Meyerbeer's L'Africaine: History, Heroism and the Mythological Hermeneutic
Vasco de Gama was the last collaboration between Giacomo Meyerbeer and Eugène Scribe, the famous playwright and librettist. The work had intermittently preoccupied them both since 1838, and it had become legendary as L’Africaine years before its completion. The first version of the opera became known as the Vecchia Africana of the long years of Meyerbeer’s anxious labours on this most troublesome of his operas An adoring public gave Meyerbeer a tumultuous posthumous accolade on the première of L'Africaine on 28 April 1865, a year after his death. This opera which involved Meyerbeer and Scribe’s creative energies for so long includes in one last and splendid achievement many of the elements that had hitherto featured in varying degrees in all their other joint creations. Both composer and librettist were men of immense imagination and genius. Between them, they created four works of great power and beauty that radically affected the history of opera.
This study examines the origins and creation of the opera, its dramaturgy and musical style, the history of its astonishing reception around the world until the 1930s, its revival in more recent times. One of the special features of the book is the collection of iconography associated with the work, and its interpretation by many of the greatest singers of the Golden Age of opera. This imagery and many musical examples help to bring out the themes explored in this work more fully.
Robert Ignatius Letellier is a member of Trinity College and the Institute of Continuing Education at Madingley Hall, Cambridge. He has specialised in the music and literature of the Romantic Period, studying especially the work of Giacomo Meyerbeer, and he is the author of a four-volume edition of his diaries, a completed edition of his libretti, a critical life, a reader, a guide to research and collections of critical and biographical studies on the composer. He has also written on the opéra-comique (with studies of Auber and Halévy) and the Romantic ballet (especially Ludwig Minkus).
“Letellier, an established author on opera, has produced another excellent text examining Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine. It is thoroughly researched so that the origins in Vasco De Gama’s voyage of exploration and colonisation in the Indian Ocean are interwoven with the mythology of the Upas Tree and the cultural dissonances of European old world and the Asian new world cultures. […] Letellier, rigorously references the history of the opera, performances, librettists and contemporary critical opinions. In addition to a general index there are 7 other indices such as those for arrangers and conductors. It is clearly an essential text for anyone seeking to know more of this work. Finally, it is beautifully illustrated with portraits and posters along with various scores.”
Robert Gibson
“This is the fourth of Robert Letellier’s companion books to Meyerbeer’s grand operas, and it is well up to the very high standards of the preceding books, on Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots and Le Prophète. These books contain everything you might want to know about the operas – and some more. As ever, there are a large number of illustrations charting the history of the opera – composer, librettists, singers, costumes and sets through the years – as well as musical examples. […] Altogether a delightful, book, an excellent opera companion, and highly recommended.”
Elaine Thornton
“[This book is] the most comprehensive and fascinating text ever written for a single opera. His reference is therefore mandatory for all researchers of the genre in general and especially Meyerbeer. […] Robert Ignatius Letellier very cleverly dedicates large pages to Mancenillier, a tree that our friend identifies with the tree of Good and Evil and the tree of Life. And Robert Ignatius Letellier says that Mancenillier is a bit of both: that's a really wonderful thought.”
Daniel Ivo Batakovic
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