L'arbre enchanté

L'arbre enchanté, ou Le tuteur dupé (The Magic Tree, or, the Tutor Duped), Wq 42, is a one-act opéra comique by Christoph Willibald Gluck to a libretto based on the 1752 opéra-comique Le poirier ("The Peartree") with a text by Jean-Joseph Vadé.[1] Vadé's libretto was based on a tale from Boccaccio's Decameron, as retold by Jean de La Fontaine.[2] Gluck's opera was written for the name day of Emperor Francis I, premiering at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna on the evening of 3 October 1759, the anniversary of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi.[3]

Gluck revised the work to a versified adaptation by Pierre-Louis Moline of the original libretto, to which was also added (for Lubin) the ariette "Pres de l'objet qui m'inflamme", parodied from Gluck's earlier opera Le cadi dupé. The revised version was first performed on 27 February 1775 as L'arbre enchanté, at the Palace of Versailles.[4][5]

The story is slightly varied in Chaucer's tale of May and Januarie ("The Merchant's Tale"), where it is instead the pair of lovers who climb the tree.

The diarist Karl von Zinzendorf related that Gluck sang the part of an ailing singer from the wings in 1761.[3]

Roles
Role Voice type Premiere cast, 3 October 1759[6]
Claudine a young woman soprano
Lucette, her sister soprano
Lubin, aka Pierot, Lucette's suitor haute-contre
Blaise, a fisherman tenor
Thomas, Lucette's tutor bass
M. Debonsecours bass
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References

Notes

  1. Vadé's work was an early form of opéra comique known as comédie en vaudeville. Although he may have written some of the music for the airs, most were probably sung to well known popular tunes known as vaudevilles (Sadler 1992, p. 883).
  2. Brown 1992, p. 162.
  3. Brown 2001.
  4. Brown 1992, p. 162; Rushton 1992, p. 425.
  5. Information at the césar website suggests that Louis Heurteaux dit Dancourt and Pierre-Louis Moline played roles in the Vienna production, perhaps as dramaturges. But Dancourt arrived in Vienna in 1762, and Brown 2001 credits Moline only with the recasting of the spoken dialogue in verse for the Paris version.
  6. Casaglia, Gherardo (2005)."3 October 1759". L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia (in Italian).

Sources

  • Brown, Bruce Alan (1992). "Arbre enchanté, L'" in Sadie 1992, vol. 1, p. 163.
  • Brown, Bruce Alan (2001). "Gluck, Christoph Willibald, Ritter von. 3. Vienna, 1752–60" in Sadie 2001.
  • Rushton, Julian (1992). "Moline, Pierre-Louis" in Sadie 1992, vol. 3, p. 425.
  • Sadie, Stanley, editor (1992). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (4 volumes). London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-56159-228-9.
  • Sadie, Stanley, editor (2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5 (hardcover). OCLC 419285866 (eBook).
  • Sadler, Graham (1992). "Vadé, Jean-Joseph" in Sadie 1992, vol. 4, p. 883.
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