Gardez la dame!

The action takes place during the Franco-Prussian War 1870-71. A group of travellers stops off at a decrepit guesthouse. They are joined by a Prussian officer and two nuns. The officer checks the papers of the travellers and notices that Elisabeth Rousset is travelling alone. The aristocratic traveller complains of the loss or destruction of her properties and possessions. Elisabeth Rousset is summoned by the officer; he asks her for a rendezvous which she refuses vehemently, telling the other passengers about this when she returns. The men praise her for her steadfastness, but the women comment amongst themselves that she could have been more ‘obliging’ out of self-interest. The next morning, the travellers find out that no new horses have been hitched and the coachman has also disappeared; it appears that the Prussian officer intends to prevent them from continuing their journey until Elisabeth Rousset has changed her mind. The travellers are in immediate agreement that she must be persuaded to allow the group to continue their journey whatever the cost. They all attempt to convince her of the significance of her ‘sacrifice for France’. Even the nuns also join in the chorus: ‘For the good of the people, it is a woman’s duty to sacrifice oneself to the mighty’! Elisabeth agrees and accepts the Prussian officer’s invitation; relieved, the others order champagne and drink a toast to success, life and victory. In the evening, they all wait in front of the guest house for Elisabeth, who is now universally known disparagingly as the ‘harlot’. When Elisabeth arrives, all fall silent in embarrassment; she comments the events however with the terse words ‘There are times of powerless and there are times of love’.

A group convinces an individual to sacrifice himself and then turns away from him, hypocritically condemning this sacrifice with indignation – that is the plot in a nutshell of the short opera written by Hans Peter Müller-Kieling and his librettist based on motifs by the great French moralist Guy de Maupassant. Müller-Kieling recreates a striking and vivid musical image of the change of atmosphere within the group. The expansive ensemble scenes depict the inexorable developments through the progressively heightening tension and harmonic and polyphonic compression, achieving an unexpected and almost terrifying counterpoint to the chilling composure of Elisabeth in the final scene.