Merry Mount
Opera by Howard Hanson
Illustration to the short story on which the opera is based
Librettist	Richard Stokes
Language	English
Based on	"The May-Pole of Merry Mount" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Premiere	March 20, 1933 (1933-03-20) Ann Arbor, Michigan

Merry Mount is an opera in three acts by American composer Howard Hanson; its libretto, by Richard Stokes, is loosely based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The May-Pole of Merry Mount", taken from his Twice Told Tales. Hanson's only opera, it was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

The opera received its world premiere in concert at the fortieth annual May Festival of the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, Michigan (at Hill Auditorium), on May 20, 1933, with the composer conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The cast included Leonora Corona, Rose Bampton, Frederick Jagel, Chase Baromeo, John Charles Thomas, and George Galvani.

Its world stage premiere by the Metropolitan Opera was given on February 10, 1934. As that performance took place at a Saturday matinée, it was broadcast nationally as part of the company's weekly radio series, with Milton Cross serving as announcer. The premiere featured Lawrence Tibbett in the central role of Wrestling Bradford, the Puritan minister, with Gladys Swarthout as his betrothed, Plentiful Tewke. Swedish soprano Göta Ljungberg and Canadian tenor Edward Johnson took the roles of the Cavalier lovers, Lady Marigold Sandys and Sir Gower Lackland; Tullio Serafin was on the podium. At its premiere, the opera received a total of fifty curtain calls, still a house record.^[1] The opera was performed eight more times during the season, but never returned to the Met's repertory, and subsequent performances have been scarce.

Creation and first performance

Merry Mount is unusual in that its libretto was written without a composer in mind. Stokes had conducted comprehensive research into Puritan fanaticism, sexual obsession, and demonology; he found that it often reached pathological levels, and usually ended in death as a form of punishment, or redemption, for its victims. While he found his title in a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stokes crafted an original libretto which some compared to The Scarlet Letter.^[2] Upon completion of the text, Stokes went in search of a composer, finally finding one in Howard Hanson. Hanson, for his part, was new to the composition of opera, although he had already written a fair amount of choral music. Still, he was already respected as an elder statesman of American classical music, and such was his reputation that the Metropolitan was convinced to commission the work. Merry Mount would be the fifteenth American opera, and the last but one, presented at the Met during the tenure of Giulio Gatti-Casazza as company director.

The bluntness of the language used in the libretto surprised many, and was remarked upon even during rehearsals; the New York Times wrote, on February 11, 1934:

[T]he call for the first full-dress rehearsal of Mr. Hanson's first act, to be held today, found several of the singing actors wondering whether modern censorship would approve the candor of some of the "plain English" sung or spoken by the Pilgrim Fathers to their disturbing neighbors, the Cavaliers of Quincy, Mass.

Vigorous in denunciation, the more clerical characters do not mince their words. One of them uses a series of unmistakable Anglo-Saxon epithets in accosting a woman described as Desire Annable, "a sinner."

To the angry person's entirely specific charges, the woman not only confesses, but accepts meekly a rejoinder in terms rarely used in a theatre today.

The end of their interview is the traditional "Go and sin no more"^[2]

Despite the fiscal frugality imposed on the company by the Great Depression, a lavish production was designed for the opera, and it was lushly cast. Lawrence Tibbett was already well-known to New York audiences for his work in American opera, but the others were more familiar from other fields; Göta Ljungberg was known primarily as a Wagnerian singer, while Edward Johnson had been the company's principal tenor since 1922, and Gladys Swarthout had won fame as a singer of the French repertory.

Lawrence Tibbett, creator of the role of Wrestling Bradford.

Göta Ljungberg, the first Lady Marigold.

Gladys Swarthout, originator of the role of Plentiful Tewke.

Roles

Plot

The action takes place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century.

Reception

Merry Mount was successful at its appearance – "A Stirring Ovation ... Reception of Hanson-Stokes Opera most Enthusiastic of 10 Years at Metropolitan", read the headline on page 1 of the second section of the Times^[2] – but audiences seemed more pleased with the piece than did the critics. Typical of the latter's attitude was Pitts Sanborn's review for the New York World-Telegram:

Dr. Hanson's music is most effective in the choral passages, which are plentiful. Take the chant of the men within the church after the impressive choral prelude. True there is oftener the suggestion of Moussorgsky than of Massachusetts, but who would be so ungracious as to object to that? Nor has Dr. Hanson failed to assemble lively measures for the Maypole dance or to strike the witching note called for by the wild doings at the "Hellish Rendezous". Unfortunately his writing for the solo voices is not free from awkwardness and at times the weight and density of the orchestral fabric constitutes a barrier between the word that is sung and the ears of the audience.^[4]

Less enthusiastic was Olin Downes, writing for the February 11 edition of the Times:

[T]he story is too cluttered up with incidental diversions. ... [T]he principal defect of this book lies ... in the inhumanity of Bradford. He is nothing but a maddened and perverted sadist. Our Puritan fore-fathers, despite all the present-day condemnation of "suppressions" and the like, were much more than that. They had very noble sides; they had superb heroism. There should be more conflicting impulse and action, and relieving traits, in this character, for us to believe in him.

... The music is at times conventionally and noisily effective. Otherwise, it displays neither originality nor any special aptitude for the theatre. Its strongest point is the choral writing. That is somewhat inappropriate, in the sense of dramatic verity, because we know that no Puritans sang these elaborate choruses, or anything much like them.^[2]

Critics were, however, nearly universal in their applause for the cast, especially for Tibbett. Sanborn, in his review, said:

"Merry Mount" is almost a one-part opera and that part is Wrestling Bradford. In it Mr. Tibbett exhibits once more his intelligence and skill as a singing actor, as well as splendid courage and endurance. The wooden angularity of his movements and gestures, however, was a mistaken exaggeration. That the terrific tessitura of his part interferes with his vocal security and freedom was, of course, not his fault.^[2]

Downes, for his part, wrote that

... The cast and orchestra were admirable. Mr. Tibbett had to shout his way, against prevailingly heavy orchestration, all through the opera, so that it was no wonder his tone showed sign of strain. He was nevertheless as effective as he possibly could be in an ineffective part. Mme. Ljungberg also shouted, but with evident care for the purpose and respect for the composer's intention and melodic line ... Mr. Johnson sang excellently with a fine quality. ... The chorus was superb, and Mr. Serafin, very plainly, had prepared the opera with the greatest care. (Times, February 11, 1934.)^[2]

Downes also found occasion to comment upon the makeup of the audience:

Another feature of the occasion was the uncommon character of the audience. On the social and musical side it was exceptionally representative, but it had also an element not often present in such force in this lyric theatre. For this was an audience more thoughtful and conservative than is customary in many places of public amusement.

Those who do not always patronize opera as an amusement were there. They listened and they looked with a special seriousness and interest. It is reasonable to believe that this substantial gathering in a theatre crowded to capacity was attracted by the nature of Mr. Stoke's subject ...

To other facts of the occasion should be added these: That the performance was repeatedly punctuated by applause; that after the first curtain there was a particular burst of approval for Lawrence Tibbett; that after the second curtain there were recalls after recalls for Dr. Hanson and for Mr. Stokes, who came back and forth with complete éclat, and showed clearly their approval of the audience! Enthusiasm grew. There was more applause after the second act-the Maypole scene-than after the first, and more after the third than after the second.^[2]

Later critics have not been kinder to Merry Mount; Paul Jackson, in his book Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met, writes that

[Hanson's] incessant drumbeat ostinati and repetitive fanfares ultimately relegate a large portion of the score to the realm of background music. Hanson establishes no distinctive sound signature either in the predictably Polovetzian choral and ballet sections or in his monochromatic vocal writing for the principals ... Hanson is overfond of length choral vocalizations on "Ah"; too often the music calls to mind the trappings of a Hollywood soundtrack. After Bradford's penitential immolation, a final choral apotheosis, accompanied by the inevitable drums, brings the opera to a close. One must echo Johnson's lament that all their labors and money had "gone for nothing."^[5]

Even some members of the cast were disappointed in Merry Mount. Johnson, after two weeks' rehearsal, confessed that he was "pretty well fed up with it ... Merry Mount is a very pretentious, ineffective work,"^[5] later calling his role "simply lousy."^[6]

The opera was given a further eight times during the season, including three tour performances; the last of these took place in Rochester, New York, where Hanson was director of the Eastman School of Music.

Subsequent performances

Despite its initial appearance of success, Merry Mount was dropped from the repertory after the 1933–34 season, and has not enjoyed many revivals since. Hanson compiled a suite for orchestra from excerpts of the piece which consists of the prelude, the children's dance from Act I, the love duet from Act II, and the prelude and ballet from Act II.^[7] This has enjoyed more popularity than the opera, and has received multiple recordings.

In April 2014, Merry Mount was revived in two performances at the Eastman Theater in Rochester by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. On May 7, 2014, the same orchestra played Merry Mount at Carnegie Hall in New York, its first New York performance in 80 years.^[8]

Recordings

A recording of the 1934 world premiere broadcast of Merry Mount by the Metropolitan Opera was issued on CD by Naxos Records in 1998. Small snippets of music, missing from the original master discs, are missing from the recording; the release does, however, feature commentary by the announcer Milton Cross as originally heard on-air.

Not long after the opera's premiere, the composer led a group of student performers in a recording, now long out of print, of excerpts from the piece. Numerous recordings of the orchestral suite exist.

Tibbett recorded Bradford's first-act aria "Oh, 'tis an earth defiled" on 19 January 1934,^[9] shortly before his performance of the role at the stage premiere. This was for many years the only excerpt of the opera that was commercially available.

In May 2007, Naxos Records released a complete CD recording of Merry Mount, performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Gerard Schwarz. This recording was made at the time of an October 1996 concert production of the opera in Seattle, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hanson's birth.

Notes and references

• Howard Hanson, Merry Mount. Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Recorded 1996, released by Naxos in 2007
• Howard Hanson, Merry Mount. Metropolitan Opera, Recorded 1934, released by Naxos in 1998
• Gerald Fitzgerald, ed. Annals of the Metropolitan Opera: The Complete Chronicle of Performances and Artists
• Metropolitan Opera Archives Archived 2010-02-18 at the Wayback Machine
• American Opera at the Met: Part 1: 1910–1935
• Paul Jackson, Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met: The Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts, 1931–1950