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A. SETTING THE STAGE

It is the Council of Constance that serves as the background to Halévy’s La Juive (1835), a cruel tale of persecutions, hatred, revenge, and martyrdom. In his libretto, the indefatigable Scribe captured the ferocity of the age without too much regard for historical accuracy. A five-act opera with a ballet, in conformance with the Parisian opera conventions of the period, La Juive has as its central figure the fanatical Jew Éléazar, fairly obviously modeled on Shakespeare’s Shylock. His adopted daughter, the trusting and devoted Rachel (echoes of Scott’s Rebecca) commits the mortal sin of consorting with a Christian prince in disguise (possibly modeled on Hugo’s Francois I). Éléazar could save her by revealing that she was born a Christian, were it not for his implacable hatred of Cardinal Brogni, Rachel’s biological father, and the church authorities he represents. Except for Rachel, none of the characters emerges in a sympathetic light, and the opera ends with the gruesome death of Rachel and Éléazar.

Au bucher les Juifs, qu’ils perissent! La mort, la mort pour leurs forfaits! (To the stake with the Jews, let them perish! They well deserve to die!) Thus one of La Juive’s enthusiastic choral outbursts, and they do ring with the strength of historical truth. Branded as outcasts and Christ killers by many early churchmen and victimized during the Crusades, the Jews faced renewed and violent persecutions following the horrible plague of 1348 and 1349. During the same years, similar outrages occurred in Brussels and in the German cities of Mainz and Erfurt, while at Worms, 400 Jews chose self-immolation rather than being killed by the townspeople.

This hostility soon spilled over to Spain, where the Jewish population had enjoyed a period of tolerance and tranquility under the earlier rulers. Enflamed by the agitations of a fanatical priest named Ferrand Martinez, riots broke out protesting growing Jewish wealth and influence and demanding the cancellations of debt to the Jews. In 1391, these riots culminated in four days of murder, pillage, and forcible conversions in Barcelona. Together with deep-seated religious intolerance in Spain and elsewhere went the powerful motive of greed. Full participation in their communities was denied them, but banking and money-lending were considered permissible Jewish occupations: cancellation of debts and expropriation of Jewish property were widely desired objectives. In Spain, although the violence eventually subsided, precedent had been established for even more sordid events to follow a century later.

The anti-Semitic outbursts newly fueled by the reaction to the heretics are faithfully reflected in Halévy’s La Juive. However, the philandering Prince Léopold, hailed in the opera as the leader who “has chastised the insolence of the Hussites with the help of God,” is historically nebulous. He is honored by a pageant in the third act, attended by the Emperor Sigismund himself, but the latter is reduced to silence in the otherwise prolix libretto.

(George Jellinek)

Scribe’s contribution to the libretto, both in terms of the works themselves and in terms of his approach to the writing of them, are some of the most far-reaching in operatic history ... as a story planner and scene-and-act organizer -- as a stage technician -- and as a writer with a comprehensive mind and an endless facility for disguise he is without peer ...

Scribe did not invent the historical libretto or invent the emphasis on spectacle ... What is true of all [his] historical operas ... is not that they are scrupulously accurate -- they are far from it -- but that they are an attempt at a direct re-creation of a specific lost time ... Scribe in these large-scale works emphasized bigger forces (religious hatred, power politics, and the like) within a larger framework, to the detriment of individual characterization. Wagner extrapolated exactly this epic quality from the surroundings of manufactured spectacle and plot complications and put it to work in a far more thoroughgoing way. But Scribe’s widening of the horizon of the libretto was a genuinely novel contribution: one that had been seen sporadically before ... but had never been systematically explored.

He accomplished [his] output through a system of collaboration, organization, and diligence. he was a stage-oriented writing machine, ever at the ready to scribble down a new approach, a new snatch of dialogue ... Scribe also possessed an uncanny instinct for stageworthy situations and for stage effects. He made full use of the newest technical devices (such as the development of the more reliable gas lighting) in planning his works.

He realized that his forte was as a scenario writer and stage-effect planner, not as a creative genius, and he further realized that in Grand Opera the words themselves were of far smaller import than the effect of the over-all design. Besides, the artistic value of the whole mattered to him less than its immediate success.

Scribe is likewise credited with the development, if not the invention, of the tableau curtain, in which the act climaxes on an unexpected twist of the plot or on a grand culmination. This upbeat finale, calculated to generate waves of applause, became a feature of the later well-made librettos and plays, and was known in England as the “tornado” curtain.

Anyone connected with the production was free to suggest improvements, and often these became part of the result. Thus the great tenor Adolphe Nourrit contributed a footnote to libretto history by ... writing the words of Éléazar’s most famous aria in La Juive ... Nourrit was allowed to write the Juive aria because Scribe was, as always, too busy and Norrit offered to compose words that would lie easily for his tenor voice. Those interested in the problems of writing words suitable for singing should study the vowel and consonant placements of “Rachel, quand du Seigneur” for further enlightenment.

Scribe as a writer is a mirror of his age, and thus although none of his works illumines the depths of his thoughts or his soul ... all of them reflect well his general liberal-bourgeois mentality, which was exactly in tune with the spirit of the age of Louis-Phillippe ... in his watered-down way he sided with the weak against the strong, the underdog against the oppressors, and the good against the bad ... Scribe softens the characters so that none of them is an idealization (again, the bourgeois ethic). Brogni, the implacable Cardinal and enemy of the Jews, is shown to have humanity ... The over-all tone of the librettos is that which would appeal most strongly to a middle-class audience: that is, one of strong sentimentality intermixed with pomp. The love story is central ... usually a reciprocated love thwarted, Romeo-like, by incompatibility of backgrounds (Jew and Christian , Huguenot and Catholic). The one constant in the Scribe librettos -- and in others of the period in France -- is the obsession with religion.

(Patrick J. Smith)

You must have been anxious to find out how La Juive went ... It was tremendous, so tremendous that nothing like it has ever before been seen in Marseilles ... The beautiful line I sing in the finale was sensational. Then, in the fourth act, the duet with the Cardinal also went very well. But just when I started to sing my aria [“Rachel, quand du Seigneur”], I was seized with a violent hoarseness, so severe that I thought I would not be able to finish. I made a tremendous effort, however, and had enough will to get to the end, but only by forcing my voice. You can imagine what condition I was in at the end. I had only a few words to sing in the fifth act, and managed to do it.

(Adolph Nourrit, letter to his wife)

Halévy has just won a tremendous success with his Val d’Andorre at the Opera-Comique. It is really good. There are in his score some charming melodies and things of a high and just style. I said what I thought when I wrote of it.

(Hector Berlioz)

[The Paris Opera] has since then staged only platitudes of which La Juive is the culmination ...

(Hector Berlioz)

I have never heard dramatic music which has transported me so completely to a particular historic epoch.

(Richard Wagner)

Through Schlesinger Wagner became acquainted with the French Jewish composer Fromental Halévy. His note copying was mostly connected with Halévy’s works, of which a few enjoyed great public success. Wagner, of course, had his own opinion of them. In a letter from Paris to Robert Schumann, which though anonymous, was intended for the public ... Wagner judged Halévy’s work favorably and praised him as a man. Relying on Halévy’s own statements, Wagner asserted that the composer occupied himself with the popular genre of opera only out of economic necessity. If he were wealthy, Wagner wrote, Halévy would devote himself to the higher kinds of music, symphonies and oratorios. In any case, Halévy was no humbug: “He is open and honest and not a deliberately cunning deceiver like Meyerbeer.” Wagner’s judgment in his Autobiographical Sketches, composed after his return home from Paris, runs much the same, although it is less forgiving of Halévy’s choice of musical genres. It is possible that Halévy profited from the contrast with Meyerbeer, in whom Wagner ... began to lose faith around this time. Both Halévy and Meyerbeer were Jews, and Wagner was fully conscious of that fact. His judgment of them, positive or negative, remained untouched by it.

(Jacob Katz)

Wagner attributed all that was meretricious in Paris opera to the Jewishness of its composers. “Of necessity what comes out of attempts by Jews to make art must have the property of coldness, of non-involvement, to the point of being trivial and absurd .” ... It was a succession of effects in the bad sense, “effects without causes.” This was why it found its natural expression in the theatre of unmotivated spectacle -- Grand Opera. To write works of this kind was to make use of art as a mere means -- a means of entertainment, a means of giving pleasure and getting to be liked, a means of achieving status, money, fame. For Jews it was a means of making their way in an alien society. “Like all the Parisian composers of our day Halévy burned with enthusiasm for his art for just as long as he needed it to help him scale the heights of success. Once this was done and he had entered the ranks of privileged and lionized composers he cared nothing beyond turning out operas and getting paid for them. In Paris fame is everything, the artist’s delight -- and his destruction.”

(Bryan Magee)

[Vincent d’Indy] described the years of the Empire, when Meyerbeer, Halévy, and Offenbach operas held the boards, as the “periode judaique,” claiming that Jewish composers were never original, only borrowing from the host country in which they lived.

(Elaine Brody)

We urge the composer to be on his guard against certain harmonic boldnesses which may sometimes be qualified as roughness.

(Jacques Halévy, letter to the young Georges Bizet)

The plot of the Jewess may be unnecessarily horrible, but Halévy has bestowed upon it such warmth of feeling and such dignity of treatment that it long held a prominent place in the repertory of the leading opera houses of the world and is still frequently performed. The composer treated the subject with unusual sympathy, as he himself was a Jew. The opera made a great sensation for it had been preceded by nothing which presented so great an opportunity for pageantry.

(The American History and Encyclopedia of Music [1908])

It is hard to believe, now that Fromental Halévy’s grand opera is such a rarity, but through much of the 19th-century La Juive was one of the most popular works in the repertory, and Halévy himself was regarded as a crucial figure in the development of the art form ... Gustave Mahler claimed La Juive as “one of the very greatest works ever written,” while Wagner continued to study its dramatic strengths throughout his life, to the extent of borrowing the opening of its first act for the equivalent moment in The Mastersingers. Such admiration was remarkable from a composer whose suspicion of Jewish musicians (as Halévy was) has become notorious, and who might have been even more wary of a work whose subject matter is conflict between Jews and Christians in 15th-century Europe ...

The five acts of La Juive have all the ingredients of operatic spectacle -- dramatic confrontations, big public set-pieces, a tragic end with a twist, and it is easy to see how it tweaked the imagination and conscience of its 19th-century audience. In fact it held its place until the 1930’s, when the rise of the Nazis effectively removed La Juive from the opera houses of Europe. Since then it has never regained its status ...

(Andrew Clements)

While Halévy in his works shows the influence of Meyerbeer ... his compositions are perhaps better finished from the academic standpoint ...

The libretto of La Juive is an exceptionally fine piece of work for the time, filled with pageantry and tensely dramatic situations. The great Te Deum, the famous passover scene, and the wonderful duet between Éléazar and the Cardinal, rise to immortal heights. His subsequent music, much of it marked by dignity, sobriety and exquisite musical and orchestral finish, lacks the passionate climaxes of La Juive. In many ways he was much in advance of his time, and it is not surprising to see the revival of his chief work, now that the general public has become better educated.

(Etude Magazine, June 1921)

Ah, La Juive, how it glimmers in history’s dustbin. Save perhaps for Robert le Diable or Les Huguenots, both by another assimilated Jewish composer, Giacomo Meyerbeer, no other work so exemplifies the grand opera at its grandest, and Paris heard La Juive 562 times before it was dropped from the repertoire in the 1930s. Left in circulation was the tenor’s aria, “Rachel, quand du Seigneur.” The Jewish jeweler Éléazar sings it just before his daughter is thrown into a boiling vat, except that since Scribe wrote the libretto, she is really the long-lost daughter of his enemy, the Cardinal Brogni, who consigned her to the flames only to discover his mistake when she is already halfdone.

The Met last staged La Juive in 1919* for Enrico Caruso, who put much effort into Éléazar, even wearing ill-fitting shoes in the Inquisition scene so he would shuffle like an old man. Richard Tucker, too, got his lifelong wish to sing the opera shortly before his death.

Why are all these tenors so hepped up about this opera? It certainly beats me ... a ponderous composition ... many lovely moments expertly turned out and rarely adding up to a thrilling theatrical experience. Not another act, you think, as the opera unfolds ever so slowly ... Still, worse operas do appear in the repertoire, and perhaps La Juive might make an impact in a staging that reflected the composer’s grandiose scenic concepts -- and with a great tenor.

... Her husband, Prince Léopold, [Princess Eudoxie] discovers, has been leading a double life as a Jewish painter. “Heavens!” she exclaims. Scribe should have been cooked with Rachel.

(Manuela Hoelterhoff)

* It was actually last seen at the Met in 1935-6, with Giovanni Martinelli [ed.].

B. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND WRITING

1. Should Scribe have been cooked with Rachel? Is the libretto that bad? Good? Indifferent? Why?

2. Jellinek and Smith tell us that the libretto is not even close to being accurate in its historical details. Does that matter? Is a work of historical fiction, theater, film, or opera obliged to stick to the facts?

3. Are the characters in this opera believable? Are their motivations convincing? Are they well-rounded, or cliches?

4. Is the emphasis on spectacle and effects misplaced? Does it diminish the value of a theatrical work? Consider modern film spectacles, with their extraordinary FX, and such Broadway spectaculars as Miss Saigon or Phantom of the Opera.

5. Early 19th century French grand opera, typified by Meyerbeer and Halévy, once dominated the opera world, but now is rarely seen or heard. To what do you attribute this decline? Is it the works themselves, or are other factors involved?

6. Aside from its characters and situations, is La Juive an identifiably Jewish work? Does the music sound Jewish? Does it embody or advocate Jewish values (and if so, what are they)?

C. PROJECTS AND FURTHER STUDY

1. Investigate the persecutions of Jews in medieval Europe, and consider the reasons for them. You’ll find extensive resources on this subject.

2. Listen to works by Halévy’s contemporaries, notably Meyerbeer, but also Rossini in his Grand Opera mode. Compare their style with his. Evaluate the genre. Is Grand Opera unjustly neglected?

3. Later works that employed some of the elements of Grand Opera include Les Troyens by Berlioz and Don Carlos and Aida by Verdi. These are in the Met repertory; you’ll find study guides elsewhere on this site. Listen to them, and consider why they are more highly regarded than their predecessors. (There are many others, too.)

4. Wagner denounced Grand Opera, but as Clements points out he mined its resources for his own works. Listen to the opening of Die Meistersinger and compare it to the opening of La Juive to verify Clement’s comparison. Other Wagner works approach Grand Opera as well, including Tannhaeuser (to which Wagner added a ballet for its disastrous Paris premiere), Lohengrin, and Goetterdaemmerung. All are in the Met repertory. The last-named, which concludes the four-part Ring cycle, will be broadcast this season. Consider the relationship of Wagner’s works to Grand Opera. As for Wagner’s anti-semitism, the central text is his essay Judaism in Music, available in several English translations; there are many other primary and secondary sources on this issue.

5. Other operas on Jewish and Biblical subjects in the Met repertory include Strauss’s Salome and Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron (both broadcast this season), Verdi’s Nabucco, and Saint-Saens’s Samson et Dalila. The differences among them vastly exceed the similarities, which makes them fascinating to study as a group.

6. The tenors most closely associated with La Juive include Nourrit (Read The Great Tenor Tragedy by Henry Pleasants), Caruso (there are several biographies), Richard Tucker, and more recently Jose Carreras. Find recordings of the latter three, and others, singing Rachel, quand du Seigneur, and compare them. Do changes in vocal style over time account partly for the disappearance of Grand Opera from modern stages?