Scan 6
Musical Courier 1895-03-20: Vol 30 Iss 784, 1895
102 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
1News From Paris.
2PARIS, February 20, 1895.
4WOMEN have never done anything striking in the two arts, music and architecture, and as they have had at least nineteen centuries in which to begin it is not too cruel on our part to suppose that nineteen centuries more may go over their heads without a change in the record.
6Every rule, however, must have its exception. Chicago during the last Exposition furnished this with regard to architecture, and to Paris belongs the honor of producing a notable exception in music.
8On the 8th the Grand Opéra here gave the first representation of La Montagne Noire, the text and music by Madame Augusta Holmés. The scene opens in Montenegro. There is a battle going on with the Turks, and the lamentation of the Montenegrin women, with the roaring of guns and cannon, makes a dramatic scene.
10Dara, the mother of Mirko—one of the leaders engaged in the fight—stands high up on the rocks watching the battle, while Hélène, his betrothed, is below on the plain with the terrified women. In the midst of their lamentation there is a cry of "Victoire! Victoire!" and the soldiers, covered with blood and dust, hurry down the mountain passes. They are followed by the priest, Sava, and the two chiefs, Aslar and Mirko. The rejoicing is well depicted in a stirring chorus, while the priest goes to a shrine of the Virgin and offers up prayers of thanksgiving.
12The chorus over, the two friends, Aslar and Mirko, who have fought side by side, present themselves before the priest to have their vows of brotherhood blessed, and while the priest holds the crucifix on high they hold each other's hands and sing together:
14Je jure devant Dieu de t'aimer comme un frère,
15Dans la vie ou la mort, dans la paix ou la guerre,
16Et de sauvegarder ton honneur de chrétien,
17Fût-ce au prix de mon sang, ou fût-ce au prix du tien.
19After this they exchange swords and have just finished singing some fine stanzas in praise of brotherhood when high up on the mountain passes some soldiers appear dragging Yamina along, a Turkish captive of exceeding beauty, covered with jewels and dressed in the gaudy splendor of the East.
21They take her to be a spy, and the crowds at once cry "A mort, a mort!" but when she reaches Mirko she falls at his feet crying beseechingly, "Grace, Je n'ai fait rien!" while he gives utterance to the surprised exclamation, "Qu'elle est belle!" as he gazes on her loveliness. The women press about her crying "A mort, a mort!" but Mirko protects her from their violence and eventually hands her over to his mother, Dara, the latter at once deciding to take Yamina into her household as a slave.
23The scene ends with a kind of feast and a dance. The women gather round the soldiers, take away their swords and bring them wine to drink. The curtain falls on the first act after Yamina has presented Mirko with a goblet of wine, Hélène, a moment after, coming too late with hers. As Mirko takes that offered by Yamina, pressing her hands lovingly as he does so, Hélène lets her goblet fall to the ground and turns away weeping.
25So little is there of the feminine in the music of this act that parts of it might almost be called brutal. The orchestration is noisy, as befits an assemblage of warriors, and if there is nothing extraordinarily fine in the inspiration, Madame Holmés shows herself fitted with ability for her task.
27The second act opens in a village in the mountains. Aslar has gone off to arrange things for a battle with the Turks, and the soldiers are on the mountain slopes getting ready for the conflict, polishing their guns while they smoke their chiboucks. Mirko comes out from his house in the village and seems lost in thought. The soldiers talk to him, but he scarcely heeds them; and when they have started on their way he soliloquizes on the strange change that has come over him since the golden haired Turkish woman has entered his home; how he sees but one glance, hears but one voice and is full of unknown desires and trouble.
29Qu'ai-je donc? Pourquoi suis-je ainsi
30Près de langueur et de faiblesse
31Tout m'excite et me blesse.
32Mon cœur est oppresé, mon esprit obscurci,
33De l'aube jusqu'au soir, de la nuit à l'aurore,
34Je ne vois qu'un regard, je n'entends qu'une voix:
35Je brûle et je tremble à la fois,
36Quel est donc ce mal que j'ignore?
37Hélas! De vains remords, de désirs inconnus,
38Mon âme est torturée
39Depuis que de roses parée,
40En ma maison l'esclave ennemie est entrée
41Avec des anneaux d'or sonnant à ses bras nus!
43Madame Holmés has never written anything better than this solo. The music is full of passion and sentiment, uncontrollable, yearning, troubled. The words are mirrored in the music, the music in the words, and as an expression of sensuous love is perfect. You realize at once not only the passion of the hot-blooded young warrior, but as well the beauty of the woman that excites it.
45As he finishes Mirko lets fall his face in his hands, and from the heights the warriors again cry to him "Allons, Mirko!" as they all join in a war march. Just as their voices die away the women with Yamina come into the village, singing and carrying great bundles of straw and wood or jugs of water on their shoulders. As he hears them Mirko jumps up crying "Elle!" and hides himself behind some rocks. Some of the women commence to wash at the fountain, and one of them cries angrily to Yamina, who has seated herself, "Work, slave!" while others ask her ironically of what she is dreaming. She buries her face in her hands, weeping, and at once the women crowd around her to know her grief. Then occurs a scene of great beauty—a very masterpiece. Rising, Yamina sings an exquisite solo, regretting her lost country, with its blue skies, its palms, its warm, perfumed air; and when the women ask her what she did there she raises her arms in a gesture of voluptuous grace and cries, "I was loved"—"J'étais aimée." "You are still," says Mirko from his hiding place, while those around Yamina cry: "Women should work; it is their duty." And in smiling derision Yamina answers, "Yes, here. Here you are beasts of burden; you work from morning till night to have the bread baked, the wine clear; but under the flaming skies of my beautiful land it is we who rule, we who give pleasure, and in our gauze draperies we dance before those we love to the sweet music of silvery flutes." Then while she sings Yamina commences to dance with slow, languorous movements her Eastern danse d'amour, while the women regard her in amazement, and Mirko, his hands clasped, sings in ecstasy:
47Sombres yeux, bras blancs, lèvres roses;
48Yamina, tendre sour des roses,
49Au pays du soleil éclosé!
50Blanche étoile de mon chemin,
51O Fleur-de-Jasmin!
53The lovers draw nearer to each other, till Dara with Hélène appear on the scene. The former orders all to their work, and when Hélène sees Mirko following Yamina she bars the path and stops him. The women move off with Dara, and Hélène pleads with her faithless lover, reminding him of his vows and how and when they were given. Yamina steals back in time to see Mirko and Hélène move off hand in hand, and in a splendidly dramatic scene she cries that in spite of his vows he shall be hers; that for a smile, a word softly spoken, he will forsake his duty, his faith, his country, forget his vows and leave all to fly with her.
55After Hélène has left Mirko, Yamina finds him. Winding her arms about his neck she uses all her exceeding powers of seduction to make him fly with her, till finding he still hesitates she denounces him and swears to hate him; and at last, half mad with passion and love, Mirko consents rather than lose her.
57Finding out their flight, Hélène calls the warriors to the rescue, and the act ends finely with Aslar's beautiful song as he declares he shall go at once in search of Mirko, refusing to believe that his friend could so far forget his faith, duty and country as to desert these with the Turkish slave, and insisting instead that Hélène accuses him wrongly, for that he has surely gone on some secret and dangerous mission to the Turkish camp.
59This entire second act is a masterpiece and is undoubtedly the finest of the four. Madame Holmés has risen to the occasion and given us some of her best work, far surpassing expectation. There is life and movement in her music. It is all original, all full of the sensuous charm inspired by the witching beauty of the incomparable Yamina, and Mirko's mad love, blotting out in its passionate intensity all sense of duty, all thought of honor or fear of consequence.
61The third act opens on a scene in the mountains. Mirko and Yamina are together, the latter overcome with fatigue. They make a halt and, interlaced in each other's arms, sing a charming love duet, part of which, sung by Mirko, is sure to become a popular favorite:
63O tendre voix!
64Tu m'appartiens, je suis ta proie,
65O ma beauté!
66J'ai subi l'ineffable joie
67Et la mortelle volupté.
68Où le cœur ploie!
69Parmi l'extase où mon âme est ravie,
70Tout s'oublie,
71Tout est vain!
72Oui, j'ai donné ma vie
73Pour cet enfer divin'.
75At length Yamina falls asleep in Mirko's arms and Aslar comes on the track of the fugitives. Mirko sees him with terror, and a most dramatic scene ensues. Aslar presents before his adopted brother all the infamy involved in the flight of the latter, and at last, overcome with shame, yet torn with remorse and love, Mirko consents to leave her. As he gives Yamina a parting kiss she awakes and covers her faithless lover with reproaches, while Aslar urges the latter not to heed these, but to remember his country and his honor, which he dare not betray for an unbeliever. He steps in to keep the lovers apart, Yamina demanding by what right he does this. The scene is long and really great in its dramatic intensity, culminating as Mirko takes Yamina to fly with him. Aslar then places himself in their path, barring it sword in hand, while he cries:
77J'ai juré devant Dieu de t'aimer comme un frère,
78Dans la vie ou la mort, dans la paix ou la guerre,
79Et je garderai pur ton honneur de chrétien
80Fût-ce au prix d': mon sang ou fût-ce au prix du tien!
82Mirko angrily orders him aside, and at last, maddened, draws out his sword, but when Aslar, uncovering his breast, cries to his friend, "Strike—if you can," Mirko's arm drops to his side. At that moment Yamina cries, laughing, "Why not?" and snatching his sword from Mirko, plunges it into the breast of Aslar. She then turns to Mirko impatiently, and bids him come, but, full of horror, he turns on her in fury and orders her away, falling on his knees by the side of Aslar. Aslar is not dead, only wounded, and when the companions of the latter come on the scene, he revives sufficiently to tell them that the Turks had surprised and wounded him and that but for Mirko, who had staunched his blood and defended him, he must have died.
84As the warriors carry Aslar away, Mirko following, Yamini comes from her hiding place crying in rage:
86Créties maudits je vous désire
87Et j'aurai malgré vous son honneur et sa vie.
89The fourth act opens in a town on the frontiers of Turkey. Yamina has accomplished her vow, and Mirko is with her. They are in a beautiful rose garden surrounded by slaves and dancing girls. It is a scene of Oriental sumptuousness, and while the chorus sing "C'est ici le jardin du rêve. Ceuillez en les fleurs," Mirko, overcome by remorse, bemoans his fate and explains how "la soif, la soif, furieuse de l'inoubliable baiser," the thirst, the maddening thirst of a never-to-be-forgotten kiss, has made him mad, made him forget everything; then as Yamina comes before him he buries his remorse and sings some love strophes of exceeding beauty. The slaves then come forward, and, after some beautiful dancing, offer him wine, which he drinks in quantities, the better to deaden his remorse, till at last surrounded by the slaves he falls into the arms of Yamina.
91Just then Aslar, who has come at the head of his soldiers to take the town, appears alone and tries to save Mirko. The latter, stupefied with wine, refuses to go away, calling himself a traitor and cursing the love and folly that made him one. Night falls, and the firing of guns is heard; the women rush about in terror, then fly from the gardens. As Yamina goes to follow them Mirko tries to make her stay with him, but she refuses, breaking from him to follow her terrified women to a place of safety. Mirko is about to follow her when Aslar stops him and once more urges him to his duty, begging him to join the combat and fight for his country. Mirko refuses, and when Aslar has exhausted all resources and time presses he cries at last, "Eh bien. donc mourir." Raising his sword he stabs Mirko, who falls to the ground dead.
93At that moment an explosion occurs, and for a second Aslar is seen as he attempts to carry off the dead body of his friend; then the flames surround him and while he perishes amid them the curtain falls.
95Taken as a whole the opera is undoubtedly a fine one. Musically and dramatically Madame Holmés has depicted with success two great loves. The one, that of friendship, self sacrificing, noble, beautiful in its disinterestedness; the other, that of passion, egotistical, selfish, forgetful of honor. She has given us a work which, although not great in any one way, is full of dramatic and lyric beauty. Her greatest inspiration has been in the vocal score, and here there are many bars of really beautiful music. In her orchestration she has done nothing original, given us no new tone effects, and although she cannot be said to show feebleness, yet there is an undoubted want of inspiration. The orchestral portion of her score may be said to be good, solid Kapellmeister music—that and nothing more. It is scholarly, but this fact does not save it at times from monotony. Madame Holmés has stooped to no tricks to catch her public. She has been honest throughout in her work, and there is not a bar in her score one could point out as written for the gallery or as wanting in musicianly taste or knowledge.
97As the work of a woman the opera is indeed remarkable. Madame Holmés has not struck out any individual path or opened up any avenue not hitherto traversed by her brother composers, but she has certainly outdistanced in her bid for fame many aspirants of the male sex, and if she but had the orchestral skill and inspiration of a Saint-Saëns or the grace and cunning of a Massenet, she would have produced in La Montagne Noire a remarkable opera. The work as it is is thoroughly French in inspiration, without the feebleness of the old Italian opera, and lacking, because of its orchestral shortcomings, the strength of the modern music drama. It is a work musicians will hear with pleasure, and one that sooner or later is bound to make for its composer a reputation outside of France.
99The libretto is singularly perfect, and with few exceptions the lines are replete with poetic and dramatic sentiment. Altogether, judging from the success of her double task, we may confidently expect good if not great work from Madame Holmés in the future.
101It is a strange fact that the French critics one and all made a decided onslaught on the opera, but the Parisian music critic is a queer specimen, and his criticism something queerer still. It was in Paris that Wagner was reviled and Berlioz and Bizet laughed to scorn. Even Gounod did not escape, for Faust failed to have success here till other European towns found out its merits, and latterly
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