THE NEXUS OF RELIGION,

THE THEMATIC NEXUS OF RELIGION, POWER, POLITICS AND LOVE
IN THE OPERAS OF GIACOMO MEYERBEER.

Text in Italian Il nesso tematico di religione, potere, politica e amore nelle opere di Giacomo Meyerbeer

It is no accident that foremost among the positive commentators on the effectiveness of Meyerbeer's art are counted some of the great literary names of French Romanticism - Balzac, George Sand and Théophile Gautier. Balzac's eulogy of Robert le Diable in his novel Gambara (1832) is famous, as is George Sand's analysis of Les Huguenots in the eleventh Lettres d'un voyageur (1837). But it is Théophile Gautier's reactions after the premiere of Le Prophète in 1849 that in many ways distills something of the aesthetic point and purpose of Meyerbeer's grands opéras and fixes them in the mainstream of cultural significance.[1] These operas were not only musical milestones but important contributions to the thought-forming forces at work in the artistic self-expression of Society -- and certainly the ubiquity of Meyerbeer's music, the universality of his operas until the First World War -- emphasizes the validity of the perceptions of the composer's literary contemporaries.

Gautier perceived an intellectual control at work in the chronology and themes governing Meyerbeer's operas, a perception so different from the dismissive and trivial critical clichés of the twentieth century which has regarded Meyerbeer's work as meretricious and sensationalistic. Only an unprejudiced consideration of the libretti and the music with the new scientific rigour that is now able to utilize all the primary resources of personal documentation, will allow for the proper reassessment of an unjustly denigrated art and the recovery of the reasons for Meyerbeer's cultural significance.

For Gautier, there was no difficulty in perceiving an underlying intellectual structure in both the themes and evolution of Meyerbeer's first three French operas: for him they represented a type of trilogy, and in the chronological appearance constituted a sequence, even a dialectic, which explores a fundamental human question of belief -- even the meaning of life. This trilogy has its thesis announced in Robert le Diable which Gautier sees as "an opera of faith", describing as it does an almost allegorical struggle between the forces of light and darkness in the re-creation of an old Medieval legend. But sureties of faith are challenged in the voices of dissent in Les Huguenots, "an opera of love", which depicts the disintegration of a unitary faith in the religious and political turmoil of the Reformation by depicting an historical chronicle from the Wars of Religion in sixteenth-century France. The very uncertainties of both faith and religion, or of belief fatefully modified by historical exigency, are treated in Le Prophète, "an opera of illumination", which posits the harsh reality of human weakness or individual helplessness, determined by socio-political realities, in the manner of an ideological tract or political pamphlet or broadsheet, from the troubled history of the Anabaptist movement (1537) in the early days of the Reformation. The sure faith affirmed in Robert le Diable, which is divided and dishonoured in Les Huguenots, is swept away in Le Prophète, where true illumination lies in the rejection of credal faith and dogmatic politics for the reality of human love and commitment, a solution already hinted at in the Fifth Act of Les Huguenots, but developed into apotheosis in the fiery finale of Le Prophète. [2]

This paraphrase and elaboration of Gautier's brilliant perceptions is bound entirely to the text (both verbal and musical) of Meyerbeer's operas, and by the biographical factors which determined the origin and emergence of his works in their historical actuality. Several important factors immediately emerge that demand attention:

4. What is the role of Meyerbeer's own religious and family attitude to these texts?

5. What is the relationship of Meyerbeer's later operas to the posited dialectic of his first three grands opéras?

It would appear that religion was perhaps the dominant force in Meyerbeer's life - anyway in shaping his attitudes from childhood on and in colouring his (aesthetic) responses/reflections on life. He was born a Jew in a family committed to its faith. His father, Herz Beer, was prominent in the emancipation of the Jews in the Prussian state under the reforms of Baron von Stein, and moreover, a pioneer in the practice of the reform movement in Judaism with all its liberalizing tendencies. His mother, Amalie Wulff, was a committed Jewess who requested that her son never abandon the faith of his fathers. This Meyerbeer indeed never did: he remained a Jew all his life and was eventually buried in the Jewish Cemetery in the Schönhauser Allee, Berlin. His Judaism was a quiet but constant feature of his life, but never a point of aggressive self-assertion. His loyalty to his Jewishness distinguished him sharply from the Protestant convert Mendelssohn and underlined the hostility shown him so consistently by the latter. There can be no doubt that being Jewish was the source of a deeply traumatic psychological reaction all his life. His sense of rejection by Germany, his own rejection of Prussian militarism, his search for a wider and more various European experience, especially as a young man in Italy where he remained in self-imposed exile for eight years, reflected not only his sense of alienation from a narrow nationalism but also a deep perception of his precarious position as a Jew in a Christian society with deep-seated anti-semitic prejudices. His well-known letter to his brother Michael Beer in 1818 is sadly prophetic, not only of his own shabby treatment by future generations of gentile critics, but also of the tragic fate of European Jewry in the twentieth century.

For all his polished, international urbanity, and his discreetly controlled areligious public persona, religion would seem to have been the burden of his perception of life, the origin of the depression and anxiety that overshadowed him all his life.

Bound up with this sadness was a tacit preoccupation with Christianity. While he never expressed a public opinion about any aspect of Christianity, and hardly seems to have been unduly distressed by his daughters' embracing of either Catholicism (Blanka) or Lutheranism (Cornelie), his choice of libretti suggests a deep thematic involvement with religion generally and many aspects of Christianity particularly.

He himself, in spite of his marriage, remained a lonely man, devoted to his art and constantly travelling in its service - the archetypal "wandering Jew". From his first opera (Jephthas Gelübde) (1812) with its Biblical topic involving as it does an agonizing decision brought on by the dictates of religion and religious sensibility, through Il Crociato in Egitto (1824) with its exploration of two opposed cultures and their respective religions (Christianity and Islam) caught in a conflict that has serious complicating factors of identity for the principal protagonists, to his swansong L'Africaine (1865) where the Catholic West meets the Hindu East in what amounts to a quasi-allegorical consideration of the issues of colonialism and racism, great issues are considered in terms and symbolism of opposed religious factions, and particularly in a variety of Christian imagery. The choice could hardly have been fortuitous, and may well account for the composer's disgraceful neglect by his own people to whose cause and faith he was ever loyal.

The extent of Meyerbeer's dealings with Eugène Scribe, the nature of their working relationship, and the fact that he could not sustain work on a theme or text that did not inspire him (as with Alexandre Dumas on Les Brigands, Saint-Georges on Cinq Mars and Scribe himself on Noëma and Judith) only emphasizes his deep concern with the subject matter he chose to work on. It is well-known, for example, how he was obliged to turn to his old Italian colleague, Gaetano Rossi, for the adumbration of the character of Marcel and the local colour of Les Huguenots - both religious factors in the libretto.

Scribe further submitted the libretti of both Le Prophète and L'Africaine to Meyerbeer at the same time in 1838. The inner compulsion of the composers own reactions and inner development meant that Le Prophète received immediate attention despite its having another Reformation theme after Les Huguenots, while L'africaine was to concern him intermittently until the very end of his life. The chronological logic of the composition of Le Prophète only strengthens Gautier's perception of a dialectic and the centrality the religious nexus of themes to Meyerbeer's creativity.

In Robert le Diable the whole universe, terrestrial and celestial, is presented to us. Not only do the demons call out for Robert from the cleft through which Alice espies the fires of hell, but the finale is sanctioned by angelic voices from heaven who hover protectingly over the Cathedral of Palermo - the very earthly forecourt to the heavenly kingdom. This is an opera in which the demonic is incarnated in Bertram who has the power of a necromancer and calls up phantoms (the Prince of Grenada and the spirits of the damned, the nuns of St. Rosalie, in a travesty of the resurrection of the dead at the end of time) . This is a world of legends where the barriers between the mythical and the actual, between the corporeal and the spiritual, are. broken down, and the whole panoply of the archetypal struggle between good and evil is unrolled before the eyes and ears of the audience in the manner of the Medieval miracle plays. The struggle is for the souls of men and women in an ageless battle between the forces of heaven and hell who contend at every level in supernatural manifestations, but most particularly by the surrogate agencies of those who are for God and those who are against him. Satan, the dark master, is active through the demon Bertram; the heavenly forces operate principally through the pure girl Alice who places herself directly under the patronage of the Virgin herself in Act 3 ("Quand je quittais la Normandie"), and clings on to the great cross that dominates this central act literally and the whole opera figuratively.

It is she who, through her purity and alignment with the divine, has the instinctive power to see through Bertram's veneer of humanity to his demonic self (both in Act 1 and especially in Act 3). She holds the sacred mission to "redeem" Robert by keeping him to the right path and enabling him to choose the way of life and light. She thus generates the register of positive imagery in the opera a nexus of associations that, through her Marian alignment, and association with Robert allied with Satan and hence with darkness and death, but as Robert's father gives a paternal characteristic to the demonic forces. Thus Robert, a symbol of poor humanity, is caught between Alice and Bertram (as in the famous painting by Lepaulle), representatives of the centrifugal forces of heaven and hell, of the spiritual ideal and the earthly reality, which pull him in either direction in the struggle for his soul on its earthly pilgrimage. It is significant that Bertram is not merely a one-dimensional, symbol of evil, but i.s seen as half-human himself, with a genuine, if tortured and tortuous, love for his son. This love is real enough (consider his pleading aria in Act 5), but it is also seen as innately destructive, and ultimately deceptive. The drinking, gambling and lawless love he offers Robert (and this is repeated in symbolic compression in his famous seduction by the demonic nuns) is all too much the temptation of living life to excess and hence irresponsibly. Association with Bertram leads to reiterated disappointment and toss to the extent where Robert feels himself cursed and doomed (as in his pathetic response to his gambling disaster in Act 1). Convention and courtesy (the knightly code of honour embodied in the restraining laws of the tournament, the formalities of courtly love, and the liturgies of pious practice) are overthrown in profligacy (drinking, dicing and wenching), lawlessness (seeking a rival outside the lists), sacrilege (the violation of the holy grave of St. Rosalie and consorting with demons), deception (the use of the magic talisman) and violence (the intrusion and threatened abduction and rape of Isabella).

For all Bertram's genuine love for his son, this love is of itself negative and destructive. But this "love" is present, actual, earthly and earthy - carnal in short. It is of the nature of Robert's humanity, the corporeal inheritance of his human nature which is fatefully tainted with the "paternal" curse of original sin. He needs, indeed awaits, redemption and this comes in the person and mission of Alice who is sent to him by his dying mother.

Robert's mother, Berthe, is now in the Heavens where she prays for him (as Alice recounts in "Va, dit-elle" in Act I) a part of the spiritual world of angels and powers in high places. They (Alice, Berthe, and beyond them both, the Virgin) represent man's higher calling, his aspiration through faith and doctrine, to a transformation and sublimation of unregenerate humanity into something noble and "redeemed". The interesting aspect to all this is that Robert is more played upon than actually engaged himself in this spiritual drama: he is constantly deceived into new situations and temptations and loss by Bertram; even in the great moment of decision before the fatal midnight hour ends the term of trial, he is helplessly torn between the all too earthly paternal forces and the all too spiritual maternal ones. The reading of his mother's testament only intensifies his agony ("Qu'est-ce que je fais?") and his salvation comes as an act of grace: Alice causes the signing of the pact to be delayed until the fatal hour has struck and the power of darkness is broken, leaving Robert free, liberated, open to the flooding of light and the celebration of romantic love sacramentally in marriage in Palermo Cathedral, blessed by Heavenly chorus. Robert is the recipient of grace freely bestowed and channelled through Alice. The true and desirable world order is established and celebrated: darkness is dispelled, human nature is redeemed and faith is triumphant. No wonder George Sand called this a "Catholic" opera and that it enjoyed such popularity in Spain in the last century. [5]

The implications of the spiritual conflict that goes on it) this opera permeates all levels of symbolism. The cross stands above the cavern of St Irene which is the entry into hell itself. The cross is further juxtaposed with the profane, even blasphemous, pseudo-resurrection of the nuns (which is really a necromantic delusion). [6] But even as hell is present in the presence of Bertram, so- heaven is represented whenever Alice appears. In Act I, when she is left alone with Robert, their interview is preceded by a gentle ritornello in which the clarinet is given a prominent solo. The solemn and reassuring grandeur of the horns begins her account of the death of Robert's mother while the promise of her celestial benediction is realized in ethereal string harmonies, and the postlude reasserts the interplay of high, pure woodwinds. [7] The effect is calming, even pastoral, and couches Alice's presence and words in an idyllic sound world that embodies what she stands for and says. Her entrance in Act 3 is characterized in exactly the same terms and orchestral colours. After the demonic tempest which accompanies Bertram's descent into the cavern to meet his dark master, the stage is still and empty until Alice enters accompanied by the high woodwinds. Her simple balladic song of reminiscence ("Quand je quittais la Normandie") as she waits for Raimbaut belongs to the same sound world which is given added force when it becomes the prayer of a virgin to the Virgin, and this is broken in upon with increasing demonic fury by the storm music with its harsh brass and discordant harmonies. Alice represents a pure, idyllic world, a pastoral world of simplicity, light and love.

Bertram personifies the terror, menace, disruption and chaos of hell itself, and the broken "formlessness" of his duet with Alice in which he threatens violation and death itself, is the musical expression of the spiritual drama. The increasingly complex accompaniment to Raimbaut's Act I ballad with its chromatic cloudiness, the deep dark sounds of bassoon and trombone which characterize Bertram's utterances, his evocation, and the actual resurrection of the nuns, as well as the storm music which accompanies his descents into the nether regions in Acts 3 and 5, are disruptive of the lucid sounds and harmonic simplicity of Alice's idyll.

This pastoral world is also represented in Isabella's yearning for a "sort prospère" at the beginning of Act 2, and in the emotional upsurge and affecting beauty of her plea to Robert ("Robert, toi que j'aime") in Act 4 in which she significantly appeals for "grâce". The harps which so eloquently accompany her, return as a calming postlude to Robert's "redemption" after Bertram's descent into hell, are, of course, identified as celestial sounds in the great final chorus of rapt, solemn, sacramental celebration. The monks with their portentous, admonitory chorus, and their prayer based on medieval chant with organ accompaniment, provide the voice of the church militant on earth, warning and praying in the ageless struggle between heaven and hell. The idyll of lost innocence is constantly threatened (as in the experiences of Alice and Isabella), or turned to demonic purpose in a false garden of seduction (as by Bertram in the ballet of the nuns). But in this opera faith is affirmed, the idyll is attained and paradise regained. Religion is triumphant.

The situation is radically challenged in Les Huguenots. Robert le Diable is an opera written in the romance mode that summons up a Medieval world of faith where belief is monolithic in its corporate unity, and challenged by forces outside itself. While the world may seem to be equally divided between forces of good and evil, the Manichean universe is avoided by the providence of grace which in the end is determinative and all-pervasive. There is an almost scholastic adherence to orthodoxy.

In Les Huguenots the world has changed. A world of fairy-tale princesses, demons and angels has given way to one of historical realities, a Renaissance world where kings and queens still hold sway, but supernatural realities have disappeared in the cold light of reason, and the realm of action is confined to the ordinary lives of men and women - even if many of them are nobles. Matters of faith are still determinative, but they are the consequence of individual choice, unaided by the manifestation, let alone incarnation, of any spiritual reality. Men and women are born into, or choose to align themselves by, preference of faith (or politics), with a persuasion or party. Rational man has come into his own and must now make his own choices -- if he can. But man being a social animal is the product of his age, class and society. One believes in what one is born into, and only the rare soul has the innate power or gift to rise above this and question the fundamentals of life and belief. Faith is still absolutely determinative but the vibrant heart of human feelings and thought is conjured up in a manner inconceivable to the absolute certainties of an age of faith. Protestantism has arrived, and again George Sand was so precise and accurate in calling this a "Protestant" opera. The one proviso, however, is that this should be Protestantism with a small p.

In Les Huguenots Meyerbeer is as careful and assiduous as in Robert le Diable in creating a world of polarities. Here, though, the poles are not two distinct worlds apart, but a Christianity divided against itself. We have, on the one hand, the Catholics, arrogant, collectively self-assured and ruthless; on the other, there are the Huguenots, presented (until Act 3) as brave individuals (Raoul and Marcel) standing boldly and nobly against their flippant and intransigent opponents. An ideal of faithful and uncompromising witness is delivered firstly by Marcel, whose hymn is both a prayer and a pious testimony in the face of a hedonistic, and probably godless, collective opponent. Similarly Raoul's public rejection of Valentine in Act 2 is based on strict Calvinistic principles of honour and probity. His dreamy, ingenuous and idealistic nature is established in Act I, especially in his romance "Plus blanche que la blanche hermine". His Pauline chastity and old-fashioned knightly code is amply demonstrated in his interview with the capricious and licentious Queen. [8] Later he does not hesitate to consider the political consequences, or personal implications for Valentine, of his public actions. He, like Marcel, must learn the powerful and humbling witness of self-sacrifice -- even of personal pride in oneself and one's cherished (religious) principles through the self-effacing witness of Valentine. She is the innocent victim, the pole of integrity and the catalyst for change throughout the opera. In spite of her public humiliation by Raoul, whose morality has been based on self-righteous perceptions of honour, her love and her principles are strong enough to rise above offended pride and arrogance of party affiliation or formal religion. She is able to break with these restricting codes in order to warn the gruff and idiosyncratic Marcel of Raoul's danger from ambush. Indeed her duet with Marcel in Act 3 is the spiritual heart of Les Huguenots, perhaps even more than her love duet with Raoul. The depth of her self-sacrificing love is manifested here, and its power is overwhelming in its transforming effects, since Marcel himself, the religious zealot, is moved beyond pride and prejudice to bless the former object of his chauvinism and challenge to his immovable principles: a Catholic woman. His benediction of Valentine represents the triumph of a chastened and enlightened humanity over the unthinking demands and intransigent conditioning of race, clan, creed, class and politics.

This duet stands at the heart of Les Huguenots and enshrines not only the theme of this opera, but whatever message Meyerbeer had for the world.

Valentine, and also Marcel, are thus open to change. Raoul is noble and unchanging in his love, but he is not capable of radical alteration of belief. He is honourable enough to come at great personal danger to himself to seek Valentine's pardon, but his duet with her is again the product of her initiative - in trying to prevent his departure, in declaring her love, in attempting to hold him back. He too celebrates this love ecstatically, but once again sacrifices her and his love for the principle of honour to friends and creed. The acute dilemma of Raoul's position must not be underestimated though, nor yet the deep love in his preparedness to die for his friends. Even in Act 5 when Valentine comes to seek him out and save him, lie cannot cope with the challenge and must turn to Marcel for reassurance so that it is yet again Valentine who must sweep away convention even the sacrosanct principles of family and faith - in order to hold on to what for her is the true meaning of life, the love that offers itself even unto and beyond death.

Her marriage to Raoul blessed by Marcel in the hour of death is a deeply solemn celebration of profound truth that puts love and human worth above and beyond human pride, prejudice, and even principle. What are the causes men and women die for? Is heroism valid in itself? Should religion have this hold on the human heart and system of values? In the face of death, the great leveller, what is true worth? When two parties who both uphold a Gospel of love and forgiveness are able to kill each other, what is the role of faith?

Who will arbitrate with the truth? The futile appearance of Queen Marguerite de Valois at the high point of the horror of waste and loss is no decoration but a profoundly sad observation of helplessness in the face of brutish and atavistic human behaviour. The mystery is why worship of God should be a locus of human hatred, the adherence to principle be the reason for the death of compassion.

These themes are again explored at various levels in the opera. If Valentine is the embodiment of exploratory and compassionate humanity, then Queen Marguerite is the catalyst for political change and shares much in common with Valentine. She is prepared to rise above party and religion in the interests of peace, and indeed much of the action of the plot is precipitated by her plan for peace. She is to marry a Protestant, and is happy to receive Raoul and even Marcel at her court. Only her presence prevents the outbreak of party violence at Chenonceaux and outside the Louvre. But her efforts are swept away in futility on St. Bartholomew's Eve. It is Marguerite who most clearly and precisely repudiates the futility of religious partisanship when she wishes the debates and bloodshed precipitated by Luther and Calvin far from her Court which is a place of love and peace. Her court at Chenonceaux is idyllic, and becomes a symbol of a bygone age of innocence, a paradise lost by partisan hatred. The celebrations of her would-be reconciliatory marriage with Henry of Navarre are similarly the re-creation of a courtly idyll which is broken in upon by sin and bloodshed. Thus both Valentine and Marguerite are instruments for peace and change of heart, even if both seem doomed to failure.

Queen Marguerite is allied in her plan to the Comte de Nevers, a truly noble Catholic who is naturally happy to co-operate with the Queen, but has already shown his disdain of senseless social prejudice by inviting a Protestant to join in his all-Catholic gathering at his country estate in Act I. When asked, and to his great personal cost, he gives up his cherished engagement to Valentine in the interests of peace and reconciliation. In this he is ironically the true partner of Valentine who later marries him out of duty. His supreme moment of testing comes in the conspiracy of St Bartholomew's Eve when he declines to participate in the massacre, despite the royal decree. lie thus joins the company of the secular saints with Valentine, Raoul and Marcel (and the Queen too). But his association is particularly with his wife, because, like her, he is one of the few persons in the opera who uses noble reason to rise above the automatic and categorical dictates of class and belief. Neither king, country nor the Catholic Church can persuade him to compromise or extirpate his humanity.

It is only then that Valentine becomes fully aware of his noble nature beneath his gentlemanly, sometimes gallantly exaggerated, manners. Nevers becomes a true hero who is prepared to die for the truth, but a truth that puts people before ideas. He is a genuine man of peace, who, like the Queen, would generate reconciliation and harmony. The party at his chateau in Act I celebrates youth, conviviality and peace ("Des beaux jours de la jeunesse"). His wedding procession at the end of Act 3 becomes a type of urban idyll in which the traditional symbols of the pastoral. - marriage, dancing and festivity - provide an alternative to the hatred of the religious factions who mutter at and menace each other under the joy of the celebration, subjecting its happy theme to chromatic disfigurement.

But the epitome of pride, prejudice and bigotry is Valentine's father, the Comte de St Bris. He personifies the intransigent and destructive nature of the unyielding spirit who identifies completely with the given factors of his birth, and elevates his country and religion into unalterable absolutes that determine life and even death itself. This is not to say that this character is conceived as an unthinking monolith anymore than Bertram is totally demonic.

He sweeps aside all personal preference and sympathy, so that it is poetic justice when he inadvertently murders his own daughter in the massacre; perhaps he would have, anyway, had he known of her change of faith. So he becomes the voice of every superego, the blindly obedient fanatic who will suppress his humanity and his reason, if his ideal, principles or ideology demand it. In doing so he becomes the patron of all implementors of "final solutions". Meyerbeer was indeed a prophet in his own right.

George Sand was right to see Les Huguenots as a Protestant opera in opposition to the Catholicism of Robert le Diable -- but this opera is in no way a glorification of Calvinism. It is true that Meyerbeer achieved one of his masterpieces of characterization in the figure of Marcel, but then St Bris is also delineated in masterly fashion. In fact the composer re-creates both religions in depth and with persuasive effectiveness. Both are depicted in both positive and negative light. The best of the Catholic spirit, the purity and vulnerability of gentle devotion, is perfectly captured in the Litany of the ladies who accompany Valentine to her vigil in the chapel before her marriage to Nevers. The tenderness of devotion for the Mother of God is enshrined in the gentle style and pullucid woodwind harmonies. Similarly, in Act 5, when the Huguenot women and children seek refuge in their church from the massacre in the streets, the ethereal arrangement of Luther's hymn perfectly portrays the best of their faith and the heroic calling of their imminent martyrdom, a situation already prefigured in Marcel's rendition of the hymn in Act I ("Seigneur, rampart et seul soutien") which Meyerbeer consciously used "als Anklang aus einer bessern Welt". Marcel himself reflects the ambiguity of religious depiction in the opera: his prayer represents the best of the Reformed tradition, a countersign to worldliness, whereas his Battle Song (the famous "Piff Paff") shows the opposite side, the arrogant prejudices and hatred which express themselves in militarism, fanaticism and chauvinism.

This crude aspect of the Huguenot mentality finds further expression in the Rataplan chorus of the Protestant soldiers in Act 3, and their brutish attempts to drown out the Marian litany. This spirit of vengefulness, hatred and aggression first bursts out in the Act 2 confrontation at court, and is seen pulling the people apart in the great quarrel scenes of Act 3 when the Catholic ambuscade is prevented by Marcel's summons to arms. Catholic treachery immediately undercuts the purity of the litany in St Bris's conspiracy to murder Raoul, while all the fatal spirit of partisan hatred and its consequent militarism is captured in the monumental Blessing of the Daggers where fanaticism is triumphant, the clergy betray their calling of love in blessing weapons, and the people are caught up in a paroxysm of destructive hatred. In Robert le Diable the monks are custodians of a redeeming and ennobling way of life; here they have become purveyors of intolerance and even death.

It follows with supreme appropriateness that in the duet which comes next between Valentine and Raoul should celebrate in almost incomparable terms the transforming rapture of love which defies the barriers of sectarianism and hatred, and proposes the only healing alternative to the deformation of faith and hope. Valentine and Raoul's Romeo and Juliet situation underlines the tragedy of human worth betrayed for an idea, ideal or preferred principle. The real tragedy of this story, however, is that the sacrifice of the lovers and their mentor Marcel does not bring about reconciliation (as between the Montagues and Capulets), but is swept away in the flood of destruction. They do become martyrs, and their witness carries a message of love beyond the deforming consequences of ruthless politics and the mutually destructive implications of religious "conviction" which is so easily corrupted into intransigent fanaticism. Men and women need not be the slaves or victims of any determinism, be it of birth, class, nation or creed.

If the wholeness of faith in Robert Le Diable is tragically broken in Les Huguenots then in Le Prophète religion is totally discredited. While in Les Huguenots both the opposing parties represent different religious points of view, in the story of the Anabaptist revolt of 1537 only one of the contenders is aligned with faith. The oppressive nobility (represented by Count Oberthal) are a symptom of a social malaise which a millenarian religious sect seeks to replace by revolution. The trouble is that whatever faith is left is now manipulated for the cynical purposes of a group of men who are not believers, but use faith and idealism as an agency for self-aggrandizement. The magical world of romance, and the religious politics of queens and noblemen, is now considered in the low-mimetic terms of innkeepers and peasants. Count Oberthal is a necessary cause and dramatic foil, but in his senseless tyranny he symbolizes an unjust social system. The Anabaptists are the ordinary, "little" people, but by their preaching and attractive religious mystique, they come to represent something almost supernatural. Although three (Zacharias, Matthias, Jonas), they move, act and speak as one, like some kind of unholy trinity. Through their chorale, their Latin prayer, their fiery vernacular preaching on social justice, they constitute an explosive factor in an already volatile social situation.

Their mysteriousness has a kind of mythical power, their uncanny seeming-omnipresence and ability to prophesy and interpret dreams, makes a deep unconscious appeal -- as is illustrated by their power over the people in Act 1, and their influence on Jean in Act 2. Their three-in-one and one-in-threeness is protean since they do emerge as individuals (in Act 3), but merge in and out of their corporate identity until the end when they fuse into one again when they decide to betray Jean (Act 5, scene 1). Their personal interest in religion and liberation theology is based on greed and power, since they do not hesitate to build up the mystique of "the Prophet" on lies and subterfuge, while cynically amassing influence and wealth for themselves (as in the Trio Bouffe). Zacharias's battle song is an example of the lethal combination of religion, fanaticism and militarism that was already considered in Les Huguenots. But whereas genuine religious feeling may have spurred Catholics and Protestants to deeds of violence, the Anabaptists manipulate the religious sensibilities of genuinely pious men like Jean, and many others of their followers. Their chorale, their preaching, their assumption of the role of the ancient Israelite warriors, their ceremonies and sanctimoniousness, are all part of a public persona assumed for political purposes. In the end they use betrayal like other Judases. Religion is entirely discredited. It has become form without substance, the cloak of power politics, greed and treachery.

Into their milieu of tyrannical nobles and hypocritical clerics steps the figure of John of Leyden. His qualities are genuine: he has real faith and Christian commitment ("il est.. dévot: il sait par coeur toute la Bible!" Act 2, scene 1), and loves his mother and fiancée. He also shares in something other-worldly because of his dreams, and his power to inspire other men -- all of which make him something of a visionary. When impelled by the outrage of social injustice -- which rips open the hidden interior of his predictable, petty bourgeois life as an innkeeper, he becomes something of a social missionary in his dynamic leadership and popularity with his soldiers (the calming of the revolt, the attack on Münster, the loyalty of his closest followers even in his betrayal). The problem lies in his role as Anabaptist leader: he participates in the propaganda and chicanery of the leadership of this movement. He, the liberator, himself uses militarism and terror as instruments of social oppression (see the chorus of frightened city-dwellers that opens Act 4). Yet he appears to believe in the quasi-divinity of his mission at his coronation -- itself a type of parody of a sacramental rite --

To what extent is he the leader of a genuine chiliastic movement or the dupe of manipulators, and the victim of his own power? Is his prayer in Act 3 authentic, or a ploy to calm the outraged rabble? Is it a type of soliloquy, or does the Anabaptist prelude suggest that it is all part of his public relations technique? Certainly his Hymne Triomphale uses the Old Testament imagery of militaristic triumphalism (like Zacharias earlier).

Here, however, one cannot deny the genuine rapture as well as the purity and appropriateness of the imagery: David the victor, poet of praise as well as victorious military leader and king. The imagery ties into the symbolism not only of Jean's dream, but of the Anabaptists perception in Act 2 of his likeness to the portrait of King David in Münster Cathedral. There can be no doubt that Jean is an enigma and perhaps something of a schizophrenic. The nature of his motivation, his true perception of religion, are never explained, and the relationship between his public and private lives is disturbing. The dilemma of his psychological complicity is very real and only emphasized by his other human relationships.

So much of the dynamism of Le Prophète is generated by the triangular relationship between Jean, his mother and his fiancée. The love that governs this relationship is established firmly in Act 1 where the devotion between future daughter-and mother-in-law is tenderly delineated. Act 2 provides Jean with the opportunity to show his love for both Fidès and Berthe, both in situations of agony. The meeting of the two women in Act 1, and their description to Oberthal of Jean's saving of Berthe from drowning in the Meuse, is couched in the gentle and rhapsodic music of the idyll. This generates what will be one of the principal strands of imagery in the opera, one very familiar from Robert le Diable, and also prominent in Les Huguenots -- the pastoral. When the Anabaptists promise Jean a kingdom in Act 2, his reply is designated by Meyerbeer "Pastorale", and is Jean's paean of love for his beloved Berthe. He postulates not a kingdom of power, wealth and prestige, but a hidden life of conjugal bliss, envisaged in terms of the classic imagery of the pastoral -- so providing the mainspring of one of the major strands of symbolism in the opera, the other being the religious register generated by the Anabaptists. Jean holds to his position until the outrages visited upon Berthe and his mother wrenches apart his pastoral idealism and impels him into his career of religio-social vengeance and reconstruction. In spite of his military successes, he is not happy, as his first appearance in Act 3 indicates. On the eve of his campaign against Münster, his mind is filled with melancholic reminiscence of the pastoral paradise lost: the theme of his love song accompanies his reflective appearance. His hymn of triumph is, in a curious way, a military transformation of the Pastorale, as David, shepherd, musician and warrior, is chosen as the patron of the climax of Jean's mission of punishment and restitution. In this, the hymn becomes a Messianic statement.

The level of his commitment to his true "pastoral" self is constantly gauged by his dedication to Fidès and Berthe. Even when impelled by circumstance to deny his mother publicly at his coronation, his first action is to seek her out privately and beg her forgiveness. The passion of their duet in Act 5, and its consistent movement into gentler mode, represents Fidès' successful re-conversion of her son to his pastoral heredity: he is prepared to flee with her, even leaving behind his trusted soldiers. All fervour, all the military fanfares of bassoon, horn and cello that accompany Fidès' suggestion, are softened into the high woodwind and strings of new pastoral possibilities as Jean is convinced by his mother's pleading. The explosive resolution of the cabaletta indicates Fidès confidence in having regained her son's heart and the unison climax embodies their shared intention to move forward together.

Berthe's appearance in the crypts where she has set in motion her plan of vengeance against the Prophet, provides the moment of supreme irony, and throws the tragedy of their doomed pastoral in to a bitter perspective. Berthe's ignorance of Jean's public identity, and the resolution on the part of mother and son to return to the lost life of simplicity, allows for the flowering of their pastoral trio, a glimpse of the loving peace yearned for by all three who, for the first and only time, are allowed to be together as a family. This ideal, again, is violently wrenched apart by the destructive forces of militarism when Jean's soldiers come to warn him of his imminent betrayal, and Berthe, appraised of his true identity, is propelled in horror to suicide. The pastoral is not lost though, but must be regained in new, courageous and spiritual ways. Jean is totally disillusioned by the forces of religious fanaticism and militarism that have destroyed every dream and ideal, and his own handling of the conspirators, by utilizing the vengeance which Berthe has already set into motion by her slow fuse, will be his repudiation of the world of ideological passion, the greed for power that is concomitant with it, and the corruption of ideals and values that are the inevitable corollary. The theme of the new pastoral mournfully counterpoints the shimmering music of the banquet, a type of the Last Supper, and Jean's drinking song, far from being a bibulous celebration of pleasure, is really a thematic variant on the Pastorale of Act 2 [10] and is Jean's ironic repudiation of the assembly of traitors and his exultation of a totally opposed view of the world. This becomes abundantly clear when Fidès joins him in the conflagration of his palace, and their voices, united as in their duet earlier, form an exultant Liebestod over the chaos of a collapsing and corrupt world order. Human love, this time filial -- maternal, and even more fundamental than romantic commitment, proclaims a purified humanity over religion, politics and power. It is the vindication of love in terms of a pastoral frame of reference, an illumination of the heart and mind.

But Le Prophète has other points to make, especially as they emerge from the characters of Fidès and Berthe. Fidès, like Bertram and Marcel, is acclaimed as one of Meyerbeer's great characters. And just as Bertram and Marcel are father and mentor to Robert and Raoul respectively, so Fidès as mother fulfils a similar role in Jean's life. When one considers that Valentine's independence of thought, her humanity and choice for love, are in drastic contradistinction to her father St. Bris' implacable fanaticism and hatred, it can be understood that for Meyerbeer the parent-child relationship provided a highly symbolic and emotive dynamism in the exploration of these themes that so concerned him. The powerful influence of his own parents -- and most especially his mother -- were no doubt of decisive influence in his life and way of thinking, if biographical considerations are taken into account. But in terms of his own aesthetic achievements, one must understand this concern with paternal-maternal-filial imagery as vital to his expression of his artistic self as the famous series of father daughter duets that characterize Verdi's oeuvre.

Robert's dead mother extends her influence through Alice beyond the grave, and Fidès is decisive in establishing the new world order of Le Prophète. As in the earlier opera the mother figure is the representative of a wisdom, and the actual catalyst to the achievement of true illumination. She embodies all the qualities of courage and domestic love in the first Act, to Berthe her future daughter-in-law. The suffering attendant on their abduction by Oberthal, and the impossible sorrow of the choice Jean is forced into by the Count -- Berthe's disgrace or Fidès' death -- is a crucible of suffering out of which emerge the blessing of the mother's deeply-felt arioso, "Ah mon fils, sois bénis!"

But the wheel of fire must turn even further in the path of deception, torment and ironic inversion. The disappearance of Jean on his mission, and pretended death by Anabaptist propaganda, leads to the curse of the Coronation Scene, where prayer is deformed into malediction in the partial fulfillment of the prophecy of Jean's dream: "Grand Dieu, exaucez ma prière!" Fidès, too, then, uses the store of religious imagery that infuses the opera. Jean's exorcism of her "madness" is another ironic misuse of prayer at Fidès's expenses. But the rupture of trust between mother and son is already in the process of healing in her cavatina of forgiveness in the prison in Act 5 ("O toi qui m'abandonnes"), and in her invocation to the Holy Spirit to send the fire of illumination into her son's heart.

Her own fiery pleading wins him over in their duet, but, after the bitter disillusionment of their fated idyll in the trio with Berthe, it will only be the fire of destruction, and the courage of love, even in and beyond death, that will bring about the new world order. The analogies of Siegfried and Brünnhilde are not far to seek: the fallen hero, betrayed and murdered, yet cherished by his aunt/wife even after she has cursed him, is vindicated in death by the supreme sacrifice of self-offering which brings about the end of an old and corrupt world order (Götterdammerüng). It is small wonder that Wagner was so disturbed by the premiere of Le Prophète.

The figure of Berthe also has a forceful dramaturgical and symbolic function that belies the reputation which this role has of being ungrateful.

Berthe captures a loneliness and tragedy of feminine helplessness that is salutary in its tacit criticism of social attitudes to the undefended in history. She appears in Act 1, a vulnerable and impulsive girl from the village, and her cavatina ("Mon coeur s'élance" -- composed for Castellan and included in the full score only in the appendix) is full of rapturous expectation, and is a masterly presentation of character. The coloratura is wistful, and succeeds in presenting both the ingenuousness and helplessness of a highly-strung young woman. Her duet with Fidès is a type of pastoral, and in its affecting harmonies and unison singing, delineates the deep commitment and love shared by these two women. This is even more the case in their Act 4 duet, after both have been tied to the wheel of fire, and their suffering emerges in the agitated writing and chromatics. The development of Berthe's character from her simple Act 1 aria is extraordinary.

The inexorable injustice and horror of her experience is captured in her brief but tragical outcry to Jean in Act 2 when she rushes in to seek his protection from the pursuing Oberthal. For the one and only time they are briefly alone together and their voices combine for one menaced moment as Jean assumes her suffering to himself.

By the time Act 4 arrives we have learnt that she escaped from Oberthal's castle by jumping into the moat, and has fled to Münster. The picture of the two women supporting each other in their emptiness and pain is deeply touching, and in the order of the duets of womanly love shared by Norma and Adalgisa. Berthe's development through sorrow is again captured in a phrase that in its combination of love and grief is of the essence of tragic experience:

The news that Jean has supposedly been killed by the Prophet elicits the outburst of the cabaletta where the fervour of her determination to be avenged is given musical expression in the furious propulsion, explosive sforzandi and impassioned coloratura. Here the fragility and vulnerability are pushed over the edge into an instability that is more fully explored in the Act 5 trio, where, after the ethereal harmonies of the pastoral, a situation already unreal, the news that Jean and the Prophet are one, breaks Berthe's hold on rational behaviour, and leads to her suicide. Her coloratura is now frenzied and stratospheric -- almost out of control -- and perfectly captures a mind pushed beyond its capacity to endure. Her lonely death accompanied by a solo cello should be restored from the manuscript score.

Berthe has reached the abandonment of a tragic fate. With her there is no bolstering of religion, no prayers, no connotation other than her friendship with Fidès. in her sad story she is the victim of the selfishness of men, their cruelty and betrayal, an image of the helpless suffering of womankind through the ages. She is treated as Oberthal's plaything, and with Fidès, becomes the victim of the Anabaptist propaganda which deceives all society. Even Jean's desire to avenge her becomes a destructive tide beyond his control.

The high point of the ironies of this opera is that in her wreaking vengeance on her lover's supposed murderer, she is in fact trying to kill the one she loves, who in his turn, has embarked on a programme of social vengeance to avenge her. Again it is with keen irony that the flames she ignites in the palace crypts should be the source of the punishing and cleansing fire of Jean's new world order of renunciation and self-sacrifice. Berthe's death is the catalyst of Jean's new resolution to cleanse his life actually, and society symbolically, of the nexus of selfishness and crime in which he has become entangled. She is present in the final apotheosis in the flames she has lit, and in the love that Jean and Fidès share, and shared with her, even to death.

Gautier was accurate in his perception of an intellectual movement in Meyerbeer's first three French operas. There is a constancy in the search for some meaning to life, and a distinct variation in the modes used for the consideration.

In Robert le Diable the whole universe is laid before one, and in a legendary world of angels, demons, princesses and magic, heaven and hell are corporate realities vying for the souls of men and women. In the end the all-pervasive providence of heaven is triumphant since the freely given gift of grace is a certain aid to the struggles of helpless men, and faith, the faith of the one church of believers, is on hand to reassure and make good.

In Les Huguenots the high historical politics of kings and queens and their power over the lives of men, is the realm of action. These politics, though, are still decisively influenced by matters of faith, by choices in religion the witness of which is now splintered and diffused. Does one behave always according to the dictates of birth, status and inherited belief, and the politics it dictates? Valentine, Raoul, Marcel, and also Queen Marguerite and Nevers, find that the answer is not that simple: in the end the peace that is so desired is dependent on change of heart, on the abnegation of the legitimate pride of inheritance, and on the all-transforming power of forgiveness, tolerance and love. Religion is still patent, but dangerous, not automatically synonymous with love.

By the time Le Prophète is reached, the world is secularized, and the mystique of history de-glamorized, into the ordinary lives of little, ordinary men and women. Religion is still all-pervasive, but is all but discredited. Neither deeply held belief in faith nor trust in politics can bring about a new age of liberty, a new millennium. Only the deep commitment to loyalty, compassion and love can provide meaning in a world where the best motives of belief and politics are open to deception and abuse, and history itself seems demonized by original sin. Renunciation of false values is born of love, and only here is true illumination.

The nexus of themes that dominates the trilogy of Meyerbeer's first three French operas, and which shows these themes developing, varied and transmuted in a process of consideration and evolution, is also much in evidence in his later works. Religion, politics, the idyll and parent figures, all in a process of interaction between power and love, are again the stuff of his aesthetic transformations.

For example, both Struensee and L'Étoile du Nord are dominated, in the manner of Robert le Diable, by the spirit of a dead parent, Struensee's father in the play, Catherine's mother in the later opera. As in Robert, the memory of the parent is a potent, quasi-sacramental force capable of positively influencing the course of action should the central protagonist be open to this mystical transmission of positive values. In Robert, Alice provided the living channel of Robert's sainted mother's protective grace; in Struensee the hero's father's influence manifests itself in a dream; in L'Étoile du Nord, the dead mother's love is evoked in prayer. The parental influence is positive and healing, and again associated with religion. Struensee's father was a minister, and in the corrupt and ultimately destructive world of high politics, adultery and betrayal in which Struensee becomes involved through his liaison with Queen Caroline Mathilda, he represents for his son a nobler ideal linked both to faith and a lost innocence of childhood, or his unspoiled youth in the country away from Copenhagen.

Similarly in L'Étoile du Nord, the story opens in the idyll of a village where there is a simplicity of life and uncomplicated, happy values are celebrated. Catherine is her fully vivacious self in this milieu, fortunate in her love for the carpenter Peter, and fortified in her dead mother's promise of her destiny (as star of the North). It is significant that this world is broken in upon by the spirit of militarism and politics - both in the invasion of the Cossacks and in the Tsar's conscription which obliges Catherine to take her brother's place so that he can be married. As in Le Prophète, there is a depiction of camp life, where the activities of dancing, drinking and gambling provide a counter image to the pastoral innocence of village life.

The camp in fact, becomes a kind of false or inverted idyll where betrayal and violence lurks beneath the brilliant and hectic atmosphere, and the brutality of militarism, which grows out of political ambition or necessity is made apparent. The camp is a place where Values are diminished or scorned, where soldiers and vivandieres show men and women at their loosest, where identities are distorted by disguise or violence, where he himself becomes brutal, drunk and irresponsible, the heroine assumes the persona of a man, and the ideal of pure love is dishonoured in the confusion of values (with the attendant breakdown in the theme of maternal protection). Peter is forced by political necessity into a glorification of militarism with the parade of his regiments, but this is significantly at a time when he has lost his true love. The situations in this central act of L'Étoile du nord are full of ironic reversals, mannerist exaggerations [13] and covert social criticism.

The genial and lighthearted prelude to Act 3 restores the optimistic tone and re-establishes the principles of comedy. The Tsar is seen a vulnerable man again, contrite and full of regret for the loss of innocent and happy days ("O jours heureux"). In order to recover Catherine from the madness brought on by her ordeal in a world of collapsed values, Peter must give up his paternal status as political arbiter, and return to his simpler self. His contrition and the saving, loving role of Prascovia and George, are part of a series of healing actions whereby the past is recovered and redeemed. This happens on a literal level with the re-creation of the village and all its familiar and lovable inhabitants of Act 1, where Peter is once again a flute-playing carpenter.

These appurtenances are an aspect of a more spiritual restoration of a positive world of symbols and values which represent the pastoral inheritance of which Catherine's mother is the protectress, and her marriage to Peter the culmination. As in Robert le Diable the triumph of the maternal spirit sees the restoration and fulfillment of the idyll.

The perceptions are given even more pertinent and extended consideration in Le Pardon de Ploërmel. If L'Étoile du Nord represents in some ways the extension of the ironic mode prevalent in Le Prophète, then Dinorah looks back to Robert le Diable in the resumption of romance elements. True to Northrop Frye's theory of modes developed in his Anatomy of Criticism, [14] the ironic stage already begins to show mythic tendencies (as is famously the case with James Joyce where the whole ironic exercise of his novelistic world returns to the register of myth in the re-interpretation of the Universe which the artist has poeticized -- hence Stephen Daedalus in both Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses). In Le Prophète the quasi-supernatural, trinitarian conception of the three Anabaptists is most definitely not in the realistic mode, while the pastoral frame of reference and the implications of the finale are all definitely mythical.

In Dinorah, by reverting to folktale as the source of the plot, Meyerbeer returned to the legendary atmosphere of Robert le Diable. However, while in the latter opera all the spiritual universe is conjured up, and magic is a fact of life, in Dinorah the romance implications are more subdued and limited. The subject matter is derived from Breton folktale, and the denizens of superstition, the elves of the Breton countryside, the korrigans and the practitioners of magic, the wizard Tonic, are present only by reputation, not actually. The world is not necessarily populated by supernatural beings, but is believed to be; faith is once again a pure factor and it is opposed and tarnished, not by politics, nor by magic, but by superstition which is a type of paganism, a broken inversion of faith, and as such counterpart of the demonic magic of Robert le Diable. Faith and superstition become the determining binary opposites of this fictional world, and perhaps even more than in Robert, establish a sequence of such polarities. The spiritual battle is between the benign patronage of Our Lady of the Pardon on the one hand, and the sinister power of the old wizard on the other. His unseen power is embodied in the treasure which exerts its malevolent influence over all the characters in the opera. The treasure in fact becomes an evil talisman, an embodiment of superstition, an idée fixe, which by its obsessional attraction, poisons happiness and can lead to death - in fact a demonic object. Hoël's infection by this evil influence turns him into a treasure-hunting maniac whose abandonment of his fiancee Dinorah has resulted in her madness, and whose genuine desire to find the means to restore her ruined property is fatally overshadowed by his obsession with the pearls, diamonds and rubies of the fabled and fabulous hoard. It must be remembered the original title of the work was to be Le chercheur de trésor.) Hoël loses all respectability, all moral perspective, and is prepared to send the simple Corentin to his death, which superstition decrees is the fate of the first finder of the treasure.

Corentin, too, is seen in thrall to superstition, having lost his freedom of decision and action to a dread of the magical" powers he fears are lurking everywhere in nature. The search for the treasure only compounds his dread and fear.

Dinorah's madness is directly related to the treasure and its obsessional hold on the imagination, and remains imprisoned in her madness, a sort of elemental or psychological extension of the numinous forces presumed to infest nature. Her closeness to the detached and removed world of nature is reflected in her Shadow Song where she becomes one with the moon light, almost subsumed into the elements. Her rapport with the goat strengthens this oneness with the animate world of nature, and given that this animal is both a symbol of demonic alignment and of pastoral innocence, it is a suitably ambiguous symbol of her fey nature. Its sprint across the bridge spanning the ravine is the symbolic denouement of the story - since the destructive forces of nature are released, but in their destruction help to bring about a positive resolution. The search for the treasure, though, seems to affect nature itself, and the fears surrounding the haunted valley appear to infuse the elements themselves in the tempest which sinisterly encroaches upon the action of Act 2, blocking out the pure moonlight, growing in menace as Dinorah warns of the evil of the treasure, and finally bursting in fury and unleashing the torrent which sweeps Dinorah to her presumed death. The story of Dinorah and Hoël's fated love is unfolded in Acts 1 and 2 which take place in afternoon - evening and night. The scene of the haunted valley, like the Cloister Scene in Robert le Diable, and the Wolf's Glen in Der Freischutz, is the locus of terror, where evil would seem to reign triumphant.

The irony is that in Dinorah, nature is not the preserve of numinous forces, but an in between world of indifference, where peasants watch on without commitment or involvement, almost casual onlookers, gossiping villagers, merrymakers and goatherds. The beauty, but supreme indifference, of the various rural soloists (hunters, goatherds, reapers) at the beginning of Act 3 suggests this. However, the destructive waters of the torrent are also healing waters, since Hoël, having plunged into the flood to save Dinorah, finds himself changed, as if born again in a type of baptism. Dinorah's near death, and his ability to respond to it by leaping into the water to save her, have shocked his senses into a fresh perception of life, and washed away, as it were, the poisonous taint of the treasure. He is reborn into a new wiser self, and finds his love refurbished by contrition ("Ah! mon remords te venge"). He is now able to love from the heart once again, and is able to assist in Dinorah's complete recovery of her mental equilibrium. She becomes human again under the power of love, and is able to regard the darkness of the interim experience as a bad dream. When this experience of multiple recovery is found to be taking place on the day of the annual pilgrimage to the shrine (the "pardon") of Our Lady of Ploërmel, the source of this gift is unmistakable. The protectress of the pure of heart and of the innocent reasserts the divine law of grace, a type of paradise regained.

The concision and cohesiveness of this densely wrought imagery lends itself to the most precise set of binary opposites in Meyerbeer's oeuvre: if faith and superstition are the poles, then the sequence of antonyms is as follows:

faith (religion)	superstition (magic)
the Pardon	the treasure
mother (Mary)	father (Tonic the wizard)
height	valley
light/day/sun	darkness/night/moon
salvific	dangerous
life/reality	death/dream
paradise (idyll) regained	paradise (idyll) lost

The movement into myth so obvious in Dinorah is also discernible in Meyerbeer's last opera, L'Africaine. [15] Dinorah shares very much in the thematic nexus that so preoccupied Meyerbeer in his operas -- the concern with modes of religious belief, the clash with an opposing mode or system of belief or non-belief, the ever present admixture of paternal and maternal elements. L'Africaine in many ways shares in the Renaissance imagery of Les Huguenots and Le Prophète. Their historical sequence is 1499, 1537 and 1572, a fact alone that must focus attention on why Meyerbeer should have been so relentlessly preoccupied with such a narrow time sequence in his major work. The period of intellectual fermentation, the explosion of knowledge, self-perception and exploration, which characterized the late fifteenth and entire sixteenth centuries, perhaps represented for the composer the decisive period of upheaval and reassessment of so many issues in the unfolding of modern civilization, issues that decisively challenged and often contradicted the monolithic certainties of the Middle Ages.

Robert le Diable is decisively a work of Medieval times;Les Huguenots is a Renaissance work, a disturbing reflection on the religious upheaval of the times. Le Prophète is in a sense a "timeless" work, in spite of its basis in historical fact. L'Africaine is also firmly founded in history, and reflects on the famous voyages undertaken by the Portuguese in their search for a route to the East. But this work is very special in its unique mixture of modes; it is, like Les Huguenots, in its depiction of history, a chronicle,. a high-mimetic reflection on the dealings of the rulers of nations. At the same time, it is like Robert le Diable and Dinorah in its assumption of mythological elements. The Afro-Indian characters are entirely imaginary and Selika's kingdom (in Madagascar?) a fictitious realm. In the manner of Camoën's Lusiads (and hence in the tradition of the ancient epics) there is a mixture of the actions of men and of the supernatural - and the curious mixture of history and fairy tale, of ancient certainties and puzzling new discovery - is effectively captured in the fusion of Portuguese history and exotic invention. The manchineel (or upas) tree is typical of this confusion of tact and fiction that so characterized the period of new discovery: [16] botany and superstition combined in forming a potent myth that plays a decisive role in the story. Further, the chorus of unseen spirits at the end of the opera is both product of Selika's hallucination, and objective reality, a wistful, loving epilogue both to this opera and the whole of Meyerbeer's aesthetic endeavour. In the end it is only love that matters. The pattern so familiar of opposing worlds and/or systems of belief, characterize clash of old and new worlds, of European Catholicism and exotic paganism.

The proponents of religion emerge in a negative light, the politicians as calculating, greedy and untrustworthy. The new world is treated with contempt in the person of its monarch who is held as a slave - her colour and gender adding a peculiarly modern and prophetic poignancy to this chronicle of colonialism - not only as a decisive factor in the unfolding of modern, Renaissance history, but also as an ageless and therefore mythical - comment on the recurrent, or perennial condition of the human heart: the timeless story of men and women in their dealings with one another.

Are they determined by birth, position and creed, or are they positively free, through the option of a liberated adult heart, to make the illuminating choice of love, with all that this might entail by way of the relinquishment of power, in order to achieve the true freedom of the untrammelled soul?

The situation of opposing worlds and factions, of religion and politics, constitute an admixture with a familiar dynamic. The love that Selika would share with Vasco is not possible since they both represent incompatible worlds, with their own claims. Union beyond the prejudice and pain of race, religion and sectarianism is possible only when born out of humility and genuine, self-sacrificing love. Both Inez and Selika know this, and both are prepared to offer all to the point of death itself. Their reiterated attempts to share their love for Vasco lead to evocation of recurrent idyllic situations: be it Inez's Ballad of the Tagus which recalls Vasco's love, Selika's duet with Vasco in prison (which is based on a misunderstanding of his attitude), or her duet with him in the tropics (which is induced by drugs and his belief that Inez is dead). The actual terrestrial paradise of the new world is depicted, but now it has been burst open by European intrusion and the world will never be the same again.

The unspoiled Eden is in the process of becoming a paradise lost. The only solution for Selika is to attain the transcendent idyll of the spirit. Through renunciation and self-sacrifice, by allowing Vasco and Inez the freedom to leave unharmed, and with the aid of nature, the poison of her own indigenous tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she is able to gain access to the realm of the spirit, and so to the ultimate liberty of body, mind and heart.

It is indeed a swan-song, and the last formulation of a surprisingly consistent view of the world by one of music's great thinkers.

1. By far the most comprehensive survey of Gautier's views of Meyerbeer's operas is provided by K. Pendle, "Eugène Scribe and French Opera of the 19th Century" in The Musical Quarterly, 57 (1971), 535-561.

2. This perception of a dialectic operative in Meyerbeer's first three French operas has been further developed in recent times by Sieghart Döhring of the Forschungs institut für Musiktheater, Univ. Bayreuth. His full exposition will appear in the iminent publication of his Habilitationsschrift.

5. This observation was made to the writer of this article on two different occasions, from two different sources: firstly by the laste Mr. Hermann Baron of Willesden Green, London, the well known antiquarian dealer whose knowledge of nineteenth century scores was formidable; and secondly, by Monseigneur James Sullivan of the English College in Rome, who lived for so many years in Lisbon, and who had direct links with many Iberian traditions of the last century.

6. The print of Jenny Lind holding on to the base of the cross is a famous piece of nineteenth- century operatic iconography.

7. The effect was used by Weber in Euryanthe where the diatonic woodwind prelude to Adolar's romance ("Wehen mir Lüfte Ruh") follows immediately on the dark, stormy and chromatic conspiracy duet of Lysiart and Eglantine, and would later be used by Wagner in Lohengrin to distiguish between the "light" world of the hero and Elsa and the "dark" world of Telramud and Otrud.

8. The historical Marguerite de Valois was notorious for her many love affairs, so that when she begins her famous aside "Ah, si j'etais coquette" in her duet with Raoul, one is not dealing with an instance "in which high seriousness is repeatedly pushed aside for more diversion" (the allegation of Arthur Jacobs in Opera, Nov. 1991, 106) but a genuine recreation of character, an authentically historical characterization.

9. See the thought-provoking artile by Don Cupitt, "Meyerbeer's Message" in the Covent Garden programme booklet on Les Huguenots (Oct. 1991)

10. This insight was stimulatingly provided by Matthias Brzoska in his paper, "Konstruierte Idylle Zum Kompositionsprozess in Meyerbeer's Prophète" delivered on 26 September, 1991 in Thurnau at the Meyerbeer Symposium.

11. Wagner's letter to Uhlig in 1849 after the première in whih he speaks of having felt himself present at the birth of a new world, is famous for the complex nuances it provides in Wagner's tortuous relationship to Meyerbeer and his work.

13. This point of mannerist elements in Meyerbeer's late works been developed at length by Sieghart Doehring

15. The writer's observations here must be understood as a reflective gloss on this most complex last opera of Meyerbeer. The many facets and levels of symbolism operative in this world are investigated at length in the paper "History, Myth and Music in a Theme of Exploration : Some Reflections on the MusicoDramatic Language of L'Africaine" delivered on 26 September 1991 at the Meyerbeer Symposium at Thurnau.