# Roussel's Exotic And Fascinating Opera Padmavati



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Padmavati , by Albert Roussel , may be the greatest opera you've never heard .
This highly original French composer, who lived from 1869 to 1937 , was apparently 
inspired by his visit to India about a century ago to write this unique opera/ballet , which 
tales place in medieval India during the Moghul conqest of the subcontinent .
It was first performed in 1923 at the Paris opera to considerable acclaim , and had a few revivals there over the years , but has somehow never achieved the lasting place in the repertoire it deserves , which is a pity, because it's one of the most gripping, colorful and 
fascinating operas you're ever likely to hear. It still awits its U.S. premiere , although Christoph Eschenbach, recently installed as music director of the Washington National symphony, led excerpts from it earlier this year at a Washington concert .
There was a revival at the Paris Theatre de Chatelet a few years ago , which was 
very enthusiastically received , and the production later moved to the Spoleto festival in Italy, but with a different cast and conductor .
The plot of Padmavati is quite straightforward ; the conquering Moghul Sultan Alauddin comes to the city of Chitoor after a long conflict ostensibly to make peace with the Maharajah Ratan Sen, but secretly covets his dazzlingly beautiful wife 
Padmavati, who is revered by the local people as almost divine . 
But he soon decrees that if Padmavati is not immediately handed over to him , his army will destroy the entire city and slaughter all of its inhabitants .
Padmavati, her attendants, and the Brahmin priests retreat to a secret Hindu temple in th emeantime while Ratan Sen and his Indian troops valiantly fight the Moghul army .
The maharajah returns wounded to the temple and begs his wife to yield to the Sultan in order to spare the people and the city . But she refuses adamantly , 
and stabs her husband to death so that she will be required by Hindu law to commit Suttee, or the ritual burning of widows . 
She goes through an elaborate ritual of immolation , and at the very end , Alauddin and his troops have finally penetrated the temple . But she is no more, and 
everything was in vain ! 
Roussel's score sounds like no opera you have ever heard , and the orchestration is
filled with the most dazzling colors you have ever heard .
As the composer had the opportunity to study traditional Indian music at the source,
the music sounds much more authentically Indian than such entertaining but pseudo 
Indian operas as Delibe's Lakme and Bizet's The Pearl Fishers .
There are extended ballet sequences . Russel's music sounds nothing like his 
better-known contemporaries Debussy and Ravel ; it is much more rugged and dissonant , yet often full of sensuous, sinuous melodic lines . 
So far, there have been only two recordings, one live, and one studio.
The studio version from the 80s , and a superb one ,features Marilyn Horne in the title role, Nicolai Gedda as her husband , and Jose Van Dam as the Sultan , with a sizable number of smaller roles filled by some excellent French singers .
The conductor is Michel Plasson , who has recorded so much interesting off-beat French music, with the excellent Toulouse orchestra and a chorus from Barcelona ,in 
vivid and atmospheric sound on EMI .
I haven't heard the other one, from a live concert performance in London in 1969, the Roussel centennial year, conducted by Jean Martinon, who had been a pupil of the composer .
There may still be some copies left at arkivmusic.com .
Do try this fascinating and unique opera ballet if you can find a copy .
Let's hope that Leon Botstein will do Padmavati sometime soon in New York with his
American symphony .


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I agree. I'm not much of an opera fan, but I stumbled on the Plasson recording at a used CD store and have been taken with it from the start.


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