The Miraculous Mandarin

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A csodálatos mandarin
The Miraculous Mandarin
Béla Bartók in 1927
MusicBéla Bartók
Based on1916 story by Melchior Lengyel
Premiere27 November 1926 (1926-11-27)
Cologne Opera

The Miraculous Mandarin (

Sz. 73 (BB 82), is a one act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók between 1918 and 1924, and based on the 1916 story by Melchior Lengyel.[1] Premiered on 27 November 1926 conducted by Eugen Szenkar at the Cologne Opera, Germany, it caused a scandal and was subsequently banned on moral grounds.[2][3][4]
Although more successful at its Prague premiere, it was generally performed during the rest of Bartók's life in the form of a concert suite, which preserves about two-thirds of the original pantomime's music.

Synopsis

  1. Beginning—Curtain rises
  2. First seduction game
  3. Second seduction game
  4. Third seduction game—the Mandarin enters
  5. Dance of the girl
  6. The chase—the tramps leap out
  7. Suddenly the Mandarin's head appears
  8. The Mandarin falls to the floor

After an orchestral introduction depicting the chaos of the big city, the action begins in a room belonging to three tramps. They search their pockets and drawers for money, but find none. They then force a girl to stand by the window and attract passing men into the room. The girl begins a lockspiel—a "decoy game", or saucy dance. She first attracts a shabby old

rake
, who makes comical romantic gestures. The girl asks, "Got any money?" He replies, "Who needs money? All that matters is love." He begins to pursue the girl, growing more and more insistent until the tramps seize him and throw him out.

The girl goes back to the window and performs a second lockspiel. This time, she attracts a shy young man, who also has no money. He begins to dance with the girl. The dance grows more passionate, then the tramps jump him and throw him out too.

The girl goes to the window again and begins her dance. The tramps and girl see a bizarre figure in the street, soon heard coming up the stairs. The tramps hide, and the figure, a mandarin (wealthy Chinese man), stands immobile in the doorway. The tramps urge the girl to lure him closer. She begins another saucy dance, the Mandarin's passions slowly rising. Suddenly, he leaps up and embraces the girl. They struggle and she escapes; he begins to chase her. The tramps leap on him, strip him of his valuables, and attempt to suffocate him under pillows and blankets. However, he continues to stare at the girl. They stab him three times with a rusty sword; he almost falls, but throws himself again at the girl. The tramps grab him again and hang him from a lamp hook. The lamp falls, plunging the room into darkness, and the Mandarin's body begins to glow with an eerie blue-green light. The tramps and girl are terrified. Suddenly, the girl knows what they must do. She tells the tramps to release the Mandarin; they do. He leaps at the girl again, and this time she does not resist and they embrace. With the Mandarin's longing fulfilled, his wounds begin to bleed and he dies.

Music

The score begins with an orchestral depiction of the "concrete jungle." The violins have rapidly rising and falling, wave-like

pentatonic theme harmonized by 3 lines of parallel tritones
in the other trombones and the tuba. When the Mandarin enters the room, the trombones and tuba play downward glissandos, again spanning a minor third. Three measures later, this interval is played fortississimo by the full brass.

The girl's dance for the Mandarin contains both a

woodwinds
. As the Mandarin begins to bleed, the downward minor-third glissando heard at his entry is echoed in the trombone, contrabassoon and low strings. The work then stutters arhythmically to a close.

The scoring is generally heavy, and Bartók employs many colorful techniques here, including

quarter-tones
in the violins.

In 2000 a new edition edited by Peter Bartók, the composer's son, was published. Based on the composer's written manuscripts, corrections, and the concurrently written score for piano with four hands, it restored a considerable amount of previously lost music.

Instrumentation

The Miraculous Mandarin is scored for three

tam-tam, xylophone, celesta, harp, piano, organ, choir, and strings
.

Recordings

Performances of the ballet suite outnumbered performances of the complete ballet until recent years. Recordings of the suite include:

Notable recordings of the complete ballet include:

Notes

  1. ^ "The Miraculous Mandarin". Universal Edition. Retrieved 19 December 2020.
  2. ^ "Classical Music News from NAXOS.COM". www.naxos.com.
  3. ^ "Monthly Calendar". The Kennedy Center.
  4. ^ Puccio, John J. "Classical Candor: Bartok: The Miraculous Mandarin Suite (CD review)".
  5. ^ www.gramophone.co.uk: The Fischer recording's award on Gramophone's website

External links

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