And thoughts about the last-named passage are among those that have lingered with me since that last post. The Father has always seemed to me the most interestingly developed character in Louise. While we must recognize that the opera is first “about” Louise’s step out into the world, into her sexuality, and into the ever-beckoning life of the modern city, and that in that tale The Father occupies the position of antagonist; and while we deplore The Father’s turn to tyranny and near-violence, in the end we feel towards him the sort of mournful pull we usually associate with the fall of a tragic hero. He’s done everything right, working hard to the point of sacrificing his health and mediating the tensions between mother and daughter, for love of Louise and his own sense of honor. He has told himself that one must accept one’s lot, that the closeness of his little family and the comforts of routine will make up for lack of means and navigating skills in a changing world, and will be enough to keep his daughter down on the farm after she’s seen Paree. Now all that is crashing down. After his outburst of “Les pauvres gens, peuvent-ils être heureux?” has turned to complaints about the ingratitude of the young, there is a brief interlude that includes sad little touches of “Depuis le jour“—music of Louise’s inner thoughts of Julien and freedom—during which Louise, who has been sewing, rises and opens a window. The Mother is also present, taking it all in and showing compassion for The Father, who watches Louise closely. He starts in again, singing first of the  pride in seeing her grow from infancy into a beautiful young woman sought by “all the gallants.” Louise weeps, The Mother moves in supportively. But then The Father’s plea again turns unsympathetic, as he begins cursing the marauder (that would be Julien, Louise’s lover) who has stolen this treasure from her loving parents. Louise slams down the window; The Mother exits for the kitchen.

I assume that length—along with worries about The Father going on too long, repeating himself—is the reason for deleting “Voir naître.” But the self-destructive obsessiveness of The Father is the point. In each of these passages, he begins with lamentations that earn some sympathy, or at the least indulgence, only to careen into accusations that precipitate the final disaster. His final card to throw on the table, the Berceuse, is heart-rending for us but intolerable for Louise, for it infantilizes her in exactly the way Julien scorned in Act 3.  Considered independently and purely as music, “Voir naïtre” offers nothing particularly outstanding. But as part of the musical fabric and of the dramatic progression, it very much belongs.

Another sequence I become more intrigued with each time out is the Bohemian intrusion and the Coronation of the Muse (Scenes 2 and 3 of Act 3). As with La vie d’un poete, this was part of the material Charpentier was wrestling with before it was worked into his operas, and the Couronnement proper was performed as a separate pièce d’occasion both before and after the premiere of Louise. To the ear, these scenes (really a continuous theatrical event) have a unitary celebrative tone, albeit with an edge of countercultural mockery of a state ceremony. But there is a lot going on inside it. There are banner bearers and lantern bearers, grisettes and beggars, Louise’s former co-workers from the atelier, some of the street people (including the Junkman) from the opening scene of Act 2, children with flowers, a Parade of Pleasure, a danseuse with a little supporting corps, Daughters of Joy who bear in the Noctambulist/King of Fools on a litter. At the apotheosis, there is Bengal fire. Not all the residents of La Butte are pleased with the Bohemian disturbers of the peace. Some of the kids and beggars react with the same nose-thumbing dismissal they would at a true state occasion. (At one point, the stage directions assign varied inflectional instructions to subgroups who are singing only the exclamation “ah!” underneath the lovers’ avowals, the girls “admiringly,” the mothers “indignantly,” the young men “delightedly,” and the fathers “derisively.” What musical texture is meant to emerge from this mélange I’m not sure.)