| La chute de la maison Usher | |
|---|---|
| Unfinished opera by Claude Debussy | |
 Debussy c. 1900 | |
| Based on | "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Poe |
La chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) is an unfinished opera in one act (divided into two scenes) by Claude Debussy to his own libretto, based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story "The Fall of the House of Usher". The composer worked on the score between 1908 and 1917 but it was never completed.
Debussy had long been fascinated by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, familiar to French readers through the translations by Charles Baudelaire. As early as 1890, André Suarès wrote in a letter to Romain Rolland that "Monsieur Claude Debussy ... is working on a symphony that will unfold psychological ideas based on the stories of Poe, in particular, The Fall of the House of Usher." [1] Nothing came of this plan but in the wake of the success of his only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, Debussy turned to Poe for material for a potential successor. He worked on his first attempt at a Poe-inspired opera, the comedy Le diable dans le beffroi , for several years before finally abandoning it in 1911 or 1912. By mid-June 1908 Debussy had begun another opera based on a Poe tale, the darker Fall of the House of Usher. On 5 July he signed a contract with the New York Metropolitan Opera guaranteeing the house the right to stage the premiere of his projected Poe double-bill as well as another unwritten opera La légende de Tristan. [2] That summer he wrote to his friend Jacques Durand: "These days I have been working hard on The Fall of the House of Usher... There are moments when I lose the feeling of things around me and if the sister of Roderick Usher were to come into my house, I shouldn't be very surprised." [3]
In 1909 Debussy wrote that he had almost finished Roderick Usher's monologue: "It almost makes the stones weep ... as a matter of fact it is all about the influence of stones on the minds of neurasthenic people. The mustiness is charmingly rendered by contrasting the low notes of the oboe with the harmonics of the violin (a patent device of my own)." [4] Debussy had believed he had been subject to neurasthenia but around this time his doctor diagnosed him as suffering from the rectal cancer which was to kill him. According to Robert Orledge, "Debussy began increasingly to identify with Roderick Usher, whose mental breakdown Poe had identified with the crumbling House itself." [5] Debussy made three attempts at writing a libretto. Only when he was satisfied with the third one did he produce a short-score draft of the music to the first scene and part of the second in 1916–17. He went no further with Usher before his death in 1918. [2] The surviving manuscript of the libretto is held at the Harry Ransom Center. [6]
There are four characters: Roderick Usher, his friend (ami), the doctor (le médecin) and Lady Madeline. Debussy assigned all three male roles to the baritone range. Jean-François Thibault writes: "One does not know what exact baritone ranges Debussy would have used for his three male characters, or if, as in Pelléas, he would have graduated them from Deep Bass, to Bass-Baritone, to Baritone-Martin. The assignation of the three roles to baritones of the same range is significant in that it opens up the strong possibility that the characters are three incarnations of one single consciousness." [7]
Roderick Usher is the last male descendant of his family. He lives in his crumbling ancestral home with his twin sister, Lady Madeline, who is afflicted by a wasting disease, and her doctor. Roderick's friend (the narrator in Poe's tale) has been summoned to the house. During his visit, Lady Madeline is found dead and is buried in a vault under the house. The friend reads Roderick a tale from a medieval romance in order to comfort him as a storm rages outside. As the friend reads the climax of the tale, Lady Madeline appears covered in blood. She had been buried alive and now turns on her brother, dragging him to his death. The House of Usher collapses as the friend makes his escape under a blood-red moon. Debussy follows Poe's tale but places more emphasis on Roderick's incestuous feelings for his sister and makes the doctor into a more prominent, more sinister character, who is also Roderick's rival for Madeline's affection. [8]
In the 1970s, two musicians made attempts at producing a performing edition of the incomplete opera. Carolyn Abbate's version, with orchestration by Robert Kyr, was performed at Yale University on 25 February 1977. [9] [10]
In the same year the Chilean composer Juan Allende-Blin's reconstruction was broadcast on German radio. Allende-Blin's version was staged at the Berlin State Opera on 5 October 1979 with Jesús López Cobos conducting, the baritone Jean-Philippe Lafont as Roderick Usher, the soprano Colette Lorand as Lady Madeline, the baritone Barry McDaniel as the doctor, and the bass Walton Grönroos as Roderick's friend. [11] Blin's reconstruction was later recorded by EMI – the music has a running time of approximately 22 minutes. [12]
In 2004, Robert Orledge completed and orchestrated the work using Debussy's draft. His reconstruction has been performed several times. It has also been recorded on DVD (Capriccio 93517) [13] (see Recordings below). The first German staging of Orledge's reconstruction took place in Mannheim in 2019, expanded to 90 minutes with other music by Debussy. [14]
(Achille) Claude Debussy was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie, who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached.
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) is a short silent horror film adaptation of the 1839 short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. The movie was co-directed by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, and starred Herbert Stern, Hildegarde Watson, and Melville Webber. It tells the story of a brother and sister who live under a family curse. An avant-garde experimental film running only 13 minutes, the visual element predominates, including shots through prisms to create optical distortion. There is no dialogue in the film, though one sequence features letters written in the air moving across the screen.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe) is the debut studio album by British rock band The Alan Parsons Project. It was released on 25 June 1976 in the United Kingdom by Charisma Records. The lyrical and musical themes of the album, which are retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, attracted a cult audience. The title of the album is taken from the title of a collection of Poe's macabre stories of the same name.
Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist play of the same name. It premiered at the Salle Favart in Paris by the Opéra-Comique on 30 April 1902; Jean Périer was Pelléas and Mary Garden was Mélisande, conducted by André Messager, who was instrumental in getting the Opéra-Comique to stage the work. The only opera Debussy ever completed, it is considered a landmark in 20th-century music.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.
House of Usher is a 1960 American gothic horror film directed by Roger Corman and written by Richard Matheson from the 1839 short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. The film was the first of eight Corman/Poe feature films and stars Vincent Price, Myrna Fahey, Mark Damon and Harry Ellerbe.
The Fall of the House of Usher is a 1928 French horror film directed by Jean Epstein, one of several films based on the 1839 Gothic short story The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.
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Le diable dans le beffroi is an unfinished comic opera in one act by Claude Debussy to his own libretto, based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Devil in the Belfry".
La chute de la maison Usher is the French translation of the title of Edgar Allan Poe's tale The Fall of the House of Usher (1839). The most famous French translation of the story is by Charles Baudelaire. It is the basis of the following works:
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is an 1839 short story by Edgar Allan Poe.
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C. William Harwood was an American conductor. Chiefly remembered for his work as an opera conductor, he notably conducted the Houston Grand Opera's groundbreaking 1977 national tour of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. He also conducted the world premieres of operas by Claude Debussy, Frederick Delius, Stephen Paulus, and George Rochberg.
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