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Had not "Faust," which it often recalls, preceded it, its fate might have been different. Still, it contains many strong passages and much beautiful writing. "Mireille," a pastoral opera in three acts, words by M. Carré, the subject taken from "Mireio," a Provençal poem by Mistral, was first produced at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris, March 19, 1864, with the following cast: MIREILLE Mme.
In an access of grief and remorse her father promises to revoke his dismissal of Vincent, whereupon Mireille speedily recovers and is united to her lover. Gounod's music seems to have borrowed the warm colouring of the Provençal poet's romance. 'Mireille' glows with the life and sunlight of the south.
I should like to sing Mireille and Lakmé here, but the Director may wish to put on other works instead. "Yes, we have native opera in Spain, but the works of our operatic composers are little known in other lands. The Spanish people are clannish, you see, and seem to lack the ambition to travel abroad to make their art known to others; they are satisfied to make it known to their own people.
And so as my own dogs have often been my only consolation in like times of misery and despair, oh, how I would love to comfort you beautiful, faithful, disconsolate Mireille!" Cities, like people, seem to have souls, deep hidden and rarely ever entirely revealed. How well must one come to know them, stone by stone, highways, homes and habitants, ere they will disclose their secret.
He has affected the French too; I trace him in Gounod's Romeo et Juliette and we don't gain by it; we have a poor remuneration for the melody gone; think of the little shepherd's pipeing in Mireille; and there's another in Sapho-delicious. I held out against Wagner as long as I could. The Italians don't much more than Wagnerize in exchange for the loss of melody.
Last in line, but by no means least, was a splendid English pointer, a superb, finely bred animal, who day in, day out would lie by the open fire, lost in a profound revery that terminated in a kind of sob. Poor, melancholy Mireille, what master was she mourning? For what home did she thus pine? How I respected and appreciated her sadness. How intensely human she became.
What endless enchantments they afford, if only one can get rid of the sickening politics that break up and destroy everything they touch! On the morrow I travelled down the Rhone, through the Camargue, with its droves of oxen and its flights of flamingos, lost in dreamy reverie as though foreseeing even then that beautiful poem of "Mireille," which Mistral and Gounod have since rendered immortal.
In the original libretto the song had its place in the first act, and indeed numerous changes have been made in the libretto since the opera first appeared; as in the original, Mireille dies in the arms of her lover, and Urias, Vincenzo's rival, is drowned in the Rhone.
And so, too, he finds it atop the Rue Lepic in the now sham Mill of Galette, a capon of its former self, where Germaine and Florie and Mireille, veteran battle-axes of the Rue Victor Massé, pose as modest little workgirls of the Batignolles.
Ambrogio, Vincenzo's father, accompanied by his daughter, Vincenzina, also waits upon Raimondo and intercedes in his son's behalf, but is sternly refused. Mireille, who has overheard the interview, declares to her father her irrevocable attachment for Vincenzo.
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