Félicien David: Herculanum – Hungarian première

Lilia Gabrielle Philiponet
Olympia Aude Extrémo
Hélios Cyrille Dubois
Nicanor/Satan Thomas Dolié
Magnus Douglas Williams

Hungarian National Choir (choirmaster: Csaba Somos)
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: György Vashegyi

A forgotten French Romantic composer, an unfamiliar opera and a story about a city destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and the lives of its inhabitants. This evening is an opportunity for us to excavate exciting finds from the grey layers of the ashes of time. Félicien David’s opera was praised even by Berlioz. Presenting the work will be an international cast of singers under the baton of György Vashegyi, who has worked tirelessly for many years to popularise neglected treasures of music history.

Félicien David (1810–1876) was a student of Cherubini’s; a contemporary of Liszt and the great Romantics Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wagner and Verdi, he wrote numerous operas. The most famous of these is the four-act Herculanum: first performed in 1859, it is a dramatic love story full of seduction and intrigue between the pagan Romans and members of the new Christian faith set against the backdrop of an impending natural disaster. If we add that Satan appears in the story, first in disguise and later revealing himself, one can see how powerfully the expressive style of David’s work uses the extreme devices of Romanticism. The core of the production’s international cast of singers consists of three French artists – soprano Gabrielle Philiponet, mezzo-soprano Aude Extrémo, tenor Cyrille Dubois and baritone Thomas Dolié – along with American bass-baritone Douglas Williams. György Vashegyi, who started his highly significant journey of exploration into the French repertoire with Rameau and operas from the Baroque period, also leads Hungarian music listeners across Classical and Romantic landscapes conducting works by Méhul, Cherubini, David and others.

Félicien David (1810–1876)

Orphaned at the age of five, Félicien David trained at the choir school of Saint-Sauveur Cathedral, Aix-en-Provence, before entering the Paris Conservatoire in 1830. There, he attended the classes of Millault (harmony), Fétis (counterpoint) and Benoist (organ), while also studying privately with Reber. After meeting the painter Pol Justus in 1831, he left the Conservatoire (without obtaining any prizes) to join the Saint-Simonians, becoming their official composer. When the community was disbanded by government order in 1832, David left France with a group of friends to preach the Saint-Simonian gospel in the East, a journey that took them to Constantinople, Smyrna, Jaffa, Jerusalem, and finally Egypt. From that time dates his pronounced taste for exoticism, as illustrated in his Mélodies orientales, 22 piano pieces published in 1836, shortly after his return to Paris. Although he did not succeed in finding a niche for himself in the musical milieu of the capital, David composed at that time 24 short string quintets (Les Saisons), 4 symphonies, and 2 nonets for brass. Le Désert, described as an ‘ode symphonie’ and premièred on 8 December 1844 at the Théâtre-Italien, marked the turning-point in his career. This descriptive work, which aroused a passion for oriental subjects that was to last throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, was an immediate success. In 1851 David began to write for the stage; within fifteen years he produced La Perle du Brésil (1851), Herculanum (1859), Lalla-Roukh (1862), La Captive (completed in 1864) and Le Saphir (1865). He was showered with honours in the last years of his life. In 1869 he succeeded Berlioz both as librarian of the Conservatoire and as a member of the Institut de France.

Félicien David: Herculanum

Premiered at the Paris Opéra on 4 March 1859, Félicien David’s Herculanum is one of the last productions of French grand opéra: in the tradition of Rossini’s, Halévy’s and Meyerbeer’s major works, it bears witness at the same to the Verdian revolution that was beginning to sweep the French operatic stage (Les Vêpres siciliennes was premiered in Paris in June 1855). As in Halévy’s La Magicienne (premiered in 1858) – and in keeping with Emperor Napoleon III’s political orientations – the libretto was very clearly intended to promote Christianity. The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, which buried Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae, is presented as the consequence of the decadence of ancient civilisation and the persecution of the first Christians. Joseph Méry and Térence Hadot’s libretto favours the spectacular: the luxury of the costumes, props, scenery, machinery and dances prompted Berlioz to write in his Journal des Débats column (12 March 1859), “I believe that nothing more magnificent has been done at the Opéra than the staging of Herculanum.” As Félicien David’s only work for this theatre, Herculanum surprised many of his contemporaries by the scope and solemn accents of a style that regularly departed from the symphonic exoticism he had displayed in Le Désert. Many numbers were critically acclaimed: Hélios’s seduction scene in Act I; Act II, with its Schubertian reminiscences; Act III’s ballet airs; and, above all, Hélios and Lilia’s Act IV duet.