Lewis/Gounod's Bleeding _Nonne_: Introduction and Translation of the Scribe/Delavigne Libretto

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.