Sulamite

La Sulamite

scène lyrique

for mezzo-soprano and female chorus

Chabrier had all kinds of bad luck as a composer - the worst, in his opinion, being the immediate closure, through bankruptcy or fire, of whatever theatre his latest opera had opened in. But the greatest professional misfortune of all, though he was not himself aware of it, was the lamentable quality of his literary collaborators, particularly those he trusted most, like the Parnassian poets Catulle Mendès and Jean Richepin. It was Richepin who, as well as being one of several incompetent writers involved in the adaptation of Le Roi malgré lui from farce to opéra-comique, plundered the Song of Solomon for the text of La Sulamite.

In spite of the awkward verse, the contrived rhymes and the confused imagery, however, Richepin did give Chabrier what he wanted - which, quite clearly, was a way of writing a piece of music equivalent to the sexual act while remaining perfectly respectable to all outward appearances. Richepin’s programme note hints at the situation without, of course, being explicit about it: “Everyone knows, by reputation at least, the Song of Songs, that marvel­lous effusion of love, at the same time lyrical and passionate, where the most subtle mystical ideas are expressed and developed in images of the most ardent sensuality. La Sulamite is like a digest of it…The Shulamite, saddened at first by the absence of her beloved, soon senses his approach, calls to him, sees him run towards her, and finally sinks into the hoped for ecstasy, among the loud congratulations of her companions, happy in her good fortune.” Reviewing the first performance of La Sulamite at a Lamoureux concert in 1885, the critic Alfred Bruneau saw through the biblical vestments to a “sustained outpouring of passion formidable in its final paroxysm.”

Although the excitement comes at the end, Chabrier’s score is inspired from the very beginning, as Debussy was to acknowledge when he came to write the opening of La Damoiselle élue in 1888. There is something of Ravel’s early Shéhérazade Overture too in the exotic main theme of the work introduced by the chorus on the words Pourquoi fuir nos jeux et leur douceur? and then devel­oped by the orchestra. The only other recurring motif of any significance is a noble horn-call variant of that theme first heard half-way through the opening chorus. The main theme is recalled in different forms with each of the beloved attributes celebrated in the first solo section, which is one of the most sensual of all examples of Chabrier’s scoring for female voice.

The choral writing offers a brief opéra-bouffe contrast as the Shulamite’s companions tease her about the fidelity of the nightingale and a (for Chabrier) rare exercise in imitative counterpoint as they express their fear for her beloved’s safety in the desert. But, once she hears his virile hunting horn, the mood of the work becomes ever more ecstatic, culminating in a finale where the exalted solo voice rides through the excited yelps of the chorus to an ending as little inhibited as anything of its time. The Danse générale at the end of Daphnis et Chloé was written nearly a quarter of a century later.