About the work
Fervaal is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Vincent d’Indy, who also wrote the libretto, drawing partly on the verse tale Axel by the Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér. D’Indy composed the work between 1889 and 1893; it premiered on 12 March 1897 at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels.
Plot
In the fifth century, the Celtic prince Fervaal, forbidden earthly love by a druid as the price of victory over Saracen invaders, fights the invaders in the Cévennes. When he falls in love anyway with the Saracen princess Guilhen, who had nursed him after a wound, he loses the decisive battle and even kills his mentor, the druid Arfagard, in combat. At the end, Fervaal and the dying Guilhen climb a sacred mountain together, where she succumbs to the cold.
Cultural significance
With Fervaal, d’Indy, who as a young man had attended the Bayreuth premieres of Wagner's Ring (1876) and Parsifal (1882), sought to create a French counterpart to Wagner's music dramas; critics such as Paul Dukas praised the work, though d’Indy's hope of writing a great French national opera went unfulfilled. Its strict leitmotif system and echoes of Wagnerian characters such as Brünnhilde, Kundry and Gurnemanz still make Fervaal one of the most striking examples of French Wagnérisme.