Notes
1 Consider,
for instance the vast number of operas based on Sir Walter
Scott's work. For a survey see Jerome Mitchell's two
volumes, The Walter Scott Operas, and More Scott
Operas. Sometimes librettists also omitted "Gothic"
elements in their literary sources. Rossini's
Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra (1815) was based on
Sophia Lee's The Recess (1786). But it focuses on
the historical romance rather than its family secrets and
threats of incest.
2 Though
marginal, this opera remains on the fringes of the
repertoire. Two recordings of the complete work are
currently available on CD.
3 Though La
Nonne sanglante closed after eleven performances, it
nevertheless leads a shadowy afterlife as a printed
libretto, a manuscript score in the Bibliothèque de
l'Opéra, and Bizet's reduction of the score for
voice and piano. It has attracted some scholarly interest.
In 1998 Bizet's score was reprinted by Music-Edition Lucie
Galland (Heilbronn, Germany), and in 1999 a volume called
Charles Gounod: La Nonne sanglante. Dossier de presse
parisenne (1854) was published by the same company. The
latter makes contemporary reviews readily available. I am
aware of one recording of one aria from the opera, a 1994
CD (now out of print) called Mélodies de
Gounod (Ligia Digital). French Amazon.com lists it but
describes it as "unavailable." It contains one aria, "Le
calme," which, I would guess, is Rodolfe's aria from Act 3
scene 4, beginning "Un air plus pur. . . ."
4 Lewis's use
of the word "bleeding" is interesting, since the ghost
merely wears a blood-stained habit. But he probably could
not have called her "the bloody nun," given the taboo on
that word in English. The hints of physicality and process
suggested by the present participle may be a Kristevan
example of "poetic language," in which this word "bleeding"
implies the horrifying disruptiveness of "female"
materiality. Certainly the nun, who has sworn to renounce
sexuality and motherhood, does, in breaking her vows and
murdering her lover, embody such a horror of the dangerous
female.
5 Maria
has had at least seventy-five revivals, as recently as
1982. The Bleeding Nun of this story is not a phantom, but
a woman, another unfaithful nun, who bleeds to death on
stage, singing to her lover Corrado, "Now there awaits me a
tomb of evil fame/ Without prayers . . . without tears . .
. already I am falling, the icy hand of Death/ Falls heavy
upon my breast!/ You deprived me of life . . . and heaven!"
Corrado responds, "Ah forgive me!" She responds, "I forgive
you, I love you still. . . ." And falls dead at his feet. A
complete recording is available from Opera Rara (1998), and
many individual arias have been recorded.
6 Gueymard
made his debut in the title role of Robert le diable
and also sang at the five-hundredth performance in 1867. He
created Jonas in Le Prophète, Henri in Les
Vêpres siciliennes (1855) and Adoniram in
Gounod's La Reine de Saba (1862). He sang at Covent
Garden as well as in Paris and with the French Opera
Company in New Orleans (The New Grove Dictionary of
Opera, Vol. II, 564.)
7 The printed
libretto spells the name of the woman performing "La Nonne"
as "Weirtemberger." All contemporary reviews, however,
including Gautier's, who was acquainted with her, spell the
name "Wertheimber."
8 For a
definition of the genre, see M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet,
"Grand Opera," New Grove Dictionary of Opera,
vol.10, pp. 289-294.
9 Scribe and
Delavigne offered the libretto to Berlioz, who composed a
scene and then abandoned the project, and to Donizetti who
was not interested in this work. According to Gustave
Chaduil, writing in Le Siècle for November
21, 1854, the libretto was also offered to Auber,
Meyerbeer, Félicien David, Halévy, and Verdi,
seemingly to most opera composers of the day. (Murphy,
Kerry ed. Charles Gounod: La Nonne sanglante. Dossier de
presse parisienne (1854). Heilbron, Germany:
Musik-Edition Lucie Galland, 1999.) See also Jacques
Joly.
10 For a
discussion of Gothic conventions as manifesting anxieties
about the structure of the patriarchal family, see Anne
Williams, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic.
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