''L'écume des jours'' (English: ''The Foam of Days'') is an

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

in three acts (14 scenes) by the Russian composer

Edison Denisov Edison Vasilievich Denisov (russian: Эдисо́н Васи́льевич Дени́сов, 6 April 1929 – 24 November 1996) was a Russian composer in the so-called " Underground", "alternative" or "nonconformist" division of Soviet music. ...

. The French (also

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

and

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

) text is by the composer based on the novel of the same title by

Boris Vian Boris Vian (; 10 March 1920 – 23 June 1959) was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer who is primarily remembered for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sull ...

. It was composed in 1981.

Composition history

Denisov conceived of the opera in the 1970s, and he worked on it up until 1981. The libretto is written in French. In it, Denisov used text from the novel and from numerous songs by

. He also used religious texts, including a song by an anonymous author (14th tableau), a text from a funeral liturgy (13th tableau), and the Latin text from the

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

(

Credo In Christian liturgy, the credo (; Latin for "I believe") is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed – or its shorter version, the Apostles' Creed – in the Mass, either as a prayer, a spoken text, or sung as Gregorian chant or other musical sett ...

and Gloria – 2nd tableau) and from the requiem (

Agnus dei is the Latin name under which the " Lamb of God" is honoured within the Catholic Mass and other Christian liturgies descending from the Latin liturgical tradition. It is the name given to a specific prayer that occurs in these liturgies, and ...

and Requiem aeternam – 13th tableau). Denisov defined his opera as a lyrical drama. The musical language is typical of Denisov's music of the 1980s with complex chromatic vocal lines, dissonant harmony and rich orchestral textures. There are many quotations, hidden quotations or allusions to music of different styles and epochs: songs by Duke Ellington, American

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

, French

chanson A (, , french: chanson française, link=no, ; ) is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music. The genre had origins in the monophonic so ...

, or

Gregorian chant Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainsong, plainchant, a form of monophony, monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek (language), Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed ma ...

. All of these are veiled and transformed in some way, and even the quotation from

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

’s ''

Tristan und Isolde ''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was comp ...

'' has a jazzy hue. The duration of the work is 2 hours and 20 minutes. It was published by

Le Chant du Monde Le Chant du Monde is a French music publishing house. It was created in 1938 by Léon Moussinac and was supported in the beginning by classical composers Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Charles Koechlin, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Albert ...

in Paris.

Performance history

The premiere performance was given on 15 March 1986 at the Opéra-Comique in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, conducted by John Burdekin and directed by Jean-Claude Fall. Subsequently, productions were mounted at the Perm Opera Theatre in 1989 and the

Staatsoper Stuttgart The Staatsoper Stuttgart (Stuttgart State Opera) is a German opera company based in Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The Staatsorchester Stuttgart serves as its resident orchestra. History Performances of operas, ballet an ...

in late 2012.

Roles

Scoring

Singers Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

: 2 sopranos, mezzo, 4 tenors, 2 baritones, 3 basses, 2 mimes, 1 boy soprano, chorus *

Orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

: 3.3.3.3 – alt saxophone,

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while ...

– 3.3.3.1–

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

–

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

–

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

/ celesta – harp – strings

Synopsis

Act 1

''1st Tableau: Colin's room'' Colin lives together with Mouse, the friend of his house. Colin is waiting for his friend, engineer Chick, whom he invited for dinner. His cook Nicolas is reading the recipes from the cook book. Chick arrives, and Colin shows him the "piano-cocktail", his own invention – the piano that makes cocktails. Chick plays an improvisation on Duke Ellington themes and then tells him about Alise, the niece of Nicolas, whom he met at the conference of Jean-Sol Partre (a broad hint on

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...

). They both go skating. ''Intermezzo: Colin dreams about a girl he wants to meet'' ''2nd Tableau: The skating-rink "Molitor"'' Chick and Colin meet Alise and Isis, who invites them to the birthday celebration of her dog. One of the skaters breaks up on the wall. They all join the burial liturgy. ''Intermezzo: The windy street'' Colin repeats: "I would like to fall in love, you would like to fall in love", and so on. ''3rd Tableau: At Isis'' Alise tells Colin that Chick does not want to marry her, because he spends all his money on the books by Jean-Sol Partre. Chloé enters. Colin feels that she is the girl of his dream. They dance. ''4th Tableau: The Quarter'' Colin meets Chloé and they walk along the streets. Terrified by the absurd shop-windows they went to the forest where surrounded by the pink cloud they are invisible for other people.

Act 2

''5th Tableau: Wedding preparations'' Two "honorary homosexuals", Pégase and Coriolan, are preparing themselves for the wedding. Simultaneously Chloé, Alise and Isis also prepare themselves for the wedding. ''Intermezzo: The wedding of Colin and Chloé: Hymn of Love'' ''6th Tableau: The honeymoon trip'' Colin and Chloé travel by car with Nicolas as a driver. Chloé is frightened by the vision of strange fish-scale beasts, smoke and dirt of the copper mines. ''7th Tableau: At Colin's'' Colin and Chloé are in bed. Chloé complains about pain in her lungs. They play a record, and the room is transformed into a sphere. The visit of a doctor. ''Intermezzo: The Medical Quarter, the channel with some fragments of bloody cotton, the eye gazing to Colin and Chloé'' ''8th Tableau: The pharmacy'' Colin and Chick are in a strange pharmacy with a guillotine for recipes and a mechanical rabbit making pills. Colin tells that Chloé has a lily in her lungs, and only flowers can cure her. ''9th Tableau: At Colin's'' Chloé is surrounded by flowers. The room became smaller. Colin reads her a novel about ''

Tristan and Iseult Tristan and Iseult, also known as Tristan and Isolde and other names, is a medieval chivalric romance told in numerous variations since the 12th century. Based on a Celtic legend and possibly other sources, the tale is a tragedy about the illic ...

''.

Act 3

''Intermezzo: Colin walks along the road; the vision of strange shapes and shadows'' ''10th Tableau: The military plant'' Colin finds a job at the military factory. The Director explains that weapons are growing from the seeds if you warm them with your naked body. ''11th Tableau: At Colin's'' Chloé sleeps among the flowers. Alise enters and tells Colin that Chick spent all his money on the books by Jean-Sol Partre, and now wants to separate from her. Colin tries to console her. ''Intermezzo: Seneschal and eight policemen are coming to Chick to confiscate his property'' ''12th Tableau: At Chick's'' Chick dies defending his books. Paris is on fire. ''Intermezzo: Alise sets fire to the bookshops with the books by Jean-Sol Partre'' ''13th Tableau: Chloé’s death'' The dialogue between Colin and Jesus nailed to the cross. ''Intermezzo: The empty town. The little girl sings a song about the dead town'' ''14th Tableau: An Epilogue'' Dialogue of Cat and Mouse. Mouse wants to die putting its head into the Cat's mouth. Blind girls walk the street singing a song about Jesus. One of the girls stepped on the Cat's tail. The Cat shuts its mouth.

Recordings

''Colin et Chloé'', suite from the opera ''L'écume des jours'' (''The Foam of Days'') for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, chorus and orchestra (1981) 36' Text by

(French) *LP Melodiya 24593:

USSR Ministry of Culture The Ministry of Culture of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (), formed in 1936, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was formerly (until 1946) known as the State Committee on the Arts (). The Minis ...

SO, Latvian SSR Academic Chorus, The USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra,Vasili Sinaisky (conductor), Nelli Lee (soprano), Nina Terentieva (mezzo-soprano), Nikolai Dumtsev (tenor) *CD Melodiya SUCD 10-00107: USSR Ministry of Culture SO, Latvian SSR Academic Chorus, The USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra, Vasili Sinaisky (conductor), Nelli Lee (soprano), Nina Terentieva (mezzo-soprano), Nikolai Dumtsev (tenor) :*1. The Street - 22.36 (1-7) :*2. The Molitor Skating Rink :*3. On the Way to Chloé :*4. The Wedding :*5. Colin et Chloé :*6. The Medical Quarter :*7. Alice's Death :*8. Epilogue - 7.40

References

Other Sources * Kholopov, Yuri and Valeria Tsenova: ''Edison Denisov (Contemporary Music Studies)'', Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995, ; London: Routledge, 1997, * Kholopov, Yuri, ''Edison Denisov, the Russian Voice in European New Music''. Berlin: Kuhn, 2002

External links

at Hans Sikorski pageThe production page for the 2012 staging in Stuttgart
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ecume des jours, L' Compositions by Edison Denisov French-language operas Operas Russian opera 1986 operas Opera world premieres at the Opéra-Comique Operas based on novels