Étienne Méhul, by H.E. von Winter

Étienne Nicolas Méhul (22 June 1763 – 18 October 1817) was a French composer, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution."^[1] He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic".^[2]

Life[link]

Méhul was born at Givet in Ardennes to Jean-François Méhul, a wine merchant, and his wife Marie-Cécile (née Keuly). His first music lessons came from a blind local organist, but he had innate aptitude and was sent to study with a German musician and organist, Wilhelm Hanser, at the monastery of Lavaldieu, a few miles from Givet. Here Méhul developed his lifelong love of flowers.^[3]

In 1778 or 1779 he went to Paris and began to study with Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, a harpsichord player and friend of Méhul's idol Christoph Willibald von Gluck. Méhul's first published composition was a book of piano pieces in 1783. He also arranged airs from popular operas and by the late 1780s he had begun to think about an operatic career for himself.

In 1787, the writer Valadier offered Méhul one of his libretti, Cora, which had been rejected by Gluck in 1785.^[4] The Académie royale de musique (the Paris Opéra put Méhul's work, under the title Alonzo et Cora, into rehearsal in June 1789. However, the rehearsals were abandoned on 8 August, probably because the Opéra had been suffering severe financial difficulties throughout the 1780s, and the opera was not premiered until 1791.^[5] In the meantime, Méhul found an ideal collaborator in the librettist François-Benoît Hoffman, who provided the words to the first of Méhul's operas to be performed, Euphrosine. Its premiere in 1790 was an immense success and marked the composer out as a new talent. It was also the start of his long relationship with the Comédie Italienne theatre (soon to be renamed the Opéra-Comique).

Méhul in 1799, portrait by Antoine Gros.

In spite of the failure of Cora in 1791 and the banning of Adrien for political reasons the year after that, Méhul consolidated his reputation with works such as Stratonice and Mélidore et Phrosine. During the French Revolution, Méhul composed many patriotic songs and propaganda pieces, the most famous of which is the Chant du départ. Méhul was rewarded by becoming the first composer named to the newly founded Institut de France in 1795. He also held a post as one of the five inspectors of the Conservatoire de Paris. Mehul was on friendly terms with Napoleon and became one of the first Frenchmen to receive the Légion d'honneur.

Méhul's operatic success was not as great in the first decade of the nineteenth century as it had been in the 1790s, although works such as Joseph (1807) became famous abroad, particularly in Germany. The failure of his opera Les amazones in 1811 was a severe blow and virtually ended his career as a composer for the theatre. In spite of his friendship with Napoleon, Méhul's public standing survived the transition to the Bourbon Restoration intact. However, the composer was now seriously ill with tuberculosis and he died on 18 October 1817.^[6]His grave is at the cemetery of Père Lachaise, near the grave of the Belgian composer, his contemporary François-Joseph Gossec.

In 1797 Méhul adopted his seven-year-old nephew, composer Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul, and his younger brother. He played a major role in his nephew's musical education and career; counting him among his pupils at the Paris Conservatoire. After his death, Daussoigne-Méhul notably completed his unfinished opera Valentine de Milan which premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1822. He also wrote new recitatives for his opera Stratonice in 1821 for a revival of that work in Paris.^[7]

Music[link]

Operas[link]

Méhul's most important contribution to music was his operas. He led the generation of composers who emerged in France in the 1790s, which included his friend and rival Luigi Cherubini and his outright enemy Jean-François Lesueur. Méhul followed the example of the operas which Gluck had written for Paris in the 1770s and applied Gluck's "reforms" to opéra comique (a genre which mixed music with spoken dialogue and was not necessarily at all "comic" in mood). But he pushed music in a more Romantic direction, showing an increased use of dissonance and an interest in psychological states such as anger and jealousy, thus foreshadowing later Romantic composers such as Weber and Berlioz. Indeed, Méhul was the very first composer to be styled a Romantic; a critic used the term when reviewing Méhul's Le jeune sage et le vieux fou in La chronique de Paris on 1 April 1793.^[8]

Méhul's main musical concern was that everything should serve to increase the dramatic impact. As his admirer Berlioz wrote:

[Méhul] was fully convinced that in truly dramatic music, when the importance of the situation deserves the sacrifice, the composer should not hesitate as between a pretty musical effect that is foreign to the scenic or dramatic character, and a series of accents that are true but do not yield any surface pleasure. He was convinced that musical expressiveness is a lovely flower, delicate and rare, of exquisite fragrance, which does not bloom without culture, and which a breath can wither; that it does not dwell in melody alone, but that everything concurs either to create or destroy it - melody, harmony, modulation, rhythm, instrumentation, the choice of deep or high registers for the voices or instruments, a quick or slow tempo, and the several degrees of volume in the sound emitted.^[9]

One way in which Méhul increased dramatic expressivity was to experiment with orchestration. For example, in Uthal, an opera set in the Highlands of Scotland, he eliminated violins from the orchestra, replacing them with the darker sounds of violas in order to add local colour.^[10] Méhul's La chasse du jeune Henri (Young Henri's Hunt) provides a more humorous example, with its expanded horn section portraying yelping hounds as well as giving hunting calls. (Sir Thomas Beecham frequently programmed this piece to showcase the Royal Philharmonic horn section.)

Méhul's key works of the 1790s were Euphrosine, Stratonice, Mélidore et Phrosine and Ariodant.^[11] Ariodant, though a failure at its premiere in 1799, has come in for particular praise from critics. Elizabeth Bartlet calls it "Mehul's best work of the decade and a highpoint of Revolutionary opera".^[12] It deals with the same tale of passion and jealousy as Handel's 1735 opera Ariodante. As in many of his other operas, Mehul makes use of a structural device called the "reminiscence motif", a musical theme associated with a particular character or idea in the opera. This device looks forward to the leitmotifs in Richard Wagner's music dramas. In Ariodant, the reminiscence motif is the cri de fureur ("cry of fury"), expressing the emotion of jealousy.^[12]

Around 1800, the popularity of such stormy dramas began to wane, replaced by a fashion for the lighter opéra comiques of composers such as Boieldieu. In addition, Mehul's friend Napoleon told him he preferred a more comic style of opera. As a Corsican, Napoleon's cultural background was Italian, and he loved the opera buffa of composers like Paisiello and Cimarosa. Méhul responded with L'irato ("The Angry Man"), a one-act comedy premiered as the work of the Italian composer "Fiorelli" in 1801. When it became an immediate success, Méhul revealed the hoax he had played.^[13] Méhul also continued to compose works in a more serious vein. Joseph, based on the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, is the most famous of these later operas, but its success in France was short-lived. In Germany, however, it won many admirers throughout the nineteenth century, including Wagner.^[14] A melody from Joseph is very similar to a popular folk melody widely known in Germany which was used as a song in the German Imperial Navy, and adapted, notoriously, as the tune for the co-national anthem of Nazi Germany, the Horst-Wessel-Lied. It is unclear, however, whether Méhul's melody was the actual provenance of the melody.^[15]

Symphonies and other works[link]

Besides operas, Méhul composed a number of songs for the festivals of the republic (often commissioned by the emperor Napoleon), cantatas, and five symphonies in the years 1797 and 1808 to 1810.The First Symphony was revived in one of Felix Mendelssohn's concerts with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1838 and 1846 to an audience including Robert Schumann, who was impressed by the piece. In all four movements there are some stylistic similarities with Beethoven's Symphony No.5 (including the dissonant, furious mood of the first movement and the string pizzicatos in the third), which were also noted by Schumann. Actually at this date only Beethoven's Symphonies No.1 and 2 (1799/1800 and 1802) had been performed in France and both Beethoven's Fifth and Mehul's First were composed in the same year, 1808, were published in the following, 1809. In his mature symphonies, Mehul continued the path Haydn (the Paris Symphonies, 1785-86, for example), Mozart (Symphony No. 40, K.550, 1788) had taken, two composers who enjoyed great popularity in France in the early 19th century. A fifth symphony was never completed—"as disillusionment and tuberculosis took their toll", as David Charlton pointed out. The Symphonies nos.3 and 4 were only rediscovered by Charlton in 1979. Interviewed 8 November 2010 on the on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Professor Charlton said that Méhul's 4th Symphony was the first ever to employ the cyclical principle.

List of works[link]

Operas[link]

See List of operas by Méhul

For piano[link]

• 3 Sonates for Piano, op. 1 (1783)
• 3 Sonates for Piano, op. 2 (1788)

Orchestral music[link]

• Ouverture burlesque (1794)
• Ouverture pour instruments à vent (1794)
• Symphony in C (1797, only parts are surviving)
• Symphony No.1 in G minor (1808/09)
• Symphony No.2 in D major (1808/09)
• Symphony No.3 in C major (1809)
• Symphony No.4 in E major (1810)
• Symphony No.5 (1810, only a first movement survives)

Vocal music[link]

• Chant du départ (1794)
• Chant des victoires (1794)
• Messe Solennelle pour soli, chœurs et orgue (1804)
• Chant du retour pour la Grande Armée (1808)
• Chant lyrique pour l'inauguration de la statue de Napoléon (1811)

Ballets[link]

• Le jugement de Pâris (1793)
• La dansomanie (1800)
• Persée et Andromède (1810) (together with music by Haydn, Paer and Steibelt)

Incidental music for plays[link]

• Timoléon (by Marie-Joseph Chénier)
• Les Hussites (by Alexandre Duval)

Discography[link]

• The Complete Symphonies (Symphonies No.1-No.4). Lisbon Gulbenkian Foundation Orchestra, Michel Swierczewski (including the Ouvertures La Chasse du jeune Henri and Le Trésor supposé), Nimbus Records, 1992
• Symphonies Nos 1 and 2. Les Musiciens du Louvre, Marc Minkowski, Erato/Apex, 2003
• Overtures: Mélidore et Phrosine; Ariodant; Joseph; Horatius Coclès; Bion; Le jeune sage et le vieux fou; Le trésor supposé; Les deux aveugles de Tolède; La chasse du jeune Henri. Orchestre de Bretagne/ Stefan Sanderling, ASV, 2003
• Stratonice. Petibon/Beuron/Lescoart/Daymond, Corona Coloniensis, Cappella Coloniensis, William Christie, Erato 1996
• Joseph (in French): Natalie Dessay, soprano ; Brigitte Lafon, mezzo-soprano ; Laurence Dale, Antoine Normand, Philippe Pistole, tenors ; René Massis, baritone ; Frédéric Vassar, Philippe Jorquera, basses ; Abbi Patrix, speaker ; Ensemble choral "Intermezzo" ; Orchestre régional de Picardie "Le Sinfonietta" ; Claude Bardon, conductor. Chant du monde, c. 1989.
• Joseph (as Joseph in Aegypten), two versions of the work in German both recorded in 1955: (a) Alexander Welitsch/Libero di Luca/ Horst Guenter/Ursula Zollenkopf, Symphony Orchestra and Choir of NWDR, Wilhelm Schüchter; (b) Alexander Welitsch/Josef Traxel/Bernhard Michaelis/Friederike Sailer, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Suedfunk Chor, Alfons Rischner. Gala, 2004.
• La Chasse du jeune Henri, Le Trésor supposé and Timoléon Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Thomas Beecham, Sony, 2002.
• L'Irato Turk/Auvity/Courtin/Buet/Chamber Choir Bonn, L'arte del mondo, Walter Ehrhardt, Capriccio, 2006.
• Piano Sonatas opp. 1 (nos. 1-3) & 2 (nos. 4-6). Brigitte Haudebourg, piano. Arcobaleno, c. 1990.
• Le chant du départ; Chant Funèbre à la Mémoire de Féraud; Hymne pour la Fête des Epoux; Ouverture. Edwige Perfetti, soprano ; Tibère Raffali, Christian Papis, tenors ; Gilles Cachemaille, baritone -- Orchestre d'Harmonie des Gardiens de la Paix de Paris ; Claude Pichaureau, conductor -- Chœur de l'Armée Française ; Serge Zapolski, chorus-master -- Chorale a Chœur Joie la Gondoire ; Daniel Catenne, chorus-master -- Chorale Populaire de Paris ; Jean-Claude Chambard, chorus-master. Musifrance, n.d.
• Chant national du 14 juillet 1800; Hymne à la raison; Le chant du départ Chœur et Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse ; Michel Plasson, conductor. EMI, 1990.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Adélaïde de Place Étienne Nicolas Méhul (Bleu Nuit Éditeur, 2005)
• Berlioz Evenings with the Orchestra, translated by Jacques Barzun (University of Chicago Press, 1953)
• Booklet notes by David Charlton to the recording "The Complete Symphonies" (Nimbus, 1989)
• Booklet notes by Ates Orga to the recording of Méhul's "Overtures" (ASV, 2002).
• David Cairns Berlioz: the Making of an Artist (André Deutsch, 1989).
• David Charlton, section on Méhul in The Viking Opera Guide ed.Holden (1993)
• David Charlton, chapter on "French Opera 1800-1850" in The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera ed. Roger Parker (OUP, 1994)
• Introduction to the edition of Méhul's opera Stratonice by M.Elizabeth C. Bartlet (Pendragon Press, 1997)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Étienne Méhul

• Free scores by Étienne Méhul in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Etienne Méhul at the International Music Score Library Project
• The Mutopia Project has compositions by Étienne Méhul
• Free scores by Étienne Méhul in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• A portrait of Méhul by Antoine-Jean Gros
• Biography and Works, France Diplomatie Culture
• Notes on the Symphony No.1 by Herbert Glass, Los Angeles Philharmonic Website
• Berlioz and Méhul, The Hector Berlioz Site

Roberto Alagna in 2004

Roberto Alagna (born 7 June 1963) is a French-Italian tenor. He was born in Clichy-sous-Bois, Seine-Saint-Denis, France.

Early years[link]

Alagna was born outside of the city of Paris in 1963 to a family of Sicilian (Italian) immigrants . As a teenager, the young Alagna began busking and singing pop in Parisian cabarets,^[1] mostly for tips.^[2] Influenced primarily by the films of Mario Lanza, but also from recordings of many historic tenors, he then switched to opera, but remained largely self-taught.^[3][4]

Career[link]

After winning the Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition, Alagna made his professional debut in 1988 as Alfredo Germont in La Traviata with the Glyndebourne touring company.^[5] This led to many engagements throughout the smaller cities in France and Italy, mainly again as Alfredo, a role he would eventually sing over 150 times. His reputation grew and he was soon invited to sing at major theaters such as La Scala in 1990, Covent Garden in 1992 and the Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in 1996. His performances of Roméo in Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod at Covent Garden in 1994 (opposite Leontina Vaduva) catapulted him to international stardom.^[6]

Alagna opened the 2006/07 season at La Scala on 7 December 2006 in the new production of Aïda by Franco Zeffirelli. During the second performance on 10 December, Alagna, whose opening performance was considered ill-at-ease, was booed and whistled from the loggione (the least expensive seats at the very back of La Scala), and he walked off the stage. The tenor's reaction to his public criticism was denounced as immature and unprofessional by La Scala management and Zeffirelli, who said, “A professional should never behave in this way. Alagna is too sensitive, it is too easy to hurt his feelings. He does not know how to act like a true star.”^[7] The role of Radames was taken over successfully for the rest of the performance by his understudy Antonello Palombi, who entered on stage wearing jeans and a black shirt.^[8] In 2007 while at the Metropolitan Opera singing the role of Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly, Alagna replaced the indisposed Rolando Villazon as Romeo in Roméo et Juliette opposite Anna Netrebko for two performances in September and two performances in December. His wife had flown to New York to be with him for the September engagements, and as a result was fired from the Lyric Opera of Chicago for missing her rehearsal dates for La Bohème. Alagna was also engaged by the Metropolitan Opera at the last minute to cover for the indisposed Marco Berti in a 16 October 2007 performance of Aida. After the performance, the audience gave him a standing ovation.^[9] The 15 December performance of Roméo et Juliette starring Alagna and Netrebko was broadcast by the Met into 447 theaters worldwide in high definition and seen by about 97,000 people.^[10] Controversy, however, continued to shadow his career. In September 2011, a disagreement with the veteran conductor Alain Lombard in rehearsals for Gounod's Faust forced the Paris Opéra to choose between conductor and star tenor. They chose Alagna and Lombard had to leave.^[11]

Repertoire[link]

In recent years Alagna has been an advocate of restoring to prominence neglected French operas - Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac, Massenet's Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, Lalo's Fiesque, and new works Vladimir Cosma's Marius et Fanny and his brother David Alagna's Le dernier jour d'un condamné. He has also recorded light music with a hommage album to Luis Mariano, Sicilien, and Pasión.

Personal life[link]

Alagna's first wife, Florence Lancien, died of a brain tumor in 1994; they had one daughter, Ornella, who was born in 1992. In 1996, he married Romanian soprano, Angela Gheorghiu.^[12] The couple have sung together often onstage and have made many recordings together both of duets and arias and complete operas. Their joint album, Duets & Arias, peaked at #42 in the UK Albums Chart in May 1996.^[13] The two singers also starred in a film version of Puccini's Tosca directed by French film director Benoît Jacquot.^[14] In October 2009, Alagna said in an interview in Le Figaro that he and Angela Gheorghiu had separated.^[15] Following the separation, Gheorghiu declined to appear opposite him in Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2009.^[16] Alagna and Gheorghiu announced that they were back together in March 2011.^[17][18]

Alagna has worked together on several projects with his brothers Frédérico Alagna and the stage director and composer David Alagna. The three brothers recorded an album of light music Serenades, and worked together on the younger brother David's opera based on Hugo's Last Day of a Condemned Man. Alagna has often sung Alfano's Cyrano opposite his sister-in-law Natalie Manfrino as Roxane.

Discography[link]

• 2011: Pasión

References[link]

External links[link]

• Roberto Alagna at the Internet Movie Database
• Reviews, articles, photos and future schedules from The Opera Critic
• Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks
• Concert photos

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Parthiv Gohil, a playback singer for Indian films, was born on 18 February 1976 in Bhavnagar, a town in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat state. Both his great grandfather and father shared a passion for music and it is they who introduced him to the world of classical music.

At the age of ten, Parthiv began his formal lessons with Smt. Bhanuben Solanki, Smt. Dakshaben Mehta and Shri Laxmipati Shukla, a disciple of Pandit Omkarnath Thakur.

At the age of 14, he won the Pandit Omkarnath Thakur Competition, which was followed by the state talent search competition.

Under the gurukul scholarship scheme of SPICMACAY he was chosen to be trained under Zia Fariduddin Dagar, a descendant of the legendary Tansen. From him, Parthiv learnt the tenets of voice culturing. Under the aegis of SPICMACAY he got to accompany maestros such as Hariprasad Chaurasia, Sultan Khan, Gundecha Brothers and V. G. Jog on tanpura and learnt a lot from them as well.

He was a runner-up in TV's Sa Re Ga Ma show. The competition was judged by renowned names like Pt. Jasraj, Parveen Sultana, Khayyam, O P Nayyar, Kalyanji Anandji, Anil Biswas, Jagjit Singh and Rajkumariji. His voice and style have been appreciated by many and his concerts have enthralled both Indian and overseas audience alike. He is currently hosting the program Sa Re Ga Ma on Alpha Gujarati channel of ZEE.

He now lives in Mumbai. His work as a film singer started with the title song and some back vocals for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film Devdas (2002 film). He made his debut as a play back singer in Bhansali's film Saawariya. After which, he sang for many films like EMI, Heroes, Vaada Raha, Kisaan, Saheb Biwi aur Gangster and so on.

He has been the only Gujarati artiste to be featured in the National Iconic Song "Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara". Recently he was also featured in the international music project "Coke Studio"at MTV along with artists like Ustad Rashid Khan and Richa Shrama.

Awards[link]

Gujarat Gaurav award from Gujarat government.

Best playback singer 2007 for the Gujarati film Prem Ek Pooja.

Best playback singer 2009 for the Gujarati film MAI ODHANI ODHI TARA NAMNI.

Ravji Patel award for as an young achiever.

Recently parthiv have been honored by Shree Rahul Gandhi as a young achiever award amongst top 10 young gujratis.

Bruhad Gujarat Mumbai award as an young achiever in 2012.

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This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2012)

Mehul Kumar is an Indian filmmaker, film director, producer and writer who works in the Bollywood industry. He primarily works as an independent film director in parallel cinema.

Kumar started his career in 1977 with the low budget Gujarati film Santu Jamadar. Since then, he has directed over 35 Hindi and Gujarati films, in a range of film genres, including dramas, comedies and action films, though he is mostly recognised for his cinematic depiction of patriotism in his films.

Kumar has worked with some of the most noted film actors in Bollywood, such as Amitabh Bachchan, Nana Patekar, Dimple Kapadia, Madhuri Dixit, Naseeruddin Shah, Akshay Kumar, Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor. Some of his famous works include Tiranga, Krantiveer, Kohram.

Filmography[link]

External links[link]

• Mehul Kumar at the Internet Movie Database