The return of Herrmann's Wuthering Heights

As we reported several days ago, the Minnesota Opera is preparing a new production of Bernard Herrmann's opera for next year:

Wuthering Heights
by Bernard Herrmann
Libretto by Lucille Fletcher

April 16, 17, 19, 21 and 23, 2011
A gothic romance by a Hollywood legend.

Wuthering Heights is based on Emily Brontë's gothic romance. Unable to bridge the chasm of social class, Heathcliff and Catherine are consumed by a love that can never be, and its legacy haunts the windswept Yorkshire moors. The music of the opera, composed by Hollywood legend Bernard Herrmann, underscores the novel's passion, prejudice and mystery. (Complete synopsis)

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975) was an Academy Award-winning American composer who scored almost every Alfred Hitchcock soundtrack from 1955-1964, including Psycho, Vertigo and North by Northwest. His numerous, unforgettable collaborations include Citizen Kane with Orson Welles and Taxi Driver with Martin Scorsese. Wuthering Heights was Bernard Herrmann's only opera. Though he completed it in 1951, it didn't receive its premiere until 1982, when it was staged by Portland Opera. Minnesota Opera's new production of this forgotten masterpiece celebrates the centennial of the composer's birth.

Sung in English with English translations projected above the stage.

Tickets to individual shows go on sale July 19, 2010 and may be purchased online at that time.

No details about the cast have been revealed yet, but we know the conductor and the stage director: Michael Christie and Eric Simonson, respectively.

And this summer, the Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon festival will have a concert version of the opera:

Wednesday, July 14 - Opéra Berlioz /Le Corum -20:00 h
Bernard Herrmann
Les Hauts de Hurlevent (Wuthering Heights )

Opéra en quatre actes et un prologue (1943-51)
Livret de Lucille Fletcher d’après le roman d’Emily Brontë
version concert

Laura AIKIN, soprano : Catherine Earnshaw
Boaz DANIEL , baritone : Heathcliff
Vincent LE TEXIER, baritone : Hindley Earnshaw
Hanna SCHAER, mezzo-soprano : Nelly Linton
Yves SAELENS, tenor : Edgar Linton
Marianne CREBASSA, mezzo-soprano : Isabella Linton
Nicolas CAVALLIER, baritone : Mr Lockwood
Carlo KANG, bass : Joseph

Orchestre National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon
Opera Junior
Director: Alain ALTINOGLU

Composer of some fifty film scores, of which the most important were written for Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975) also left numerous concert works. In 1951, he finished his opera Wuthering Heights to a libretto by his first wife, Lucille Fletcher, based on Emily Brontë’s novel (1847). In a prologue and four acts, the work was not staged until 6 November 1982 (in Portland, Oregon), although it had been given in a concert version in London in 1966. A recording, financed and conducted by the composer in 1966, was released for the first time in 1972 and later re-released on CD.
The novel, ‘a mixture of wild purity and Satanism’ (in the words of one of Emily Brontë’s two sisters), describes the vengeance of a Gypsy child, Heathcliff, who, raised in a foster family, is humiliated by the two legitimate children, a boy (Hindley) and a girl (Cathy), after the death of their father. It is shrouded in the stormy atmosphere of the Yorkshire moors where Emily Brontë lived. After the prologue, the opera unfolds in flashbacks and corresponds only to the first part of the novel, concentrating on the romantic love story of Cathy and Heathcliff, but the poignant ending of the original is preserved.
Wuthering Heights is marked by its dramatic orchestration, and several musical themes are drawn from the composer’s film scores. Although the influence of the operas of Tchaikovsky and of Frederick Delius, a native of Yorkshire, can be detected therein, this is indeed the work of an American, anglophile and lover of English literature. Another opera on this subject was composed by Carlisle Floyd in 1958. (Marc Vignal)

By the way the phrase 'a mixture of wild purity and Satanism' was, as far as we know, never said by Charlotte Brontë (as a matter of fact it comes from the booklet of the original Unicorn Wuthering Heights CD). The most approximate thing we can find is this comment in the Editor's Preface to the New Edition of 'Wuthering Heights' (1850):

Heathcliff betrays one solitary human feeling, and that is NOT his love for Catherine; which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman: a passion such as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some evil genius; a fire that might form the tormented centre - the ever- suffering soul of a magnate of the infernal world: and by its quenchless and ceaseless ravage effect the execution of the decree which dooms him to carry Hell with him wherever he wanders. No; the single link that connects Heathcliff with humanity is his rudely-confessed regard for Hareton Earnshaw - the young man whom he has ruined; and then his half-implied esteem for Nelly Dean. These solitary traits omitted, we should say he was child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man's shape animated by demon life - a Ghoul - an Afreet.

Midi Libre (or Le Parisien) explains how the Festival director, René Koering, discovered this opera:

Herrmann avait d’ailleurs lui-même dirigé les Hauts de Hurlevent. Et c’est grâce à un enregistrement collector acheté sur ebay (250 €) que René Koering a découvert « le plus beau des opéras américains ». (Jean-Marie Gavalda) (Microsoft Translator)

And not directly related to Herrmann's opera but to another opera version of Wuthering Heights: Frédéric Chaslin's new version. The French composer and director has been appointed chief conductor of The Santa Fe Opera.

Categories: Music, Opera, Wuthering Heights