THOMAS Ambroise (1811 - 1896)

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THOMAS Ambroise (1811 - 1896)
AUTOGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPTS of recitatives and additional music for Mignon (1866); 115 folio pages (Heugel Archives ink stamps). Important file on the reworking of Mignon into an opera. Mignon, a comic opera in 3 acts by Ambroise Thomas, on a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré after Les Années d'apprentissage de Wilhelm Meister by GOETHE, was first performed in Paris, at the Opéra-Comique, on November 17, 1866, with Célestine Galli-Marié (Mignon), Marie Cabel (Philine), Léon Achard (Wilhelm), Charles Bataille (Lothario), and was immediately a great success, reaching the hundredth performance in less than a year, and quickly played throughout Europe: Antwerp and Brussels in 1867, Geneva, Weimar and Vienna in 1868, and London on July 5, 1870 at Covent Garden, with Christine Nilsson in the title role. It is, it seems, for these London performances, given in Italian, that Ambroise Thomas transformed his comic opera into an opera, suppressing the spoken texts and dialogues with recitatives, composing dance music and additional arias; and it is in this form with recitatives that Mignon is generally given nowadays. The young Mignon is a foundling, mistreated by gypsies, from whom she is redeemed by the rich young Wilhelm Meister, lover of the actress Philine. He takes her with him, dressing her as a page. Mignon becomes attached to her savior and soon becomes jealous of Philine; she pushes the old Lothario, a crazy itinerant singer, to set fire to the castle where Wilhelm and Philine are staying for a party. Wilhelm saves Mignon from the flames, and realizes his love for her; he takes her to Italy, to a castle that once belonged to Lothario, Marquis of Cipriani, who then recognizes in Mignon his own daughter, Sperata, who had been kidnapped by gypsies; in spite of a last attempt by Philine, Wilhelm and Mignon confess their love, and everything ends happily. This set of manuscripts, in orchestral score, is written in brown ink on Lard-Esnault paper with 24 lines, in sheets, filed in folders; it includes: ACT I (84 p.), recitatives; ACT II (105 p.), recitatives ; Introduction of Mignon, "Ritournelle entre les deux strophes", for the aria of Lothario at the beginning of act I, sung by Jean-Baptiste Faure in London (1 sheet) ; Forlane, danced (30 p.) ; "2de version italienne page 308" for act III (1 f. in pencil on both sides) ; Styrienne - rondo, aria of Mignon, 2nd stanza : "Un beau jour tout triomphant"... (act II, 22 p.); 1 double sheet of corrections in pencil; Air N° 7, 2nd act, aria of Philine: "À merveille, j'en ris risqué d'avance!"... (48 p. with corrections); Rondo-gavotte, aria of Frédérick: "C'est moi, j'ai tout brisé"... (2nd act, 18 p.). DISCOGRAPHY Marilyn Horne, Alain Vanzo, etc., Philharmonia Orchestra, dir. Antonio de Almeida (Sony 1998)
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