Watson, Laura (2015) Ireland in the Musical Imagination of Third Republic France. In: France and Ireland: Notes and Narratives. Reimagining Ireland (66). Peter Lang, Bern, pp. 91-110. ISBN 9783034319140

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Abstract

This chapter will examine images of Ireland as evoked in the music of the Third Republic in France with particular focus on the 1924 production of Henri Rabaud’s L’Appel de la mer, addressing its libretto, score, and reception history. The musical adaptation of any literary text will always result in some transformation of the original material but when Rabaud (1873-1949) decided to set John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea as a one-act opera, he strove to retain its authentic local colour, natural dialogue, and references to islander rituals, all the while writing with the Opéra-Comique audience in mind. ‘They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me’, laments Maurya towards the end of Synge’s one-act play about a widow from the Aran Islands who loses her husband and each of her six sons to the surrounding North Atlantic ocean. The isolated island, its people, and traditions comprise Maurya’s entire world, one so self-contained and alienated that even the west coast of Ireland seems impossibly distant. How, then, did a 1903 drama about the grinding daily hardship of a tiny fishing village find its way to the cosmopolitan setting of a Parisian opera house in 1924?

Item Type:	Book Section
Keywords:	Ireland; Music; Third Republic France; Henri Rabaud; L’Appel de la mer; John Millington Synge; Riders to the Sea; opera; Opéra-Comique;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Music
Item ID:	7770
Depositing User:	Dr Laura Watson
Date Deposited:	17 Jan 2017 10:38
Publisher:	Peter Lang
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	https://www.peterlang.com/
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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