Ruy Coelho

Born in 1889, died in 1986, and with abundant creative activity between at least 1907 — the date of an Overture presented while he was a student at the National Conservatory — and 1975 — the date of the orchestral work Viagens na minha terra (6th cycle) —, Ruy Coelho is one of the most prolific Portuguese composers of the 20th century. He dedicated special effort to the operatic cause: besides being the author of over twenty music-dramatic works, he was an ardent defender of the need to create and develop a national opera, as evidenced by his pamphlets on the management of the São Carlos National Theatre.

His first opera, Serão da infanta, dates from 1913. With a plot set in the court of D. João III, the libretto is written by Theophilo Braga, with whom he had already collaborated on a controversial Symphonia Camoneana, and the music, judging by the press criticism — as the scores were subsequently destroyed — would be reminiscent of Jules Massenet and Giacomo Puccini. During the 1910s, he approached “modernist” artists of his generation and launched himself into more or less daring cultural projects, some not realized, the happiest and most media-noticed example of which should be the premiere of the ballet A princeza dos sapatos de ferro, in 1918, at São Carlos, with the collaboration of José Pacheko and Almada Negreiros and a certain influence from Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

At the same time, perhaps out of the need to make a living, he tried for success with the operetta Margarida do adro (1916), with a libretto by Ruy Chianca based on Alexandre Herculano, from which scores have also not survived. Meanwhile, the edition of Canções de saudade e amor on poems by Affonso Lopes Vieira was published, in which he advocates the creation of the Portuguese Lied and whose music, which might perhaps be considered neo-romantic, seeking to cross the rusticity of popular song with the resources of the erudite chamber salon, received the highest praise from the also young António Joyce, Ivo Cruz, António Fragoso, and Francine Benoit. Ruy Coelho then extended the partnership with Affonso Lopes Vieira in the “musical eclogue” Crisfal, a “love oratorio,” a “half and wistful drama” — to borrow the librettist’s words — which he completed in 1919 and which premiered the following year. For Ivo Cruz, it was the “first revelation of Portuguese dramatic music.”

Also from 1920 dates the composition of the “choreographic opera” Auto do berço, based on Antonio Corrêa d’Oliveira, whose action unfolds during the government of Count D. Henrique, father of Afonso Henriques. The score was later destroyed, possibly due to poor reception at its premiere in 1921, although his close friends fiercely defended it: according to a manifesto subscribed by António Ferro, Diogo de Macedo, António Soares, Almada Negreiros, José Pacheko, Victoriano Braga, Bernardo Marques, Eduardo Vianna, Fernando Pessoa, among several others, the Auto do berço was “an affirmation of the Race” and only “those who are not Portuguese” do not understand Ruy Coelho’s music.

Shortly after, in 1922, he wrote the brief Rosas de todo o anno based on Júlio Dantas, a figure quite distant from the Orpheu circle, as is clear from Almada Negreiros’s famous manifesto; Luiz de Freitas Branco, a fellow student in Berlin whom Ruy Coelho had accused of plagiarism years earlier, classifies it as “his stage work most revealing of talent.”

The operatic project that followed — simultaneously his first grand opera in three acts, the title that gave him the most media prominence throughout the First Republic and, curiously, from a thematic point of view, the least “Portuguese” — was Belkiss. The story deals with the mythical relationship of the Queen of Sheba with Solomon — a well-known earlier case of operatic treatment of these figures is Charles Gounod’s La reine de Saba (1862). Like that text, the music also shows itself permeable to the symbolist imaginary, particularly the music of Claude Debussy, but Belkiss is also indebted to Massenet’s grand opéra, in its numbers of monumental effect, with choruses and ballet corps, and in the exoticism evocative of, for example, Cléopâtre (1914).

The media success of Belkiss originated from the prize it won in the second edition of the National Music Competition, an event organized by the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts of Spain. It was only possible to premiere Belkiss in 1928. The exotic subject was not necessarily untimely — three years later Ottorino Respighi would use the same mythical figure for his ballet Belkis —, but the large-scale opera that Ruy Coelho premiered in the meantime aligns more with the nationalist impetus of the “National Revolution” of May 28, 1926: Inês de Castro. Composed in the year of the military coup, based on António Ferreira and António Patrício, and premiered on January 15, 1927, the opera exacerbates a nationalist mysticism whose central character ends up being the Portuguese people, the driving force behind the funeral procession at the end of the third act.

1927 will also be the year of the premiere of two other operas, these of small scale: Sorôr Mariana, based on a play by Ruy Chianca derived from the Lettres portugaises allegedly written by Mariana Alcoforado, and the “lyrical comedy” O cavaleiro das mãos irresistíveis, based on Eugénio de Castro, with a light and ironic background, about a Spanish nobleman who suffers an accident while riding and falls in love with a Portuguese woman.

Two large-scale operas follow: Entre giestas (1929) and Tá-Mar (1937), based on Carlos Selvagem and Alfredo Cortez, respectively. Both testify to the search for a “national” art directed at the Portuguese people and fundamentally anchored in them. In 1940, as part of the double commemoration of the centenaries of the foundation of the nation and its restoration, Ruy Coelho brings the opera D. João IV to São Carlos, with a libretto by Silva Tavares.

Having reached this point, Ruy Coelho’s choices undergo a curious transformation: he launches into a set of five operas based on Gil Vicente. After the Auto da barca do inferno (1944) — which was even announced as the closing title of Ruy Coelho’s campaign for national opera —, the composer dedicated himself to Inês Pereira (1952), in three acts, with a libretto by Gino Saviotti. Then followed A feira (1957), Auto da alma (1959) and, finally, Auto da barca da glória (1970).

Between these titles there will still be room for three other small operas — one with a poetic background, Rosa de papel (1947), based on Augusto de Santa Rita, two on folklorist themes with a libretto by Charles Oulmont: Na noite de Santo António (1957) and the “parable” or “folkloric drama” La belle dame qui n’a pas pêché (1968) — and also a strange and perhaps autobiographical “opera-declamation-ballet-mime,” in three acts, about the “conflict between the artist who seeks the paths that have flourished since ancient times, and the panorama of a certain frivolity of modern times”: Orfeu em Lisboa (1963-1969).