Ali-Baba Overture

It would take a long time to prove it but it would be a pretty safe bet that there is not one example of the waltz in all the works - the dozens of operas, the symphony, the six string quartets, not to mention the church music - of Luigi Cherubini. Brought up in Florence on diet of Palestrina and opera seria, he settled in Paris in 1788, long before the waltz had developed into anything like its Viennese or Parisian forms. By the time of his death in the same city 54 years later, he would have heard many waltzes - including above all those of Chopin, whom he knew very well - but he had been set for so long in his strictly classical style that he would scarcely have been able to make way for the waltz in his own music. He does, however, represent an important link between Paris and Vienna, partly through his interest in Haydn and Mozart but mainly through an exchange of ideas with Beethoven, who learned as much from Cherubini’s music as Cherubini learned from his.

Cherubini’s one, misguided attempt to bring himself up to date was in his last opera, Ali-Baba or the Forty Thieves, which he wrote in 1833 after deserting the theatre in disillusion for as long as twenty years. Although the opera is described as a “tragedy,” the overture could almost be an introduction to a pantomime: the exaggerated dynamic contrasts obtained by means of an enlarged brass section, the dramatic pauses, the frequent crashings and tinklings of percussion instruments regarded at the time as “exotic,” all these have an undeniably comic side to them. The intervention of more lyrical material, including one of Cherubini’s most attractive melodies, is very welcome. The peculiarly insistent Presto coda, based on ballet music from the second act of the opera, reverts however to pantomime.

Gerald Larner©

Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842)

Asked one day in 1817 who was the greatest living composer, apart from himself, Beethoven is said to have looked puzzled for a moment and then to have exclaimed “Cherubini!” Although the initial puzzlement is at least as significant as the eventual answer, Beethoven could surely have chosen no one else at that time. Certainly, if an elevated classical style was a necessary qualification for greatness, no composer practised it more consistently and more successfully than Cherubini. Brought up in Florence on a regime of strict Palestrinan counterpoint, experienced in both opera seria and opera buffa, inspired by the radical developments in the music of Haydn and Mozart, long resident in Paris where he had absorbed the operatic reforms of Gluck and rescued the repertoire of the Opéra-Comique from triviality, he was the high priest of the classical style. Beethoven, who had the opportunity to meet the composer and to hear his work performed in Vienna, was clearly aware of his example when writing Fidelio.

Much more interested in church music than opera in the last thirty years of his long life and universally celebrated for his Requiem in D minor - which Beethoven preferred even to Mozart’s - Cherubini would probably not be too disappointed to find that all but a few of his thirty or forty operas are now completely forgotten. He would, on the other hand, be surprised to learn that most of the eight or nine which are not forgotten are remembered only for their overtures. He was, in fact, a master of the art of the overture, resourceful in setting the atmosphere of the opera in comparatively few bars, imaginative in orchestration, expressive in harmony and - since he was writing in the tradition of the Italian operatic sinfonia rather than the Viennese sonata-form overture - dramatically flexible in construction. It was through his overtures as much as his operas that, by way of composers like Berlioz in France and Weber in Germany, Cherubini’s influence extended well into the romantic movement - even as far as Wagner.

A rare, though entertaining, miscalculation among his overtures is the one he provided in 1833 for Ali-Baba - the opera with which, after deserting the theatre in disillusion for as long as twenty years, Cherubini made one last effort to score a success at the Paris Opéra. Drawing on material for an earlier unfinished opera, Koukourgi, and described as a tragédie lyrique, Ali-Baba is a serious work with an overture which sounds anything but serious. Facing for the first time the challenge of the extravagantly colourful, rhythmically dynamic Rossini overture, Cherubini both exaggerated the exotic element on percussion and overdid the driving coda with irresistibly comic effect. In these circumstances, the intervention of more lyrical material, including one of Cherubini’s most attractive melodies, is particularly welcome.