Les trois souhaits
Les trois souhaits, ou Les vicissitudes de la vie, H. 175, The three wishes, or life's tribulations, Czech Tři přání, is a film opera by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů to a libretto by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. Composed mainly in Paris between autumn 1928 and May 1929, it was not premiered until June 1971 at the State Theatre, Brno. Grove describes the work as "one of the composer's most experimental works, blending film with stage action", and as "a mature drama" it is "comparable in theatrical impact to many of Martinů's later operas."
Background
As an artist, poet and playwright Ribemont-Dessaignes was part of the Surrealist movement in Paris. As a composer, some of his piano works, written using a roulette wheel, had been heard at a Dadaist performance in the Salle Gaveau. Composer and librettist met when Ribemont-Dessaignes's work had just been translated into Czech. Ribemont-Dessaignes wrote the libretto for Martinů's second opera Les larmes du couteau with an "outlandish" and "jazz-oriented scenario".The opera concerns not only the making of a film but incorporates the final result, with the worlds colliding in the film that we see being made, and the lines between reality and unreality are frequently obscure. The work anticipates the later masterpiece Julietta, in the way it looks forward to the 'opera of dreams', with several references to dreams in the libretto. The opera is a play within a play, rather a film narrative within an episode of real-life. The composer planned a further collaboration with this poet, but it was never completed.
Ribemont-Dessaignes is quoted as saying that there is a 'vital intensity' in Martinů's music, which reflects, and is perfectly in harmony with, the action. Very much of its time, the score references "the wit of Les Six, La Revue nègre and the first tangos in Paris... snatches of atonality", while "quirky, wistful music, calling for a jazz pianist and a barbershop quartet, puts on a smile in the face of life’s bitterness". The score calls for a banjo, saxophone, flexatone as well as an accordion, the latter also used in Julietta. An orchestral entr'acte before the final scene, entitled Le Départ exists as an independent orchestral work."
Performance history
Despite the rejection of their first opera Les larmes du couteau by the Baden-Baden Festival Martinů and Ribemont-Dessaignes began immediately a collaboration on another opera, which was completed soon after in May 1929. Les trois souhaits aroused some interest in 1930 from the directors of the Berlin-Charlottenburg Opera; Martinů travelled to the German capital to present the work, but negotiations foundered on financial and administrative considerations to do with making the film and the sets, significantly greater that what they were used to create. The opera received its posthumous premiere on 16 June 1971 in the Janáček Opera House Brno in a production by the film director Evald Schorm; the conductor was Václav Nosek. Photography was by Jaroslav Kučera.In May 1973, conducted by Jean-Pierre Jacquillat, a production by the then joint directors of the Lyon Opera Louis Erlo and Jean Aster was seen by the composer's widow, the cast including Emmy Gregor as the fairy. A further production was mounted in Lyon in October 1990, conducted by Kent Nagano in a production by Louis Erlo and Alain Maratrat; with a cast including Gilles Cachemaille, Jocelyne Taillon, Jules Bastin and Béatrice Uria-Monzon, it was subsequently issued on video.
The opera was produced at the National Theatre in Prague in 1990, with Jan Štych conducting, and again in December 2015 by the Ostrava National Moravian-Silesian Theatre under Jakub Klecker.
A production of January 2007 at the Großes Haus, Das Volkstheater Rostock, Germany conducted by Peter Leonard, directed by Jiří Nekvasil, and with Olaf Lemme, Ines Wilhelm, Christoph Kayser, Lucie Ceralová was the first with no musical cuts; some dialogue alone was excised at the start of Act 3.