Dead serious
Works set in graveyards Perhaps opera’s most widely remembered graveyard scene is in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, when the anti-hero and his servant find themselves in the cemetery where the Commendatore, murdered by Don Giovanni, is buried. Giovanni defiantly invites the Commendatore to dinner – with literally fatal consequences.
Ancient catacombs have since featured in music, including those of Paris in Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, or those conjured by Respighi’s tenebrous orchestration in Pines of Rome. There are also dozens of songs with graveside settings, including Berlioz’s spooky ‘Au cimetière’ (from Les nuits d’été), and similarly titled songs by Fauré and Hahn. Darker and yet touching are Schubert’s songs including ‘Schwestergruss’ (Sister’s greeting), and those in Winterreise where the spurned lover longs for the grave, only to find in the metaphorical ‘Das Wirtshaus’ (The Inn) that all the ‘rooms’ are taken.
In our own time, Stephen Hough (see p26) has written Three Grave Songs: two tenderly expressive settings frame a wry Thomas Hardy poem on money intended for a tombstone being spent on drink and merry-making!