The music of the opera

It is the nature of opera that the story is told through words, music and visual performance equally – each adding to and deepening the other aspects. In a chamber opera running less than an hour, the music needs to make an immediate impact, helping to create character and place as much as provide an accompaniment for words. In Hidden Lovers the music is provided by the soloists along with a string trio (violin, viola and cello) with some hand-percussion. There is also a small chorus of female voices playing the forest spirits/souls of dead lovers; it is also often used quite instrumentally, setting mood and scene.  Le me introduce you to two elements of the musical material: folk melodies, and vocal style.

To allude to the Provence countryside, I have gathered four Provençale folk melodies, using them almost as motifs:

1.     Èr dou guet – an enigmatic tune with a wandering contour, with triplets and pentuplets a-plenty: it permeates the prelude and is used throughout the traveller’s journey in many guises, not all obvious or recognisable.  I’m thinking of it as his wanderings across the undulating countryside, but it also relates to his psychological journey.

2.     Laoura is a simple, rather innocent tune; I turned it into the lovers’ duet, lilting and floating, later returning to the traveller’s thoughts unbidden.

3.     La passado has a question and answer structure, with repeats and rather uneven rhythms – I altered it and used it as the music in the tavern scene rather like background muzak; it represents warmth and community, conversation and communication.

4.     Farandole: another compound-time melody, this time in a major key and with a wandering contour, that I’ve used for the farmyard and the old couple: it feels to me like a combination of the lovers’ Laoura  and the tavern/community’s passado. It gets distorted in the final scene…

Vocal style

Each of the characters has a unique melodic style, helping to create their personality in the brief time we have to get to know them in the opera.

The Old Hussar, who only has a few bars, has a slightly fragmented style and repeats the ends of his phrases, alluding to his social isolation, age and hearing impairment. His wife on the other hand almost exclusively sings in rising phrases based on scales or arpeggios – she is opening up to the Traveller, curious and somewhat naïvely positive.

Her serving girl Amelie, a yound and (I think) strong-willed woman, sings in a fast, expressive recitative with wide leaps and excited rhythms as she tells her dramatic story.

Paul the publican is probably the most obviously stylised singer, with his patter-style recitative – he is a strong contrast to the Traveller, whose irregular, almost lyrical recitative expresses his inner romantic, and his self-confessed lack of certainty in life. The sweetest, most cliched music comes at the end of scene 2 as the Traveller marvels at the beauty of the old couples’ love and lifestyle.

The music’s saccharine quality hints that there might be something false or unrealistic about his perception…

Janet Oates