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H ow often in the annals of lyric theatre has the real or imaginary life story of a composer served as the inspiration? Faced with this trivia question, an opera buff or a fan of musical comedy might reach for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri (1898), Pfitzner’s Palestrina (1917), or Sigmund Romberg’s Blossom Time (1921), with an unhappy Franz Schubert as its hero. Hans Sachs was an actual sixteenth-century lyricist-composer before he became the key character in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. Other examples that come to mind depend on artistic invention rather than biography: in Ariadne auf Naxos and again in Capriccio, Strauss and Hofmannsthal depict a fictional composer ; and Virgil T. is the male chorus in Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All, his female counterpart being Gertrude S., obviously the opera’s librettist, Gertrude Stein. In early 2007, the Metropolitan Opera in New York gave the first production of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor, a work it had commissioned. One of the main characters is a fictitious composer, and the main plot line is Emperor Qin’s demand that he write an anthem to celebrate the unity of China. The first act ends with an emphatic curtainline , sung by the Emperor (Plácido Domingo): “Finish the anthem!” In the annals of Canadian lyric theatre, surprisingly, two examples emerge: Le Père des amours (Montreal, 1942) and Le Vagabond de la gloire (Montreal, 1947). In the former, the central figure is the French-born composer and writer Joseph Quesnel (1746–1809), active in Canada from his emigration in 1779, while the latter features Calixa Lavallée (1842–91), 227 Father of Romance, Vagabond of Glory Two Canadian Composers as Stage Heroes john beckwith TEN the outstanding musical personality of nineteenth-century Canada, best known as the composer of “O Canada.” The stage works recount their careers with little regard for the known historical facts, an approach familiar from the Rimsky, Pfitzner, and Romberg items mentioned, and from many a Hollywood biopic. The composer of both works is Eugène Lapierre (1899–1970), a prominent Montreal critic, teacher, and church musician. He was educated in the generation of Abbé Lionel Groulx’s L’Action catholique (later L’Action française), and as a student at the Université de Montréal he came under the influence of the noted exponent of “cultural economics,” Édouard Montpetit. After studies in Paris in the mid-1920s he became the director of an independent Montreal music school, the Conservatoire national, a post he held until 1951. Apart from his two operettas, he composed a body of sacred choral pieces and works for organ. His published writings of the 1930s include a book, Pourquoi la musique? (1933a), and several pamphlets with titles like “Le rôle social de la musique,” “Les vedettes de la musique canadienne,” “Un style canadien de musique,” and “La question du Conservatoire.” They range from broad questions of musical aesthetics to the special place of music in Canadian society, the accomplishments of its main exponents, and specific issues such as the need for a state-supported music school. He is best remembered, however , for the first (and until recently the only) biography of Lavallée, Calixa Lavallée, musicien national du Canada, published in 1936 with further editions in 1950 and 1966. Lapierre was a forefront instigator of the 1933 ceremonies reinterring Lavallée’s remains in Montreal from the original burial site in Boston. His writings align with the conservative Roman Catholic teachings of his time and uphold a patriotic view founded on a sense of French culture transplanted in francophone North America. To judge from his work, Lapierre stands as a Quebec nationalist before the decline of clerical authority, before the révolution tranquille of the 1960s, and before the term “Québécois” came into common use.1 One of the earliest researchers to argue for the serious study of Canada’s musical past,2 Lapierre, however, often surrounds his findings with a romantic idealism that transcends scholarly objectivity. Later cultural and historical commentators contrast him with other figures in his generation of wider perspective, such as the progressive composer Rodolphe Mathieu and the pianist, critic, and composer Léo-Pol Morin.3 Indeed, Lapierre’s recipe for an authentic Canadian musical style was held up to ridicule by a musicologist of a later generation, Yves Chartier: 228 John Beckwith [18.118.30.253] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 13:21 GMT...

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