Le pauvre matelot

  • The poor sailor (tenor )
  • His wife (soprano )
  • Their father ( bass)
  • Friend of the sailor (baritone )

The poor sailor is a one-act opera in three images of Darius Milhaud. The composer himself called his work " A dirge ". The libretto Jean Cocteau. Premiere was on December 12, 1927 at the Opéra -Comique in Paris. The German premiere took place on 29 November 1929 in Berlin at the Kroll Opera instead.

Action

The opera is set in a French port city at the time of the premiere, so in the 20s of the last century.

First Photo

The wife of the sailors operates a dockside bar. The income from this business is just enough of times to keep herself and her father more bad than good about water. Since 15 years, the woman longs for the return of her husband. The friend of her husband had been repeatedly assured her that her husband would be lost, and even wooed her. But it has always trusted her feeling that her husband would one day stand in front of her again.

But in fact the Missing immersed externally heavily aged to his friend. When he treats him like a stranger, he gives him to recognize and asks him to conceal his return his wife first. He wanted to surprise tomorrow. The sailor stayed at his friend's house.

Second Picture

The next day, the sailor is looking for his wife and claims to be a friend of her husband. It will not be long, because he 'll be back. However, her husband had been unable to make his fortune in a foreign land. He was as poor as the first day when he had gone to sea. Him on the other hand, the friend, the happiness was hold. He was able to amass a small fortune. As Most Valuable he owned a pearl necklace, which he always carried with him. The woman and her father have the seemingly strangers to camp for the night.

Third picture

At night, the woman kills the sleeping with a hammer to come into possession of the pearl necklace. In this way, it wants to ensure that she and her poor husband, he 'll be back soon return to her, had safe hands for the future.

When the father asks his daughter for the culprit, she confesses her guilt and tells him her motives. Together the two throw the corpse into the nearby cistern. The neighbors they want to say, the foreign visitors had set out very early in the morning. Whether the crime is solved, leaves open the opera.

Music

From the material is established, the opera indeed belongs to the realism, the music, however, suggests a completely different direction. She is kept deliberately primitive and sounds in long stretches like a ballad or a street ballad, in some ways similar to the Three Penny Opera. Thus the sad story is clearly broken and the dark tragedy broken ironic. The listener opens up the music with relative ease.

Expenditure

  • The poor sailor, German by Werner Riemerschmid, in: spectaculum: texts of modern operas. Edited by Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, Frankfurt aM: Suhrkamp, 1962, dnb
  • Opera by Title
  • Opera in French
  • Opera from the 20th century
  • Opera by Darius Milhaud
  • Music 1927
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