Giacomo Meyerbeer: Alimelek - an Opera in Two Acts

Giacomo Meyerbeer is the only composer that I can think of who composed for three different and equally important eras of 19^th century music. His works straddle the German Romantic school, Italian bel-canto and French grand opera. Alimelek, to use the shortened title, is the first opera that he composed and received its world premiere in Stuttgart in January of 1813. The libretto was based on The Tale of the Sleeper and the Waker from Volume One of Burton’s translations of “One Thousand and One Nights”. The plot concerns the wealthy young muslim Alimelek, who lives a somewhat reckless life with his runaway love Irene. He is saddled with a group of freeloading friends who are flouting the muslim laws enough to have the Caliph of Bagdad arrive incognito to investigate him. The Caliph happens to be the very person whom Irene ran away from. The Caliph forms a plan to drug Alimelek with some forbidden wine and remove him to his own palace, where after waking him up, he arranges an elaborate deception to convince Alimelek that he is now the Caliph. All of this is in order to determine how much punishment is warranted for stealing his intended, Irene. In the end all ends happily as the Caliph forgives both Irene and Alimelek.
For a first opera, Meyerbeer’s compositional style shows a remarkable level of maturity and craft. The music shows a strong influence of Turkish mania, which was beginning to wane by 1812. Meyerbeer’s opera is a singspiel which puts it in direct comparison with Mozart’s Die Entführing aus dem Serail. The Turkish aspects of the overture and elsewhere are certainly influenced by Mozart but I must ask why there is so much Istanbul and Janissary-like percussive effects to the music when we are actually in Bagdad? Presumably there was no European musical language available to depict other Middle Eastern cultures until Rimsky-Korsakov got around to composing Shehérezade; as Félicien David’s disappointingly banal symphonic ode, Le désert gives ample proof of. Even so, Meybeer shows a fully developed plasticity of form, particularly in regards to his innovative use of the orchestra, a gift which would serve him well throughout his career. The musical numbers are quite well integrated with the story as the opening double chorus of the Freeloaders demonstrates. Act Two opens with another chorus, this time for a group of slaves, which is even more germane to the action, and it has some delightful Schubertian qualities about it before evolving into a Beethoven-like conclusion. Interestingly, there is a wonderful drinking song for the title character, which aside from being strictly forbidden for Muslims, incorporates some really delightful scoring for the woodwind section.

The live concert performance,e that was recorded here by the German Südwestrundfunk is a decently produced achievement in no small part due to the care and attention of Conductor Ola Rudner who paces things with style and verve. The Württemberg orchestra do full justice to the lovely scoring job that Meyerbeer gave them.

In a time when good documentation for a recording seems like ancient history, Sterling has led the way with not one, but two booklets. The first is an informative history of the opera, and the second is the complete libretto including all of the dialogue with full English translation. There is a great deal of dialogue in this singspiel, and much of it has been recorded. Sterling is really to be commended for printing the dialogue in its complete form with clear indications of the sections that were unperformed.

While Alimelek will never be considered Meyerbeer’s masterpiece, it certainly has enough of interest in it to deserve an occasional airing. This recording has been long in preparation but fills an important gap in the Meyerbeer canon. I would suggest snapping up a copy while one is able to. Mike Parr, MusicWeb-International