Several days ago while practicing my cello, I was delighted to find myself playing a very simple melody from a classical piece I remember loving devotedly and to tears because of its sweet simplicity when I was 19, but could not identify because I didn't know the composer. Armed with this new crucial bit of information provided by my cello instructional book, I read up on the piece to learn more and share it with you here.
The piece is "Barcarolle" from the opera, "The Tales of Hoffmann," by Jacques Offenbach. Although I prefer the orcestral version (and have never heard the opera), I feel the opera's story is interesting:
"The Muse appears and reveals to the audience that her purpose is to draw Hoffmann's attention to herself, and to make him abjure all other loves, so he can be devoted fully to her: poetry. She takes the appearance of Hoffmann's closest friend, Nicklausse" as Hoffmann recounts his three failed loves, with the muse at the end revealing herself to him and telling him: "Be reborn a poet! I love you, Hoffmann! Be mine!" The magic of poetry reaches Hoffmann as he sings, "Muse whom I love, I am yours!"
The Tales of Hoffmann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. So, it is not exactly a happy ending, assuming that loving a Muse rather than a human is a good thing, and apparently in the end the Muse realizes that Hoffman's three loves represent the real love for a woman he was trying to meet that day...but when she arrives, he is too drunk to notice, and so the Muse (poetry) wins him as he loses real human love.
Offenbach in fact died several months before finishing the opera, and so a friend of his, another composer, finished it for him...which I feel is a great and loving act of friendship, isn't it?
Before I post the youtube video of Barcarolle, here's more information about Offenbach and the piece:
Quote:
Offenbach's numerous operettas, such as Orpheus in the Underworld, and La belle Hélène, were extremely popular in both France and the English-speaking world during the 1850s and 1860s. They combined political and cultural satire with witty grand opera parodies.
Offenbach's one fully operatic masterpiece, The Tales of Hoffmann (Les Contes d'Hoffmann), composed at the end of his career, has become the most familiar of Offenbach's works in major opera houses.
Most experts are of the opinion that his last work, The Tales of Hoffmann, was his only grand opera. It is more serious and more ambitious in its musical scope than his other works, perhaps reflecting the wish of the humourist to be taken seriously. The opera was still unfinished at his death in 1880, but was completed by his friend Ernest Guiraud and premiered in 1881.
The most famous number in the opera is the "Barcarolle" (Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour), which is performed in Act 2. Curiously, the aria was not written by Offenbach with Les contes d'Hoffmann in mind. He wrote it as the 'Elves’ Song' in the opera Die Rheinnixen (Les fées du Rhin), which premiered in Vienna on February 8, 1864. Offenbach died with Les contes d'Hoffmann unfinished.
The Barcarolle has been incorporated into many films, including Life Is Beautiful and Titanic. It also provided the tune for Elvis Presley's rendition of the song "Tonight Is So Right For Love" in the film G.I. Blues (1960).
(Jacques Offenbach - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
The Tales of Hoffmann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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I think I must have had the whole orchestral version of the opera on tape, because I used to play it at night while falling asleep and I remember there were many parts. I will try to find the whole thing, but this is the movement that sticks in my mind as the saddest and sweetest and, unsurprisingly, it is the most famous, I now learn:
"Barcarolle" from the opera, "The Tales of Hoffmann," by Jacques Offenbach
YouTube - Offenbach - Barcarolle , from 'The Tales of Hoffmann'
And here is the actual Barcarolle with opera singers Rebecca Knight and Karen England...the...erm..."OperaBabes."
Oi! Somehow that epithet turns opera into something perverse and lowbrow...but they sing well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25tLv...eature=related
Now here is an actual scene from the opera (made into a movie) in which Hoffman's third love, Antonia, sings of missing Hoffman in what eventually is a passionate duet with him and then further singing that, to Hoffman's horror, leads to her death due to her fragile state of health, as described here:
Metropolitan Opera International Radio Broadcast Information Center - Opera Archive. The melody isn't so memorable or moving as Barcarolle, I feel, but it is still a pretty, wistful love song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNhuV...eature=related