Esclarmonde. Jules Massenet

Abstract

As a kind of Riviera vacation from the bel canto repertory that earned her an Olympian niche in operatic history, Joan Sutherland liked to explore the French repertory, such as Delibes’s Lakmé, Thomas’s Hamlet, and Massenet’s Le roi de Lahore and Esclarmonde. Although not exactly a physically apt Lakmé or Ophélie, the tall, imperious, big-boned, and big-voiced diva was supremely equipped to play the magical Byzantine empress in Esclarmonde and to sing its sweeping, almost Wagnerian music. Composed for the American soprano Sybil Sanderson (1864–1903), who wowed Paris with her upper extension, the title role in Massenet’s opéra romanesque climbs to a G above high C, which landed the opera in the Guinness Book of World Records for containing the highest note ever written into an operatic score. But aside from the occasional short burst of woodpecker staccatos (including some on high C), assorted trills, and a few brief coloratura flourishes, the title character’s vocalism is far less florid than that of Lucia, Norma, Amina, Donna Anna, the Puritani Elvira, Marie in the simultaneously French and bel canto Fille du régiment, or others of Sutherland’s bread-and-butter parts.