With the newly-edited ballet interlude, Gluck’s opéra-comique “L’Île de Merlin, ou Le Monde renversé” can now be performed again in its entirety.
Christoph Willibald Gluck secured his place in the history of music above all with his reform opera “Orfeo ed Euridice”. However, the beginning of this pioneering development was preceded by an intensive study of French music theatre. Unlike the Italian opera seria style, by then already somewhat outdated, opéra-comique enthralled its audiences through an apparently simple portrayal, which was in fact highly artistic and vivid. In the interplay of spoken dialogues, popular vaudevilles, newly-composed airs and dance interludes, the aim is to create an evening at the theatre – one which will fascinate today’s audience just as much as 250 years ago.
The Opéra-comique “L’Île de Merlin, ou Le Monde renversé”, premiered on 3 October 1758 in Schloss Schönbrunn near Vienna, displayed not only Gluck’s stylistic maturity in his approach to the French opera tradition, but also the great popularity of this theatrical form in the Habsburg capital in Maria Theresia’s time. The plot begins with two shipwrecked young men who are stranded on a deserted island – a place where all relationships are turned upside down. However strange and amusing it may seem at the beginning, it becomes ironic and tragic when it comes to winning the favours of their beloved girls: instead of fighting in a duel, the two have to roll the dice against their rivals before the notary. And they lose. At this dramatic moment, Merlin the magician intervenes: with his help the young men succeed in winning their beloveds back. And in order to celebrate the happy end, the magician’s retinue and the island inhabitants dance a final ballet together.
When the opera was published in 1956 as part of Gluck, The Complete Works (GGA IV/1), the edition did not yet include the ballet. It was wrongly assumed that there should just be dancing to the final chorus. It was research into Gluck’s activities as “Compositor von der Music zu denen Balletten”, which received new stimulus especially in the 1970s from the rediscovery of historic documents, that led to a crucial insight: the “Ballet du Monde renversé”, now preserved in the Schwarzenberg Archive in Český Krumlov (Czech Republic), was identified as the final ballet of the eponymous opéra-comique.
The fact that the ballet music listed does not survive in the opera scores reflected Viennese theatre practice, as this allowed it to be flexibly combined with other works. So the ballet for “L’Île de Merlin, ou Le Monde renversé” could potentially not only end another opéra comique, a dance drama, or even a drama evening, but it could also be performed as a small, independent dance divertissement. Even within the ballet music to “L’Île de Merlin” there is creative freedom: the sequence of dances reproduced in the edition – based on the sole surviving set of parts – is only one of many possible variants. The movements can theoretically be rearranged, cut or added. The number of repetitions can also be freely adjusted over and above the usual notated ones, according to the choreographical concept.
The newly-edited incidental ballet, with eleven individual movements, enables not only a complete performance of the opéra-comique “L’Île de Merlin, ou Le Monde renversé” in one of its original versions, at the same time it opens new perspectives on Viennese stage practice and daily life in the theatre in that period. It also invites a new discovery of Gluck’s music in its original staged context.
Yin-Shao Liu
(from [t]akte 2/2025)
(translation. Elizabeth Robinson)