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Updated: June 7, 2025
Massenet's music is conspicuous for anything rather than novelty of invention or treatment, but though he is content to tread well-worn paths, he does so with all his old grace and distinction of manner, and many of the scenes in 'Ariane' are treated with an uncommon degree of spirit and energy.
It is a fact that good singing in the old-fashioned sense will help nobody out in Elektra, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, Pelléas et Mélisande, or The Nightingale. These works are written in new styles and they demand a new technique. Put Mme. Melba, Mme. Destinn, Mme. Sembrich, or Mme. Galli-Curci to work on these scores and you will simply have a sad mess.
"It is of an insipidity to make one sick." "And what absence of grace, gallantry, and the belle flamme!" said Scudery, coldly. "Ah, how different from our immortal D'Urfe!" said Baro, the continuator. "Where is the 'Ariane, where the 'Astrea?" cried, with a groan, Godeau, the annotator.
It ripples along in the daintiest fashion, sparkling with wit and gaiety, and if it leaves no very definite impression of originality, its craftsmanship is perfection itself. 'Ariane' is a far more serious affair. It is a return to the grander manner of 'Hérodiade' and 'Le Cid, and proves conclusively that the musician's hand has not lost its cunning.
He saw by chance Ethel, escorted by her cousin Lord Kew, passing through a crowd of this company one day. There was not one woman there who was not the heroine of some discreditable story. It was the Comtesse Calypso who had been jilted by the Duc Ulysse. It was the Marquise Ariane to whom the Prince Thesee had behaved so shamefully, and who had taken to Bacchus as a consolation.
"It is of an insipidity to make one sick." "And what absence of grace, gallantry, and the belle flamme!" said Scudery, coldly. "Ah, how different from our immortal D'Urfe!" said Baro, the continuator. "Where is the 'Ariane, where the 'Astrea?" cried, with a groan, Godeau, the annotator.
Many of the new operas, Carmen, La Dolores, Salome, Elektra, to name a few, call for interpretative dancing of the first order. Madama Butterfly and Lakmé demand a knowledge of national characteristics. Pelléas et Mélisande and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue require of the interpreter absolutely distinct enunciation.
I say, now," she continued, taking the manager into a corner, "you want to make me take the leading part in the ballet in Ariane, you Turk. You are going to be married, and you know how I can make you miserable " "Heloise, my heart is copper-bottomed like a man-of-war." "I shall bring your children on the scene! I will borrow some somewhere." "I have owned up about the attachment."
In this theatre, which produced Carmen in 1875, Manon in 1884, and the Roi d'Ys in 1888, were played the principal dramas of M. Bruneau, as well as M. Charpentier's Louise, M. Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, and M. Dukas's Ariane et Barbebleue. It may seem astonishing that such works should have found a place at the Opéra-Comique and not at the Opera.
It seems to me that the emotions aroused by such an Opera as Ariane could only be fittingly expressed unecclesiastical as Blue Beard's character may appear in the frame of one of these old Catalonian churches.
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