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Vanessa is an opera in three (originally four) acts by Samuel Barber with an original English libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti. It was composed in 1956–1957 and was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 15, 1958, in a production designed by Cecil Beaton and conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos. Barber revised the opera in 1964, reducing the four acts to the three-act version most commonly performed today.
Synopsis
Time: About 1905.
Place: Vanessa's country house in a northern country.
Act 1
Vanessa, Erika, and the baroness await Anatol's arrival. Vanessa and Anatol were lovers twenty years before. She refuses to reveal her face until he says he still loves her. He does, but she does not recognize him. It is Anatol's son who has come. His father is dead. Erika and Anatol now enjoy the meal meant for Vanessa and his father.
Act 2
The baroness scolds Erika after Anatol seduces her. Erika loves him, but resists his marriage proposal because she doubts his sincerity. Vanessa tells her niece that she also loves Anatol, despite Erika's warning that he is not her former lover. The baroness tells Erika to fight for Anatol. She is unsure if he is worthy of her efforts. He again proposes, and she again declines.
Act 3
The doctor is drunk at a New Year's Eve ball. The baroness and Erika refuse to come to the party to hear his announcement of Anatol and Vanessa's engagement. The doctor goes to fetch them, while Vanessa tells Anatol her fears. Finally Erika returns, but faints, clutching her stomach, as the doctor makes the announcement. She recovers and flees to the lake as Anatol chases after her.
Act 4
Vanessa is happy when Erika is found alive. She asks Anatol why Erika is acting so strangely. He explains that Erika does not love him. Vanessa begs him to take her away. Erika confesses to the baroness that she was pregnant, but no longer. As Vanessa and Anatol prepare to leave, she asks Erika why she ran away. Erika says she was just being foolish. After the couple leave, Erika covers the mirrors and closes up the house, as Vanessa had done before her.
Source of the story
In many print media it says that the libretto of Gian-Carlo Menotti is based on a work of Isak Dinesen (pen name for Karen Blixen), described variously as a "short story" or "novella". However, the story is not found in any of Isak Dinesen's works. There is evidence of Samuel Barber's having read Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales, and the mistaking of the proper source may have come from a proclamation by Menotti and Barber, that the opera reproduced the "atmosphere" of Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales. According to Barbara B. Heyman,, "Menotti recalled, 'I was writing a libretto for Sam, and Sam is essentially a romantic personality...'" Menotti was "inspired by Isak Dinesen's stories, in particular her Seven Gothic Tales. He said, 'I felt that the atmosphere... would make a wonderful opera.' "
Karen Blixen was present at the premier of the opera on January 7, 1959, but part way through the performance she pleaded illness and left the theater. Her secretary wrote that Barber was "upset" by Blixen's premature departure from the opera. Karen Blixen made no public comment. (en.wikipedia.org)
Synopsis
Time: About 1905.
Place: Vanessa's country house in a northern country.
Act 1
Vanessa, Erika, and the baroness await Anatol's arrival. Vanessa and Anatol were lovers twenty years before. She refuses to reveal her face until he says he still loves her. He does, but she does not recognize him. It is Anatol's son who has come. His father is dead. Erika and Anatol now enjoy the meal meant for Vanessa and his father.
Act 2
The baroness scolds Erika after Anatol seduces her. Erika loves him, but resists his marriage proposal because she doubts his sincerity. Vanessa tells her niece that she also loves Anatol, despite Erika's warning that he is not her former lover. The baroness tells Erika to fight for Anatol. She is unsure if he is worthy of her efforts. He again proposes, and she again declines.
Act 3
The doctor is drunk at a New Year's Eve ball. The baroness and Erika refuse to come to the party to hear his announcement of Anatol and Vanessa's engagement. The doctor goes to fetch them, while Vanessa tells Anatol her fears. Finally Erika returns, but faints, clutching her stomach, as the doctor makes the announcement. She recovers and flees to the lake as Anatol chases after her.
Act 4
Vanessa is happy when Erika is found alive. She asks Anatol why Erika is acting so strangely. He explains that Erika does not love him. Vanessa begs him to take her away. Erika confesses to the baroness that she was pregnant, but no longer. As Vanessa and Anatol prepare to leave, she asks Erika why she ran away. Erika says she was just being foolish. After the couple leave, Erika covers the mirrors and closes up the house, as Vanessa had done before her.
Source of the story
In many print media it says that the libretto of Gian-Carlo Menotti is based on a work of Isak Dinesen (pen name for Karen Blixen), described variously as a "short story" or "novella". However, the story is not found in any of Isak Dinesen's works. There is evidence of Samuel Barber's having read Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales, and the mistaking of the proper source may have come from a proclamation by Menotti and Barber, that the opera reproduced the "atmosphere" of Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales. According to Barbara B. Heyman,, "Menotti recalled, 'I was writing a libretto for Sam, and Sam is essentially a romantic personality...'" Menotti was "inspired by Isak Dinesen's stories, in particular her Seven Gothic Tales. He said, 'I felt that the atmosphere... would make a wonderful opera.' "
Karen Blixen was present at the premier of the opera on January 7, 1959, but part way through the performance she pleaded illness and left the theater. Her secretary wrote that Barber was "upset" by Blixen's premature departure from the opera. Karen Blixen made no public comment. (en.wikipedia.org)
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Barber's 'Vanessa,' Long Neglected, Is Revived
By ALEX ROSS, 1995
Like many American operas, Samuel Barber's "Vanessa" started strong and then faded. Its initial reception at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 was wildly enthusiastic; Dimitri Mitropoulos, who conducted the first performance, exclaimed, "At last, an American grand opera!" But the Met lost interest in the work a few years later, and Cecil Beaton's sumptuous sets were destroyed in a 1973 fire. The Washington Opera's visually splendid new staging, a co-production with the Dallas Opera that opened on Saturday at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, is one of very few attempts at this score in recent decades.
The principal reason for the opera's neglect is probably Gian Carlo Menotti's soggy libretto, which aims for the Gothic passions of Isak Dinesen and the subtle epiphanies of Chekhov but instead achieves a kind of uneventful, unpoetic melodrama. Vanessa, the melancholy aristocrat, falls for the young, caddish Anatol, the son of her former lover. Erika, her no less melancholy niece, also sleeps with Anatol, becomes pregnant and aborts her child to avoid compromising her aunt. Vanessa goes off with Anatol, unaware of his worthlessness, while Erika stays home and withdraws from the world.
What this ponderous material does supremely well is play to the composer's strengths, particularly his penchant for melancholy rumination. Strangely, Barber felt the need to interrupt his rapt lyric passages with formulaic semi-dissonant exclamations that now sound a bit too close to 1950's film music. He overused the augmented triad, where major thirds are piled one on the other (this was also a favorite device of Bernard Herrmann, whose "Vertigo" score appeared the same year) and lapsed into Puccinisms at several passionate climaxes.
But never mind; "Vanessa," unlike many American operas for which great claims are made, has real musical substance and increases its hold on the audience as the evening goes on. Certain arias, including "Must the winter come so soon" and "Do not utter a word," are deservedly famous on their own, but what makes "Vanessa" worth reviving is the sustained masterliness of the last act, culminating in a glorious quintet and a deeply haunting final tableau. Barber never quite figured out how to write an evening-length opera, but his two attempts -- the other being "Antony and Cleopatra" -- are more gratifying than anything else in the American repertory. (...)
Barber's 'Vanessa,' Long Neglected, Is Revived
By ALEX ROSS, 1995
Like many American operas, Samuel Barber's "Vanessa" started strong and then faded. Its initial reception at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 was wildly enthusiastic; Dimitri Mitropoulos, who conducted the first performance, exclaimed, "At last, an American grand opera!" But the Met lost interest in the work a few years later, and Cecil Beaton's sumptuous sets were destroyed in a 1973 fire. The Washington Opera's visually splendid new staging, a co-production with the Dallas Opera that opened on Saturday at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, is one of very few attempts at this score in recent decades.
The principal reason for the opera's neglect is probably Gian Carlo Menotti's soggy libretto, which aims for the Gothic passions of Isak Dinesen and the subtle epiphanies of Chekhov but instead achieves a kind of uneventful, unpoetic melodrama. Vanessa, the melancholy aristocrat, falls for the young, caddish Anatol, the son of her former lover. Erika, her no less melancholy niece, also sleeps with Anatol, becomes pregnant and aborts her child to avoid compromising her aunt. Vanessa goes off with Anatol, unaware of his worthlessness, while Erika stays home and withdraws from the world.
What this ponderous material does supremely well is play to the composer's strengths, particularly his penchant for melancholy rumination. Strangely, Barber felt the need to interrupt his rapt lyric passages with formulaic semi-dissonant exclamations that now sound a bit too close to 1950's film music. He overused the augmented triad, where major thirds are piled one on the other (this was also a favorite device of Bernard Herrmann, whose "Vertigo" score appeared the same year) and lapsed into Puccinisms at several passionate climaxes.
But never mind; "Vanessa," unlike many American operas for which great claims are made, has real musical substance and increases its hold on the audience as the evening goes on. Certain arias, including "Must the winter come so soon" and "Do not utter a word," are deservedly famous on their own, but what makes "Vanessa" worth reviving is the sustained masterliness of the last act, culminating in a glorious quintet and a deeply haunting final tableau. Barber never quite figured out how to write an evening-length opera, but his two attempts -- the other being "Antony and Cleopatra" -- are more gratifying than anything else in the American repertory. (...)
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