Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:37, 2 January 2025

The Garden of Mystery
Opera by Charles Wakefield Cadman
Cadman in 1919
Librettist	Nelle Richmond Eberhart
Language	English
Based on	"Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)
Premiere	20 March 1925 (1925-03-20) Carnegie Hall, New York City

The Garden of Mystery is an English-language American opera in one act and three scenes. The composer was Charles Wakefield Cadman with a libretto by Nelle Richmond Eberhart. The opera was based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1844 short story "Rappaccini's Daughter." The opera is a Gothic story about a doctor whose work with poisons has made his daughter's touch deadly.

The work premiered in a concert version at Carnegie Hall in New York City on March 20, 1925, with the American National Orchestra conducted by Howard Barlow. A staged performance did not occur until 1996.

Plot

The opera is set in 16th century Italy at Padua. The story takes place in the garden of Dr. Giacomo Rappacini. Overlooking the garden is a neighboring home.

Rappacini is a expert on botany and toxic plants. The plants in his garden are beautiful but deadly. He lives with his daughter, Beatrice. Beatrice's cousin Bianca is visiting. Bianca's love is Enrico.

Giovanni Guasconti is a university student who lives in a room that overlooks Rappacini's garden. He observes that the doctor seems to be afraid of plants in the garden but which Beatrice handles freely. He sees a bug drop dead from her breath. Giovanni is enchanted by this mysterious and beautiful woman.

Bianca and Enrico sit in the garden by the fountain and sing of their love and how they must flee the deadly garden.

Giovanni enters the garden and woos Beatrice. They start to embrace but she pulls back. Beatrice tells Giovanni that she has been raised on poisons and her kiss would be deadly. They both exit.

Giovanni retreats and visits a friend of his father's who gives him an antidote to Beatrice's poison. The next morning, Giovanni finds that he too is poisonous when his breath kills a spider. He goes to the garden with the antidote.

Beatrice, having lived her whole life on poison, believes she could not live without the toxins. She drinks the antidote and is proven correct. As she starts to die, she tells Giovanni to drink because the antidote will save him. She died in her father's arms. Giovanni drinks the antidote and lives.

Composition and premiere

Eberhart collaborated with Cadman on five operas. In May 1912, she suggested to Cadman basing an opera on the Hawthorne story and she began working that year. The original title was Beatrice, the name of Rappacini's daughter, then The Garden of Death, before they settlee on The Garden of Mystery. The first draft of the libretto was completed in October 1912 and the final version in 1914. Cadman finished the music in 1915. The opera did not receive a performance until 1925 when it was given in a concert version at Carnegie Hall as a benefit performance. The score was published in 1925.

A 1927 study of American opera claimed Garden "was probably the second absolutely native American operatic performance. Hawthorne, the author of the original story; Eberhart, who transformed it into an opera libretto; and Cadman, the composer, all were born in America. The same was true of the cast, orchestra, conductor and stage personnel;" the first native opera being Cadman and Eberhart's Shanewis.

The New York critics were harsh. Francis D. Perkins of The New York Herald Tribune said the opera was "a hardly feasible libretto set to undistinguished music." William James Henderson of The New York Sun said "it is impossible to describe in critical terms such a sorry attempt." Deems Taylor of the New York World said it was hard to judge the work itself from a performance that was "pretty bad."

The Pacific Coast Musician summarized the criticism of the 1925 premiere, writing it was "not satisfactorily produced . . . the cast was inefficient, the orchestra was unsatisfactory." The same review said Eberhart's libretto was done "with an eye to the literary quality rather than with an appreciation of dramatic values, a fatal thing to the success of opera, where action is necessary to hold the audience's interest." B.M. Steigman in the journal Music & Letters called it "pathetic" and "wretched," with a libretto "beyond hope."

Howard Pierson said in 1982 that Garden was "a remarkable departure from Cadman's usual style, becoming at times chromatic and dissonant and employing unusual modal melodic patterns in an attempt to convey the sinister aspects of the story."

Revival

The American Chamber Opera Company gave the first staged performance of Garden on February 16, 1996, in New York at at the Kate Murphy Theatre at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times was critical of both the work and the production. "The opera has a hokey, incomprehensible libretto about a maniacal doctor, a poisonous plant and two pairs of ill-fated lovers. The score is a hodgepodge that borrows shamelessly from Richard Strauss." Of the performers, Tommasini said "the orchestra, conducted by Douglas Anderson, floundered through this wayward music. Cadman's vocal parts are punishing, and the principals . . . struggled through them with forced and edgy singing."

Roles

See also

• The Poisoned Kiss, 1936 opera by Ralph Vaughn Williams based on the same source material.
• Rappacini's Daughter, 1991 opera by Daniel Catán based on the same source material.
• Rappaccini's Daughter, a list of other operas based on the same source material.

References

1. Mattfeld, Julius (1927). A Hundred Years of Grand Opera in New York, 1825-1925: A Record of Performances. New York: New York Public Library. p. 55. OCLC 457461576.
2. Perison, Harry D. (1982). "The 'Indian' Operas of Charles Wakefield Cadman". College Music Symposium. 22 (2): 20–48. ISSN 0069-5696.
3. Griffel, Margaret Ross (2013). Operas in English: A Dictionary. Vol. 1. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 300. ISBN 9780810883253.
4. Cadman & Eberhard 1925, p. 1.
5. ^ Giffel 2013, p. 300. sfn error: no target: CITEREFGiffel2013 (help)
6. ^ Pierson 1982. sfn error: no target: CITEREFPierson1982 (help)
7. Cadman, Charles Wakefield; Eberhard, Nelle Richmond (1925). The Garden of Mystery, A Grand Opera in One Act, Three Scenes. New York: J. Fischer & Bro. OCLC 5294906.
8. Hipsher, Edward Ellsworth (1927). American Opera and Its Composers: A Complete History of Serious American Opera, with a Summary of the Lighter Forms Which Led up to Its Birth. Philadelphia: Theodore Presser. p. 104.
9. "An American Opera". The Musical Observer. Vol. 24, no. 5. New York, N Y.: Musical Observer Company. May 1925. p. 28. Retrieved January 1, 2025.
10. ^ Musical Observer 1925, p. 28.
11. "Injustice to Cadman". Pacific Coast Musician. Vol. 14, no. 15. Los Angeles, California: Frank H. Colby. April 11, 1925. p. 6. Retrieved January 1, 2025.
12. Pacific Coast Musician 1925, p. 6.
13. Steigman, B.M. (1925). "The Great American Opera". Music and Letters. 6 (4): 359–367. doi:10.1093/ml/VI.4.359.
14. Wlaschin, Ken (2024). Encyclopedia of American Opera. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p. 272. ISBN 9781476612386.
15. Tommasini, Anthony (February 21, 1996). "Neglected One-Act Operas". The New York Times. New York, N.Y. p. C15. Retrieved January 1, 2025.
16. ^ Tommasini 1996, p. C15.
17. Cadman & Eberhard 1925, p. title page verso.

• Opera

• Operas
• 1925 operas
• One-act operas
• English-language operas
• Operas set in Italy
• Operas set in the 16th century
• Operas based on works by American writers