias, while entertaining and occasionally wildly acrobatic/pyrotechnical, do not stick in the memory. The one exception is the Act 4 aria, “Robert, toi que j’aime” for Isabelle, which has a gorgeous refrain and builds to a stunning climax. Elsewhere there’s an issue of flow–arias and choruses pop up and slow down the action while not highlighting the inner lives of the characters. What you see/hear is what you get and it is mostly toward a shallow end.
Robert has plenty of music, including a second-act aria, “Ou me cacher” (added by Meyerbeer seven years after the premiere), which is introspective and full of regret and has plenty of difficult coloratura. His Drinking Song is lively and fun. The role is interesting vocally, but Robert has no real color as a person. John Osborn, a wonderfully stylish lyric tenor with a reliable top–and even a decent trill–is just fine, without overwhelming–but Hymel (see above) is better.
Erin Morley is wonderful as Isabelle, singing off the text as if the role actually mattered, and having no problems with the roulades and leaps and high notes (a sustained E at the close of “Idole de ma vie” in the middle of Act 2, and a high-F at the act’s close). The sound itself is brilliant; it’s a great performance. Amina Idris is Alice, also a fiesta role for a good lyric, and while less insightful than Morley, she also has a lovely voice. If it weren’t for her habit of mushing her consonants, this would be an excellent performance.
Bertram, the devil/dad, is a true bass role–the likes of Samuel Ramey, Boris Christoff, and John Relyea have sung it. Here, Nicolas Courjal is not good. Period. He announces that he is the “King of Hell”, but Courjal sounds more like a courtier. He’s a real bass, but he never dominates and is pale when he’s supposed to be resonant and menacing. It leaves a gaping hole in the performance despite his impeccable enunciation of the text. Nico Darmanin, whose voice is a fine medium-sized lyric, has great personality and enlivens every scene he’s in.
Under Marc Minkowski, who here makes his second recording of this opera (the first, from 2001, is in German with an unfamiliar cast), the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine (previously unheard of by me) plays with clarity and elegance, with the several obbligato wind instruments particularly spicy and perky. In fact, the orchestral performance almost sells the opera. Almost.
Congratulations again to Bru Zane who offer a 168-page book with fascinating essays on the opera’s background, the importance of “spectacle” for the work’s success, and of course, a fine synopsis. A French-English libretto is clear and even includes the parts that were cut for this recording, which only the desperate and the scholarly will be interested in.
The sonics are stunning–the jumble of a couple of the ensembles have more specificity than on any other recording. I truly wanted to be convinced by this recording; renditions I’ve heard with Ramey and Christoff (the latter singing in Russo-French) might lead us to believe that this is a masterpiece, even if the opera itself lets it down. I guess if you want Robert le Diable in your collection, this is it. But a severely cut, and in Italian, performance from Florence in 1968 has a breathtaking, young Renata Scotto as Isabelle and Christoff as a snarling Bertram. And a 1995 set from Paris has Ramey, June Anderson, and a magnificent Rockwell Blake.
Or, you can listen to Les Huguenots and Le Prophète, which make more sense.
