The Soothsayer of the village

the Soothsayer of the village is a Intermède (small opera) in an act of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (words and music), represented the October 18th 1752 with the Château of Fontainebleau in front of Louis XV and the court, and on March 1st 1753 with the royal Académie of music of Paris, with Pierre de Jélyotte in the main role, Cuvillier in the role of the Soothsayer and Marie Fel in the role of Colette.

Work

the Soothsayer of the village is the first opera whose words and music are same author. This work also illustrates many contradictions which strew the life and the intellectual work of a man which had written, little time before, in its Lettre on the French music , which “ it has there neither measurement nor melody in the French music, because the language is not likely; that the French song is only one continual, unbearable barking with any not prevented ear; that the harmony in is rough, without expression and feeling only its filling of schoolboy; that the French airs are not airs; that récitatif French is not the récitatif one. From where I concluded, that the French do not have music and cannot about it have; or that if ever they have one of them, it will be so much worse for them ”.

Characters

Hake
Colette
the soothsayer
Troop of young people of the village

Summary

Colette complains about the Hake inaccuracy and will find the soothsayer village to know the fate of her love. She learns that the lady of the place knew to captivate the heart of its shepherd by present. The soothsayer lets hope for Colette whom it will be able to bring back it to her. He then makes hear in Colin which its shepherdess left it to follow a Mister of the city. Hake does not believe anything and re-examines its mistress in love of it than ever.

Reception

If the representation at the court were a success, it went from there differently to the city where for the first representation it took part in the disorders of the Querelle of the Buffoons, in favor of Rousseau and Branch being inveighed during the opera in the middle of the laughter. Young people of the floor had imagined to cover their head of a cotton bonnet with long wick.

the Soothsayer of the village had nevertheless an extraordinary success: it is medium term between the Italian music and the French music. The melody is simple, natural and easy, the harmony married well with the melody; the agreement is perfect between the words and the music: it reigns there from one end to another a complete unit of tone and intention. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in her Confessions , tells in these terms the effect of the first representation of the Devin of the Village , before the court, in Fontainebleau:

“One opera hat not in front of the king: that made that all was heard; the part and the author gained there. I heard around me a whisper of women who seemed to me beautiful like angels and which between-were said to half-voice: - That is charming, that is charming! There is not a sound there which does not leave the heart. - The pleasure of giving emotion to as well pleasant people moved me myself to the tears, and I pus to contain them with the first duet by noticing as I was not alone to cry.

“the Jélyotte following day wrote a ticket to me where it detailed me the success of the part and the passion where the king himself was. All the day, marked me it, Its Majesty does not cease singing with the falsest voice of its kingdom:

I lost my servant,

I lost all my happiness! ”

Benefit

Rousseau could have obtained a pension of the king, at least made him one hope, and the duke of Aumont had invited it to go the following day to the castle to present it to the king. “Would one Believe, says it, that the night which followed a so beautiful day, was one night of anguishes and perplexity for me? I appeared myself in front of the king… My cursed timidity, which disturbs to me in front of the least unknown, it would have left me in front of the king of France! … I wanted, without leaving the air and the severe tone which I had taken, to show me sensitive to the honor that a so large monarch made me. It was necessary to wrap some large and useful truth in a beautiful and deserved praise. To prepare a happy answer in advance, it would have been necessary to envisage right what it could say to me… If it should escape to me in my disorder some one from my ordinary clumsinesses? This danger alarmed me, frightened me, made me quiver at the point to determine me, at any risk, not to expose me there. I admittedly lost the pension which was offered to me to some extent; but I exempted as yoke as it had imposed to me. Good-bye the truth, freedom, courage. How to dare from now on to speak about independence, satisfying. One did not have any more but to flatter or conceal to me, by receiving this pension: still which ensured me that it would be paid? What of step to be made, which people to be solicited? ” Diderot which did not make him a crime not have wanted to be presented to the king, made him terrible of its indifference for the pension. “II says to me that, if I were not involved for my account, it was not allowed to me to be it for that of Mrs Levasseur and her daughter, that I them was not to omit any possible way and honest to give them bread…”

Polemics

Rumors ran with regard to the musical paternity of Rousseau, of aucuns having claimed that Rousseau had found the music of the Devin in papers of an obscure Lyons musician that some name Gauthier and other Granet, but this history did not receive great credit. A comparison of the music of the Devin with the melodies that Rousseau entitled the Consolations of miseries of my life show that all these simple, expressive and pleasant songs, but from an often incorrect harmony emanate from the same author. Only, the instrumentation of the Devin was initially improved and perhaps rewritten by Francœur and the councils of this musician, with those of Jélyotte, were not useless in Rousseau.

Posterity

In September 1753, one represented a parody of the Devin of village under the name of the Amours of Bastien and Bastienne by Justine Favart and Harny de Guerville, continuation of light comedies and airs popular offering all the scenes and situations of opera-pastoral, under the dressing-up of the country patois substituted for the regular language that Rousseau makes speak with its characters. Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni gave to a parody of the Devin of the village with the Lovers of village (July 26th 1764).

Mozart also composed an opera Singspiel in an act on this subject: Bastien and Bastienne (Kv. 50). The booklet was of Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern, Johann H.F. Müller and Johann Andreas Schachtner. Creation took place on October 1st 1768.

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