Callirhoë (Callirhoe), op. 37, is a symphonic ballet with a libretto by Elzéard Rougier and music composed by Cécile Chaminade. The work premiered on March 16, 1888, at the Grand Théâtre de Marseille.

Composition

Cécile Chaminade composed her ballet in 1888 on a libretto by Elzéard Rougier, whose theme was inspired by that of Callirrhoe, a slave princess with whom Alcmaeon fell in love. Elzéard Rougier was inspired to write his libretto by reading a poem by Anacreon. He had first presented it to Benjamin Godard, but the latter, busy with his opera Jocelyn, referred the writer to Cécile Chaminade.

Plot

The action takes place in a town in Patras. Numerous adventures, including the transformation of Callirhoë into a marble statue, and despite the intervention of Venus, delay their union. Alcmaeon's slaves come to fill their amphorae at the fountain of a park by the sea. Callirhoë, a slave princess with whom Alcmaeon is in love, dreams only of regaining her freedom and thus refuses the young man's favors. Plunged into a deadly boredom, her companions invite her to dance. She sketches a few dance steps before withdrawing towards the sea. Alcmaeon arrives, interrupting the music and dances, looking for Callirhoë. When he finds her, he declares his love, but she remains stone-faced in the face of the warrior's pleas and prayers. He then decides to offer her precious goods: necklaces, bracelets, precious fabrics… It is a black scarf that catches her eye, and she drapes herself in it like a mourning garment, then sketches a few melancholic steps before moving away towards the sea. Alcmaeon, left alone, meditates on his situation, when a flash of lightning illuminates the statue of Venus, like an omen, pushing the warrior to make an offering to her. A religious procession then surrounds the statue of the goddess, under a dark sky, lavishing her with offerings and prayers until a ray of sunlight strikes the sea. Venus emerges from the sea in majesty, and comes to Alcmaeon, dismissing the crowd. Venus promises Alcmaeon the heart of Callirhoë, before sending Cupids to fetch the slave princess. Callirhoë resists the power of the goddess, the temptations of the Cupids, and the pleasures offered to her. Irritated, Venus orders her Cupids to pursue the princess with arrows, forcing the princess to flee until she throws herself into the sea from the top of a cliff. Venus then transforms Callirhoë into a marble statue. Alcmaeon is stunned, and Venus tells him to forget his painful love for the young woman, while explaining that the fountain from which he will drink will now be called the Callirhoë Fountain and that whoever drinks from it will be cured of the pain of love. But Alcmaeon prefers the suffering of a lost love to forgetting the one he loved. It is then that shepherds and shepherdesses touched by the pain of love appear. Alcmaeon invites them to drink the water from the fountain, which they do, and then a joyous festival begins to celebrate the newfound freedom of their hearts. The master of the place, however, is still not ready to forget Callirhoë and prefers to die. Venus, touched by the love the young man feels, then revives the statue. Callirhoë comes back to life and seems to be waking from a dream: she can finally love Alcmaeon. Everyone takes part in this union, from the goddess to the slaves, all celebrating this finally acquired happiness in a bounding and radiant farandole.

Structure

While the ballet includes twenty-one movements, there are also two versions, which do not have the same number of movements. The orchestral suite includes four movements, while the piano suite contains six.

Ballet

The ballet consists of twenty-one parts:

• Prelude

• Scherzo (incidental music)

• Pas des Amphores

• Entrance of Alcmaeon (incidental music)

• Pas du Voile (Veil Dance)

• Pas des Écharpes (Scarf Dance)

• Storm (incidental music)

• Religious March – Procession – Entrance of Venus

• Callirhoë is delivered to Venus and the Cupids (incidental music)

• Scherzetto

• Divertissement

• Andante

• Warrior's Dance

• Variation

• Oriental Dance

• Waltz

• Includes:

  • Callirhoë is changed into a statue by Venus

  • Alcmaeon's Despair

• Pastoral Scene

• The statue comes to life. Callirhoë finally opens her heart to love

• Final Waltz

Orchestral Suite

It consists of four movements:

• Prelude

• Pas des écharpes

• Scherzettino

• Pas de cymbales

Piano Suite

It consists of six movements:

• Air de ballet

• Pas des amphores

• Pas des écharpes (Scarf Dance)

• Callirhoë

• Danse pastorale

• Dans orientale

Premiere

The work premiered at the Grand Théâtre de Marseille on March 16, 1888, due to the difficulty of staging a ballet in Paris. The staging was done by Victor Natta. The work was performed under the direction of Édouard Brunel. The third movement, the "Scherzettino," was encored on the night of the premiere. It was performed again in several cities in the south of France, such as in Lyon in 1891, in Bordeaux in 1901, and in Cannes in 1913. The work was also performed again in Toulouse in 1910. It was also performed in Deauville, although the dates are unknown.

Criticism and Legacy

Premiere and the 1890s

At the premiere in Marseille, the ballet was well-received and the composer was considered a good successor to Léo Delibes. The work's dissemination, however, was through concerts rather than stage performances. In the newspaper Angers-artiste, Callirhoë was described as benefiting from the elegance and variety of its motifs. The newspaper mentioned the work's publication by Enoch and Costallat, but also highlighted the difficulty of the piece for pianists. In La Vedette, Callirhoë was acclaimed, praising both Cécile Chaminade's music and Elzéard Rougier's poem. Le Figaro had a dual impact at the time of the premiere: it mentioned it in a short article as a success, but also offered a piano reduction of the Danse pastorale.

Charles Lamoureux programmed excerpts from an orchestral suite drawn from the work as early as 1889, but this orchestral suite would not be played in its entirety until 1890 by the Orchestre Colonne. Some critics found it resembled Camille Saint-Saëns's symphonic poem Le Rouet d'Omphale. However, beneath the praise for Cécile Chaminade lay misogynistic prejudices, as exemplified by Gil Blas, which wrote, "The ideas in it have a feminine aspect that deliciously contrasts with the writing, which has a completely masculine sureness of hand." On December 15, 1889, the Concerts Lamoureux programmed two excerpts from the orchestral suite, the Scherzettino and the Pas des Cymbales, alongside Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 5, the duet from Hector Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict, a piano concerto by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (either Piano Concerto No. 1 or Piano Concerto No. 2), Rêves (one of the Wesendonck-Lieder) and Wotan's Farewell (from Act III of Die Walküre) by Richard Wagner, and finally the overture to Euryanthe by Carl Maria von Weber.

On November 30, 1890, the work was performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet by the Orchestre Colonne among other works such as Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8, variations by Robert Schumann, a scherzo by Camille Saint-Saëns, the symphonic poem Psyché by César Franck, as well as the march from Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser. The press confirmed, after this concert, the public's interest in the work, and particularly in the third movement, the Scherzettino, while congratulating its conciseness and orchestration, the latter being of "a very curious ingenuity and a perfect success." The same year, at the Monte Carlo Casino, the orchestral suite was performed for the first time with success, alongside works such as a "Symphony in E-flat," which is probably Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 39, the symphonic overture Béatrice by Émile Bernard, and symphonic fragments from Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila.

In February 1891, the first performance of the ballet took place at the Grand Théâtre de Lyon, under the direction of Alexandre Luigini and danced by Mlles Monge, Coronna, Amalia, and Boggio, with great success.

In 1892, the orchestral suite was performed at the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco for the second time, alongside works such as Károly Goldmark's Symphony No. 1, symphonic fragments from Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and the pastiches of airs and dances from Léo Delibes's Le Roi s'amuse. In parallel, pieces from the work were also played at the Salle Érard in Paris for four hands by the composer herself accompanied by Léon Delafosse, in a concert focused on the works of Cécile Chaminade, including one of her two trios for piano, violin, and cello, romances among which was L'Anneau d'argent, chamber music pieces, as well as fragments from La Sévillane. Also that year, the ballet was revived at the Grand Théâtre de Marseille, this time with Mlles Rigantes, Boissé, Ferraio, and Itey on a choreography by M. Poigny.

Pieces from Callirhoë were played in concert, such as at the Salle Pleyel on March 25, 1893, where parts of the ballet were "superiorly interpreted" on the piano by Mme Mitault-Steiger and the composer herself. On June 16, 1893, a concert was given at the Salle du Trocadéro for the benefit of Mme A. Samary, a former member of the Comédie-Française. In addition to Callirhoë, the following were performed: an organ sonata by Felix Mendelssohn, the melodies Manon au Cours-la-Reine and Les Ailes by Charles-René, a scene from Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice, the grand aria from Giacomo Meyerbeer's Le Prophète, an aria from Jean-Baptiste Lully's Les Saisons, the duet from Édouard Lalo's Le Roi d'Ys, a mazurka by Henryk Wieniawski, I Tre Giorni by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, and a Fantaisie for cello. Two fragments from Callirhoë were performed by Cécile Chaminade herself, assisted by Gabrielle Turpin: the Intermède and the Pas du Voile, which was encored. Meanwhile, on May 3, 1893, the ballet was revived at the Grand-Théâtre de Marseille, with the same success, danced by Mlles de Consolé, Boine, and Seguin. Finally, on December 31, 1893, at the Jardin d'acclimatation in Paris, the orchestral suite was performed with the overture to Louis-Aimé Maillart's Les Dragons de Villars, Jules Massenet's Scènes alsaciennes, Charles Gounod's La Vision de Jeanne d'Arc, Georges Bizet's overture Patrie, Ludwig van Beethoven's "Sérénade" (probably the String Trio No. 2), and Giacomo Meyerbeer's Schiller-Marsch.

In 1895, the ballet was performed again in Marseille, always with success. The orchestral suite, for its part, was played at the Casino municipal de Nice, during a concert where, among the moderns of the time, the Nocturne from Act II of La Navarraise and the Méditation from Thaïs by Jules Massenet were also performed. This time, however, it was Le Pas des Cymbales that was noted. That same year, Émile Risacher published his ninth Annuaire des artistes et de l'enseignement dramatique et musical, in which he mentioned Cécile Chaminade through Callirhoë and her dramatic symphony Les Amazones, each of the two works having been performed by Lyon and Marseille.

In 1898, the Pas du Voile and the Scherzettino from the orchestral suite were played at the Concerts Colonne.

1900s

In 1901, the Istanbul newspaper Istanboul announced that the catalog of Cécile Chaminade's works (published by Durand, Hamelle, Heugel, Grus, Ricordi, and Enoch) classified the music of Callirhoë as dramatic music. The same year, at the Nouveau-Théâtre, the Colonne concerts again played the piece with the overture to Euryanthe and the Concertstuck for piano by Carl Maria von Weber, Cécile Chaminade's Trio No. 2, and Lola by Camille Saint-Saëns.

In 1906, the Revue musicale de Lyon mentioned a new performance of the ballet, described as a ballet-pantomime, in Marseille, as a counterpart to Camille Saint-Saëns's ballet Javotte.

1910s

In 1910, during a "Chaminade recital" at the Salle Femina on June 8, 1910, works by the composer were played on the piano, including Callirhoë, performed on two pianos by Cécile Chaminade herself and a pianola, a recital that was very successful. This year also marked the first performances of the ballet at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. Omer Guiraud mentioned the popularity of the piano versions of the pieces from this ballet, especially the Pas des Écharpes. The author praised "the grace and distinction of the melodic thought," the "very elegant harmonies," and "a colorful and modern orchestration," although he showed sexism by specifying "that one easily forgets that it was a woman's hand that wrote it." During this performance, Mlle Colombo interpreted the role of Callirhoë, Mlle Sacchi in the role of Venus, as well as Mlle Vendenesse (in the role of Myrtha) and Mme Amélie. The orchestra was conducted by Hippolyte Tartanac. It was one of the best successes of that year. The ballet was performed on November 17, 1910. The work was so appreciated that on November 22, 1910, when Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore was supposed to be performed, the divertissement was not danced and the evening ended with Callirhoë.

During the Cannes performance of 1913, we learn that the work was performed there after Le Cœur dormant by Philippe Bellenot. Le Monde artiste also specifies that, if the work was performed in France, it was also performed abroad and gained a worldwide reputation. The work was danced by Mlles Pozzi and Charbonnel and was strongly applauded by the public. A little earlier the same year, in Nice, the "Chaminade recital" organized at the Salle Femina in 1910 was repeated, again on pianola and accompanied by the composer herself.

1920s

On August 29 and 30, 1921, the orchestral suite was played in concert at the Salle Marivaux as a musical interlude.

The work was performed until May 9, 1927, when it was broadcast on the radio during the "Soirée artistique" of the École supérieure des P.T.T. On August 8, 1927, on the occasion of the composer's seventieth birthday, Callirhoë was played on the Eiffel Tower radio by Mario Cazes's orchestra.

In 1927, excerpts from the Callirhoë suite were played on the radio in London.

In 1928, the London radio replayed Callirhoë.

On May 25, 1929, it was Algiers' turn to broadcast the orchestral suite via radio.

1930s

Radio-Alger rebroadcast Callirhoë on September 13, 1931.

In 1932, the work was played in Strasbourg, in a version broadcast by radio on April 5.

On May 21, 1933, fragments of the work, taken from the piano suite as well as the ballet, were played on Radio-Paris: the Danse orientale, the Pas des Écharpes, the Danse de Callirhoë, the Andante, and the Valse.

On July 11, 1934, the orchestral suite was broadcast on the Eiffel Tower radio. On November 25 of the same year, the orchestral suite was played on the Toulouse-Pyrénées radio frequency at 12:15 p.m.

On April 26, 1935, the piece was replayed on the Toulouse-Pyrénées radio at the same time slot. The same year, the work was broadcast on November 7 on the Paris-P.T.T. radio.

On February 28, 1936, Strasbourg broadcast the piece on the radio. The month of March saw four broadcasts: on March 6, it was the Alger-P.T.T. radio broadcast station's turn to play the work. On March 13, it was Rennes-P.T.T. that broadcast the work. On March 21, it was the turn of the Rennes-Bretagne radio to broadcast the work. Finally, on March 27, the work was rebroadcast on the Alger-P.T.T. radio. On April 11, it was the Poste-Parisien's turn to broadcast the piece. On April 17, it was the first broadcast of excerpts of the work in Morocco, on the channel Radio-Marc, which broadcast the Andante and the Valse. On June 12, Callirhoë was broadcast on the Radio-Paris radio. The same channel rebroadcast the work on August 6 and September 28. On December 25, the work was broadcast on the Toulouse-P.T.T. radio.

In 1937, it was broadcast on Radio-Paris on May 3. On May 14, it was the Paris-P.T.T. radio that broadcast the piece. Two excerpts were also broadcast abroad, the Danse de l'Écharpe and the Danse de Callirhoë, in Droitwich on May 16, 1937. On July 30, Paris-P.T.T. broadcast the work. It was played a final time on Marseille radio on November 29. On December 3, it was the Rhone-Alpes radio Alpes-Grenoble that broadcast the work.

In 1938, the work continued to be played and broadcast, as on January 29, in Algiers. On June 11, during the radio broadcast on Alpes-Grenoble of the Festival-Chaminade where the work was performed with La Chanson du ou, L'Heure du mystère, La Danse créole, L'Été, La Morena, Les Papillons, and the Orchestral Suite. The work was broadcast on October 25 on Radio-Paris and on October 29 in Strasbourg. The Festival-Chaminade was repeated and rebroadcast on December 16, this time with La Danse créole, La Moréna, L'Été, and the Orchestral Suite.

Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callirhoë_%28ballet%29?utm_source=chatgpt.com / License: CC BY-SA 4.0