Pénélope - Gabriel Fauré (1913)

Fauré had a horror of vivid colours and effects, and showed little interest in combinations of tone-colours, which he thought were too commonly a form of self-indulgence and a disguise for the absence of ideas. In his lyric drama Pénélope, begun in 1907, Fauré found a subject that enchanted him, and this work contains his personal solution to the problem of post-Wagnerian opera; Pénélope can be described as a ‘song opera’, since it uses neither the classical aria with recitative nor Wagner’s continuous melody but rather a sequence of short lyrical flights, without repetition, linked by passages of arioso and, less often, plain recitative, sometimes without accompaniment. Pénélope thus meets the challenge of maintaining a balance between the voices and the orchestra, whose role is important because it provides a commentary on the action by means of several leitmotifs in the manner of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, which in other respects it does not resemble at all. Like Pelléas and Wozzeck, Pénélope proposed an original solution, but like them it had no true successors. Yet Fauré felt too much distaste for theatrical effects to be able to create a popular work. Pénélope is a powerful masterpiece, but a masterpiece of pure music. It consists of three acts, and much of it was composed at Lausanne and Lugano.

Here is a summary of the plot:

Act One:
Penelope has been waiting for ten years for the return of her husband, Ulysses, King of Ithaca. In the mean time she has been besieged by suitors for her hand in marriage. She promises she will choose between them once she has finishing weaving a shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, but every night she unpicks the day's work. Ulysses arrives at the palace disguised as a beggar and is recognised by his old nurse Euryclea.

Act Two:
That night, as ever, Penelope keeps watch for Ulysses's ship on a hill-top overlooking the sea. She talks nostalgically to the shepherd Eumaeus. The beggar offers to help Penelope defeat the suitors. He claims to be a fugitive Cretan king who has seen Ulysses alive at his court. After Penelope leaves, Ulysses reveals his true identity to the overjoyed shepherds.

Act Three:
The suitors have arranged Penelope's wedding in the palace hall. She tells them that they must decide which one will win her hand by holding a competition to see who can draw Ulysses' bow. Not one of them succeeds. The beggar steps forward and draws the bow with ease, before turning to shoot the suitors. Finally, Ulysses and Penelope are happily reunited.


Wikipedia page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9n%C3%A9lope

Sample images:








In this recording we see a performance that took place just the day before yesterday, namely on Saturday the twentieth of February 2016.

Click HERE to obtain a video of the entire lyric drama, as well as the libretto, a vocal score, and an orchestral score of the Prelude.