Oscar Wilde’s short story The nightingale and the rose
has given rise to many musical adaptations. There have been
operas by Renzo Bossi (1910), Hooper Brewster-Jones (1927),
Jonathan Rutherford (1966), Margaret Garwood (1973) and Elena
Firsova (1994), ballets by Harold Fraser-Simpson (1927), Janis
Kalnins (1938) and David Earl (1983), and a cantata by Henry
Hadley (1911). This work falls into the last category, taking
passages from the story and setting them for music.
I should declare a certain interest here; I myself wrote an
opera on the subject in 1975, from which a suite was performed
in London in 1976. But The nightingale and the rose is
a literary work which admits of very many possible interpretations,
and although I have heard none of the settings given in the
opening paragraph of this review - I would like to hear those
by Fraser-Simpson, Hadley and Firsova - some details of the
latter are available on the internet - I can also recognise
some of the inherent problems involved in taking Wilde’s
dark ‘fairy tale’ as the basis for a musical work.
Quite apart from the major difficulties of staging, there are
also some problems created by Wilde himself in his treatment
of the story.
A young student is in despair because his beloved will not dance
with him unless he brings her a red rose; a nightingale overhears
his lament, and thinks she recognises in him the archetype of
the true lover of whom she has always dreamed but whom has never
yet encountered. She discovers that the only way she can obtain
a red rose for him is to sacrifice herself by piercing her breast
with a thorn, and in ecstasy she agrees to this bargain; but
the student is unable to comprehend her words when she tells
him of her sacrifice, and remains in despair. The nightingale
sings throughout the night as she dies, and the red rose is
duly created. When the student presents it to his beloved she
still rejects him because she has been sent “some real
jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.”
The student ends the story with the rueful reflection that love
is an illusion, and that he would be better served by devoting
himself to some more profitable field of study.
The allegorical nature of the story is clear, but Wilde has
cloaked it in some of his most delectably purple prose. Where
he creates problems for the composer is in his treatment of
the central passage where the nightingale sings. She has been
voluble enough until that point, but for her song itself he
confines himself to descriptions of the reactions of the garden
itself and the world of nature to her song - “the cold
crystal stars lean down and listen” - and provides no
words at all for the nightingale herself. Firsova in her opera
includes at this point four sonnets by Christina Rosetti which
are of the right period, but cannot possibly match the lurid
intensity of Wilde’s most scented writing. In my own opera
I reserved the descriptions of nature for chorus and allowed
the nightingale to vocalise wordlessly above that; here Siobhan
Lamb sets various passages of Wilde’s own text, without
any interpolations, over four movements.
Unfortunately the booklet, which provides the text, does not
explain the manner in which the texts selected have been chosen;
but the intentions of the composer are nevertheless clear to
anyone who knows the original story, and she follows the outlines
of Wilde’s fable closely. Siobhan Lamb studied in London
where she worked as a flautist for some years before moving
into the field of musical theatre; her experience in this field
clearly tells, and she has a keen sense of the drama of the
story.
The first movement is a condensed setting of the student’s
‘lament’ for chorus accompanied by a classical wind
band. The words are provided in the booklet, but the English
diction of the Danish chorus is very good, and one can clearly
hear that the dance between the student and his beloved would
have a decidedly jazzy feel. The distinctive phrase “she
said she would dance with me” is taken up by the solo
trumpet as the basis for some improvisations which conjure up
the scene. This develops into a sultry swing movement employing
the full forces of the big band sound. It is not quite the more
effete dance that Wilde writes of - “the sound of the
flute and the violin” - but the right giddy atmosphere
of imagined sexual intoxication is well evoked.
The second movement introduces us to the nightingale. The trumpet
of Gerard Presencer spins a delicate counterpoint around the
shy sound of saxophones, rising to an impassioned climax at
the return of the opening words “Here at last is a true
lover.” The middle section returns us to the student -
“If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me”
- in choral music of bruising sensitivity before the dance music
from the opening movement returns. At the end we return to the
nightingale and her gentler music. Incidentally the words in
the booklet contain a misquotation of Wilde’s text in
the line “what I shy of he suffers,” where the word
“shy” should clearly read “sing”. The
chorus sing the incorrect version of the phrase, which is nonsense
in the context.
The third movement, the longest, combines dialogue between the
red rose tree and the nightingale where they seal her fatal
bargain before phrases from Wilde describing the end of her
song. The music grows more jazzily violent, but the nightingale’s
“one last song” although as wild as the text states
is surely not cathartic enough for the “song that is perfected
by death” - positive shades of Tristan here in
Wilde’s writing. Per Gade’s electric guitar solo
just seems the wrong sort of sound, although it is superbly
played and does achieve the right sense of wildness. The sense
of romantic tragedy is missing, although Presencer is beautifully
expressive in his depiction of the nightingale’s death.
The last movement sets an abridged version of the final confrontation
between the student and his beloved, ending with his flippant
words “What a silly thing love is. I will go back to my
books.” It opens with a gentle chorus reprising the line
“If I bring you a red rose, you will dance with me”
around which Presencer weaves a charmed and magical counterpoint.
The women of the choir produce a suitable bitchy tone for the
beloved’s rejection of the proffered rose, echoed with
some sarcastically loaded sneers from the men and some really
sleazy playing from the band. In my own setting of this final
scene I allowed the fragments of the nightingale’s song
which had accompanied the student’s final words to coalesce
back into their original unity, concluding the score with a
sense of consolation which Wilde’s darker ending does
not really justify; Siobhan Lamb does the same here, with text
reprised from the first movement to accompany the musing meditation
of Presencer. This makes for a most satisfying conclusion.
In short, although I must confess a personal adoration for this
story which may well colour my impressions of the music, this
setting by Siobhan Lamb is by and large a gem. She clearly loves
the story as much as I do. The playing throughout is quite excellent
and the recording is well-balanced and forward.
While we’re on the subject of settings of Oscar Wilde’s
fairy stories, how about somebody re-releasing Argo’s
excellent 1967 LP recording (ZNF5) of the late Malcolm Williamson’s
beautiful one-act opera The happy prince?
Paul Corfield Godfrey
Gerard Presencer (trumpet)
