The project, which was a collaboration with the Danish playwright Poul Knudsen, caused Sibelius great anguish—primarily because he had not understood that, when signing the commissioning contract, he was committing himself to the composition of an hour-long, full-length score.

Despite the quality of its musical material—critics at the premiere, for example, praised Sibelius's nuanced score for its sense of drama, noting that "it bears the imprint of genius"[3]—the piece, due to the weakness of Knudsen's scenario, never established itself in the repertory and modern performances are rare.

[2] Further disappointment arrived when Sibelius obtained Knudsen's libretto, which he criticized as having "virtually plagiarized" the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler's Der Schleier der Pierrette (The Veil of Pierrette),[6][2] a pantomime in three acts for which the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi had recently provided the incidental music (Op.

[2][5][4] According to passages from his diary, Sibelius found it difficult to compose the new work and worried "that his international reputation was at stake":[2] I've completely ruined things for myself by signing the Scaramouche contract.

I have allowed myself to be weighed down by one stupidity after another.Despite his frustration, Sibelius completed the score in late 1913, dispatching the manuscript to Hansen on 21 December with the note: "To get it right has cost me much thought and work.

Georg Høeberg conducted the Royal Danish Orchestra, with Johannes Poulsen serving as performance director, as well as the titular character, Scaramouche.

[citation needed] The Copenhagen critics savaged the production, faulting Knudsen's libretto as "crude[ly]" derivative of Schnitzler and the use of spoken dialogue as "totally out of place".

A masterpiece from beginning to end.The review in Politiken was similarly complementary, describing the score as having displayed "the resourcefulness and unscrupulous power of the great Finnish master... [the music contains a] refinement almost verging on perversity... it bears the imprint of genius".

[3] Upon reaching Sibelius in Helsinki, the reviews put him in a positive mood and he recorded in his diary: "Scaramouche in Copenhagen was a great success".

Music coming from outside the house interrupts the festivities: Scaramouche, a hunch-backed dwarf clad in black, plays the viola, with his traveling companions (a boy in yellow with a flute and a woman in scarlet with a lute) providing accompaniment.

To her husband's embarrassment, as well as the amazement of the guests, Blondelaine dances with abandon to the music, which becomes quicker and more demonic in color; in her delirium, she drops the bunch of flowers that she had been holding.

As Leilon and company depart for dinner, Blondelaine hears Scaramouche's viola playing; possessed, she runs outside, again dropping her bouquet.

[10][11] The curtain rises to find a melancholy Leilon seated with Gigolo, who tells his friend that Blondelaine will never return to him—better, instead, to forget her.

Barnett argues that such "modest" scoring thus permits the composer to "depict the mysterious, supernatural allure of Scaramouche with restraint... the orchestration is sensitive, with a transparency akin to chamber music.

Robert Layton, for example, has written of the score's unevenness: "there are moments of genuine poetry and a wistful, gentle sadness that is both touching and charming... [this is music of] both distinction and vision"; but, he continues, much of act 2 is "thin" and "there are some passages deficient in real inspiration".