A significant milestone in the history of the Hebrews as well as
Biblical operas has now been reached. The sojourn of the Jews in
Egypt and their final departure under the guidance of Moses have
already occupied considerable attention in this study. They
provided material for the two operas which seem to me the noblest
of their kind--Mehul's "Joseph" and Rossini's "Mose in Egitto."
Mehul's opera, more than a decade older than Rossini's, still holds
a place on the stages of France and Germany, and this despite the
fact that it foregoes two factors which are popularly supposed to
be essential to operatic success--a love episode and woman's
presence and participation in the action. The opera, which is in
three acts, was brought forward at the Theatre Feydeau in Paris on
February 17, 1807. It owed its origin to a Biblical tragedy
entitled "Omasis," by Baour Lormian. The subject--the sale of
Joseph by his brothers into Egyptian slavery, his rise to power,
his forgiveness of the wrong attempted against him, and his
provision of a home for the people of Israel in the land of Goshen
--had long been popular with composers of oratorios. The list of
these works begins with Caldara's "Giuseppe" in 1722. Metastasio's
"Giuseppe riconosciuto" was set by half a dozen composers between
1733 and 1788. Handel wrote his English oratorio in 1743; G. A.
Macfarren's was performed at the Leeds festival of 1877. Lormian
thought it necessary to introduce a love episode into his tragedy,
but Alexander Duval, who wrote the book for Mehul's opera, was of
the opinion that the diversion only enfeebled the beautiful if
austere picture of patriarchal domestic life delineated in the
Bible. He therefore adhered to tradition and created a series of
scenes full of beauty, dignity, and pathos, simple and strong in
spite of the bombast prevalent in the literary style of the period.