Mad on Emily Brontë

Bernard Herrmann is arguably one of the most important composers of the XXth century. He is better known for his soundtracks, especially the ones he composed for Alfred Hitchcock. In 1944 he composed the music for the Robert Stevenson's classical Jane Eyre.

But his relation with the Brontës goes further. In 1951 he composed an opera based on Wuthering Heights. The libretto, that covers only the first half of the novel, was written by Herrmann's first wife Lucille Fletcher. It was recorded in 1966, reissued in 1971, in four LPs with the Pro-Arte Orchestra directed by Herrmann himself. In 1993, Unicorn-Kanchana released the opera in 3CDs, now pretty unavailable.

The Bernard Herrmann Society published last June an interview with Norma Herrmann, the third wife of Mr. Herrmann and Wuthering Heights is one of the topics discussed:

Günther Kögebehn: Did he ever sing Wuthering Heights to you?

Norma Herrmann:
Herrmann sing? Sing? It was the worst, worst sound. Worse than even playing the piano! Oh god, oh no, he couldn’t sing. Absolutely not - No!

You know to do Wuthering Heights he walked every step in Yorkshire and all the places where it took place. His heart and his soul was in that. He used to say one day somebody will do it. During my years with him there were about 4 or 5 approaches from different opera companies wanting to do it. And he said, they can’t afford the set, they can’t afford the size of orchestra and then he did it himself on record.

He was mad on Emily Bronte. He used to make a joke about why he got in with a Yorkshire girl, because his soul was up in the moors with Cathy. He once conducted the Halle Orchestra in Sheffield, this was after his divorce, and the leader of the orchestra said to him “Don’t you want one of our Yorkshire lasses? Don’t you like our Yorkshire lasses?” And then he used to tell this tale, “I ended up with a Yorkshire lass.”

Categories: Music, Opera, Wuthering_Heights