Mélidore et Phrosine

Inspired by the narrative poem Phrosine et Mélidore by Gentil-Bernard, the libretto for Mélidore et Phrosine revisits the legend of Héro and Léandre, telling the story of the incestuous love of Jules for his sister Phrosine. More than the indecency of the subject, the censors criticised the librettist, Antoine-Vincent Arnault, for the lack of patriotism in his text which, only containing the word “liberty” once, did not reflect the ideology that had opera in its grip during the revolutionary period. After the libretto was revised, with the help of Ernest Legouvé, the work was premiered at the Salle Favart on 17 Floréal Year III (6 May 1794) conducted by Berton. The reception was very mixed, some critics praising it as a masterpiece, others lamenting its lack of simplicity and genuine melody and criticising the composer for not drawing his inspiration from the Italian masters. The score, remarkable in its construction, aims to express the deepest passions of the human soul, particularly jealousy, by means of, among other things, the use of dissonance, chromaticism and an innovative harmonic language, characterised by the tendency to shift suddenly from the major to the minor or to juxtapose very remote keys (final of Act 1). These daring harmonic effects were not to the taste of Cherubini, who denounced “these abrupt transitions with little relation to the principal key of the piece” as being “incoherent and difficult”. Both the orchestration, whose innovative character was praised by Berlioz, and the use of reminiscence motifs, paved the way for the development of Romantic opera.