CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
New York Philharmonic

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Pre-concert talk starts at 7:00 PM in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage with Benjamin Sosland, The Juilliard School..

New York Philharmonic
Lorin Maazel, Music Director and Conductor
Susanne Mentzer, Mezzo-Soprano
Celena Shafer, Soprano (Fire / Nightingale / Princess)
Jessica Jones, Soprano
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano
Kelley O'Connor, Mezzo-Soprano
Philippe Castagner, Tenor
Ian Greenlaw, Baritone
Kevin Deas, Bass
New York Choral Artists
Joseph Flummerfelt, Director
Westminster Symphonic Choir
Joe Miller, Director
The Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Dianne Berkun, Director

RAVEL L'enfant et les sortilèges
RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé (complete)

Program Notes:

MAURICE RAVEL (1875–1937)
L’enfant et les sortilèges: Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts

Composed in 1924–1925, L’enfant et les sortileges received its world premiere on March 21, 1925, at the Théâtre de Monte Carlo, Monaco, with Victor de Sabata conducting, Marie-Thérèse Gauley in the central role, and ballet sequences by George Balanchine. The work received its first complete performance at Carnegie Hall on April 24, 1990, with Colette Alliot-Lugaz, soprano (Child); Maureen Forrester, contralto (Mother / White Cat / Owl); Edith Wiens, soprano (Bergere / Princess, Bat, Shepherdess); Claudine Carlson, mezzo-soprano (China Cup / Shepherd / Dragonfly); Gwendolyn Bradley, soprano (Fire / Nightingale / Squirrel); Jean-Philippe Courtis, bass (Armchair / Tree); David Evitts, baritone (Grandfather Clock / Black Cat); Thierry Dran, tenor (Black Wedgewood Teapot / Little Old Man / Frog); the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia; and The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit. The first performance at Carnegie Hall of any part of L’enfant et les sortileges took place on February 28, 1926, with Mary Lewis, soprano, and Elmer Zoller, piano; Air de l’enfant was the selection performed.


By the time L’enfant et les sortilèges was unveiled in March 1925, the piece had occupied Maurice Ravel for almost eight years, though in a desultory way. The original impetus came from Jacques Rouché, the director of the Paris Opéra; during World War I he approached the novelist Colette about writing a scenario for a production he had vaguely in mind. Colette would later recall:

I still don’t know how I was able to give him the libretto for L’Enfant in under a week—I who work slowly and painfully. He liked my little poem and suggested composers whose names I welcomed as politely as I could.

“But,” said Rouché after a silence, “suppose I suggested Ravel?” I burst out of my politeness and expressed my approval without reservation.

“We mustn’t neglect the fact,” added Rouché, “that it could take a long time, even if Ravel accepts.”

I had no idea what the creation of a work demanded of him, the slow frenzy which possessed and kept him isolated, however much time it took. The War encompassed Ravel and silenced all mention of his name with a hermetic seal, and thus I got out of the habit of thinking about L’enfant et les sortilèges.

When Rouché received Colette’s story, which she had provisionally titled Ballet pour ma fille (Ballet for My Daughter), he sent a copy to Ravel at Verdun, where he was serving as a driver in the Motor Transport Corps. The Army post office managed to lose it. A substitute copy seems to have reached Ravel in 1917, about the time that he was demobilized, and he set about acquainting himself with the fanciful tale of a child whose bad behavior causes his world—his toys and pets, the furnishings in his room, even the animals outside—to turn against him and eventually inspire him to realize that it’s better to be nice than naughty.

At first Ravel demurred, but the idea grew on him, and by February 1919 he was writing to Colette to apologize for his delay and to assure her that he really was moving forward on their project. Bit by bit the composer shared general ideas with his librettist, who proved amenable to pretty much anything he suggested: that “the cup and the teapot, in old Wedgwood—black—[should] sing a ragtime,” for example, adding irreverently “that the idea of having a ragtime sung by two Negroes at the Académie Nationale de Musique gives me quite a thrill.”

Ravel became particularly obsessed with the duet between two cats. His disciple Manuel Rosenthal reported that Ravel worried at length about whether the cats’ sensuous dialogue ought to be spelled (and pronounced) “mouaô” or “mouain.” “Certainly,” he wrote, “Ravel spent a lot of time ruffling the fur of his two Siamese cats, the better to notate their purrings.” (In the end he opted for multiple spellings, including “Môrnâou” and “Méinhon.”) The composer’s care paid off, and few would disagree that the cats’ scene is one of the opera’s most irresistible moments.

It was decided that the spirit of the work-in-progress was not quite right for the Paris Opéra, so plans were made to unveil L’Enfant et les sortilèges at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. That company’s director, Raoul Gunsbourg, tallied the passing months with trepidation. In the summer of 1923 he managed to secure Ravel’s signature on a contract, and after a few delays the composer delivered his score just in time for the scheduled premiere.

The story was an ideal subject for a Ravel opera. He adored children, and, being diminutive of stature, he was delighted to find that children viewed him to some extent as “one of them.” With other adults he habitually maintained a certain reserve, which was often interpreted as haughtiness. In contrast, with children he had no trouble shedding his defenses and participating enthusiastically in storytelling and all manner of play, joining his young friends on the carpet while the other grown-ups looked on from their chairs. The pages of L’enfant et les sortilèges convey this quality of childlike innocence, aspiration, and wonder, a sense hazily remembered by all of us but which many of us have buried under the weight of years.
—James M. Keller
Derived from a note that previously appeared in the programs of The Juilliard School.
© 2009 James M. Keller


MAURICE RAVEL
Daphnis et Chloé, Choreographic Symphony in Three Parts

Composed in 1909–1910, Daphnis et Chloé was first staged by the Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, on June 8, 1912, with Pierre Monteux conducting; the first complete performance at Carnegie Hall of Daphnis et Chloé took place on March 9, 1961, with Schola Cantorum of New York and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

When Maurice Ravel was approached about writing music for a new ballet being planned by Sergei Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes, the composer was understandably excited. Early productions such as the “Polovtsian Dances” from Prince Igor (1909, to music by Borodin) and Scheherazade (1910, to Rimsky-Korsakov’s score) had established the credentials of the company’s core production personnel: director Diaghilev, choreographer Michel Fokine, designer Léon Bakst. In 1910 Diaghilev took the brave step of commissioning music for an entirely new ballet, thereby serving as midwife for Stravinsky’s L’oiseau de feu (Firebird). Stravinsky contributed another score for the 1911 season—Petrushka—and in 1913 did his part to inspire the riot that greeted the third of his 10 ballets for the company, Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring).

In between, Diaghilev turned to Ravel. Fokine had been urging Diaghilev to consider a ballet on the myth of Daphnis and Chloé, and in early 1909 he began working with Ravel to devise a suitable scenario. For their source they turned to a pastoral romance attributed to the third-century (A.D.) Greek author Longus, as filtered through the late-16th-century French poet Jacques Amyot. From the outset the going was not easy. In June 1909 Ravel wrote to a friend,

I must tell you that I’ve just had an insane week: preparation of a ballet libretto for the next Russian season. Almost every night, work until 3 a.m. What complicates things is that Fokine doesn’t know a word of French, and I only know how to swear in Russian. In spite of the interpreters, you can imagine the savor of these meetings.

Work continued rather slowly, and in the event “the next Russian season” came and went, with Daphnis et Chloé still a work in progress. Whether due to the logistics of collaborating with his Russian colleagues or to some sort of personal block, Ravel fell farther and farther behind schedule—so much so that at one point Diaghilev came close to canceling the whole project. Following considerable lobbying by Ravel’s publisher, the impresario’s better judgment ruled and the ballet (structured as a single act divided into three scenes) finally made its way to the stage of the Théâtre du Châtelet about two years later than Diaghilev had hoped, with Vaslav Nijinsky dancing the role of Daphnis and with Tamara Karsavina as Chloé. It shared a bill with Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Nijinsky’s erotic tour de force), Weber’s Le spectre de la rose, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Because the program fell at the very end of the company’s season, it got only two performances. Although it was revived in Paris the next season and in 1914 received a production in London, Daphnis et Chloé has enjoyed only sporadic success in the world of ballet. Ravel’s score, however, has achieved the status of a classic, both in its complete form and through the orchestral suites the composer extracted from it.

The premiere left listeners and critics divided, due in part to a degree of inadequacy in the performance. The innumerable delays cut into rehearsal time, and being slated at the end of the season entailed further complications of scheduling, not to mention a certain physical exhaustion on the part of all concerned. A good deal of respect was forthcoming, but many well-informed listeners were baffled by the rhapsodic nature of the music, which to some ears verged on the anarchic. Pierre Lalo found Ravel’s music to be lacking in rhythm, while quite a few other critics commended the score particularly for its rhythmic verve. Robert Brussel, writing in Le Figaro, found himself “stirred, not because [Ravel’s] manner is aggressive or haughty, but because it is infinitely gentle, fresh, and tender, as it should be for such a subject.”

The Story
Fokine’s ballet scenario for Daphnis et Chloé is divided into three parts, though the action is dovetailed into a single sweep in the staged ballet and, accordingly, in Ravel’s score. Here is a summary of the general scenario, gleaned from inscriptions spread through the score:

Part I: Religious Dance. A meadow on the outskirts of a sacred wood in springtime. Youths and maidens bow before the altar of the Nymphs. The shepherd Daphnis enters and Chloé joins him. They prostrate themselves before the Nymphs. The dance is interrupted. Flirting and jealousy ensue, with the herdsman Dorcon making advances toward Chloé.

General Dance. At the end of the dance, the emboldened Dorcon wants to kiss Chloé. Daphnis pushes him aside and gently approaches Chloé. The young men propose a dance contest between Daphnis and Dorcon: The prize will be a kiss from Chloé.

Dorcon’s Grotesque Dance: The crowd sarcastically imitates the herdsman’s awkward motions, and the dance ends in general laughter.

Daphnis’s Light and Graceful Dance: All invite Daphnis to receive his prize. The crowd withdraws, leading Chloé away. Daphnis remains motionless, as if in ecstasy.

Lycanion’s Entrance. She sees the young shepherd and approaches him. Daphnis tries to escape. Lycanion dances. She lets her veils fall, and Daphnis replaces them. Annoyed, she slips away, ridiculing him.

Sounds of War. The women are pursued by pirates. Daphnis dreams of Chloé, who may be in danger, and quickly leaves to rescue her. Chloé runs in, lost and seeking shelter. She throws herself before the altar of the Nymphs, begging their protection. A group of bandits abducts her. Daphnis enters, looking for Chloé. Coming to life, the Nymphs descend from their pedestal, revive Daphnis, and invoke the god Pan. Daphnis prostrates himself before the god.

PART TWO: War Dance. The pirates’ camp. Their leader, Bryaxis, orders that the captive be brought in and commands her to dance.

Chloé’s Dance of Supplication. She unsuccessfully tries to flee. She gives herself over to despair, thinking of Daphnis. Suddenly the atmosphere seems charged with strange new elements. Gradually, the entire camp is seized by terror. Little fauns appear and surround the pirates. The earth opens up. The formidable shadow of Pan is seen. Everyone flees, bewildered. On the deserted stage Chloé holds herself motionless. A glowing crown is placed on her head. The scene seems to dissolve. It is replaced with the landscape from Part I.

PART THREE: Daybreak. Daphnis remains stretched out before the grotto of the Nymphs. Shepherds enter and awaken Daphnis. Anguished, he looks about for Chloé. She at last appears surrounded by shepherdesses. The two rush into each other’s arms. Daphnis notices Chloé’s crown. His dream was a prophetic vision: The intervention of Pan is manifest. The old shepherd Lammon explains that Pan saved Chloé, in remembrance of the nymph Syrinx, whom the god loved.

Daphnis and Chloé Mime the Story of Pan and Syrinx. Chloé impersonates the young Nymph wandering over the meadow. Daphnis, as Pan, declares his love for her. The Nymph rejects him and disappears among the rushes. In desperation he plucks some reeds, fashions a flute, and plays a melancholy tune. Chloé falls into Daphnis’s arms and he swears his fidelity. Young maidens enter, dressed as Bacchantes and shaking tambourines, and a group of young men come on the stage: joyous tumult.

General Dance. Dance of Daphnis and Chloé. Dorcon’s Dance. Final Dance: Bacchanal.

—James M. Keller

James M. Keller is the Program Annotator for the New York Philharmonic.