Giuseppe Verdi - Otello
Teatro Real, Madrid - 2016
David Alden, Renato Palumbo, Ermonela Jaho, Gemma Coma-Alabert, Gregory Kunde, Alexey Dolgov, Vicenç Esteve, George Petean, Fernando Radó, Isaac Galán
Opera Platform - 27 September 2016
It doesn't matter how good a composer is and how skilled the adaptation, any opera version of a Shakespeare is necessarily going to lack the finesse and poetry of the original. Among some notable attempts however Verdi's Otello is rightly acknowledged to be among the very best, but even Verdi's musical sophistication and Boito's poetic reworking of the plot and its themes can't translate the full measure of Shakespeare's language. Not that it should have to; Verdi's Otello is a masterpiece in its own right. Any performance however - whether this story is told as an opera or as a drama - will only as good as the creative artists and the performers involved.
David Alden's production of Otello in Madrid is one such account of the work that demonstrates the musical and dramatic qualities of Verdi's opera and the challenges that exist in delivering them. Alden even attempts to bring a little bit of poetic flair to the stage and there is enough poetry in Verdi's music for there to be room for expressive gestures. It can be quite difficult however to reconcile all the variations of character between Shakespeare and Verdi without a firm sense of purpose, and almost inevitably Alden's production is a little too uneven in its application and inconsistent in what it is trying to draw out of the characters and the situation.
In terms of paying attention to what Verdi is bringing out in the music however, Alden is almost faultless in setting the tone of each scene. It's all about choosing what to illustrate or emphasise. Act I of Otello is a masterful blend of mood, drama and emotion that very quickly - without even time for a traditional overture - establishes character and the range of human emotions and interests that are to come into violent conflict - love, jealousy, ambition and revenge. What is needed to set them into confrontation is an agent of havoc, willing to exploit the weak and the gullible.
The agent in question of course is Iago, and Alden no less than Verdi or Boito recognise that defining his particular mindset and motivations is vital. Boito of course famously goes further even than Shakespeare with the introduction of Iago's 'Credo' of philosophical nihilism. Whether this approach is valid or not, it does at least represent a setting out of a position and Verdi and Boito follow through on it. Alden is less successful, but then it's by no means easy to unpick or adjust emphasis away from this key tenet of the opera.
As far as Act I goes however, everything works wonderfully in the Madrid production. Renato Palumbo drives Verdi's score marvellously with attention to the emotional detail as well as the overall dramatic force of the work. Alden's introduction of a female dancer to stir up the excitable sailors and choreograph the fight scene with shadow boxing movement does seem a little overplayed, but in many ways it captures the sense of Iago's scheming, plotting and attempting to control violent and unpredictable forces. Or at least that's how I read it, but it's not something that is really followed through in the subsequent Acts and scenes.
The mood however is quite different in the subsequent Acts, and if Alden relies more on the conventional stage and lighting techniques, it at least matches the dramatic action well. Act II is dark and sombre, and Act III with the arrival of the Venetian delegation is unexpectedly funereal, picking up on the dark undertones of the underlying tensions that have been created. It looks fabulous, with the seemingly arbitrary early 20th century period of the costumes that appears to be a favourite of the director, at least looking stylish and elegant. Even though all this and the final Act take place within a single set that looks something like a troops barracks on Cyprus, Alden does enough with the opening and closing of the doors and using light and darkness (Desdemona always bathed in light) to ensure that it's versatile enough for every situation.
The second half of Otello perhaps needs a little more direction than this, certainly in terms of who the characters are and how they react to the escalating tensions. There's more reliance on the performers to get this across and, by and large, the cast give strong individual performances that also complement the musical accompaniment. Conducting the Madrid orchestra, Renato Palumbo directs a performance that is full of sound and fury (to mix Verdi-Shakespearean references), finding the subtle nuance within each character, but also allowing the dramatic force of those emotions to assert their dominance once they have been unleashed into conflict with one another.
Much like Don Carlo, Otello can be a tremendously challenging work for singers, but one which can be highly rewarding when it has capable singers who are able to engage with it. It can also be a work that interestingly demonstrates the respective strengths and weaknesses of a singer's voice, and that's the case with the cast assembled here in Madrid. Gregory Kunde is one of the great dramatic Rossinians, capable even in the more testing arena of grand opera. Verdi is another challenge altogether, but Kunde acquits himself well. His Otello is one who is a victim of his own tormented mind, a warrior at war with himself, and Kunde takes the role with his usual commitment and personality. If certainly tested, it's nonetheless a fine performance.
That is also the case with Ermonela Jaho's Desdemona. The Albanian soprano has shown herself capable of tackling challenging roles like Suor Angelica and even Violetta Valery, and even if this exposes a little weakness in the middle range, it's a fully committed performance that again captures the anguish of an unjustly mistreated woman. Whether there should be more to Desdemona than this however, it didn't entirely come across under Alden's direction. Much hinges on the part that the scheming Iago plays in the opera and George Petean's capable performance exuded more calculating confidence than mindless malice. Alden doesn't seem to permit any over-playing of the role, but if that means that the work loses some of its bite, the tragic outcome is no less effective for it.
Links: Opera Platform, Teatro Real
Paul Dukas - Ariane et Barbe-bleue
Gran Teatre del Liceu, 2011
Stéphane Denêve, Claus Guth, Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, José van Dam, Patricia Bardon, Gemma Coma-Alabert, Beatriz Jiménez, Elena Copons, Salomé Haller, Alba Valldaura, Pierpaolo Palloni, Xavier Martínez, Dimitar Darlev
Opus Arte
There are many meanings and cautionary messages that can be drawn from the fairytales of Charles Perrault, but 'Bluebeard' - the tale of an aristocratic serial killer who murders his wives - is surely one of the most gruesome and darkly enigmatic. Even more so in Ariane et Barbe-bleue, the version penned by the Symbolist Belgian dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck, the author of Pelléas et Mélisande, who himself adapted the work - again practically intact - as a libretto for the French composer Paul Dukas. Comparisons with Debussy's opera - written only five years previously in 1902 - are inevitable, but if the musical influences that Dukas draws from are more evident and less distinctive than Debussy, the turn of the 20th century psychological exploration of the characters through the combination of Maeterlinck's words and Dukas's music is no less endlessly fascinating and deeply compelling.
In Maeterlinck's hands, the perspective of the Bluebeard folktale is rather different from Perrault's, the dark horror and cautionary note of the serial killer storyline rather less prominent than the exploration of the psychology of the female protagonists who seem to willingly submit to the thrall of masculine power and domination through marriage. The story here does indeed touch on the dark fascination of female curiosity for the violent danger of a male sexuality that simultaneously attracts and repels. In Maeterlinck's story, Bluebeard's latest bride, Ariane, has given herself in marriage to the notorious aristocrat who is believed to have murdered his previous five wives, but she has not submitted entirely to his authority. The six silver keys he has given that open doors to wonderful treasures represent the rewards and the boundaries of what Ariane can expect by following the rules set out by the marriage - each of the doors opening to rooms containing amethysts, sapphires, pearls, emeralds, rubies and, finally, diamonds - pure and eternal. That doesn't stop Ariane however from opening the forbidden door locked by the gold key - "After diamonds, there can only be fire and death", she observes.
The final door inevitably holds the secret to the fate of Bluebeard's previous five wives, and it relates to some extent to a female curiosity based on an urge on the part of Ariane to explore the sexual history of her husband. While there is some psychological exploration of that impulse that verges on self-destructive, Maeterlinck and Dukas use that drive towards a more progressive feminist view in Ariane et Barbe-bleue. Ariane may driven by unknown impulses and working to guidelines set out by Bluebeard, but she is not in the thrall of the "enchantment" of her husband in the same way as the other wives. Their charms - the flaming hair of Mélisande, the delicate arms of Ygraine, the fair shoulders of Bellangère - have been hidden by marriage, whereas Ariane is forceful and secure in asserting her own personality and determined to help the other women achieve their own independence and expression. Like Pelléas et Mélisande however, Maeterlinck's work and symbolism defies any simple allegorical meaning and one shouldn't be strictly be applied to the exclusion of other resonances and mysteries that lie within it.
Although it is rather more emphatic in highlighting the specifics of the drama and the words than Debussy, Dukas' score also hints at those other meanings and ambiguities. The references to Debussy's impressionism may be apparent - just as Maeterlinck uses characters from his other works (like Mélisande) for Bluebeard's wives - but Dukas more obviously draws from Wagner and particularly Strauss in Salome (in the scoring of the dark undercurrents in the relationship between Salome and Jochanaan) for more explicit, direct expression. It's a fascinating and rich musical exploration by Dukas in his only opera work, powerful, beautiful and modern, possibly even more influential than Debussy's unique and inimitable opera, with the associations and female psychology explored here evidently influential on Strauss and Hofmannstahl's fairytale-like Die Frau ohne Schatten and its extraordinary use of female voices is matched only by Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites.
Considering the psychological nature of the work and the necessity of allowing its openness, ambiguity and symbolism to speak for itself, it's perhaps not surprising that director Claus Guth doesn't follow the libretto too literally. He avoids what would now be considered clichéd imagery in the opening scene of mobs of angry townspeople bearing pitchforks and firebrands, as the latest young bride seems to go willingly to her doom in Bluebeard's castle. The castle here is nothing more than a modern suburban residence, but it's what it represents that is important, and evidently the house is Bluebeard himself and it's the uncomfortable and dangerous nature of the masculinity that Ariane examines, challenges and delves into, not only opening doors, but breaking through the surface of the floor to the horrors that lie underneath. The set design works well in this respect, keeping the visuals clean, simple and symbolic, allowing the singers the necessary space to express the layers of meaning that lie within Maeterlinck's libretto and Dukas' seething score.
Much of the power of the work is indeed delivered through the scoring for powerful mezzo-soprano and contralto female voices and this cast proves to be highly effective in conveying its force. Ariane requires a strong Wagnerian soprano to express her character's inner strength of personality and purposefulness and Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet's rich tone is commanding and persuasive, yet sensitive to the shimmering suggestion of the score. She is well supported by an equally strong and wonderfully measured Patricia Bardon as the nurse, but all of the female cast here are impressive here as the other wives, although Gemma Coma-Alabert's fiery Sélysette is the only one with a significant role. As the male at the centre of the work, Bluebeard is evidently an important role in Ariane et Barbe-bleue, even if the singing is limited to only a few lines. José van Dam - who has mostly retired from big-scale stage productions - is no longer in possession of a voice as commanding as it once was, but there's consequently a vulnerability as well as a necessary strength of personality here that puts an interesting spin on his Barbe-bleue.
This is an extremely rare work but one that deserves to be better known, and - appearing for the first time on either DVD or Blu-ray - this is a marvellous production of a fascinating work, emphatically delivered with force and sensitivity by the orchestra of the Liceu under Stéphane Denêve. The quality of the Blu-ray's HD image and high resolution sound mixes ensures that the performance is given the best possible presentation. I personally found the surround DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mix a little too open, and that it suited the more direct stereo PCM mix better, with the full detail of the orchestration clearer through headphones. Other than a Cast Gallery, there are no extra features on the disc, but the booklet contains a good essay by Gavin Plumley, whose reading of Ariane striking out towards the 20th century while the others refuse to take the freedom offered is a good one, and there's a full, detailed synopsis. The BD is all-region compatible with subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Japanese and Korean.
