Dans le cœur de Marie
Les aimables vertus
Ont fixé leur patrie,
Leurs nobles attributs.
Idoles de ces beaux climats
Les bienfaits naissent sur ses pas;
Par sa présence
La bienfaisance
Sait acquérir un nouveau prix:
Célébrer cet objet chéri,
N’est-ce pas célébrer Henry? (bis.)
Auguste et tendre mère
De son sexe ornement,
Du trône ange prospère
D’Henry soutien charmant ;
Elle ajoute à ses verts lauriers
L’éclat des tendres oliviers ;
Illustre vigne!
Son jet insigne
Pousse des rejetons fleuris:
Célébrer cet objet chéri,
N’est-ce pas célébrer Henry? (bis.)
Reflections from Henry Stoll
“Dans le cœur de Marie” is the fifth song in L’Éntrée du Roi, en sa capitale (1818), a one-act opéra comique by Juste Chanlatte, a Haitian man of letters who authored poems, treatises, songs, plays, and operas for the Kingdom of Haiti. In the opera’s third scene, Damis, performed by the playwright himself, pulls a song from his portfolio and presents it to L’Hotesse, adding “may it be to your liking!” Thanking him, L’Hotesse, played by Madame David, proceeds to sing. A paean to Queen Marie-Louise of Haiti, the song praises her “comely virtues” and “nobles attributes,” asking “To celebrate this cherished one / is it not to celebrate Henry?”
The melody is derived from “In diesen heil’gen Hallen,” an aria from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (1791) and originally scored for bass. Chanlatte, however, refers to the tune as “Dans ce séjour tranquille” from Les mystères d’Isis (1801), a French adaptation of Die Zauberflöte by Bohemian composer Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith. It is in this adapted form that Mozart’s final opera was introduced to France and in which it was familiar to Chanlatte. Mozart’s music, however, was a rarity in early Haiti, eclipsed by that of French composers such as André Grétry, Nicolas Dalayrac, and Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny.