L'étoile du nord
L'étoile du nord (The North Star) is an opéra comique in three acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer.
[1] However, there also are some significant differences, perhaps the most important of which is that it was permissible to actually have Peter the Great take part in the action, which was not the case for Frederick, who had to play his flute off-stage, since members of the Prussian royal family were not permitted to be impersonated on the stage in Berlin where that work had its premiere.
Ships' carpenters rest from their work and enjoy a meal break as Danilowitch, a pastry-chef from Russia, hawks his pies.
The carpenters propose a toast to Charles XII of Sweden, Russia's enemy, which angers Danilowitch and Peters, both of whom are Russian.
Left alone, Peters tells Danilowitch that he is indeed in love with the beautiful Catherine and has even learned, like her brother Georges, to play her favourite tune on the flute in order to please her.
Catherine disarms Gritzenko, the Cossacks' leader, and the rest of his men, by disguising herself as a gypsy, telling their fortunes, and leading them in song and dance.
This rebellious feeling is increased when General Yermoloff enters with the news that the knout, a heavy whip, will thenceforth be used to discipline soldiers.
[2] Meyerbeer and his librettist Eugène Scribe had presented sensationally successful French grand operas at the Paris Opéra.
After the tremendous success of their Le prophète in 1849, Émile Perrin, director of the Opéra-Comique, invited Meyerbeer to compose a work in that genre for his theatre.
Meyerbeer had long wanted to try his hand at this typically French style of work, and he decided to adapt his German singspiel Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, presented in Berlin in 1844, for that purpose.
[3] Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, a celebration of the Hohenzollern dynasty ruling in Berlin and their illustrious ancestor Frederick the Great, had already been adapted into a piece for Vienna under the title Vielka in 1847 - Vienna being the capital of the ruling Habsburg dynasty, a glorification of the Hohenzollerns would not have been appropriate.
[4] Meyerbeer's inherited wealth and his duties as official court composer to King Frederick William IV of Prussia meant that there was no hurry to complete the opera, and he and Scribe worked on the piece for more than four years before its premiere.
These adventures of Peter the Great while working in disguise as a shipbuilder in Western Europe had already served as the basis for numerous comic operas including Il borgomastro di Saardam by Donizetti, 1827, and Zar und Zimmermann by Albert Lortzing, 1837.
The Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company staged the work's United States premiere on September 24, 1856, at the Academy of Music in New York City.
Meyerbeer composed some of the pieces in a light, humorous style largely new to his work in a Rossiniian spirit of playfulness, but there are also elements of the grand opera mode he had made so successful, for instance in the finale to the second act, with huge massed choruses, stage bands and processions.
In 1937 Constant Lambert arranged excerpts from this opera and from Le prophète into the ballet Les Patineurs, choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton.
