CHE SARA SARA:

CHE SARA SARA: THE 'STAR' OF WHICH DREAMS ARE MADE - -

SCRIBE AND MEYERBEER'S OPÉRA COMIQUE, L'ÉTOILE DU NORD

by Robert Letellier

Other articles at this site by Robert Letellier

The Thematic Nexus of Religion, Power, Politics and Love in the Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer

The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer - a first look

Robert Letellier is the editor of the Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, with commentary and notes in English. Volume I may be purchased through the Meyerbeer Fan Club. To purchase, click here.

1) The new project

The moment Meyerbeer had brought Le Prophète to its triumphal premiere (16 April 1849), he was, as usual, immediately involved in plans for a new opera.

His Diary entry for Tuesday 5 June 1849 records a "conference with Scribe about L'Impératrice (the new title of the Feldlager)". Even during business surrounding the London production of Le Prophète, the new project was at the back of his mind. On 16 July he observes that "Scribe read me Act 3 of the new opera".

The moment he left the demanding world of Paris, to resume his indefatigable travels once more, the new project began to engross his attention entirely. While traveling to Cologne on Wednesday I August he reveals that he had actually begun composition:

"I composed the first chorus of the new opera which I am now going to call La Cantinière."

On 2 August he was familiarizing himself with Act 2, and on 3 August, the eve of his arrival in Berlin, with Act 3. The work was set aside until later in the month when he again turned his attention to it, this time on the coach journey to Salzburg from Linz. He felt inspired to make a striking piece of characterization which would be of importance for the new opera.

"In the coach I again read through Act 1 of La Cantinière: it suddenly occurred to me that I should depict the anger in Peter's character, which so often recurs, by an orchestral figure, or a vocal phrase, which would always be repeated when he becomes enraged."

On Friday 1 August, on his way to one of his regular water cures, this time in Bad Gastein, he began composing Danilowitz's Act I Cavatina, continuing the mental process on 18 August. The piece was set aside for the duration of the cure, but once again the procedure of journeying set his creative impulses into motion. Not only does he record completing the diverse parts of the Introduction, but also an important point about his compositional technique:

"Today I composed a great deal in the morning, namely the Toast ('Buvons amis, à la Finlande'), the ensemble ('La guerre, la guerre'), and the conclusion to the introduction ('C'est la cloche du chantier'). Whether all this will please me when I play it to myself on the piano, however, is to be seen."

Tile new opera was thus well begun: its slow but steady composition would continue over the period of the next three years, with the Act 3 Finale completed on 27 April 1852. The title would change again, to La Vivandiére (20 Nov. 1849), until the definitive form emerged as L'Étoile du Nord (5 Oct. 1850).

2) The turn to opéra comique

Why Meyerbeer felt the compulsion to write an opéra comique is never disclosed in his own writings. From his young days, he had been a keen student of all operatic forms, and in Vienna in March 1813 he wrote at length about his reactions to Boieldieu's Jean de Paris, revealing his close knowledge of this genre. His Italian opera Margherita d'Anjou contains many demi-caractère elements, in its semiseria mode. Robert le Diable was originally conceived as, and partially written for, the Opéra Comique. In spite of his decisive, indeed trend-setting, success at the Académie Royale de Musique, he never ceased attending the smaller house, and showing the keenest interest in all its productions.

3) Ein Feldlager in Schlesien

But it was the Royal Commission to write a German festival opera, Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, in the Singspiel tradition, for the opening of the newly rebuilt Royal Opera House in Berlin, that presented him with an ideal opportunity and challenge to confront and master the 'lighter' form.

Although this was a uniquely 'national' I undertaking, the composer nonetheless felt that only Scribe, the master story-teller and librettist, could produce a scenario of sufficient dramatic interest to satisfy his stringent demands, and secretly commissioned Scribe to write it, while entrusting the German versification to Ludwig Rellstab, the Berlin poet and critic. However, it is clear that the intention of developing the work along French lines, with a view to an international audience, was there from the outset. Meyerbeer always felt that the specifically Prussian appeal of the plot of Ein Feldlager, with its selfconscious adulation of the Prussian folk-hero, King Frederick the Great.- and its almost mystical glorification of the House of Hohenzollern, would never exercise appeal outside Prussia, let alone beyond the borders of Germany. In spite of its successful Viennese adaptation as Vielka, in which the overtly Prussian nationalism was toned down, the work obdurately remained bound to the Royal Opera in Berlin, a fact both acknowledged and sustained by Meyerbeer's refusal to have the score published.

The project was pushed into the background while the grand project of Le Prophète was finally able to move forward, following the departure of Léon Pillet from the Directorship of the Opéra in July 1847. And even at the very height of the hectic rehearsals for this huge venture, Meyerbeer was conferring with Scribe about the re-working of Ein Feldlager.

4) The re-working: the rescue theme

For the new opera Scribe radically transformed the old scenario. Ein Feldlager utilizes the rescue motif as its central organizing principle. In Act 1 Saldorff, Vielka and Conrad are able to save the King from capture; in Act 2 Saldorf f galvanizes the loyal Prussian regiments to free the King from his enemies; in Act 3 Conrad, Vielka and Theresa successfully plead for Leopold's pardon, and all the rescuers are suitably rewarded, with Vielka in turn prophesying a glorious future for the King's House and his realm.

In L'Étoile du Nord the Leitmotif of rescue again furnishes the central thematic strand in the plot.

In Act 1 Catherine saves her brother George Is marriage plans with Prascovia, firstly by pleading with his future father-in-law, and then secretly taking his place in the conscription to the Tsar's army. In the meantime she saves the Tsar, who is working in disguise as a shipwright, from depression and futility, by firing his sense of ambition and glory. Her central act of deliverance is to rescue the village community from Cossack depradation by maskerading as a gypsy, filling the wild troops with superstitious dread, compounding this by telling their fortunes.

In Act 2 Catherine indirectly saves the Tsar by shaking him out of his drunken stupor, just in time for him to respond adequately to a conspiracy by disloyal troops by mustering his faithful regiments.

In Act 3 it is the chance for the assembled characters, in their turn, to rescue Catherine: George and Prascovia, the Tsar, and the whole Karelian community, help to free Catherine from the darkness and confusion of her madness by a communal act of psychotherapy. The restoration of her sanity, and the bestowal of the Crown, provide a fitting reward for her acts of sympathy, bravery, intuition and resourcefulness.

5) The deep structure: isolation - integration

The rescue theme is underpinned by a deep structure of individual isolation moving in and out of communal integration.

The village life, celebrated in the opening scene in rest, refreshment, patriotism and prayer, opposes the threat of division when Danilowitz proposes Russian sympathies. But this communal unity is menaced by the Cossack raid, and only Catherine's actions, on both a public and personal level, restore peace and end individual loneliness, enabling the celebration of the village community which is integrated in the wedding celebrations. It is Catherine who must assume the lonely, and potentially tragic, state of individual isolation, by going by herself to the army in her brother's place.

In Act 2 the dance and regimental songs present an image of common purpose and loyalty, as the life of the Russian Camp is celebrated in traditional folk and military terms. But this is a camp, and a place of incipient violence and tumult. The images of integration are immediately contrasted with opposing and negative notions of common purpose, firstly in the conspiracy, and then in the dubious merrymaking of the Drinking Episode. There is common intent among some, with disruptive potential for the greater community. Both situations present a type of limited unity, but in fact a counter-image, a destruction of true integration-. the conspirators, in banding together, aim to destroy the great common bond of patriotism and loyalty to the Crown, while Peter's revels with Danilowitz and the nautch-girls is a false conviviality, a debauchery of alchohol and sensuality, which is against the spirit of his leadership, and in direct contrast to the authentic village celebrations of the wedding in Act 1. Here the ruler loses control of himself - both his general obligations as monarch, with responsibilities for his realm and troops, and his personal commitment as an individual who forgets his true love for the absent beloved. He in fact becomes entrapped in his own isolated world of selfishness and drunken folly.

This is underpinned by the ironic situation of Catherine's witnessing the whole scene. The absent beloved is really present, although hidden and in disguise, and her arrest and death sentence, precipitate the breakdown of the series of ploys which have hidden reality, both literally and metaphysically. Her crying out for Peter, in being dragged away, shocks him into his senses, begins to awaken his true self, and enables him to cope with the drama and threat of the conspiracy, also potentially tragic for him. His Prayer and Oath show the Monarch reasserting himself in his correct role, and are steps in a process of reintegration which is cumulatively augmented by the arrival of the loyal regiments, until full celebration of genuine military order, loyalty and resolve is achieved in the famous Quadruple Chorus and the final triumphant unison of the Tsar's March.

While the Monarch has integrated himself into something of his public role, the individual Peter is still alone, lost in remorse and retrospection. The soliloquy at the beginning of Act 3 shows Peter completely isolated in himself, considering his loneliness in terms of the lost happiness of innocent childhood and ennobling love. This isolation is emphasized by the wry commentary of the Comic Trio which follows: here the pull between his personal isolation and public integration is put in ironic perspective, since he is requested, as Commander-in-Chief, to reward a loyal soldier for services rendered faithfully to the Crown. What begins to emerge in the course of the request though, is that the genuine service was nothing less than the arrest and shooting of the apparent conspirator (Catherine in disguise). This compounds the Tsar's personal wretchedness, although the ray of hope comes in Gritzenko's admitting that his prisoner escaped, so that the potential for tragedy once again gives way to hope. This hope is incidentally sustained by the arrival of George and Prascovia with the other villagers from Karelia, who have come at the Tsar's behest to re-create an image of his lost idyll.

Danilowitz brings news of Catherine's reappearance, but has to reveal that she is demented as a result of her traumatic experiences and sense of betrayal. She was lost, and is found, but is now wandering isolated in her madness. So the scene is set for the final struggle for integration over isolation.

Catherine's Mad Scene is a process of readjustment and clarification, whereby, through a series of dramatically recreated reminiscences, she is taken back in time, through various past experiences. Each becomes more and more personal, until the lost intimacy and joy of love realized finally cap the procedure, and help to restore her conscious hold on life and its normal apprehension.

The pattern is modeled on the last scene of Friedrich's libretto for Flotow's Martha, where the angry and disillusioned Lionel is able to confront his true feelings of love for Lady Harriet by suddenly finding himself in the re-created context of the Richmond Fair where he first met and fell in love with her disguised as the simple maid, Martha.

It is a battle between haziness and clarity, memory and reality, mental isolation and full psycho-social integration, as

"A strange mixture
of a thousand confused things
shining, coming back, then escaping
and vanishing into the shades"

de mille objet confus
le bizarre assemblage,
qui brille, revient, plus s'enfuit
et dans llombre s'évanouit

are slowly but inexorably focused on, fixed, and made real. Rejection, loss and trauma are transformed into assimilation, recovery and healing. One by one the familiar faces present themselves: the village workmen, Danilowitz once more the local pastry vendor, the young girls, musicians and guests at the wedding, the bride and groom themselves, the latter her brother playing the flute with her beloved Peter the workman. Catherine is caught up in an emotional crisis based on the loss of her past idyll and all the labours of love.

"Is this the shadow, the true shadow
the wandering spirits of those I love?"

C'est l'ombre fidèle,
l'àme errante de ceux que j'aimais?

The combination of the people, the music, the circumstances and memories they evoke, catalyzes the dream, the paradise lost, and transforms it into a new reality:

"Heavenly pleasure, o happy dream!
This time so sweet, so dear to my heart
intoxicates me and brings to my senses
the scent of flowers!
Spring's heavenly melody
that claims my heart."

Plaisir de cieux Ô rêve heureux!
cet air si doux, si chère à mon coeur
m'enivre et porte dans mes sens
le parfum des fleurs!
du printemps célest mélodie
qui charme mon coeur!

The awakening is the recovery of a rational perception of life, bolstered by the active presence of those recalled by reminiscence, and magnified by a new transforming reality - which is the idyll found,, or paradise regained. The situation is exactly analogous to Amina's sleepwalking and awakening in La Sonnambula: abandoned and betrayed, the disturbed girl is lost in her distraught reveries, observed by the whole village community; they, and her confused lover, now find her innocence vindicated. Her waking is an entry into a situation of love and bliss unexpectedly attained.

The act of integration is not only communal festivity, the social fulfillment of marriage, but also coronation, in fact a double crowning, so that the fulfillment of love, patriotism and destiny are all pulled together in the symbolism of the final mime. Here Catherine is garbed in the symbols of royalty as consort, to the accompaniment of her Mother's prophecy, and in the final chorus of general acclamation which loudly concludes the opera, just as it had softly begun the Overture.

6) Central imagery: the Star of the North

The dominant image and theme of the Star of the North is fulfilled: the notion of prophecy and high calling, the loving, protecting spirit of Catherine's dead Mother, the dynamism of Catherine Is intrepid character based on generous sympathy, love and personal resolve, and the realization of her fortune in royal matrimony and imperial coronation. In this way the 'star' of her Mother's prediction, and the symbol of her destiny, become the star of state, the great northern power of Russia, in an astral configuration of multifaceted and pointed significance.

Interestingly, the famous Theme of the Star was originally used as the high point of Vielka's prophecy at the culmination of Ein Feldlager, where it is sustained gloriously in its one apotheotic appearance. In the later adaptation, it is a recurring Leitmotif, with central place in the Overture, the principal theme running through the opera: as resonance of the dead Mother and her prophecy, as medium of prayer (and hence a link with the spiritual world of higher, guiding power), as theme capturing lost love and innocence in Act 2 when Catherine is pulled away from the drunken Peter, and finally as prophecy fulfilled in the closing moments of the opera.

7) Peter's Anger: two themes at play

The Theme of the Star is thus related to a register of pastoral values (mother, home, childhood, village, love, providence, destiny) and is indirectly contrasted with the other recurring theme, the Motif of Peter's Anger, which, conversely, represents the world of harsh reality (human character, passion, violence, instability, chance, the awkward facts of life, psychological determinism), all related to the darker aspects of the story (politics, history and personality).

The two themes in fact symbolize the central polarity which basically structures the plot and generates the pertinent imagery. The theme of the Star stands for the pastoral side of the story the world of comedy and romance, with emphasis on the village life and the countryside, peopled by ordinary little folk realized in stock types, like labourers, town musicians, wedding guests, village maidens and bumbling old men. The Motif of Peter's Anger captures something of the dark elements in the story, and in its destructive potential, even hints at tragedy. It is also a means of very personal characterization, an attempt at investing the Tsar's character with its own vigour and energy.

The darker side of life is distilled in the register of military images, which dominate the other half of the symbolic landscape of the opera. Peter is the bridge between these two worlds: he loves them both. On the one hand, he treasures his life as disguised shipwright, friend of carpenters and lover of his fellow labourer's sister. But he is also the Tsar and leader of nations, with onerous political responsibilities, symbolized in his role as Commander-in-Chief, and the challenge of the military conspiracy.

Part of the dramatic interest of the story is the need to reconcile these two aspects of himself. He is imperious and angry as labourer, and irresponsible and unpredictable as leader, in fact an isolated personality who is brought into greater integration of personality by Catherine. She, as a village girl, inspires him to his higher calling, and disguised as a soldier, awakens him to greater responsibility as Tsar. Finally, as demented victim, she invests him with greater humanity and compassion, both in pity for her illness and the role he plays in her recovery.

8) The world of romance and comedy

The theme of the Star also involves elements of romance, in the -technical sense of the word. Romance, depicting heroic legend in illustration of a moral, usually involves the suspense of the circumstances normally attendant on human action (often through magic). Romance is rooted in a pastoral heredity, and perceives a power or force surging through the universe, influencing, and even guiding, the lives of human beings. If this is not magic, or religious predestination, it can be seen as fortuna, or destiny.

Catherine Is dead Mother Is omnipresence, and the recollection and fulfillment of her prediction, rehearsed in Catherine's own assumption of the prophetic role in dealing with the Cossacks, embodies this strong undercurrent of romance. So does the "fairy tale" ending to the opera.

But pastoral and comedy are much more central to the story. The insistence on happiness, the focus on simple but enduring values, are set out in Act 1 in the little Karelian village where Catherine and Peter fall in love, and help to bring the love of George and Prascovia to its married fulfillment. This remains a vital image, and it is only by and through its re-creation at the end of the opera that true reconciliation and happiness can be achieved.

The pastoral experience centres on a celebration of love and song in a sunlit countryside, in the manner of Theocritus. And it is exactly music, loving-kindness, and the conjuring up of the lost Arcadia which restore Catherine to her sanity.

The pastoral elements are integral to the underlying mode of comedy which is the life-blood of the action. Reference has already been made to the satirical and farcical aspects, but the radical origins of comedy in fertility rituals insist on a celebration of life, a celebration of joy, of communal integrity and social harmony. The awkwardness of social and political necessity, of psychological individuality, leads to disruption and challenge, even to destruction of the pastoral inheritance. Peter's rage, the marauding Cossacks, and inescapable intrusion of the state in the military conscription and soldiery, assert these divisive forces in Act 1. The whole Camp Scene, with its tumult, confusion, conspiracy and strife, where values of love, loyalty and stability are overturned, represents the darker elements, pregnant with potential tragedy. Here drama, distilled in the military metaphor, becomes a miniature reflection of the great issues explored in grand opéra.

Loss of identity, with the loss of peace, and possibly even of life, become the decisive moments of change, both for Catherine and for Peter. Only recovery of the pastoral inheritance will bring healing and restoration, and regain the lost idyll, albeit in terms of an altered, exalted imagery.

9) The pastoral ideal and the threat to it

The pastoral theme had been investigated in Meyerbeer's grands opéras to some extent already. In Robert le Diable it is highly developed, and the ideal achieved in the rapturous, sacramental conclusion. In Les Huguenots it is glimpsed in the Court of Marguerite de Valois, where the beauty and tranquillity of Chenonceaux reflect the desire to attain and secure peace, before these ideals are lost in the brutal passage of history. In Le Prophète the ideal, be it personal, family, communal or ideological, is decisively lost to the intransigent forces of religion, politics and hatred. So this theme is in the line of Scribe and Meyerbeer's recurring preoccupations, to the point where it becomes central in L'Étoile du Nord.

Similarly the military images, with violence and disruption, are also present in Les Huguenots (in the warring Catholic and Protestant factions) and in Le Prophète (where the Anabaptist Camp in Act 3 is structurally analogous to Act 2 of L'Étoile du Nord, both symbolically and semiotically).

The mixture of the pastoral and the military is one of the fundamental conventions of opéra comique, in large measure because of Scribe's own contribution to the history of this genre, particularly, and to the development of the libretto, generally. He gave it prototypical expression in the book for Auber's Le Philtre (1832) where the heroine's world of rustic delight is intruded upon by the swaggering soldier Belcor who threatens her true happiness, and induces, at various levels of meaning, her real love, the peasant lad, to enlist. Scribe used the same thematic nexus as effectively a few years later in the hugely popular Le Chalet, written for Adam (1835). Both operas passed into even wider international currency because of Donizetti's adaptations of them, as L'Elisir d'amore and Betly respectively.

10) Conventions of the opéra comique

L'Etoile du Nord indeed contains so many basic conventions from the world of opéra comique that the coincidence could hardly be accidental. It is as though, in writing for Paris's second house, the authors seemed determined to subsume the traditions of the genre embodied there into a single work, and so make some kind of comment on them, or give them their own special stamp.

The nature and number of the topoi seem almost deliberate, and their occurrence was hardly unnoticed, since the situation was satirized at the time by the Journal pour rire. Moreover, with Meyerbeer's fastidious concern over his texts, this is what he must have wanted.

i) The Military Opera

This work, in many ways, and certainly chronologically, lies at the heart of the military opéra comique, expanded from earlier works of Scribe for Auber (like Fra Diavolo [1830]), exemplified perfectly in Saint-George & Bayard's La Fille du Régiment (1840) for Donizetti, later satirized in operetta by Meilhac & Halévy for Offenbach in La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867). Sentimental addenda came in Duru & Chivot's La Fille du Tambour Major (1879) for Offenbach and La Mascotte (1880) for Audran.

It is the martial music of Act 2 of L'Étoile du Nord which was lifted directly from Ein Feldlager. In spite of Meyerbeer's personal disassociation from the Prussian military spirit, there was no doubt a powerful urge, an irrepressible instinct for military ceremonial in his make-up, reaching back far into his childhood experiences of growing up in the heart of the Prussian Kingdom. His structured approach to life and composition, and his preoccupation with fervent tempi and penchant for dotted rhythms, are all examples of the insidious compulsion - as, indeed, are all his orchestral works, which were, in any case, commanded for various Prussian royal occasions.

The military spirit was in Meyerbeer's blood, but the call of the gentle pastoral was an antidote, and equally an enduring drive: an intensive treatment would come in his second opéra comqiue, Le Pardon de Ploërmel, the creation and production of which was as much a priority for him as L'Étoile du Nord had been after Le Prophète. This was in spite of the uncompleted Noëma and L'Africaine, and the fury of Scribe that he should turn to other librettists (Barbier & Carrd) while the works he had written for Meyerbeer were set aside. The composer was, with his usual singlemindedness, prepared even to put his relationship with Scribe in jeopardy in order to fulfill this impulse towards pastoral.

ii) Other conventions

There are other motifs and scene types familiar from the opèra comique, most of them of Scribe's devising: the wedding scene from L a on (1825), the heroine awakened from a dream in La Sonnambula (1827), the song remembered from past times which brings the present into new meaning, as in La Dame blanche (1825). Other situations are from Italian Romantic opera: the Mad Scene, made so famous in Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and the Conspiracy Scene from Meyerbeer's own Il Crociato in Egitto (later so illustriously developed in Les Huguenots). The challenge was for the creators, and the composer especially, to make something unique of this collection of types so recognizable to the public, and so familiar from the repertoire of the Salle Favart and Théâtre Italien. The thematic disposition of these conventions, scenes and plot patterns, in a new dynamic, was surely achieved in the close textured poetic and musical language both librettist and composer were able to produce in this late work.

11) Comedy

Perhaps the most striking feature about L'Étoile du Nord, in the context of Meyerbeer's work, is its basically comic modality. While Margherita d'Anjou, Robert le Diable and Le Prophète all contain comic elements in the plot and music (this dimension in the last being particularly black), L'Étoile was the first time the composer tackled comic themes so directly. Contrary to Wilfred Mellor's assertion that Meyerbeer had no sense of humor, this opera, in spite of its semiseria nature, and peep into tragedy, is steeped in a very delicate and charming sense of fun and joy.

i) Musical characterization

Meyerbeer's appropriation of the mantle of comedy obviously finds expression in his treatment of musical convention - just as he and Scribe had approached and transformed some of the conventions of comic plot. This is abundantly clear from the handling of characterization - and the character of Danilowitz is exactly apposite here.

In the hands of a good singing actor, who can bring out the humor latent in this part, he becomes the chief comic element throughout the story. His opening Vending Couplets have all the airy patter of the buffo genre. And it is interesting that Meyerbeer's own additions to this part (the Act 1 Polonaise and the Act 3 Arioso, expressly written for Tichatschek) flesh out Danilowitz's comic character most convincingly. The pompous, and at the same time whining, humor of the former, and the sentimental charm of the latter, capture the changing moods of the essentially good-humored scenario. And certainly the dramatic success of the Tent Scene depends, to a large extent, on the vital participation of a sharp and witty Danilowitz, to make the most of its boozy jocularity. The Act 3 Trio, perhaps the single most extended and funny piece in the whole opera, is pure comedy of manners, misunderstanding and ironic commentary: the somewhat dull but intransigent soldier, the exasperated and techy Tsar, with the witty, resourceful and somewhat detached Danilowitz mediating between the two, provides a sustained, various and arresting situation of humor, reflected in the changing moods, rhythms and harmonies of the music.

Perhaps nothing captures Meyerbeer's response to the comic challenge more exquisitely than the heroine's entrance aria. Catherine's Couplets (really a trio, with Peter and George commenting) presents the musical language of the smaller genre, the lighter style, perfectly. The music is deft and fleet, requiring rapid singing and playing, with constant changes of rhythm and tempo. The mercurial opening triplets capture both Catherine's bright and brisk personality, as well as the quick-wittedness and humor of the story she tells - of going to plead her brother's case with his fiancée's father. Her assumption of the different parts of the conversation she reports give wonderful opportunities for humor in the comic impersonation of the old grumpy old man, with her blithe and rapid upward runs, crisp and fluent coloratura establishing her masterful control of the situation, and revealing her generous and resourceful character. The unison comments of Peter and George add to the rhythmic and harmonic grace of the piece, and buoy up Catherine's quicksilver vocal line. The whole effect is of brilliance and rapidity, intensified by the patter accelerandi for all three, Catherine's fioritura and short glittering cadenza, and the vivacious orchestral ritornello rounding off the piece with great élan. The characterization of Catherine is successfully presented in the brisk and light language of the opéra comique, which Meyerbeer confects with the hand of a seasoned master.

ii) Formal innovation

It is the mutually modifying interplay of form and characterization which presents some of the most startlingly original aspects of this musically inventive score. The Tent Scene is a case in point, where a shabby drinking binge leads to the physical and moral collapse of the Tsar who loses his identity, and comes close to losing his love and his power. The bibulous Trio, which is the musical medium of these shenanigans, begins like any jolly drinking song, with a deft and elegant little ritornello which returns rondo-like at various points. But as Peter and Danilowitz's cavortings become more sozzled, Catherine watching on appalled, the formal structure of the music breaks down; Peter's lines become longer and almost inchoate ravings, interrupting the fleet and formal structure of the music which loses its tonal centre, and finishes almost desolately in a cabaletta movement which is more expressive of Catherine' s distress at the revelation of men behaving badly, rather than the usual brilliant and formal conclusion to a show-stopping trio. Even her coloratura and cadenza share in this rather bleak and fraught unraveling of the comfortable exposition and expectations of form. This is by no means your typical operatic drinking song, but a transformation of convention, with disturbing formal modifications dictated by the exigencies of characterization.

The same applies to the licentious encounter with the camp followers, where the dicing and sexual passes become a Quintet in which the underlying strain and artificiality of the situation (the Tsar and his crony disposing themselves to enjoy the professional attentions of the two prostitutes, while the voice of true love looks on helplessly and in distress) . The music reflects the strain, with an harmonic and rhythmic freneticism and exaggeration which almost distorts the ensemble work and vocal lines, straining the music to the edge of discordancy. This wrenching of formal contours is almost a mannerist response to the situation and characterization of the scene.

Another instance of startling innovation in the adaptation and transformation of convention, can be seen in the treatment of the second soprano, Prascovia. In Act 1 she appears initially as a stock type, a frightened yet coquettish soubrette, as she rushes in alarmed by the news that the Cossacks are coming. Her almost formalized fear leads into a broad and comforting Quartet, the quintessence of Gemültlichkeit, as she finds comfort and reassurance in the heart of her family and friends. Later, in the Duet with Catherine, her weeping motif reappears, but this time is subjected to comic scrutiny by Catherine, who turns the ritualized weeping into laughter, and by her dynamic assumption of control, changes grief and anxiety into joyful anticipation, with the weeping refrain becoming a cheery little Ländler in which the friendship of the two women is celebrated with all the melodic grace, rhythmic spring and charming coloratura of the opéra comique. It is a piece of truly comic spirit. Prascovia's solo in the Act I Finale is already calmer and more purposeful, with a touching melodic melancholy which invests this bridal song with an element of gentle reflection.

The deepening of Prascovia's characterization continues in Act 3 when she sings of the journey with George from Finland; the tenderness of -the music is most affecting, and picks up the marriage theme from Act 1. It is a comment on the disrupted romance between Catherine and Peter, and when Gritzenko has George arrested as a deserter, the counterpointing of the principal themes in the opera becomes a burlesque. The ensuing Duet for Prascovia and George is an astonishingly imaginative handling of form. The whole piece is a mercurial rhythmic patter, an exercise in syllabic declamation which is eerily prescient in its anticipation of more modern developments. The stock lover-types of comic opera have something new to say in their situation of ironic reversal which counterpoints and parodies the main plot. The strangely modern idiom of their commiseration is worlds away from buffo sentimentality, and injects a stimulating tinge of irony into the comic scenario. The acerbity of the form and the sound prepare the way for the meditative transition to Catherine's great Mad Scene, with its sumptuous, but more straightforward, sound-world, and extended structure. This underpins, but progressively diffuses, the semi-tragic situation, and unfolds the kindly, sentimental and intensely romantic conclusion to Meyerbeer's first essay in opéra comique.

In all L'Étoile du nord is a densely wrought work, profuse in invention, and of complex thematic and musical textures, where verve and fluency almost belie the hand of an old master.