page_title: La magicienne
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: La magicienne / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail from "March" of Labors of the months in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. The detail depicts Melusine as a winged serpent flying over the Château de Lusignan
context_page_description: La magicienne is a grand opera in five acts composed by Fromental Halévy. The libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges is based on stories surrounding the European folk figure Melusine, especially Coudrette's 15th-century Roman de Mélusine. The opera premiered on 17 March 1858 at the Théâtre de l'Académie Impériale de Musique in Paris. It had a mixed reception and after its initial run of 45 performances was not heard again until it was revived in a heavily cut concert version performed in Montpellier in 2011.
context_section_description: La magicienne was the last opera completed by Halévy before his death in 1862. Like his previous grand opera, Le Juif errant which premiered in 1852 and also had a libretto by Saint-Georges, the work was based on a European folk myth and combined elements of the supernatural with Christian themes. According to musicologists Karl Leich-Galland and Diana Hallman, the explicit religiosity of La Magicienne, particularly in the final act, which Leich-Galland describes as the scenic equivalent of a Christian oratorio, contrasts sharply with the anti-clerical sentiment expressed in Halévy's grand operas of the July Monarchy period (most notably in his 1835 La Juive). Both Hallman and Leich-Galland suggest that this shift may be a reflection of the reconciliation of church and state which occurred during the Second French Empire and can be seen in other grand operas of that period.  
  The medieval legend of Mélusine on which the libretto is loosely based has various versions. A common thread running through them is that she is the daughter of a fairy mother and a human father and possessed of supernatural powers. Like her mother, Mélusine married a human and forbade him from seeing her at certain times lest he see her true form, a creature that is half woman and half serpent (or fish in some versions). In many versions, especially those by Jean d'Arras (1393) and Coudrette (1401), Mélusine's husband was the founder of the House of Lusignan. She used her powers to build his castle, the Château de Lusignan, and bring him great riches. He discovered her secret one day when spying on her in her bath, and later in a fit of anger, called her a serpent in front of the assembled court. Outraged at this affront, she transformed herself into a winged serpent and flew out of the castle, never to return in human form.  
  In La magicienne, Mélusine lives alone in the Lusignan château. Her magic powers derive not from her ancestry as the daughter of a fairy but from a Faustian pact with the devil (personified in the opera by the Chevalier Stello di Nici). In his preface to the libretto Saint-Georges explained that the transformation of Mélusine into a horrible winged serpent in the "crude" form of the original legend could not be replicated in the theatre. Instead, he made her a woman whose future soul had become the devil's property and who was condemned in the present to be "beautiful by day and ugly by night". Her ultimate transformation in the opera is from a pagan to a Christian rather than from a woman to a monster. Some contemporary critics noted that the Mélusine of Saint-Georges' libretto scarcely resembled that of the medieval legend which was well known to French audiences of the time. She seemed more akin to the Circe of ancient Greece or Tasso's Armida.
caption: Melusine depicted in the Très Riches Heures as a winged serpent flying over the Château de Lusignan (15th century)
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