Esclarmonde () is an opéra () in four acts and eight tableaux, with prologue and epilogue, by Jules Massenet, to a French libretto by Alfred Blau and Louis Ferdinand de Gramont. It was first performed at the Exposition Universelle on 15 May 1889 by the Opéra-Comique at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place du Châtelet in Paris.
Esclarmonde is perhaps Massenet's most ambitious work for the stage and is his most Wagnerian in style and scope. In orchestral coloring and structure of melody, however, it follows French traditions. The opera has been revived sporadically in the modern era, most notably during the 1970s with Joan Sutherland, conducted by Massenet champion Richard Bonynge. The role of Esclarmonde is notoriously difficult to sing, with stratospheric coloratura passages that are possible for only the most gifted of performers.
Background
The story of the opera is based on the medieval chivalric tale Parthénopéus de Blois, which was written in the middle of the 12th century by Denis Pyramus. In the original tale, however, the protagonist sorceress is called "Melior"; Esclarmonde's name was borrowed from another chanson de geste of the 13th century: Huon de Bordeaux. Although the Esclarmonde who appears in Huon is completely different from her operatic counterpart, Huon clearly served as the basis of at least part of the opera's libretto. Alfred Blau discovered Parthénopéus in 1871 in the library of Blois, where he took refuge during the time of the Paris Commune. The libretto was originally called Pertinax; it was first drafted in prose and later versified by Blau's collaborator, Louis de Gramont. In that form – a romantic melodrama in five acts – it was offered in 1882 to the Belgian composer François-Auguste Gevaert, who, however, declined to set it. Soon the libretto found its way into Massenet's hands, though the precise circumstances in which this occurred remain a mystery.
On 1 August 1886, Massenet and his publisher Georges Hartmann attended a performance of Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival, an event which deeply impressed the composer and had a significant influence on his music. He had already seen the entire Ring cycle when it was produced in Brussels in 1883.
In his Memoirs, which were compiled in 1911 near the end of his life, Massenet ascribes the creation of the role of Esclarmonde to a chance meeting with Sibyl Sanderson sometime in the spring of 1887. He recounts how he was astonished by the range and capacity of her voice, realizing at once that she was the perfect choice for the heroine of his new opera, which he had begun to compose at the end of 1886. It is almost certain, however, that he had received the libretto to Esclarmonde much earlier than that, and the meeting with Sybil Sanderson served rather as an additional catalyst – a stimulus to complete the opera. The work was commissioned as a spectacular event to open the Paris Exposition of 1889. During the most intensive period of creation in the summer of 1887, Massenet moved into the Grand Hotel in Vevey, where Miss Sanderson was also staying; there he rehearsed with her each evening the various sections of his new opera as he composed them. The opera was completed by the end of 1888, and stage rehearsals started at Opéra-Comique. Massenet dedicated the work to Sybil Sanderson in gratitude, allowing her signature to stand alongside his own in the manuscript of the score. Rodney Milnes suggests that Massenet's "passion for his leading lady resulted in some of his most chromatically tortuous erotic writing" while observing that the operatic events are "dispatched in just over two hours of music". Crichton notes also the skill of Massenet in writing for male voices - both the tenors Roland and Énéas, but also for the Bishop, the Emperor Phorcas and the King. He also points to the scoring of low instruments, where the bass clarinet and tuba show "an individual application of lessons well learned from the later parts of The Ring, used with a discretion unlikely to upset the general public of the day".
Seven black and white projections for the scenes of sorcery, using the magic lantern technology, were created by Eugène Grasset, who also illustrated the original vocal score.