Literary Libretti

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Published on: Feb 23, 2001

In White Stuff, I touched upon an opera employing a libretto by Doris Lessing, a writer better known for non-stage works. Although many operas have been based upon novels, or adapted from plays not specifically created as libretti, Ms. Lessing's direct contribution to classical music is something of a rarity in the field of literature.

Indeed, there was a period when libretto-writing had a reputation of being hackwork, at least in Italy, so much so that authors took on acronymous pen-names (e.g., "Loran Glodici" for Carlo Goldoni) when they embarked on such projects! To this day, notions perpetuate that libretti are "just nonsense" or that, however well written the words may be, they necessarily take a back seat to the music. And so, in our own time, librettists are likely to go one step further back from pseudonymous to virtually anonymous -- unnamed in discussion of their operas. I am often guilty of not identifying them myself, for all my admiration of their skills. Alas, this tendency to ignore librettists leaves us woefully ignorant of some of the attempts by famous literary figures to try their hand at them.

A few centuries ago, for instance, Voltaire not only produced works to ultimately inspire more than 70 operas based upon them, but himself wrote seven libretti, most notably the 1744 La Princesse de Navarre and the 1745 La Temple de la Gloire, both set by Rameau. Dumas père collaborated on several libretti, including for an opera by Ambroise Thomas, the 1860 Le Roman d'Elvire. Henry Fielding wrote lyrics for several English ballad operas. Turgenev, who enjoyed a personal as well as professional relationship with her, wrote libretti for operettas composed by Pauline Viardot, such as the 1869 Le Dernier Sorcier. Hans Christian Andersen wrote a number of libretti, including his own version of a Scott novel, Bruden fra Lammermoor, set in 1832 by a composer named Bredal. Jules Verne wrote or co-wrote libretti for a total of eight operas-comiques and operettas. Even Dickens wrote one libretto, for John Hullah's 1836 The Village Coquettes. Unfortunately, the obscurity of these operas makes it difficult for us to evaluate such libretti alongside these writers' better-known works.

Let us turn to more modern examples of this special literary craft, with some consideration of the needs of an opera libretto. Sprawling as some works may appear onstage, operas usually have compact texts that needs must leave room for music to declare its own presence, sometimes even in complete absence of any vocalization; unlike straight drama, operas also not only permit but encourage the overlap of voices, as well as a more poetical use of language itself than would be natural as dialogue in a novel or play.

During this last century, established poets have written libretti, or parts of them, with mixed success. Deems Taylor's 1927 The King's Henchman, specially commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, has a Tristan und Isolde-like story written in mock 11th-century archaic English by none other than Edna St. Vincent Millay, who certainly did not employ that style in her own Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry. Langston Hughes (novelist as well as poet) wrote the libretto for Weill's 1946 Street Scene where he captured the sidewalk vernacular of a tenement neighborhood of New York; and co-wrote another, with Verna Arvy (Still's wife), for William Grant Still's 1949 Troubled Island, set in Haiti during the Napoleonic era. Auden wrote or co-wrote half a dozen libretti, his first, for Britten's 1941 Paul Bunyan, on his own; the others, for Stravinsky's 1951 The Rake's Progress, Henze's 1961 Elegy for Young Lovers, Henze's 1966 The Bassarids, Nicholas Nabokov's 1973 Love’s Labour's Lost, and John Gardner's 1974 "antimasque," The Entertainment of the Senses, all with Chester Kallman. As pure Auden, Paul Bunyan certainly bears some looking at, not the least of which for its whimsical humor and quite serious ahead-of-its-time sense of environmentalism. (This is a good place to note that poet Ezra Pound composed two operas, eccentrically scored as throwbacks to pre-Rossinian musical standards!) When Bernstein's 1956 Candide was first conceived as a Broadway show, it brought together the literary forces of several librettists including poet/short story-writer Dorothy Parker, who contributed the words for work’s "Gavotte," and novelist Lillian Hellman.

And this brings us into the territory of 20th century novelists. Betcha didn't know that Thomas Hardy wrote an opera libretto, for the 1924 The Queen of Cornwall, part of an Arthurian opera cycle composed by our old friend Rutland Boughton. Hardy had also wanted to write a libretto for Elgar, but Elgar had rejected the subject matter (Hardy's own stories, which he deemed too everyday) and that project came to nought. A few year's before the turn of the century, J.M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle collaborated on a libretto for the 1893 Jane Annie, composed by Ernest Ford. Although one would think that such a literary team would make for a surefire success, the opera flopped. French novelist Colette is of course far more renowned as the librettist for Ravel's enduring 1925 L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, an imaginative work quite unlike her chic and sophisticated society fiction. E.M. Forster, best known for uppercrust romantic novels, also happens to be the co-librettist, with Eric Crozier, of Britten's 1951 all-male-cast Billy Budd, which one would be hard-put to imagine as a Merchant-Ivory film! Perhaps such writers enjoyed breaking away from their usual output when an opera was involved.

Let us consider playwrights, now. A truly wild card is Thornton Wilder, who adapted his own drama, The Long Christmas Dinner, into a libretto set by Hindemith (1961). The German composer's only English opera, it features members of several generations of one family as they assemble at and dissemble from one continuous mimed dinner where their births, accomplishments, and deaths are almost incidental to the general table talk. Gertrude Stein wrote both plays and operas, all quite brilliant if you happen to have that “acquired taste." Thomson's 1934 Four Saints in Three Acts and 1947 The Mother of Us All are the most well known of these. Other Stein libretti include Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (1938), which was commissioned by eccentric English composer Lord Berners, who unfortunately did not go on to create a score for it. This is a charming work, which I have seen performed as a straight play. Jean Cocteau, who wrote non-operatic drama and also screenplays, produced a number of dark-tinged libretti for works that premiered in 1927: Honegger's Antigone, Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, and Milhaud's Le Pauvre Matelot. He is also, importantly, librettist of Poulenc's one-singer tour de force, the 1959 La Voix Humaine.

Quite recently, playwright Terrance McNally, whose plays Master Class and The Lisbon Traviata both concern Maria Callas, wrote the libretto for Jake Heggie's 2000 Dead Man Walking as well as for one work ("The Food of Love") in the 1999 opera trilogy Central Park, another mini-opera of which ("The Festival of Regrets") was penned by fellow playwright Wendy Wasserstein. That was an unusual case of librettists receiving far more media attention than did the works' composers, who were Michael Torke and Deborah Drattell respectively. For the record, opera number three was "Strawberry Fields" by composer Robert Beaser and librettist A.R. Gurney.

Can you think of more examples? Please share them in a discussion of this topic. And watch for my next several articles, where other aspects of libretti will be examined.