page_title: Le prophète
section_title: No heroes nor love story
hierarchical_section_title: Le prophète / Analysis / Dark and complex libretto / No heroes nor love story
caption_attribution_description: English: Meyerbeer - Le prophète - Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Fides Identifier: victrolabookofop00vict (find matches) Title: The Victrola book of the opera&#160;: stories of one hundred and twenty operas with seven-hundred illustrations and descriptions of twelve-hundred Victor opera records Year: 1917 (1910s) Authors: Victor Talking Machine Company Rous, Samuel Holland Subjects: Operas Publisher: Camden, N.J.&#160;: Victor Talking Machine Co. Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ' Text Appearing After Image: Illlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll SCHUMANN HEINK AS FIDES I llllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllllllllllllllllllllllimillllllllllllllllllllllllllMIINlllllllllHl (Italian) (French) (English) IL PROFETA LE PROPHETE THE PROPHET (Eel Pro-fay-tah) (Leh Pro-feh Y ) OPERA IN FIVE ACTSText by Scribe. Music by Giacomo Meyerbeer. First presented in Paris, April 16,1849. First London production July 24, 1849. First American production at the NewOrleans Opera, April 2, 1850. First New York production November 25, 1854. Revivedat the Manhattan Opera in 1909 with dAlvarez, Lucas and Walter-Villa. CharactersJOHN OF LEYDEN, (Ly-den) the Prophet, chosen leader of the Anabaptists. . Tenor BERTHA, his sweetheart Soprano FlDES, (Fee-dayz) mother of John of Leyden Mezzo-Soprano COUNT OBERTHALf ruler of the domain about Dordrecht Bass ZACHARIAH, I (Bass JONAS, (three Anabaptist preachers &lt; Tenor MATH1SEN, J (Bass Nobles, Citizens, Peasant Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Le prophète is a grand opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer. The French-language libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, after passages from the Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations by Voltaire. The plot is based on the life of John of Leiden, Anabaptist leader and self-proclaimed "King of Münster" in the 16th century.
context_section_description: In contrast to the usual opera texts of the day, the love story is very clearly in the background in the libretto. Scribe prefers to focus on characters with unusually detailed psychology.
  The first of these characters is the "hero" (or rather the anti-hero) Jean of Leiden. The deepest nature of the character remains ultimately ambiguous: does he truly believe in the mission that God is said to have entrusted to him (in the prophetic dream of the second act, the vision of his victorious attack on Münster at the end of the third, and the coronation ceremony)? Or does he know that he is ultimately only a usurper who takes advantage of circumstances (hence his bad conscience and his repentance when he confronts his mother in the last act)? Does he really believe in the ideals of equality and social justice he defends? Or does he only act out of vengeance? Is he manipulated by the three Anabaptists? Or is he constantly controlling the situation? The libretto does not say.
  According to musical historian Robert Letellier, Scribe would have been inspired by the character of the false Dmitri in the drama Boris Godunov of Pushkin published in 1831 to create his portrait of Jean of Leiden, torn between his sincere religious faith and his imposture as a prophet and son of God. The libretto also mentions twice the character of Joan of Arc; in the second act she is referred to as an example of a war leader acting in the name of faith; in the third, this reference highlights the cruel failure of Jean, who, by his own admission, only directs a group of executioners, while "Joan of Arc, in her footsteps, has given birth to heroes."
  The second remarkable figure in the libretto is Fidès, the mother of John. This is the main female character, much more original than the conventional figure of Berthe, Jean's fiancée. Fidès is a devout woman who loves her son and tries to save him many times, even if she has to deny her motherhood and accuse herself of lying when she is not. The scene where Fidès questions the divine origin of her son during the coronation is a direct echo of the scene in Schiller's play The Maid of Orleans, which appeared in 1801, where the father of Joan of Arc accuses his daughter of sorcery at the coronation in Reims of Charles VII. With rare exceptions, Meyerbeer does not entrust the character with particularly virtuosic music; he prefers to invent a kind of lyrical declamation that reinforces the credibility and dignity of this role as a mother. On the musical level, the role is particularly difficult and was specifically written for the rare voice of Pauline Viardot.
  Finally, the trio of the Anabaptists, who act, speak and move as if they were only one person, is, for Robert Letellier, an invention of great originality. Perhaps intended as a caricature of the Holy Trinity, the trio personifies hypocrisy, treason and the dangers of demagogy.
caption: Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Fidès
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