May 16, 2009: 'Betrothal in a Monastery' by Sergei Prokofiev

Lyrico-comic opera in four acts, op. 86, by Sergei Prokofiev to a libretto by the composer and Mira Alexandrovna Mendelson after Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comic opera libretto The Duenna, or The Double Elopement (1775); premiered Prague, National Opera Theatre, May 5, 1946.

Cast:
Isaac Mendoza, a wealthy fish merchant -- Sergei Aleksashkin
Don Jerome, father of Louisa & Don Ferdinand -- Nikolai Gassiev
Louisa, daughter of Don Jerome & beloved of Don Antonio -- Anna Netrebko
Don Ferdinand, son of Don Jerome & brother of Louisa, in love with Clara -- Aleksander Gergalov
Don Antonio, in love with Louisa -- Yevgeny Akimov
The Duenna, Louisa's governess -- Larissa Diadkova
Clara d'Almanza, friend of Louise, in love with Don Ferdinand -- Marianna Tarassova
Don Carlos, impoverished nobleman, friend of Mendoza -- Yuri Shkliar
Padre Augustin, prior of the monastery -- Vladimir Vaneev
Padre Elustaf/Pablo/Masker -- Sergei Liadov
Lopez, Don Ferdinand's servant -- Vladimir Zhivopiskev

From Grove Music Online:

Sheridan’s The Duenna is an extravagant parody of that venerable comic-opera genre in which a ward or daughter outsmarts her parent or guardian to marry the suitor of her choice. Its farrago of disguises, subterfuges and mistaken identities ends with no fewer than three couples finally matched correctly in defiance of the wishes of Don Jerome (tenor in Prokofiev’s opera), a grandee of Seville, who had hoped to marry his headstrong daughter Louisa (soprano) off to Isaac Mendoza (bass), a rich old Portuguese Jew, who is accompanied on stage at all times by his friend Don Carlos (baritone). Mendoza ends up with Louisa’s chaperone (contralto: the Duenna); Louisa with Don Antonio (tenor), her impoverished true love; and Don Jerome’s son Ferdinand (baritone), assisted by his sister, succeeds in eloping with Donna Clara (mezzo-soprano), whose father had intended her for a convent. All of the weddings take place in a priory attached to the convent, the young lovers (and the duped Mendoza) having bribed an old toper of a friar to perform the ceremonies. When Sheridan’s play was first performed at Covent Garden, its 27 musical numbers – mainly strophic songs, with an occasional ensemble – were set by the author’s father-in-law and brother-in-law, both Thomas Linley, in collaboration.

Prokofiev’s opera owes its existence to Mira Mendelson, the composer’s second (common-law) wife, whom in 1940 he had just met. She had been translating the piece in collaboration with a friend, and described it to the composer. Eager as he then was to retreat into politically innocuous terrain after the frustrations that had attended the production of his first Soviet opera, Semyon Kotko, Prokofiev immediately sensed its possibilities for innocent musical ‘champagne à la Mozart or Rossini’.

Six of Sheridan’s songs, translated into Russian verse by Mendelson, were retained: Antonio’s ‘The breath of morn bids hence the night’ (‘V Sevil’ye, spyashchey krepkim snom’); Jerome’s ‘If a daughter you have, it’s the plague of your life’ (‘Esli est’u vas doch’, eto, ver’te, chuma’); Clara’s ‘When sable night’ (‘Noch’ bayukayet Sevil’yu’); Don Carlos’s ‘Gentle maid, ah! why suspect me?’ (‘Ne nado zhdat’ vam ot lyudey’); the Duenna’s ‘When a tender maid is first essay’d’ (‘Kogda vokrug zelyonoy devochki’); and the friars’ glee, ‘This bottle’s the sun of our table’ (‘Butïlka – solntse nashey zhizni’). For the rest, Prokofiev himself adapted Sheridan’s prose quite elegantly into a very fast and pliant vehicle for continuous music.

Yet compared with his previous operas, Betrothal in a Monastery is anything but prosy. As his ad hoc generic designation for the opera suggests, the composer sought every opportunity for lyricism, giving primary emphasis to the romantic intrigue at the expense of the more grotesque elements he might have been inclined to underscore earlier in his career. (In particular, the character of Mendoza is considerably softened in Prokofiev’s treatment, and Sheridan’s blatant anti-Semitism is as far as possible erased; on the other hand, the play’s peripheral anti-clerical and anti-mercantile satire is much exaggerated for the benefit of the Soviet audience.) A particularly happy invention was the casting of scene vi (corresponding to Sheridan’s Act 3 scene i, the letter scene) against a background of domestic music-making: Don Jerome (on the clarinet) rehearsing a jaunty minuet with two onstage musicians (trumpet and bass drum) [Note: In this production, Don Jerome "plays" the trumpet until another trumpeter arrives; then he conducts the trio.].

Prokofiev’s gift for writing distinctively original diatonic melodies, virtually unparalleled among 20th-century composers, is outstandingly in evidence in this appealing score, which in its tumble of racy minuscule numbers sooner recalls the manner of Falstaff or (particularly) Gianni Schicchi than the earlier models the composer advertised.

Richard Taruskin. "Betrothal in a Monastery." The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Ed. Stanley Sadie. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. 16 May 2009 .