La princesse jaune is an opéra comique

Opéra comique

Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 in one act and five scenes by composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...

 to a French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Louis Gallet

Louis Gallet

Louis Gallet was an inexhaustible French writer of operatic libretti, plays, romances, memoirs, pamphlets, and innumerable articles, who is remembered above all for his adaptations of fiction—and Scripture— to provide librettos of cantatas and opera, notably by composers Georges...

. The opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 premiered at the Opéra-Comique

Opéra-Comique

The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

 (Salle Favart Theatre) in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 on 12 June 1872.

Like many French artists at this time, Saint-Saëns was influenced by the Japonism

Japonism

Japonism, or Japonisme, the original French term, was first used in 1872 by Jules Claretie in his book L'Art Francais en 1872 and by Philippe Burty in Japanisme III. La Renaissance Literaire et Artistique in the same year...

 movement in Paris. He appealed to this public taste by choosing a story about Japanese princess, although it is set in the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. The music is characterized by a "light and brisk" quality that uses pentatonic harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 to evoke an "oriental" sound. The story follows Kornélis, a student who is fascinated by all things Japanese, and his cousin Léna, who is in love with Kornélis. Kornélis, however, is too obsessed with his portrait of Ming, a Japanese girl, to notice his cousin's affections for him. In a fantastical dream caused by a potion, Kornélis is transported to Japan. At first enthralled, he eventually becomes disillusioned as he comes to the realization that he is in love with Léna.

History

Although La princesse jaune is the third opera that Saint-Saëns composed, it was the first of his operas to be mounted on the opera stage. It was also his first collaboration with Louis Gallet, who would go on to write the librettos for several more operas and become a close friend of Saint-Saëns. La princesse jaune was commissioned for the Opéra-Comique by the company's director, Camille du Locle

Camille du Locle

Camille du Locle was a French theatre director and a librettist. He was born in Orange, France. From 1862 he served as assistant to his father-in-law, Émile Perrin at the Paris Opéra, moving in 1870 to the Opéra-Comique....

, as compensation for not being able to mount Saint-Saëns's other opera, Le timbre d’argent

Le timbre d’argent

Le timbre d’argent is an opéra fantastique in four acts by composer Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. Although completed in 1865, the opera did not receive its premiere performance until 23 February 1877, when it was presented by Albert Vizentini's Théâtre...

, as promised due to financial reasons. At the opera's 1872 premiere, it was grouped into a set of one-act operas which included Emile Paladilhe

Emile Paladilhe

Émile Paladilhe was a French composer of the late romantic period.-Biography:Émile Paladilhe was born in Montpellier. He was a musical child prodigy, and moved from his home in the south of France to Paris to begin his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris at age 10...

’s Le passant and Georges Bizet

Georges Bizet

Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...

’s Djamileh

Djamileh

Djamileh is an opéra comique in one act by Georges Bizet to a libretto by Louis Gallet, based on an oriental tale, Namouna, by Alfred de Musset.-Composition history:...

. The evening was a complete flop and music critics were hostile to all three operas, a fact not surprising for Saint-Saëns, as critics were regularly hostile towards his music during this point in his career. The Opéra-Comique gave four more performances of the opera that season before they dropped it from their repertoire.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 12 June 1872 (Conductor: Adolphe Deloffre Adolphe Deloffre Louis Michel Adolphe Deloffre was a French violinist and conductor active in London and Paris, who conducted several important operatic premieres in the latter city, particularly by Charles Gounod and Georges Bizet.... )
Kornélis	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Paul Lhérie Paul Lhérie Paul Lhérie , was a French tenor, then baritone, later a vocal teacher, most famous for creating the role of Don José in Bizet's Carmen.-Life and career:...
Léna	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Alice Ducasse Alice Ducasse Anne-Elisa Alice Ducasse, born 1846 in Valparaiso, , was an opera singer and teacher active in Paris.As a member of the company at the Théâtre Lyrique under Pasdeloup and Vizentini she sang various roles at that theatre, creating Mab in Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth, as well as Nérine in...

Synopsis

Place: Holland, at the home of Léna's parents

Time: Winter

Scene 1

Léna and her cousin Kornélis, who is a recent orphan, live with her parents. She enters his study one morning to find he is not there. The study is in disarray with books, papers, and Kornélis's half-finished artistic endeavours strewn all over the place. Many of the objects reflect his interest in Japan. Léna starts to clean up everything for him and notes that he must have stayed up working all night. She finds a poem that confirms her suspicion that he is in love with the Japanese woman painted on the panel hung in the cabinet. Exasperated, she admits her secret love for her cousin and expresses her jealousy and spite for having to compete with a mere image for her cousin's affections.

Scene 2

Kornélis returns to his room, absorbed in his thoughts. Léna asks him what he is so preoccupied with and whether he is happy. Kornélis evades her questions, but admits to his love for Japan and his desire to go there. An argument erupts when Léna seizes a small bottle that Kornélis brought back with him that morning, and of which he refuses to reveal the contents. She leaves his room in a huff.

Scene 3

Léna contemplates her cousin's behavior and begins to fret more and more over his obsessions. She wonders whether or not she should give up on him.

Scene 4

Kornélis resumes pursuing his love affair with Japan, particularly fixating on his portrait of Ming, after the departure of Léna. He takes out his potion, supposedly from the Orient, and drinks it. The potion contains opium

Opium

Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...

, and Kornélis continues his obsessive behavior in a drugged state.

Scene 5

Léna returns to Kornélis's room and finds him in a delirious state, lost in his daydreams. As Kornélis sinks deeper into his hallucinations, the Dutch cabinet transforms into a Japanese interior. Kornélis declares his passionate love to the woman who he thinks is Ming but is in fact a surprised Léna. She realizes that he is in a deluded state and rejects his advances before fleeing the room in fear of more erratic behavior. Kornélis eventually collapses on an armchair and the Dutch cabinet regains shape as he passes out. Léna, returning prudently, finds him in the armchair dreaming. He awakes and she angrily reproaches him for his wild behavior and his madness for loving a dream, a woman who only exists in his imagination. As she rants, Kornélis's eyes are opened and he becomes aware of how much he actually loves Léna. He offers an apology, which she hesitantly accepts. They admit their love for one another and the opera ends.

External links

• Libretto of La Princesse Jaune