- Opéra in 2 parties (24 tableaux)
- Composer: Darius Milhaud
- Libretto: Paul Claudel
- First performed: Staatsoper, Berlin, 5 May 1930, conducted by Erich Kleiber. Concert version in Paris, 1936.
- Revised: Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, 21 May 1956.
| Queen ISABELLE | Soprano | Delia Reinhardt |
| CHRISTOPHE COLOMB I | Baritone | Theodor Scheidl |
| CHRISTOPHE COLOMB II | Bass | Emanuel List |
| The PRESENTER | Spoken | |
| The Opponent | Spoken | |
| Columbus’s Wife | Soprano | Margherita Perras |
| Columbus’s Mother | Soprano | |
| Duchesse Medina-Sidonia | Soprano | |
| King of Spain, Commandant, Innkeeper | Bass | |
| Majordomo, Cook, Inn servant, Sultan, Wise man I, Young man, Defender I, Creditor I, Guitarist I | Tenor | Fritz Soot |
| Wise man II, Self-made man, Defender II, Creditor II, Guitarist II | Baritone | |
| Wise man III, Columbus’s ghost, Officer, Defender III, Creditor III, Guitarist III | Bass | |
| Sailors’ delegate, Executioner | Spoken |
SETTING: Spain and the New World, 1492 and 1506
Christophe Colomb, cet immortel Génois qu’aujourd’hui l’on révère…
Meyerbeer / Scribe, L’Africaine (1865)
In 1492, as every child used to know, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. But was he a hero or a villain? He discovered America, of course, but for at least a century, people have deplored the consequences of that discovery: the dispossession of the Native Americans, the destruction of their cultures, and their exploitation and enslavement. Milhaud’s opera gives both depictions of the man: the bold sailor, the visionary, the dreamer, but also the egoist, the liar, the debtor, the invader, the restorer of slavery.
“Christopher Columbus brought forth a new world, but it was no small feat… And it was not without pain either…” the Presenter states at the beginning of the opera.
“The new lands did not yield gold, and barely a handful of pearls. The natives, treated harshly, massacred the invaders, resulting in horrific reprisals. To cultivate this unhealthy land, it became necessary to restore slavery. However, Columbus wanders confusedly as if lost in the midst of these new islands, and it is almost unknowingly that he finally reaches the continent.”
Christophe Colomb is one of Milhaud’s three New World operas. (The others are Maximilien, 1932, and Bolivar, 1950.) It is an enormous opera, nearly three hours long, with more than 30 characters, 24 scenes, and the pageantry of 19th century historical opera. Part II, for instance, begins with a Processional: halberdiers, musketeers, and officers carrying the standards of Aragon and Castile; then the Book of Christopher Columbus; finally the chorus, at first walking in rows, then with turbulence and disorder. Some scenes nod almost to 19th century grand opéra. There are big crowd scenes: Colombus and his Creditors, with a catchy refrain of “Paye tes dettes” (scene 12); and the bright, bustling Recruitment for the Caravels (scene 15). The mutiny (scene 16) – a “grande” and “fameuse” scene, as the Presenter puts it – would have been a set piece in grand opéra; Milhaud treats it more as theatre than opera: it is partly spoken; the chorus, which would have dominated the scene a century before, only provide backing to the baritone. We are a long way from Spontini’s mutiny and exploding ships in Fernand Cortez (1809).
Milhaud’s score is eclectic, combining spoken dialogue with big choruses, dance, jazz, and modern polyphony. Its eclecticism led Claude Rostand to compare it to a baroque opera, in which different styles co-existed: “The opera, which is dominated by the presence of the sea, is as varied as the sea itself. Utterly different musical styles and methods combine or succeed each other.”
But while Colomb might seem an extravaganza, it is also a non-naturalistic, even metaphysical, drama. (It anticipates Shaffer’s Royal Hunt of the Sun.) There are two Christopher Columbuses: one living the action, one looking back on the action and commenting. The action takes place out of chronological order: Part I shows Columbus’s return to Spain and his death; Part II shows Columbus’s discovery of the New World. (A change made when Milhaud revised the opera in the 1950s; originally, the action was more linear.)
There are scenes in Columbus’s conscience (witnessing the harm his discovery caused); and in the Paradise of the Idea (an astral plane where all is white, and Queen Isabelle of Spain and her court become childlike). Part I ends with a big choral and orchestral scene, called the “Alleluia”, as the queen prays to the Virgin Mary for Columbus’s salvation. Part II shows Columbus’s trial in the afterlife, with a quadrille danced by the allegorical figures of Envy, Ignorance, Vanity, and Avarice; doves chase them away. Columbus himself takes on religious overtones: he is named after the “porter of Christ”, while in French, Colomb means “dove”, and he is compared to Noah’s dove that found new land and to the spirit of God descending on the waters in the form of a dove. Giroud considers the opera “a symbolist, poetic meditation, emphasising the rôle of Columbus as the bringer of Christianity to the New World”. But the final scene, “Le redempteur” (scene 17), depicting landfall on America, strikes a note of “terror, anguish, and hope”. Columbus’s legacy is complex.
A lavish spectacle was what Austrian theatre director Max Reinhardt wanted; he asked Claudel to write the libretto, and proposed that Richard Strauss write the music. But Claudel held out for Milhaud. The two had worked together in the French embassy in Rio de Janeiro, where Claudel was ambassador and Milhaud his secretary; later, they collaborated on an adaptation of Æschylus, L’Orestie (1936).
The Berlin Staatsoper pulled out all the stops: 100 rehearsals for chorus, and 25 stage rehearsals with orchestra. Erich Kleiber no less conducted the opera, which featured some of Berlin’s big singing stars. The production used multimedia to project Columbus’s thoughts: a film screen shows black slaves in shackles; the ghosts of Columbus’s family and of his younger self; Columbus reading the Travels of Marco Polo. Elsewhere, the film shows historical events (the Reconquista) or the supernatural (St James, on a stained-glass window). Barbara L. Kelly suggests that the film, emphasising the symbolic and spiritual dimensions of the play, was influenced by Japanese puppet theatre (bunraku). In all events, the result was a resounding triumph; the opera remained in the Staatsoper’s repertoire for two years.
Michael Stegemann (Dictionary of German Musical Theatre, 1991) said it contained all the avant-garde elements of post-war musical theatre: “Mystery and revue, opera and multimedia Gesamtkunstwerk, historical spectacle and ideological profession of faith, psychodrama and thriller, cinematographic-stage work, parody, and experimental work”.
But an Italian critic, P. de Mugica (Ritmo), complained, however: “Grey choirs singing soporifically. A rubbishy Columbus. A story that the author himself does not understand… Colomb was the baritone [Theodor] Scheidl, whose part was highly unworthy of him. Without character; with a funereal face. He had an alter ego in eternity, with whom he conversed at times! … I expected to see our grandiose court at its zenith, with costumes like those in Pradilla’s Reconquest of Granada… What misery! Everything nebulous, anecdotal, sometimes destitute…”
Despite its success in Berlin, the scale of the opera made it difficult to stage, restricting it largely to concert hall performances. Its pre-WWII performances in France (Paris, 1936; Nantes, 1937, conducted by Pierre Monteux) were both concert versions; so were the British (London, 1937) and American (New York, 1952, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos) premières. This version was not staged in France until 1984.
In 1953, Milhaud revised the work; this new version was given (in concert form) at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 1956, then staged at Graz, in 1968.
It was staged at Compiègne in 1993, with a young Laurent Naouri, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Milhaud’s birth and the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. The last performance seems to have been in Lübeck, Germany, in 2019.
Despite the challenges of staging it presents, Christophe Colomb is a work that should be better known. It is a theatrically interesting work about perennially topical and controversial themes: exploration and colonialism, faith and the judgement of posterity. Claude Rostand believed it was “one of the highest peaks in Milhaud’s creative output, since by the very diversity of his genius, he finds in that call of the baroque the opportunity for the most complete expression of his musical mind”.
Recordings
Watch: Laurent Naouri (Christophe Colomb), Michel Hermon (Christophe Colomb II / the Presenter), Mary Saint-Palais (Isabelle), with the Orchestre de la Fondation Gulbekian de Lisbonne, conducted by Michel Swierezewski, directed by Claude Lulé, Compiègne, 1993.
Listen to: Janine Micheau, Robert Massard, Xavier Depraz, and Jean Giraudeau, with the Orchestre lyrique de la RTF, conducted by Manuel Rosenthal, Paris, 1956.
Works consulted
- Le Ménestrel, 20 June 1930
- Claude Rostand, “The Operas of Darius Milhaud”, Tempo, No. 19 (Spring 1951)
- Piotr Kaminski, Mille et un opéras, Paris : Fayard, 2003
- Vincent Giroud, French Opera: A Short History, Yale University Press, 2010
- Barbara L. Kelly, Darius Milhaud et Arthur Honegger face au théâtre lyrique, Histoire de l’opéra français III : De la Belle Époque au monde globalisé, edited by Hervé Lacombe, Fayard, 2022
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