In March 1912, the famous violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe visited fellow musician Raoul Pugnot's home in Paris. Pugno played the piano and performed the opera “City of the Dead,'' which he had written with his mentee-turned-collaborator Nadia Boulanger, who was 35 years his junior.
“This very private performance leaves me with the deepest and happiest impressions,” Ysaye wrote to Boulanger later that month. The opera, he told her, was “so beautiful, so resonant, so moving.”
“La Ville Morte” was the most ambitious project of Boulanger's young composer's career. And once the piano and vocal score was completed that summer and it took shape, she wrote “Alleluia!!!!” as her last resort.
However, one after another, “City of Death” prevented them from taking the stage. In 1914, Pugno, an essential partner in public sales, died. With the outbreak of World War I, the scheduled premiere was postponed, but it would not be the last. A few years later, Boulanger's beloved sister, composer Lili Boulanger, also passed away, and Nadia effectively stopped writing and promoting her own music.
Boulanger went on to shape 20th century giants such as Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter, as well as legendary figures such as Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach and Philip Glass, and was one of the greatest music teachers in history. You will be alone.
As a composer, Boulanger received little attention in 1979, leaving “City of the Dead'' more of a footnote than a true accomplishment. Its full score is lost and has never been performed in the United States. It wasn't even performed until this century. But on Friday, it will make its American premiere in Catapult Opera's production at New York University's Skirball, featuring revealing new orchestrations that conductor Neal Goren calls “very rich and gorgeous.” He said that.
“I had no idea that Boulanger had ever written an opera,” says Goren, Catapult's founder and artistic director. He was looking for an opera by Catapult's women, and he was given “City of the Dead.'' “I was completely captivated. It's like a cross between 'Parsifal' and 'Pelleas.' ”
Boulanger and Pugno composed a libretto based on the play “La Citta Morta'' by the famous Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, and in 1898 translated it into French as “La Ville Morte'' starring Sarah Bernhardt. Arrived in Paris.
Pugnot became a major supporter of Boulanger's career after he completed his studies at the Paris Conservatory in 1904, when he was only 18 years old. They met when she was a student, and their relationship was both a friendship and a romance.
It's unclear when they first started thinking about “Death Office,” but Alexandra Lederach, author of the 2020 collection “Nadia Boulanger and Her World,” and co-authors Jeanice Brooks and Kimberly Francis, among others. Found mention of this work. Boulanger's long-unavailable correspondence and notebook. An entry dated May 22, 1910 reads, “We have written the first notes of The City of the Dead.”
Details regarding the origins of opera are vague, especially regarding the division of labor. This speaks to how truly collaborative it was, but it also speaks to the fact that the music world did not take Boulanger as seriously as Pugno in the early stages of her career. Although she had built up a respectable catalog of both her chamber and orchestral works, she relied on Pugno's reputation to generate her interest in the “City of the Dead”.
Lederach describes the first manuscripts of the piano and vocal scores as “an invaluable source that allows us to clearly distinguish between two types of handwriting that always overlap and complement each other.” But Mr. Pugno did not give that impression to the public. Leonie Rosenstiel, in his biography Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music, recalls an interview she gave to Ward Stevens in the magazine Musician in 1912. When asked what he was doing there, he replied: I'm writing an opera. ” He does not mention Boulanger anywhere.
She also had occasional frustrations with both D'Annunzio and Pugno, who seemed out of proportion to her ambition and enthusiasm for completing the “City of the Dead”. An obscure entry in her notebook, found by Brooks and Francis, reads:
I go to Punyo – I confess a little sadness and an explanation – I confess my mixed feelings of pride as a woman, as a lover, and sadness as an artist – but this is a thankfully kind decision that only makes things worse. It was incredible, but that rare and unforgettable time – the honesty, the emotion, the giving, the immense love that binds us together – is incredible.
Pugno and Boulanger worked together to bring “City of the Dead” to the stage. They played sheet music together and both sang on the piano. There was talk of premiering this work at the Paris Opera, but it ended up being performed at the Opéra Comique, whose leader Pierre-Barthélémy Guchy wrote the piece in 1914. Earlier that year, Pugno fell ill and died in Moscow during a concert. Tour with Boulanger. When war broke out, Gyushi canceled all production and joined the French army.
After the war, he was fired from his company. D'Annunzio was no longer invested in the “City of the Dead”, and none of the other supporters of this work were still alive. Although Boulanger would later make negative statements about her own work, her actions regarding her opera were not. She befriended a young Leonard Bernstein and gave him copies of her sheet music. (It is unclear whether it was the piano vocals or the full version.) He expressed interest in playing, but never performed.
G. Schirmer published a piano and vocal score, which was Goren's first introduction to opera. He was asked to orchestrate. Joseph Stilwell and Stefan Kwik created one for 11 players, with the help of former Boulanger pupil David Conte.
But there was more to the opera than just the music, said Robin Guarino, director of the Catapult production (first performed at the Greek National Opera earlier this year). “There was some redundancy in the text and required some basic editing,” she said. “If there had been a world premiere, Boulanger would have done this himself.”
When the opera was completed, Guarino found herself amazed at what she was seeing and hearing, the mysterious and dramatic story unfolding with rich poetry, and the “feminism burning beneath the surface.”
Goren said listeners will hear music reminiscent of Debussy and Wagner, but also Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky. There's also proto-jazz. “You can hear everything about that time reflected in this score,” he added. “There are basically two types of composers she is: synthesizers and innovators. She was her best synthesizer, so I hope people see her as a serious and legitimate composer.” Masu.”