About the work
"Guercœur" is an opera in three acts by Albéric Magnard to his own libretto, composed mostly between 1897 and 1901. Its premiere did not take place until 24 April 1931, posthumously, at the Paris Opéra (Palais Garnier), since Magnard died in 1914 without ever seeing his principal stage work performed.
Plot
The wise ruler Guercœur has died defending his city and asks, in the afterlife, to return to earth to save it. There he discovers that his former companion Heurtal has seized power and taken up with his widow Giselle; when Guercœur tries to rally the people against corruption, the angry crowd kills him. Disillusioned with humanity, he returns to the afterlife, where the Goddess of Truth promises him a better age still to come.
Cultural significance
Large parts of the orchestral score for Acts I and III were destroyed in 1914 when German soldiers set fire to Magnard's country house; his friend Guy Ropartz later reconstructed them from the piano-vocal score. Influenced by Wagner, the strongly meditative opera is regarded as Magnard's principal work for the stage, yet it went without a new production for more than 80 years after its premiere.