Le Roi d'Ys Overture

Édouard Lalo

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General Info

Year: 1888 / 1970
Duration: c. 12:10
Difficulty: V (see Ratings for explanation)
Original Medium: Orchestra
Publisher: Southern Music, through Hal Leonard
Cost: Score and Parts (print) - $165.00 | Score Only (print) - $20.00

Instrumentation

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Errata

None discovered thus far.

Program Notes

This overture to Lalo's opera Le Roy d'Ys, originally written for orchestra, has proved to be one of the finest overtures in the concert repertoire. It is an intensely dramatic work, and for this reason, lends itself admirably to a band transcription. It depicts many moods, including love, such as in the original cello solo, assigned to the solo alto saxophone in the present transcription.

- Program Note from publisher

The plot of Édouard Lalo’s opera Le Roi d’Ys is based on an old Breton legend. The two daughters of the King of Ys are in love with Mylio, but he returns the love of only one of them, Rozenn. Overwhelmed by jealousy, the second sister, Margared, contrives to have Ys flooded by the opening of the sea gates on the wedding night of Mylio and Rozenn. Then, overcome with guilt, she commits suicide. The patron saint of Ys saves the city from destruction. The overture to the opera contains some of the opera's principal melodic ideas.

- Program Note from Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music

Le roi d'Ys (The King of Ys) is an opera in three acts and five tableaux by the French composer Édouard Lalo, to a libretto by Édouard Blau, based on the old Breton legend of the drowned city of Ys. That city was, according to the legend, the capital of the kingdom of Cornouaille.

This is Lalo's most complex and ambitious creation. (This same legend inspired Claude Debussy's La Cathédrale Engloutie.) Le Roi d'Ys was not initially considered performable and was not staged until 1888, when Lalo was 65 years old. The opera was premiered on 7 May 1888 by the Opéra Comique at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place du Châtelet in Paris. Apart from the overture, the most famous piece in the opera is the tenor's aubade in act 3, Vainement, ma bien-aimée (In vain, my beloved).

- Program Note excerpted from Wikipedia

Media

Audio: Reference recording. U.S. Marine Band (John R. Bourgeois, conductor)
Audio CD: U.S. Marine Band (John R. Bourgeois, conductor) - 2007

State Ratings

Florida: VI
Georgia: VI
Indiana: ISSMA SENIOR BAND GROUP I
Maryland: VI
South Carolina: VI
Virginia: VI

Performances

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Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) Wind Symphony (David Blackinton, conductor) – 16 March 2006 (CBDNA 2006 Western/Northwestern Division Conference, Reno, Nev.)

Works for Winds by this Composer

Aubade No. 1 (arr. Eustace)
Le Roi d'Ys Overture (arr. Cailliet) (1888/1970)
Norwegian Rhapsody (arr. Daehn) (2015)
Scherzo (arr. Laty) (1935)
Suite Espagnole (arr. Defoort) (1997)
Symphonie Espagnol (arr. Gardner) (1951)

Resources

Lalo, É.; Cailliet, L. (1968). Le Roi d'Ys Overture [score]. Leblanc: Kenosha, Wisc.
Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music. "Lalo, Édouard." Accessed 20 September 2022
Le Roi d'Ys. Wikipedia. Accessed 20 September 2022