Cherubini - Medea (New York, 2022)

Luigi Cherubini - Medea

Metropolitan Opera, 2022

Carlo Rizzi, David McVicar, Sondra Radvanovsky, Ekaterina Gubanova, Matthew Polenzani, Janai Brugger, Michele Pertusi, Christopher Job, Brittany Renee, Sarah Larsen, Axel Newville, Magnus Newville

Met Live in HD - 22nd October 2022

Livestreamed opera and opera on DVD are obviously something quite distinct from live opera but the Met live broadcasts with their presenters and backstage interviews during the intervals are something else again. The Metropolitan Opera have of course long been innovators in presenting their opera to the world in live radio and then livestream broadcasts to the cinema, so they're obviously very good at it. They have it down to such a fine art now - with flawless uninterrupted High Definition image and sound - that you do however wonder where the priorities lie; whether the image, presentation and star attractions of big productions take precedence over the actual musical content.

That's maybe just an idle thought, as I have rarely had any doubt about the quality of the performances I have seen streamed from the Met, but the format certainly makes me think differently about how I review such a production. It's not like live opera, or even opera on DVD. I'm sure the primary consideration is a striving for excellence for the audience in the theatre - whether you think they achieve it or nor - but I get the impression that for some productions they do seem to have an eye to how it will look in its cinema broadcast. Those considerations are largely on the camera placements and shots, and Gary Halvarson ensures that the Met Live in HD broadcasts have a very distinctive and impressive look.

Which brings us to the Met production of Luigi Cherubini's Medea. If it merely looked impressive however and didn't also live up to that in performance, you'd have more reason to be critical, but there are few concerns on that front. Throughout the broadcast we were reminded by Joyce DiDonato and Peter Gelb that this was the first time Medea has been performed at the Met, which is incredible, but also welcoming as a sign of the Met striving to expand their range. It's not a minor work by any means, made famous by Maria Callas, but as one of those works belonging to that in-between period between classicism and romanticism, it has perhaps been somewhat left in the shadow of the twin titans of Mozart and Verdi.

Mainly however the stated reason for not performing Medea before now, is that - as a showpiece of Maria Callas demonstrates - it indisputably requires a soprano of tremendous force to deliver it and do justice to the role of Medea. It wasn't until Sondra Radvanovsky suggested that she would love to sing the role that the Met felt it would be worth exploring.

Whether Radvanovsky is good enough to sing it, I have some reservations, but by and large it was a successful account that certainly emphasised and made obvious the attractions of the work. There's no doubting Radvanovsky's comittment to a challenging role, but she didn't totally win me over. There were some weaknesses in her delivery and the strain showed in the demanding third act, but in the moments where it counted, especially in the delivery of the extraordinarily powerful and demanding finale, it was genuinely spine-tingling.

If Sondra Radvanovsky wasn't totally convincing it seemed to me that she was maybe trying too hard. The blame for that falls on director David McVicar who forced her into all kinds of gymnastic writhing on the stage, pacing, ducking, diving, rolling, crawling, stretching. Most of this is completely unnecessary since all the force of the role of Medea is there in the libretto, in the music and in the terrific writing for the voice by Cherubini. All this movement undoubtedly tired Radvanovsky much more than was necessary and clearly affected what is already a challenging vocal performance. That should not happen. It is simply bad direction, and that's the kind of thing that makes me wonder where the priorities in presentation lie.

McVicar's production has its obvious attractions - primarily aesthetic - but it didn't entirely convince on a human emotional level. It looked stunning but was way over the top, going for shock and awe. It didn't adhere to any historical period other than generic operatic past, which works well enough. Classical stone steps lead up to huge tarnished steel doors that resemble stone walls, emphasising just how much Medea is cut off and excluded from the world of Colchis. To make sure you didn't miss a thing in the huge expanse of the Met stage, a huge tilted mirror at the back reflects and expands the area for the drama, permitting the viewer to see the full grandeur of Giasone's wedding to Glaucis' while Medea writhed around in anger, jealousy and rage outside of it.

Halvarson's cinematography captured all this superbly with low angles foregrounding Medea against the beautifully lit backgrounds. Aesthetically it was striking but emotionally it was utterly redundant. With McVicar's stylistic mannerisms and Medea's eye-rolling and writhing around the stage, all amplified by the dramatic camera angles, it overwhelmed the true heart of the musical drama. Act III was the worst offender. Flames flickered earlier than expected, flames of fury presumably since Medea has not yet started to enact her fiery revenge. The gory death of Glauce doesn't need to be shown, nor do the deaths of the children, at least not in the cinematic gore fashion shown here (we had the same problem with Met's Tarantino-meets-Werther). The raging thunderstorms and circles of flame that accompany Medea's final descent into insanity are spectacular, but overly emphatic when you have that vocal finale, which Sondra Radvanovsky delivered superbly.

Musically Carlo Rizzi matched the fireworks on the stage, but I found the busy stage and overacting too much of a distraction, so I can't say say for sure if it really got to grips with Cherubini or whether this was also smothered by McVicar's indulgent production. Matthew Polenzani brought a more sympathetic side to Giasone in a lower tessitura than he is accustomed to. He sang well but didn't make a great overall impression, overshadowed as his character is by the dominance of Medea and by the production. The other roles were well-handled; Ekaterina Gubanova an excellent Neris and Janai Brugger giving a good account of Glauce.

There was a lot to enjoy here, but how much of it was genuine opera and how much was pure stage spectacle is debatable. Even that might not really matter, as spectacle has its place in opera and it was certainly a feature of the opera's original French production in 1797. I enjoy high production values in opera as much as anyone and am certainly in favour of new technology and theatrical techniques being employed, but I was left with the feeling here that as impressive as this was, as much money and effort has been put into impressing you, it just didn't connect on an emotional level. Worse, the production actively hampered the qualities that are there in the opera itself and was detrimental to the delivery of the singing, and that should never happen. 

Links: The Met Live in HD, Medea

Cherubini - Medea (Wexford, 2017)

Luigi Cherubini - Medea

Wexford Festival Opera, 2017

Stephen Barlow, Fiona Shaw, Lise Davidsen, Ruth Iniesta, Raffaella Lupinacci, Sergey Romanovsky, Adam Lau

National Opera House, Wexford - 31 October 2017

There's one essential element that you need for a performance of Cherubini's Medea and it's a fairly obvious one. No, it's not Maria Callas, but you're on the right track; it needs a character with the fire and personality that Maria Callas was capable of bringing to one of the most challenging roles in opera - or theatre, for that matter. There aren't too many Maria Callases around obviously, which might be one of the reasons why Cherubini's opera isn't performed more often these days, but there's no question that the Wexford Festival have found a great Medea in Lise Davidsen.

Finding a singer capable of harnessing the forces and challenges of this particular role is not however the only element that is essential to putting on a successful Medea, and there are other reasons why the opera is not performed very often. There are questions over which version to go with (French or Italian? The opéra-comique version with passages of spoken dialogue or the musical interpolations for the recitative provided by Franz Lachner for a German version of the work?). There's also the nature of the Classical opera and its fashionability, and Cherubini has never really been fashionable, not even in his own time.

All of those issues are well-addressed by Stephen Barlow, who conducts a magnificent account of the Italian version with Lachner recitatives at Wexford, and it truly reveals the merits of the work. There's no overblown Romanticism, but rather the restrained and measured elegance of the Classical tradition is adhered to; a sense of order in the music however that feels constantly threatened by the actions of its principal character. The music carries within it a hint of that menace, tying it to the dominant nature of the role that Medea exerts on the piece, her efforts to maintain control over her actions and her life always seeming to be in danger of giving in to her darker nature and spilling over into horrible violence.

Finding a way to meaningfully draw out that aspect of the work also seems to inform Fiona Shaw's approach to the direction. She takes into consideration that Cherubini composed the opera in 1797, with the horrors and dark violence of the French revolution would undoubtedly found its way into the composition. Certainly there are parallels to be drawn towards violence being inflicted on an unsuspecting royal family, but as an actress who has played this role on the stage, Shaw looks beyond that and tries to examine where exactly such murderous thoughts and intent might have derived from. She finds that in the references in Medea's murder of her own brother to help Jason steal the Golden Fleece and that idea is woven into the production. Violence begets violence, as the Greek classics often warn us, and it's hard to argue with how this element in presented here.

The overture hints at the sins of the mother being visited upon the children of the next generation. The Wexford production opens with the children of Medea playing as they make the sea crossing to Corinth, but the storms left behind on Colchis are still present with them in the figure of Medea's brother who has a silent physical presence here. It's this more than any classical references that are important, and the nature of this corruption of the soul should still have relevance today. It doesn't necessarily have to be spelled out in terms of contemporary political topicality, but there is certainly room for that if the audience want to apply it to the world around them.

Shaw's production at least makes a more open interpretation possible by placing the action of the drama in a more contemporary setting. Act I sees Glaucis and her ladies working out at the gym, getting into shape for her forthcoming wedding to Jason. The arrival of Medea then is in marked contrast to this scene, bringing an unwelcome dose of reality into the picture. "Hey, Jason - what about those promises you made to me? What about the kids? What about the brother I killed just so that you could give the Golden Fleece as a wedding present to your new bride?"

Heavily paraphrased by me, that is nonetheless the import of Medea's words, and the contemporary setting just hits home the human sense of betrayal that Medea feels. But it's not just a matter of reducing classical mythology down to the level of a domestic dispute, and Shaw's production delves deeper into those archetypal themes with the symbolism of the sea, the waves, an island - all of it suggesting isolation, raging emotions, deep pain and urges towards violence that result in Medea's descent into madness.

The singing is fully up to the demands of the work and the intent of the production, showing just what Cherubini's opera has to offer. Lise Davidsen, in casual jeans and jumper, doesn't look at all like a demented enchantress, but that's the point. You don't know what will trigger Medea's reactions, but if those buttons are continually pushed, you will know all about it. You'll also know it from Davidsen's delivery, which is just phenomenal. It's not just that Davidsen meets the technical demands of the role, but she really does make it seem like Medea is on a hair-trigger, treading a line between outrage and entreaty, so that when she does finally explode and kill her children, it almost seems proportionate. And when it comes to it, the size of that voice does as much damage as Medea does to the gym equipment.

Ruth Iniesta also has a strong voice as Glauce, but it felt a bit overpowering, not quite as refined and controlled as Davidsen and almost too big for the O'Reilly Theatre. Raffaella Lupinacci made a terrific impression as Neris with some lovely lyrical singing. Sergey Romanovsky couldn't be faulted as Jason and his characterisation was also good, fitting in well with the production. While you can never have any real sympathy for Jason, his fault here is not so much betrayal and serial infidelity (as it can be in other opera versions of this story), but rather he is undone by his own weakness and misjudgement of Medea. There needs to be some kind of understanding of his position in order for the loss he suffers as a consequence to be utterly devastating, and in combination with Fiona Shaw's direction and Stephen Barlow's conducting - not to mention some impressive work from the orchestra and the chorus - the full force of Cherubini's Medea is felt by the time we get to that conclusion.

Links: Wexford Festival Opera

Cherubini - Medea (Geneva, 2015 - Webcast)

Luigi Cherubini - Medea

Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2015

Marko Letonja, Christof Loy, Daniel Okulitch, Grazia Doronzio, Andrea Carè, Alexandra Deshorties, Sara Mingardo, Alexander Milev, Johanna Rudström, Magdalena Risberg

ARTE Concert - 24 April 2015
 
I'm not proud of it, but I have to admit that my first thought on seeing the two sulky baseball-capped skate-boarding teenage sons of Medea and Jason racing across the stage in the 2015 Geneva production of Cherubini's version of Medea was - well, I won't be too shocked or distraught when their mother kills those two at the end of this production. A cruel thought maybe, but it's one that is perhaps intended by the director. Almost certainly, since the director here is Christof Loy, and there's little that isn't precisely calculated in a Christof Loy production.

The other thing you can expect from a Christof Loy production is that it will be set in a more modern era. None of this classical stuff, even for the sedate, elegant music of Luigi Cherubini, which is Mozartian with more Classical flourishes. Loy however does indeed take his cue from the music, recognising that there is an edge lying beneath the measured surface of the musical arrangements, if you can cut through the layers of varnish. It might be a myth, but presenting Medea in a modern perspective does just that, forcing you to really consider whether there's a universal, recognisable truth in the characterisation and the situation.

Not everyone like Loy's modernisations and abstractions - and you could question whether it is really necessary in Greek tragedy - but there's no question that his direction and acting instruction makes opera characters fully three-dimensional and human. As such, the creation and playing of Medea herself is a fascinating case study and challenge for any performer. She can be seen and depicted as a monster, but not here. The structure of Cherubini's opera, the music that underscores it, and Christof Loy's direction all go into ensuring that you can sympathise to some degree with Medea, even if you can't justify her actions.

The same attention however needs to be paid to the other characters in order to fully understand Medea and her actions. This is the real trick and it's one that Loy doesn't miss. Despite the impression given at the opening with the children, he doesn't make cheap or easy shortcuts either. You actually feel sorry for Jason as well here for foolishly crossing Medea and betraying her with a marriage alliance with Glauce. If Medea was a sorceress who had indeed bewitched Jason, it would be easy to consider him an injured party, but that's not the case here. Under Loy's direction, taking its cue from Cherubini, Medea is a formidable character, with force of personality and dangerously seductive. Jason's only mistake is in underestimating her as a woman.

Creon too. Loy uses Medea's scenes with Creon to emphasise her particular allure. He sets it up well by showing the King as something of a skirt-chaser, all touchy-feely with his courtiers (or, I don't know, business team or assistants or whatever they are in their smart modern suits). Creon is amenable to the right kind of persuasion then, and this Medea knows it, managing to strip him down in her encounter with him, before he quickly comes to his senses, or takes the opportunity of an interruption to make his escape. He doesn't get off so easy of course.

Even Medea's children aren't as crudely characterised as I make it appear. They are rather just unfortunate bystanders caught in the middle of terrible events that are not of their doing. It's clever directing, allowing you to see the surface impression (which is usually all you get in most productions of Medea), and then reveal a deeper, more human truth. If there's anything monstrous about Medea, it's the situations, it's society, it's the depths of despair that the human heart plummet and it's the extreme actions that one can be driven to in a such a situation that appears to offer no way out.

Cherubini's rich and dramatic score allows for this kind of interpretation in Médée. There's a measure of opera seria expression in the composition, each of the main characters give an opportunity to air their grievances in arias and long scenes, with some Romantic flourishes that elevate and deepen the human elements of the Greek tragedy. This is reflected in the set design, the wood-panelled state-rooms (reminiscent of Loy's Roberto Devereux), giving way (in sliding panels reminiscent of Loy's Jenůfa) to more expansive vistas of the nature in outside world, to the colour and drama of the kingdom of Corinth.

The structure of the work offers opportunities for expression for all the principals, and the detail here is well presented and sung well also. Glauce's fitting for a wedding dress sets the scene well at the beginning of Act I, Grazia Doronzio expressing her misgivings about Medea and capturing the delicacy of the situation well. In Cherubini's Médée, even Neris, Medea's maidservant, has her own expression, sympathising with the situation of her mistress, giving a balance to the work. Neris is sung rather well by Sara Mingardo. Daniel Okulitch is a solid if rather young looking Creonte, and Andrea Carè a fine Jason. Loy's production was conceived with Jennifer Larmore in mind, only for the American soprano to be forced to withdraw through illness. Alexandra Deshorties proves a fine late replacement, her Medea sung forcefully enough although her voice is a little thin on the recitative sections. She has plenty of allure and character.

With Deshorties performance and Loy's direction, this does prove to be an interesting Medea - one that is fully fired and clearly motivated by human impulses. Arguably however, Loy humanises this Medea a little too much, and we lose a little of the opera's high drama. I don't know whether it's to do with the use of the Italian version rather than the original French version (this production uses the 1909 Carlo Zangarini version in its 1953 Maria Callas incarnation) or whether it's conducted in line with this characterisation, but Marko Letonja's conducting tones down some of the more extravagant Romantic flourishes and crescendos in Cherubini's score, finding rather a measure of elegance in its swoops and swirls. A little less restraint in the appropriate places might however have made this Geneva production a little more exciting.


Links: ARTE Concert, Grand Théâtre de Genève

Cherubini - Koukourgi

Luigi Cherubini - Koukourgi

Stadttheater Klagenfurt, 2010

Peter Marschik, Josef E. Köpplinger, Daniel Prohaska, Çiğdem Soyarslan, Johannes Chum, Daniel Belcher, Peter Edlemann, Leonardo Galeazzi, Stefan Cerny, Alexander Puhrer, Kap-Sung Ahn

Arthaus Musik

Luigi Cherubini is one of the great neglected composers of the Classical age, known now, if at all, for his formal but dramatically near-operatic compositions of Requiems and Coronation Masses as Court Composer during the times of Revolutionary France, but his twenty-five actual operas are mostly unheard of and only a few of them are on rare occasions performed. There is a perception that Cherubini’s music is a little bit academic and conventional, with an impeccable sense of melody, counterpoint and situation every bit as delightful as Haydn, but without the spark of genius or originality of Mozart. There’s some degree of truth in that perception, but at the same time Cherubini is certainly worthy of being considered alongside these two more famous near-contemporary composers, and one need only look to the only one of his operas that is regularly performed, Medea, to see Cherubini’s qualities as an opera composer of genuine merit.

Whether his other works match up to Medea - which is only well-known now because of Maria Callas and for the dramatic opportunities in the singing range that it offers a leading soprano - is rather more difficult to judge due to the rarity of ever seeing one of his operas actually performed. An opéra-comique, Koukourgi is probably not the most representative of Cherubini’s dramatic and classical-based works, but it is certainly one of the rarest. Composed around 1792, Koukourgi - for reasons unknown - was left unfinished and, up until its premiere here at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt in 2010, had never been previously staged. The spoken dialogues are lost, but are not difficult to determine from the progression of the plot and have been rendered in German here for the Klagenfurt audience, although almost certainly not in the form they take here. The overture is taken from Cherubini’s Ifigenia in Aulide (1788) and the finale ‘Viva Amore‘ was an insert composed by Cherubini for a French production of a Paisiello opera.

As for the opera itself, it does tend to confirm the idea of Cherubini’s work being written to suit the conventions of the opéra-comique. It’s a little bit dry and academic in places, with familiar character types and situations, the obligatory thunderstorm and a spectacular march of soldiers, but with no great narrative drive that inspires any impressive musical or singing feats. In its own way however,      Koukourgi is a lovely little example of its type, as light and entertaining as a Haydn opera, but with a modest French buffo character that avoids the excesses of the more florid Italian singing. That character is maintained in the Klagenfurt production, delicately played by the Kärtner Sinfonieorchester as conducted by Peter Marschik, which sets the tone by having Koukourgi play the part of narrator. It is unlikely that the character would have performed this role in the original spoken dialogue for the work, but it works effectively in the context here, making asides and confidences to the audience about the opera itself as well as about his own indolent nature, inviting them to laugh along with him at the rather more serious attitude adopted by the other characters in what doesn’t really amount to a great deal.

Although it is set in China, where the ruler Fohi comes under assault from the invading masses of the Tartars, Koukourgi could be seen as a reflection of the character and spirit of the times in revolutionary France. Set against this backdrop of the struggles of the royals to regain control, there is a romance that could also be seen as a reflection of the differences in class and attitudes. The great warrior Amazan is an orphan who has grown up in the castle and is in love with Zulma, but the ruler Fohi doesn’t consider him an acceptable match for his daughter, preferring Koukourgi, the son of his General Zamti. As the Tartar’s invade, are repulsed and invade again, it’s the Amazan who bravely launches himself into the fray, while the commander of the troops, Koukourgi, refuses to get involved, preferring to eat well, drink and attempt to seduce the repulsed Zulma, giving Amazan only his weakest troops in the hope that he might end up getting killed. Against the odds however, Amazan succeeds and wins the love of Zulma, courage is rewarded, indolence leads to nothing, and love conquers all.

The tone of the production and stage setting is also well fitted to the drama, not striving for any realism or strictly period setting, but being a thoroughly theatrical construct. All the chorus and extras wear grotesque masks, leaving the focus on the main characters with their face-painted Asian designs, but masks also play a part in the backgrounds. The back and forth nature of the off-stage attacks leads to a good running joke has one of the principal troops arrive on the stage at regular intervals with an arrow in his back announcing that the Tartars are invading again, before expiring with a trumpet call. It’s funnier than anything else that is in the actual libretto, but, as is often the case with this type of work, a lot depends on the charm and the delivery of the performers. Daniel Prohaska has a great deal of fun as the irreverent Koukourgi, but finds suitable companions for his cowardly nature in Daniel Belcher’s Sécuro and Peter Edlemann’s Phaor. Çiğdem Soyarslan’s Zulma and Johannes Chum’s Amazan meanwhile play the romantic drama wonderfully straight, Amazan ready to fly off to brave all the Tartar attacks without a moment’s cause for reflection.

Koukourgi is by no means a major discovery, but it’s entertaining in its own right, delightfully staged and performed, and with the scarcity of Cherubini operas available in any form, this is a true rarity that does indeed throw new light on the variety and quality of the composer’s work. It’s only available on DVD - no Blu-ray release - but the specifications are excellent, with a clean, sharp widescreen transfer and good audio mixes in PCM Stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1. The disc is Region-free, NTSC format, with subtitles in French, English, German, Spanish, Italian and Korean.

Cherubini - Medea

Luigi Cherubini - Medea

Sassari Italy, 2004

Orchestra dell’Ente Concerti, Eric Hull, Giuseppe Sollazzo, Denia Mazzola Gavazzeni, Carlo Cigni, Elisabetta Scano, Cesare Ruta, Chiara Chialli

Kikko Classic

Adaptations of classical Greek mythology are common in opera, particularly Baroque and opera seria, and it’s perhaps for this reason that opera traditionally deals with highly dramatic subjects revolving around the twin passions of love and revenge. With perhaps the exception of Carmen, they don’t come much more impassioned than Luigi Cherubini’s version of the Euripides drama Medea.

More than the actual drama - it’s not a particularly complicated storyline and not a great deal happens - much of the passion is embodied within the character of Medea herself, the sorceress arriving at Colchis to stop the marriage of Jason to Glauce. Turning up on their wedding day, Medea threatens all manner of vengeance should Jason break the vows he has made, under enchantment, to her. Made famous by Maria Callas, which probably accounts for it being the only real Cherubini opera in repertoire, Medea is a role that calls out for a big performance and it does indeed get that here in the figure of Denia Mazzola Gavazzeni.

Recorded in Sassari in 2004 in the revised Italian version of the opera, this is a reasonably good production, traditionally staged, costumed and performed - a solid production that suits the opera and plays to its strengths. The orchestration and singing are both fine, but unfortunately neither are really shown to their best in the rather poor sound reproduction on this DVD release from Kikko Classic in Italy. A live recording, presumably made for television, the sound is Dolby Digital 2.0, but I’m not even sure it’s in stereo, or if it is, there’s not much L-R separation. It might as well be mono, and the mixing accordingly isn’t great, the orchestra mostly drowning out the singing.

The video quality is also lacking. In 4:3, it looks like a TV video master, and is certainly not shot in HD. Grain and blockiness can be seen in the dark backgrounds, there is faint discolouration with exposure varying between cameras. There are even one or two buzz glitches that momentarily affect both image and sound. The biggest problem with the filming is the editing, which makes use of different performances from different nights often within the same scene, the frequent intercutting leading to obvious continuity issues. Even more problematically, this causes the lip-movements to rarely match the singing or the performance.

Most of these issues are relatively minor and wouldn’t individually spoil the enjoyment of what is a fine opera and a good performance of it, but cumulatively, they can be quite niggling and distracting.