Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly
La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2017
Roberto Rizzi-Brignoli, Kirsten Dehlholm, Alexia Voulgaridou, Ning Liang, Marta Beretta, Marcelo Puente, Riccardo Botta, Aris Argiris, Aldo Heo, Mikhail Kolelishvili, Wiard Witholt, René Laryea, Rosa Brandao, Birgitte Bønding, Adrienne Visser
Opera Platform - February 2017
If Kirsten Dehlholm of the Danish art collective Hotel Pro Forma succeeds in one area where productions of Madama Butterfly often fail, it's in the manner of how to make a considerably older soprano convincingly pass for a 15 year old geisha. The La Monnaie production uses a life-sized puppet stand-in with two handlers for the main role, while it is sung at the side of the stage by Alexia Voulgaridou. Voulgaridou has of course sang the role convincingly enough before in many conventionally staged performances, but Dehlholm has other intentions for her role and the production as a whole. Some of those ideas have merit, but whether they actually work in the context of performance to do justice to Puccini's masterpiece is another matter.
The use of a puppet doll for Madama Butterfly has an authenticity and justification in that it is derived from the Japanese theatre tradition of Bunraku. It does helps envision Cio-Cio-San as a mere child, with an advantage that the skilled handlers are able to give a more authentic emphasis on mannerisms and gestures that might not otherwise be there with the same lightness and delicacy with an older woman playing the role. The use of a puppet also gives rise to other impressions that might seem appropriate in the context, viewing Butterfly as little more than a plaything of others with no real volition of her own.
The downside to this however is that, whether intentional or not, the impression it gives is fairly limited in terms of characterisation and lacks nuance. Butterfly is far from a passive puppet; she is determined and knows her own mind, even if she is often mistaken or misled in her belief that her marriage to American sailor Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton is anything other than a sham or a marriage for his convenience. To perhaps try and find other ways of giving expression to the real content and meaning of the work, the director has some other ideas, but most of them are fairly abstract and difficult to decode.
Aside from the Bunraku marionettes, the production tries to make a claim for a Nôh theatre influence, but it's far from authentic and mixed in with an indeterminate approach that makes it neither one thing nor another. The setting is not period specific. Pinkerton wears a generic military-style uniform, while the Japanese characters wear kimonos and obis. The set is mostly bare, there are no walls and only really a Japanese temple style roof hanging over the stage. Screens and projections present a mixture of abstract images and - bizarrely - a modern cruise ship for Pinkerton's return. Dancers in eccentrically designed origami folded costumes appear now and again and for some unfathomable reason, it looks like stage hands appear at the side of the stage for 'Un bel di vedremo'.
It's all a bit cool and detached from the real emotion that lies at the heart of the work. That can be a viable approach to Madama Butterfly to counteract the overheated drama (Robert Wilson's production is no less effective for it), but alongside the puppet/singer division, it creates too much distance between the story and the telling, even though Alexia Voulgaridou is far from dispassionate in her performance and not entirely disengaged from the drama. Wearing a white wig and an identical costume to the marionette, you might think she is an elderly version of Madama Butterfly reflecting on past mistakes, were it not for the fact that Cio-Cio-San doesn't live past the age of 18 (sorry for the spoiler). In reality, it's just another (misguided and mishandled) attempt to bring Japanese folklore into the production in the form of the traditional ghost story.
Not unlike the director's striking work for La Monnaie on Rachmaninoff's Troika, the production seems to arbitrarily place emphasis on light, colour and patterns as if it is enough to get across the deeper themes of the opera that have been left out of the traditional stage production. It can be refreshing to see something different attempted like this and there's no question it's a colourful and attractive production, but in the effort to be original you get the impression that the production team is more often missing the point, or worse - such as in the appearance of an oversized toy representing the child and the flock of birds that fall to the stage when the cannon fires to announce the arrival of Pinkerton's ship in Nagasaki - don't seem to be taking it terribly seriously at all.
Whether they are taking it seriously or not, it seems fairly certain that at least in how it presents Puccini's score, the production utterly fails to hit its musical and emotional high points. The singing is merely adequate, Voulgaridou trying to put a little more feeling into the proceedings but sounding sometimes a little over-stretched. Marcelo Puente's singing is fine but he fails to make an impression one way or the other in respect of how we feel about Pinkerton and his treatment of his Japanese child bride. Ning Liang is not a strong Suzuki, Riccardo Botta's Goro and Aris Argiris' Sharpless are rote and largely ineffectual. The orchestra under Roberto Rizzi-Brignoli sounds a little reduced and don't quite convey the Romantic sweep of the work, but other colours are brought out and there is impact where you would expect to find it.
Unfortunately none of this impact makes even the smallest dent on the dispassionately impervious production. It's perhaps not always necessary to fully embrace Puccini's melodrama, but if you are going to undermine the emotional delivery and tragic consequences of the final scenes, it would help if you had an alternative message or some surprise revelation to pull out in its place. The only surprise here is that you really couldn't care less at the conclusion, which is admittedly an incredible achievement for any Madama Butterfly. On the other hand, judging from the enthusiastic response of the audience perhaps this worked better in the theatre than it did on the screen, but as far as the live streaming is concerned this Madama Butterfly died in more ways than one.
Sergei Rachmaninoff - Troika
La Monnaie-De Munt, 2015
Mikhail Tatarnikov, Kirsten Dehlholm, Kostas Smoriginas, Sergey Semishkur, Alexander Vassiliev, Anna Nechaeva, Yaroslava Kozina, Sergei Leiferkus, Dmitry Golovnin, Ilya Silchukov, Alexander Kravets, Dimitris Tiliakos
La Monnaie Web Streaming
Based on works by Pushkin and Dante, it's not as if there aren't dramatic possibilities in the three one-act operas composed by Rachmaninoff. L'Opéra National de Lorraine at Nancy not only successfully staged a pairing of Aleko and Francesca da Rimini recently, but director Silviu Purcărete also managed to link the similar themes of the two works together into a single workable concept. Kirsten Dehlholm's approach to La Monnaie's presentation of all three Rachmaninoff's short opera works is, typically for the adventurous Belgian company, very different.
While there is an overall thematic connection between the works that is reflected in the set design, each of the three works very much has their own look and feel. None of the operas however are what you would call fully staged. Partly that may be dictated by La Monnaie's transfer to the Théâtre National while renovations are being carried out to La Monnaie's regular home, right through the next season. On the other hand, La Monnaie do tend to think 'outside the box', so to speak in their productions, and that's very much in evidence in their staging of the Rachmaninoff Troika.
Russian opera suits big colourful spectacle and pageantry and certain productions of Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko and The Golden Cockerel come to mind in Kirsten Dehlholm's bold setting of Aleko. A traditional staging of Rachnaminov's first opera, written as a graduation competition piece when the composer was nineteen (1892), and based on Pushkin's short story, 'The Gypsies', will usually draw unavoidable comparison with Carmen and Pagliacci. That certainly was the impression given in the recent Nancy production. Dehlholm's setting takes it far away from that.
Staged almost oratorio-like on a tiered platform of steps, Aleko doesn't really play to the storytelling drama aspect of the story. Nothing about the stylised rainbow-coloured costumes either suggests a naturalistic time period or gypsy culture. The story of Aleko's jealousy over his wife's affair with her lover that leads to their murder isn't wholly acted out either, with characters only moving into place alongside one another without acting out any drama. There are one or two props - some cut-out trees and tarot cards that indicate fate at play - but the force of the dramatic impact relies more on lighting and colouration exploding in psychedelic bursts of kaleidoscopic patterns that are nonetheless wholly informed by the music.
Rachmaninoff's music instrumentally takes up a considerable part of drama from the sparsely scripted libretti of Aleko and Francesca da Rimini, and it's no coincidence that the orchestra are more visible during these two operas. The orchestra might be on stage primarily due to the absence of a natural pit at the Théâtre National, but the instrumental elements of the operas are also very much a part of the dramatic fabric of the works. Just how important that is becomes more evident with the rich, melodic, dynamic Romantic sweep that Mikhail Tatarnikov draws from the orchestra here. Impressive singing too really gets the dramatic content across.
The Miserly Knight, again drawn from Pushkin, is more dialogue driven, taking the author's text almost directly from the page. It consequently pushes the focus back onto the characters at the front of the stage, the orchestra remaining behind the curtain that shows projections of a ruined building and a few filmed sequences. The situation is a relatively simple one that doesn't rely on a lot of dramatic action, but its still richly scored by Rachmaninoff, who sets the story, the characterisation and the relationships between the characters beautifully in the music.
The story of The Miserly Knight concerns Albert, a knight who has fallen on hard times, who can't even raise enough money to enter a tournament. It's particularly galling to Albert since his father, the Baron, is a very rich man who avariciously hoards all his wealth, horrified that his worthless son might one day inherit it all without having had to sweat for it. A Jewish money-lender suggests to Albert that he might want to hasten the day he inherits the money with a few drops of a potion that he can obtain for him, but nature takes its own course when the Earl himself suggests that the Baron might want to help Albert by placing him into his court.
Written in 1904, some nine years after his first one-act opera, Rachnaminoff's own distinctive voice is much more in evidence in The Miserly Knight. Despite the limited action it's lushly scored, giving strong character to the all the roles, not just the principals. The stage setting of the work tries to find a way to reflect this in the images of a ruined abandoned building, which means that occasional graffiti is thrown up unusual associations - Jimi Hendrix appearing on the screen at one point - but combined again here with very strong singing performances from Dmitry Golovnin and Sergei Leiferkus, it comes across impressively.
Although never composed to play as a trilogy, the order of composition sequence works well for the purposes of the La Monnaie Rachmaninoff Troika in progression and development. By the time we get to Francesca da Rimini (1905), the full force and brilliance of the orchestral composition, arrangements and dramatic intent is striking. The haunting choruses of the damned in the opening section where Dante and the Ghost of Virgil descend into the Second Circle of Hell and the musical colour and sweep that Rachmaninoff has composed for this theatrical extravaganza is given full expression too in Mikhail Tatarnikov's marvellous conducting of the rich orchestration.
Other than some projections of swirling mists and the descent of Dante and Virgil on cables, there's not really any effort made to give any traditional depiction of Hell in the staging. Perhaps recognising that the visual element needs no additional 'colour', the costumes and lighting go for a contrasting monochrome palette. As with Aleko, the effects are mostly limited to lighting and simple pattern effects that give the impression of the steps being fluid and wavy. It's visually spectacular, but not one that draws the dramatic element out as well as Purcărete's Nancy production. With a strong, consistent visual element and terrific performances across each of the three operas, the La Monnaie Troika creates a fascinating Rachmaninoff narrative of its own.
Links: La Monnaie-De Munt
