100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (72 page)

Scene 5
Marie meets the Drum Major in the street. He is a handsome fellow, she notes. He agrees. He starts to make love to her. It is a quick conquest—and they disappear into her house.

ACT II

Scene 1
Marie preens herself on the pair of earrings that the Drum Major has given her. When Wozzeck enters, he notes the new earrings and is suspicious. Yet he is still upset in his mind about other things, and he is sorry for the child, who lies asleep with a slight fever. Almost absent-mindedly he gives Marie his wages. When he has left, she scolds herself for her wickedness.

Scene 2
In the street the Captain meets the Doctor, who frightens his friend by telling him he looks bad. “You might find yourself partially paralyzed, one day,” he remarks unsympathetically. But a better target for his malice passes by. It is poor Wozzeck. The two officers make unmistakable references to Marie’s unfaithfulness, and the Doctor suggests that Wozzeck is also pretty sick.

Scene 3
Encountering Marie in the street, Wozzeck accuses her in wild terms. She begs him not to hit her. Rather, she cries, she would prefer a knife in her heart. And as she runs off, Wozzeck repeats her phrase mutteringly: “Rather a knife …”

Scene 4
At the beer garden everyone is in high spirits and slightly boozy. Wozzeck joins the crowd, sees Marie dancing with the Drum Major, and is about to attack him. But the dance stops, and a soldier begins a drunken song. Someone else delivers a crazy sermon. A fool starts talking to Wozzeck. And as he sits there listening, his feeble brain seems to weaken even more.

Scene 5
Wozzeck is moaning in his sleep, in the barracks.
Andres awakens and hears him talk about a knife blade. Then, enter the Drum Major, who boasts about his conquests. Wozzeck, maddened by jealousy, attacks him. But the Drum Major is a big fellow, and Wozzeck is badly beaten up. Having done his job, the Drum Major leaves. The other soldiers heartlessly shrug their shoulders, turn around, and go to sleep.

ACT III

Scene 1 is
entirely Marie’s. She is alone with her child and full of guilt. She reads from the Bible, first the story of the woman taken in adultery and then the story of Mary Magdalene. And she prays to God for mercy.

Scene 2
takes us to a pool in the forest outside the town at night, where Wozzeck is with Marie. He makes her sit beside him; he kisses her; and he mutters earnestly of love. Then he whispers mysteriously to himself, and there is a long silence. Suddenly Marie notices that the moon is red. “Like a blood-red iron,” says Wozzeck, and he draws out his knife. Terrified, Marie tries to escape. But he madly plunges the knife deep into her throat; and when she is dead, he rushes away.

Scene 3
It is to a tavern that he rushes. More than half drunk, he sings madly, and dances with Margret, Marie’s neighbor. Suddenly she notices blood on his hand, and she cries out. Everyone crowds around and sees the blood, but Wozzeck runs out as fast as he can.

Scene 4
Back he rushes to the scene of his murder. He
must
get rid of his bloody knife, and when he finds it, he flings it into the pool. But then he fears it may be found after all and the blame pinned on him. Completely befuddled, he wades deep into the pool. He fishes for the knife with his hands; he topples over; and he drowns. The Doctor and the Captain, passing by, think they hear a noise. But they decide it was only the lapping of the water, and they leave the ghostly night scene.

Scene 5
It is bright sunshine the next morning, and outside of Marie’s house children are playing ring-around-a-rosy.
Among them is Marie’s little boy. Another group of children comes in, bursting with news. One of them shouts to the little boy: “Hey, your mother is dead!” But the child does not hear. He is playing horse. And when the others rush off to see the body, which has been discovered near the pool, the child just goes on riding his hobbyhorse. “Hop-hop, hop-hop!” he cries.

CHRONOLOGY

For anyone who wishes to use this volume as a survey of the subject of opera, the works described are indexed below, grouped by composers, in the order of the births of the composers. Reading, in this order, merely the introduction to each of the works will serve either as an informal history of the subject or as a supplement to formal studies such as Donald Jay Grout’s A
Short History of Opera
, in two volumes, or the one-volume
The Opera:
1600–1941, by Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)
         
La favola (d’Orfeo
(1607), 169

Henry Purcell (1659–95)
         
Dido and Aeneas
(1689), 116

George Frederick Handel (1685–1759)
         
Giulio Cesare
(1724), 236

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–36)
         
La serva padrona
(1733), 467

Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714–87)
         
Orfeo ed Euridice
(1762), 353
         
Alceste
(1767), 31

Domenico Cimarosa (1749–1801)
         
Il matrimonio segreto
(1792), 315

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91)
         
Bastien und Bastienne
(1768), 66
         
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
(1782),
11
         
Le nozze di Figaro
(1786), 295
         
Don Giovanni
(1787), 124
         
Così fan tutte
(1790), 110
         
Die Zauberflöte
(1791), 275

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
         
Fidelio
(1805) 175

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826)
         
Der Freischütz
(1821), 200
         
Oberon
(1826), 346

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864)
         
Les Huguenots
(1836), 226
         
L’Africaine
(1865), 15

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (1792–1868)
         
Il barbiere di Siviglia
(1816), 55
         
La Cenerentola
(1817), 95
         
Guillaume Tell
(1829), 539

Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848)
         
L’Elisir d’amore
(1832), 140
         
Lucia di Lammermoor
(1835), 265
         
Don Pasquale
(1843), 131

Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35)
         
Norma
(1831), 341
         
I Puritani
(1835), 395

Hector Berlioz (1803–69)
         
Les Troyens
(1863, Part II only), 525

Ambroise Thomas (1811–96)
         
Mignon
(1866), 336

Friedrich von Flotow (1812–83)
         
Marta
(1847), 302

Richard Wagner (1813–83)
         
Der fliegende Holländer
(1843), 187
         
Tannhäuser
(1845), 490
         
Lohengrin
(1850), 246
         
Tristan und Isolde
(1865), 514
         
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
(1868), 329
         
Das Rheingold
(1869), 412
         
Die Walküre
(1870), 418
         
Siegfried
(1876), 425
         
Die Götterdämmerung
(1876), 433
         
Parsifal
(1882), 366

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901)
         
Ernani
(1844), 144
         
Rigoletto
(1851), 405
         
Il trovatore
(1853), 520
         
La traviata
(1853), 508
         
Simon Boccanegra
(1857), 471
         
Un ballo in maschera
(1859), 308
         
La forza del destino
(1862), 191
         
Don Carlos
(1867), 119
         
Aïdd
(1871), 24
         
Otello
(1887), 357
         
Falstaff
(1893), 156

Charles François Gounod (1818–93)
         
Faust
(1859), 162
         
Roméo et Juliette
(1867), 441

Jacques Offenbach (1819–80)
         
Les contes d’Hoffmann
(1881), 482

Bedřich Smetana (1824–84)
         
The Bartered Bride
(1866), 61

Johann Strauss (1825–99)
         
Die Fledermaus
(1874), 182

Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–86)
         
La Gioconda
(1876), 209

Alexander Borodin (1834–87)
         
Prince Igor
(1890), 389

Modest Moussorgsky (1835–81)
         
Boris Godounoff
(1874), 75

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
         
Samson et Dalila
(1877), 459

Léo Delibes (1836–91)
         
Lakmé
(1883), 242

Georges Bizet (1838–75)
         
Carmen
(1875), 85

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840–93)
         
Eugen Onegin
(1879), 149

Arrigo Boito (1842–1918)
         
Mefistofele
(1868), 325

Jules Massenet (1842–1912)
         
Manon
(1884), 283
         
Thaïs
(1894), 497

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff (1844–1908)
         
Le coq d’or
(1909), 105

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921)
         
Hänsel und Gretel
(1893), 220

Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1858–1919)
         
Pagliacci
(1892), 362

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924)
         
Manon Lescaut
(1893), 290
         
La Bohème
(1896), 68
         
Tosca
(1900), 503
         
Madama Butterfly
(1904), 270
         
La fanciulla del West
(1910), 215
         
Gianni Schicchi
(1918), 206
         
Suor Angelica
(1918), 477
         
Il tabarro
(1918), 480
         
Turandot
(1926), 534

Gustave Charpentier (1860–1956)
         
Louise
(1900), 252

Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
         
Pelléas et Mélisande
(1902), 371

Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945)
         
Cavalleria rusticana
(1890), 91

Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
         
Salome
(1905), 453
         
Elektra
(1909), 138
         
Der Rosenkavalier
(1911), 447
         
Ariadne auf Naxos
(1912), 51
         
Arabella
(1933), 47
         
Capriccio
(1942), 83

Umberto Giordano (1867–1948)
         
Andrea Chénier
(1896). 41

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
         
L’Heure espagnole
(1911), 224

ítalo Montemezzi (1875–1952)
         
L’Amore dei tre re
(1913), 37

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876–1948)
         
Il segreto di Susanna
(1909), 464

Igor Stravinsky (1882-)
         
The Rake’s Progress
(1951), 399

Alban Berg (1885–1935)
         
Wozzeck
(1925), 544

Sergei Prokofieff (1891–1953)
         
The Love for Three Oranges
(1921), 257

Virgil Thomson (1896-)
         
Four Saints in Three Acts
(1934), 197

George Gershwin (1898–1937)
         
Porgy and Bess
(1935), 384

Gian-Carlo Menotti (1911-)
         
The Medium
(1946), 321
         
The Telephone
(1947), 495
         
The Consul
(1950), 100
         
Amahl and the Night Visitors (
1951), 35

Benjamin Britten (1913-)
         
Peter Grimes
(1945), 377

H
ENRY
W. S
IMON
(1901–70) was an author, editor, educator, and music critic and served as chairman of the Music Critics Circle of New York. His other books include the
Pocket Treasury of Great Operas
and
The Victor Book of the Opera
(revised edition).