Christophe Colomb

This article is about the opera. For the explorer, see Christopher Columbus.

Darius Milhaud
Operas Le pauvre matelot (1927) L'abandon d'Ariane (1928) Christophe Colomb (1930) La mère coupable (1966)
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Christophe Colomb (Christopher Columbus) is an opera in two parts by the French composer Darius Milhaud. The libretto, by the poet Paul Claudel, is based on his own play Le livre de Christophe Colomb about the life of Christopher Columbus. The opera was first performed at the Staatsoper, Berlin on 5 May 1930 in a German translation by Rudolph Stephan Hoffmann. Milhaud thoroughly revised the work to produce a second version around 1955. The opera is on a large scale and requires many resources for its staging. As in many of his other works, Milhaud employs polytonality in parts of the score.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast Conductor: Erich Kleiber
Young Columbus	baritone	Theodor Scheidl
Old Columbus	bass	Emanuel List
Queen Isabella of Spain	soprano	Delia Reinhardt
The wife of Columbus	soprano	Margherita Perras
Majordomo	tenor	Fritz Soot
The King of Spain	bass
Master of ceremonies	tenor
Narrator	spoken role

Synopsis

The opera tells the life of Christopher Columbus in a series of episodes which avoid chronological order and are sometimes allegorical.

Sources

• The Viking Opera Guide ed. Holden (Viking, 1993)
• Del Teatro (in Italian)
• Amadeus Online