Relayed from the National Museum of Wales
National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)
The play of Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus. was by Madame von Chezy, remembered also as the authoress of the libretto of Weber's opera, Euryanthe. Her son, who was one of Schubert's friends, has left it on record that all the music for the play-eleven separate numbers -was completed in five days, and that the only orchestral rehearsal lasted less than two hours. None the less, the reception given to the music on the production of the play was so cordial that the Overture had to be twice repeated. At the end of the play Schubert himself had to appear and make his acknowledgments. But the play itself was such poor stuff that even Schubert's music could not keep it alive, and the music was put aside and lost for many years. As English people are proud to remember, it was rediscovered and given back to a grateful world by Sir George Grove and Sir Arthur Sullivan, who made the journey to Vienna in 1867 specially to look for it and other buried treasures.
In the original version of Gounod's Faust produced at the Theatre Lyrique, the only ballet was in the second act, where Faust and Mephistopheles came among the people on a gala day. Ten years later the composer revised the work for production at the Grand Opera, and the traditions of that theatre demanded something more elaborate in the way of ballet. The two authors of the libretto accordingly made incursions into the second part of Goethe's Faust, untouched for Gounod's original opera, and made use of the revels of the Walpurgis night. There, in Goethe's play and in this revised version of Gounod's opera, Faust meets many of the famous women of old, Cleopatra, Helen, the Trojan Women, and other personages of myth and legend. The several dances in this ballet are 'The Nubians,' 'Cleopatra and the Goblet of Gold,' 'The Trojan Women,' 'Variation,' and 'Phryne's Dance.' When the opera is given in this country this scene is almost always omitted.
(to 14.00)
