Roland à Roncevaux

This opera recounts the final hours of the valiant eighth-century knight Roland, who gave his life defending the Frankish Kingdom’s frontier against the Bretons: his love for the beautiful Alde, Ganelon’s treachery, and the heroic end of the Twelve Peers at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, Charlemagne having arrived too late to save them. Something quite rare for the time, Auguste Mermet – who studied composition privately with Jean-François Le Sueur and Fromental Halévy – also wrote the libretto for this work, which celebrates patriotic sentiment. The work, premiered at the Paris Opera in 1864 with the support of Napoleon III, was a creditable success (59 performances in one year), but it disappeared from the repertoire with the end of the Second Empire. A chivalrous tone permeates Roland à Roncevaux, and the third act in particular was praised for its shepherd’s song, farandole, blessing of the soldiers, and Roland’s chant de guerre (war song), which was encored at the premiere. The Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris noted: “After the third act, His Majesty the Emperor, in his loge with Prince Humbert and the Duke of Leuchtenberg, his cousin, sent for M. Mermet and complimented him in the most delightful and flattering manner.”