Bateman French Opera: La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein

“The Grande Duchesse has done great harm to the Italian opera this year, and we don’t have to interfere in the wars and jealousies of the directors, but we [must] permit ourselves a rectification, or, if you will, an explanation. It’s true that Mme Fleury-Longchamps was dedicated to utility roles at the Academy, but this circumstance doesn’t mean that she’s not qualified for anything else. It’s even more inaccurate that she would be regarded as the chief prima donna at the French Theater. Everybody knows that Mlle Tostée has that job, but in case of indisposition, naturally she must have some understudies. Finally, it’s not about the 14^th Street theater or the French opera, but the French operetta, and a singer who hasn’t enough of a voice for grand opera can possess sufficient voice for a lighter work. One can be endowed with a very large voice, like Mme Ghioni, and massacre Donizetti’s music; one can have a voice of lesser volume and not do harm to the music of Offenbach.”

“Mlle. Fleury Longchamps made quite a hit last night as the Grand Duchess.  She seems to have gained the true spirit of the merry mistress of Gerolstein and she was encored in many of the favorite airs of the opera.”

“We saw La Grande Duchesse again by chance, and we don’t know how to insist enough on the necessity for the artists who perform in this piece to moderate and above all to shorten  their current “cascades” [the best English translation is “stunts”, but a more modern reading might be “shtick”]. It’s always in the scene of the second-act finale that the excess of the burden is most obvious. We don’t like the English phrases introduced into the text more or less at random by Mme Fleury Longchamps or M. Guffroy any better. These “poor little boy”s, “come here my love”s, are out of place. Mlle Fleury doesn’t sing badly, and speaks the poem well enough, but she is icy: “Non, non, ce n’est pas la nôtre grande duchesse.” [“No, no, this isn’t our grand duchess.”]

Mlle Tostée, with a less pure voice and a technique that isn’t any better, sings more agreeably and interprets the character a thousand times better. Why? Because she possesses perception and rhythm and diction to a higher degree. In modern grand opera, the inhuman screams to which singers are brought--by the  necessity of showing off unaccented singsong and of dominating overwhelming orchestrations--are an invincible obstacle to all good pronunciation, and consequently to all good diction. The marriage, so productive, between the note and the word has been changed into a general divorce. The school to which Mlle Tostée belongs has come to re-establish the union that’s so necessary and so desirable. Without making a comparison, Thérésa owed her success to the diction of sung words, and severe and extremely competent judges have warmly verified it.

 In sum, it’s to rhythm, on one side, and good diction, on the other, that one must attribute a healthy part of M. Offenbach’s great success. The stunts, the twisting about by the actors or actresses, the off-color stuff, the disorder, the insanity, haven’t contributed to this success as much as one would believe. Looking at it close up, one finds that the public’s taste isn’t as low, as depraved, as sick as appearances may have one believe. One perceives that, tired of antimusical endeavors, it throws itself on what still seems the most rhythmic and melodic.”