LORD BERNERS (1883-1950)
Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement (1923)
Fanfare (1931)
Caprice Péruvien (1938)
Viceroy: Ian Caddy (bar)
Martinez: Alexander Oliver (ten) Balthasar: John Winfield (ten)
La Périchole: Cynthia Buchan (sop) Thomas d'Esquivel:
Thomas Lawlor (bass) Bishop of Lima: Anthony Smith
(bass)
BBC Scottish SO/Nicholas Cleobury (Carrosse)
rec Glasgow 16 Aug 1983
Royal Ballet Sinfonia/Gavin Sutherland (Fanfare)
rec London 15 Sept 1999
RTE Sinfonietta/David Lloyd-Jones (Caprice)
rec Dublin 10 Jan 1995
MARCO POLO 8.225155
[79.17]
Crotchet
AmazonUK
AmazonUS
Over the last years Marco Polo have served Lord Berners' music well. This
is their fourth Berners record. The central piece is the one-act comic opera
Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement after Mérimée's comedy.
Mérimée is certainly better-known for his novel 'Colomba' and
his play 'Carmen' made famous by Georges Bizet. Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement
was a flop at its earliest stagings. Later revivals were not successful
either. In 1917 Yvonne Arnaud staged it again and it seems that this last
effort was much more successful. Berners saw Arnaud's work on the play and
was fascinated by it. He made it the subject of his only opera, indeed a
comédie musicale as he called it. There are eight scenes that
follow each other without a break, all set in the office of the Viceroy.
Berners' libretto is very close to Mérimée's text. The scene
confronting the Viceroy and his secretary, which is much about La Pericola's
behaviour, has been somewhat shortened. In fact, in the opera this scene
is about the (not so?) ambiguous relationship between La Pericola and Ramon.
Berners dispensed with the traditional overture which is why the Caprice
Péruvien arranged by Constant Lambert has been used as a substitute
for the absent overture (this recording comes from Marco Polo 8.223780).
Berners' setting starts rather abruptly and the listener is thrown right
into the action without any preamble and the opera unfolds restlessly throughout
till its equally abrupt conclusion. The main problem with this opera is that
there is actually very little dramatic action and whatever action there may
be occurs off stage and is witnessed by the Viceroy watching the events through
his telescope. The opera is ON words and Berners saw to it that they may
be clearly heard, which is incidentally the case in this recording. There
is also little psychology and most characters appear to be clichés.
Even the rather improbable "conversion" of La Pericola, the Viceroy's mistress,
is yet another cliché. The story is quickly told: The Viceroy is stuck
to his chair due to his gout (which he prefers to refer to as "fatigue")
and feels rather dispirited because he would like to use his brand new carriage
to attend the service in the cathedral. He cannot move his swollen foot and
is thus resigned to staying at home and attending to public affairs, a.o.
an Indian uprising in a remote part of the country and complaints about his
mistress' behaviour. He has words with his private secretary concerning the
latter. When La Pericola appears, there ensues a considerable argument which
inevitably ends in favour of La Pericola: She gets the new carriage to go
to the cathedral. From his window the Viceroy witnesses the accident. The
following scene is almost an orchestral entr'acte (most of the Caprice
Péruvien derives from this). The town clerk tells the Viceroy
of the accident and of various incidents that occurred when La Pericola was
on her way to and from the cathedral. The Bishop arrives with La Pericola
who has donated the carriage to the Church after having had what she calls
a "revelation" by the Virgin. Suddenly the Viceroy's leg is much better!
The Bishop agrees to dine with La Pericola and the opera ends with a (mock?)
solemn incantation assuring La Pericola of eternal life for her charitable
gesture. Again, there is little action and little psychology in all this,
but Berners certainly did not want to plumb any great depths. The piece again
clearly belongs to the années folles following the First World
War. Satie, Le Groupe des Six, Sauguet and Berners shared the same ideals
(or lack of them) and their aim then was to entertain, and Le Carrosse
du Saint-Sacrement is hugely entertaining. This short opera is a delightful
piece that certainly deserves to be heard again, even if its aesthetics may
seem a bit dated, as do many art works from that period. Berners' setting
is fairly straightforward and the words are swiftly delivered without any
respite. His clear and fairly sparse scoring allows for the words to be clearly
heard throughout. I find the performance very satisfying: everyone sings
and plays with obvious enjoyment. Again, Berners' temperament was obviously
attuned to its times and his music partakes of the then prevailing mood of
light-headedness and nonchalance. Nevertheless the present revival shows
it to be much better than might be expected from a composer sometimes referred
to as the 'English Satie', which I find totally wrong: Berners' music is
often much finer than Satie's. These Marco Polo releases certainly help put
things right again and are to be warmly welcomed.
Hubert Culot
See also review by Rob Barnett
