Gioachino Rossini - Otello
Buxton Festival, 2014
Stephen Barlow, Sara Fulgoni, Alessandro Luciano, Kate Ladner, Nicky Spence, Henry Waddington, Carolyn Dobbin, Leonel Pinheiro, Mikael Onelius, Andrew Brown
Buxton Opera House - 26 July 2014
I don't usually review concert performances of opera - the dramatic direction is as much a part of opera as the music and the singing - but a performance of Rossini's Otello is rare enough that that it's worth mentioning whenever it's presented. One of the principal reasons it's rarely performed is that it's hard to find singers good enough in this register, Otello notoriously requiring no less than five tenors in fairly challenging roles. Buxton get around this problem by using an alternative version of the opera that casts a mezzo-soprano instead of a tenor in the role of Otello. It's not so much getting around the problem as readjusting where the challenges lie, and you're still going to need four good tenors. All of which just increases the rarity value and interest in this performance.
A dramatic presentation of a work adapted from a Shakespeare play would, you think, be pretty much indispensable, but Rossini's Otello varies from Shakespeare's in a number of significant ways, not all of which will be satisfactory to the purist. The changes however are not arbitrary or ill-conceived, but are necessary to reduce the complexity and scale of the original play into a manageable music-drama format. To do that without losing the essence of the work is important, and while Rossini doesn't entirely succeed in some areas and can hardly be said to improve in any areas, in others the composer finds a successful medium, or at least one that has dramatic consistency.
The most controversial change in Rossini's version is of course the switching of Desdemona's handkerchief for a love letter. Written by Desdemona to Otello but never received by the latter, Iago convinces the Moor the letter that has come into his possession was intended for Rodrigo. This is much more tangible proof than a handkerchief, which means it doesn't take quite so much persuasion from Iago to convince Otello of her infidelity. It simplifies motivations certainly, but it's not just a shortcut, actually reducing the amount of chance and contrivance much that the drama relies on. Along with the suggestion that Iago's advances were once rebuffed by Desdemona, this also makes his motivations more credible than just evil ambition.
It's true however that the impulse to change certain aspects of the play derives more from Rossini need to adapt situation and characterisation to fit the structure of the number opera. With more long laments than action, Otello can also be seen to adhere more to the opera seria format, but Rossini respects the dramatic drive and innovates with accompanied recitative and interaction in duets between Otello and Rodrigo, Desdemona and Rodrigo, and - completing the triangle - between Desdemona and Otello. The placement of quintets, ensembles and choral pieces throughout the work all serve to create an even greater sense of the drama and situation.
A concert performance of the work just emphasises how dramatically effective Rossini's musical handling of the material is on it own terms. Or at least this one at Buxton did. It started off with the cast wearing formal evening dress and standing before music podiums, although Nicky Spence's Iago rakishly had his tie removed and shirt collar unbuttoned. By the end of the evening however, you'd have forgotten that this was a concert performance, all the singers seeming to have been caught up in the characterisation, the audience fully drawn into the drama by the escalating momentum of Rossini's arrangements.
It did however take a while to become accustomed to a mezzo-soprano in the role of Otello rather than Desdemona. It wasn't so much from a vocal standpoint however as a visual one and in male costume during a full production, it probably wouldn't have been an issue at all. Sara Fulgoni's powerful performance however made it easy to feel the extent of Otello's rage and the force of personality that would lead him to such drastic actions, and there was actually a discernible difference between the two female leads in the more feminine gowns worn by Kate Ladner. Ladner's performance was exceptionally good, devastating in her account of Desdemona's predicament, her Willow Song in particular deeply touching.
Buxton however managed to overcome the other singing challenges of this work such apparent ease that you'd almost wonder why all the fuss about putting on Rossini's Otello. Alessandro Luciano was certainly tested as Rodrigo, but came through it well, with clear bright enunciation and a strong dramatic tenor voice. Nicky Spence really impressed me with his Iago. This is a more dramatic role that requires a deeper and darker timbre than I've heard him sing in before, but he was thoroughly convincing and dramatically effective, singing the role with apparent ease. Under the fine direction of Stephen Barlow, the Northern Chamber Orchestra and the Buxton Festival Chorus were again simply outstanding, handling the intricacies of the work with an eye on the whole overarching structure and journey that Rossini's wonderful score thrillingly takes.
H.K. Gruber - Gloria, A Pigtale
Buxton Festival, 2014
Geoffrey Patterson, Frederic Wake-Walker, Gillian Keith, Jessica Walker, Andrew Dickinson, Charles Rice, Sion Goronwy
Buxton Opera House - 26 July 2014
At the Buxton Festival, you don't just get the uncommon, you occasionally get the very unusual. HK Gruber's Gloria, A Pigtale is however not just an indication of the kind of adventurous programming you find at Buxton, it's also an example of how expansive an artform opera can be in the range of musical, theatrical and narrative ideas it can encompass.
Defining Gloria, A Pigtale then, much less evaluating its qualities, is difficult. Very difficult. Abandoning any attempt to figure out what it was all about, whether the bizarre story was supposed to be allegorical on some level and just what part the music played in the character of the piece, I found it was better to just let my preconceptions go, enjoy its idiosyncrasies and just consider it a bit of fun. The loving attention that had gone into the staging and the performances of the cast and the musicians showed that they were clearly enjoying the opportunities the work presented and were going along with the flow, so perhaps that's also the best way for the audience to approach it.
The plot, if you want to call it that, concerns Gloria, a pig with golden curls who is more than a little bit deluded. Her fanciful ideas about her station make her the laughing stock of the other farmyard animals, but she's determined that she will find and marry her Prince Charming. Somewhere along the way she dreams of Hollywood hotdogs, and seems to get involved with a frog (I think), but when this doesn't work out Gloria looks elsewhere. Her strange fancies lead her to mistakenly believe that the butcher's interest in her is romantic, when all he sees is prime pork sausages. Eventually Rodney, a wild boar looking like a Wookie, falls in love with her and saves her from the butcher's knife. They marry, have piglets and don't live happily ever after, the boar realising too late his mistake in marrying such a mad creature.
Like the plot, the music is something of a mix of styles, but it nonetheless has a consistent style and tone of its own. It inevitably has something of a Kurt Weill feel to it, a bit of German jazz cabaret, some Bavarian oompah brass and a lot of beautiful melodic harp playing. There's a wide range of singing and narrative voices with little actual songs but there's good interaction between chanted verse, narration and arioso soprano singing. It's a style that suits the somewhat off-the-wall fairytale subject approach here, and it's one that works equally as well for Gruber's latest opera (albeit on a grander scale), Tales from the Vienna Woods, which just premiered this summer at the Bregenz Festival (where this Mahogany Opera Group production of Gloria subsequently travels on tour).
Mamoru Iriguchi's cabaret stage set designs for Frederic Wake-Walker's production plays well on the delightful absurdity of the situation. The band play from a raised platform to the back of a stage that has a curtain backdrop of rows of sausages. It's as sausages that each of the performers is ejected onto the stage, colourfully dressed in a pink theme. Wearing a wig of golden curls a body suit and a pink tutu, batting her eyelashes and striking poses, Gillian Keith's Gloria is not dressed to look like a pig in any conventional way, the colour pink being perhaps the only concession. The bizarre situations are likewise colourfully and inventively depicted, the stage kept busy with inflatable pigs, costume changes and role-switching.
A satire, a burlesque revue, an opera, Gloria, a Pigtale is probably also an allegory of some sorts, but precisely what isn't entirely clear. For life I suppose, at a basic level, the sausage as a metaphor for the fact that "we're all meat wrapped in skin". Really, it's just an excuse to push around some ideas, wrap then in a skin of music and singing and see what comes out of the sausage-opera machine at the end. Like life also, there's not much point in over-analysing it - it will never make sense or come to a happy end. Might as well just enjoy the experience.
Christoph Willibald Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice
Buxton Festival, 2014
Stuart Stratford, Stephen Medcalf, Michael Chance, Barbara Bargnesi, Daisy Brown
Buxton Opera House - 25 July 2014
Start with a simple idea. That's always the best way to approach Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. It doesn't preclude attempting something more elaborate in the style of La Fura dels Baus when the setting demands it, but in a modest theatre the size of the Buxton Opera House it helps if the idea is simple, relevant and respectful of the reformist nature of the work. The subject of Orfeo ed Euridice is however universal and timeless, so it can withstand a little tweaking and Stephen Medcalf's production for the Buxton Festival manages to achieve all that very well, without being over-ambitious.
The idea is indeed a simple enough one. Orpheus is a singer, right? He's famed for his lyrical musicianship, so there's nothing out of the ordinary in him being depicted as a rock-star with adoring fans clamouring around him as he steps off the stage at the start of Buxton's Festival 2014 production of Gluck's opera. The sentiments are the same, the human sense of suffering and bereavement are no different, the pain expressed at the loss of his beloved wife Eurydice no more nor less deeply felt than by anyone else in the same position.
Despite the trappings of the rock-star and his chorus of adoring fans, there's an admirable simplicity, directness and pureness of purpose in the set design that suits the content here. The stage is mainly bare, the only real prop being five block letters of Orpheus' stage backdrop that spell out the name ORFEO. These are lowered onto the stage and used to form the gates to the Underworld that he must pass in order to recover Eurydice, they are moved around to act as obstacles and they are used as needed for platforms and seats for chorus and principals alike.
There doesn't appear to be any deeper subtext here, unless you consider Orpheus's grief and his efforts to defeat death self-absorbed and self-important, which clearly isn't the intention of the work. The use of the letters of his name could be seen as an inner struggle to come to terms with the death of Eurydice, but I wouldn't read that much into it. A little reshuffling is done to form the word AMORE at the end (obviously with some additional letters), which shows that the production knows where the true sentiments lie, but elsewhere there's no attempt to be clever with wordplay or anagrams.
The production remains faithful also to the intent if not the exact literal classical depictions of the creatures of the Underworld. The Furies, blocking Orpheus' way by rolling the bold neon-lit letters into a barrier, wear shabby clothes and are the kind of characters you wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley. They do actually mug Orpheus here, stealing his wallet and belongings, before letting him pass. The inhabitants of Elysium, by way of contrast, are chilled-out beach-bums wearing shorts and bikinis. I wasn't sure smoking would be a fitting activity in such a place, but maybe they were smoking something a little more "recreational". It might explain why they found their game of blind-man's bluff with the grief-stricken Orpheus so hilarious.
The setting and the directorial choices are unconventional then, but work fine and match the tone and the intention of the work. Musically and in terms of the singing however, the production didn't always come together as well as it should. It's always good to have a counter-tenor in the role of Orpheus. In terms of singing voices, I personally prefer the role to be taken by a mezzo-soprano, but there's always a better dynamic when Orpheus is visibly a man and Eurydice a woman. Audibly, it's a different matter, and it seems to be harder to match the right counter-tenor voice with the soprano. Michael Chance sounded a little alarming when he dropped to the lower end of the register in the more dramatic pronouncements, but his high end was strong and ringing. Barbara Bargnesi was a credibly intense Eurydice and sang well, but the two voices just didn't blend all that well.
That said, some of the most affecting moments in the production were the ones shared by Chance and Bargnesi as Orpheus and Eurydice. Their encounter in the Underworld had real impact for its significance, as did the scene where Eurydice fades away again in his arms. Elsewhere however, I just wasn't feeling it. The slow tempo of the musical arrangements might not have helped. Working with the original version of the work, Stuart Stratford played it brooding and moody and not just in the overture. The Dance of the Furies was deliberated and menacing, the Dance of the Divine Spirits somewhat blissed-out. When there wasn't much happening on the set in terms of stage directions, this seemed to create something of a disconnect between the music, the action and the singing.
Aside from personal preferences regarding the pacing and how it related to the action on the stage, the Northern Chamber Orchestra gave a fine performance of Gluck's beautiful score for the 1762 Italian original version of Orfeo ed Euridice. All the dances were included and were lovely to hear. They aren't always deemed necessary for inclusion and can contribute to a slowing down of the drama, particularly when - as here - there's no actual dancing as such. It was left to the Festival Chorus to mill around during such moments shifting letters and they did so reasonably well. They were certainly in fine voice here, as elsewhere throughout the 2014 Buxton Festival programme. Daisy Brown also impressed as a bright omnipresent Amore.
Antonin Dvořák - The Jacobin
Buxton Festival, 2014
Stephen Barlow, Stephen Unwin, Andrew Greenan, Nicholas Lester, James McOran-Campbell, Anne Sophie Duprels, Nicholas Folwell, Matthew Newlin, Bonaventura Bottone, Anna Patalong, Martha McLorinan
Buxton Opera House - 24 July 2014
There are a lot of lost or forgotten operas and they usually aren't performed for a good reason, whether it's changing fashions and taste, or the fact that they often they just aren't very good. The wonderful thing about the Buxton Festival's revivals of neglected operas is that you not only get a chance to determine whether a rarely performed work has any merit, but you can be almost certain that if an obscure opera has been chosen to be produced at the festival, it's usually because it's worth it. Dvořák's The Jacobin is, on this showing, clearly an opera worth reviving.
Musically, at least. Anyone who has had the opportunity to hear The Jacobin before (it was performed in concert version at the Barbican a year or so ago), will certainly have noted the beauty and the richness of melody in Dvořák's writing. There's more to an opera than just music however, it has to work dramatically on the stage. While the merits and pacing of the plot here are rather more open to question than the qualities of the music, the success of such a work can often depend on the interpretation and direction. In both respects, The Jacobin is traditionally in good hands at the Buxton Festival.
Stephen Barlow and the Northern Chamber Orchestra clearly relished the opportunity to explore and give full expression to Dvořák's warm melodic writing for The Jacobin. It's not the most sophisticated music, but it's full of wonderfully simple but catchy tunes that are appropriate for the content and the context. In addition to some beautiful arias and some fine multi-layered ensemble singing, Dvořák uses folk music as a basis for the arrangements, particularly the choral pieces that give it a strong national character. The influence of Wagner is not so evident here as much as Bellini, if you can imagine Bellini writing national anthems, or perhaps think of a more melodic Wagnerian flow in a Massenet style.
As a Czech national opera however, and as a comedy moreover, The Jacobin must also look to Smetana's The Bartered Bride. While it relies on many of the characteristics of the comic opera - arranged marriages to horrible old men that threatens the pure love of a young couple, dark family secrets that come to light when a long-lost family member returns - there's a feeling that The Jacobin almost tries to be too clever and risks trivialising or at least marginalising the simple mechanics of the plot for the sake of enriching it musically.
The actual plot is not the most sophisticated, operating on two main situations - one dramatic and one comic. The dramatic plotline involves the return of Bohuš with his new wife Julie back to his Bohemian hometown, where rumours have been spread of him becoming a Jacobin revolutionary during his stay in Paris. This rumour suits his brother Adolf, who stands to gain the inheritance of his father, Count Harasova, in the absence of his disinherited brother. Fully aware of the danger, Adolf ensures that his steward Filip has the stranger with false papers arrested. The comic plotline involves Terinka, the daughter of the music teacher Benda, being forced into a marriage with steward, when she is in love with Jiří. As the leading voices in Benda's choir, they use the occasion of singing rehearsals for a celebration for the Count to find a way of being together and thwarting Filip.
The choral practice takes up rather more of the opera than you might think relevant to the plot, and it seems a little indulgent on the part of the composer - Dvořák that is, as much as on the part of Benda who has pretensions to be the new Mozart. While this does give Dvořák the opportunity of writing serenades and anthemic choral pieces and blending those into the simple folk melodies and dramatic situations, it's not entirely gratuitous. Music does indeed play an important role in The Jacobin. The major resolutions are brought about not so much by revelations about identity as character. Julie's recollection (in a beautiful rendition by Anne Sophie Duprels) of nostalgic folk songs she has learned from her husband, ensure his release on the principle that they can't be bad people if they love the music of our country this much. In many ways, the music also saves Jiří and Terinka, who are indispensable to the music master.
As such, the quality of the singing is by no means a small matter in this opera, and this is a not a consideration neglected in Buxton productions either. There's a recognition that it's in the supposedly secondary characters where the real charm of The Jacobin lies and in this respect, the casting of Benda, Filip, Jiří and Terinka is perfect. Between them there's plenty of enthusiasm, bluster and good-humoured conflict. The singing is just delightful, as much in individual voices as in the blending of them (the English translation moreover working superbly in bringing together all those interweaving voices expressing conflicting sentiments. The staging, updated to a 1930s setting, was deceptively simple but worked remarkably well, Stephen Unwin focussing on the direction and interaction of the diverse characters, making them work well with one another. The Northern Chamber Orchestra were on outstanding form, showing a real feel for the drive and melody of the work, bringing it all together and showing just how wonderfully entertaining The Jacobin can be.
Sergei Prokofiev - War and Peace
Mariinsky II, St. Petersburg - 2014
Valery Gergiev, Graham Vick, Andrei Bondarenko, Aida Garifullina, Yulia Matochkina, Larisa Diadkova, Sergei Aleksashkin, Yevgeny Akimov, Maria Maksakova, Ilya Selivanov, Edward Tsanga, Yekaterina Sergeyeva, Gennady Bezzubenkov, Vasily Gerello
More2Screen Cinema Live in HD - 16 July 2014
It seems obvious to divide War and Peace into two distinct parts. That's the way that Tolstoy divides the novel and that's the structure that Prokofiev follows in his opera version. But when did Graham Vick ever do the obvious? The British director is not one to shy away from controversy either, but while his staging and Paul Brown's set designs take considerable modernising liberties with the Mariinsky's 2014 production of Prokofiev's 1942 epic War and Peace, he uncharacteristically tends to steer away from any overt contemporary political commentary in relation to war and peace as far as it relates to Russian current and foreign affairs.
What Vick does manage to bring out of this work however is the recognition of the fact that war and peace are, if you want to put it in such terms, two sides of the same coin. They aren't as distinct as the title of Tolstoy's masterwork might make them seem (although such considerations are infinitely more subtly drawn in the epic and intimate scope of the actual novel). How Vick approaches this is clever, even if it seems counter-intuitive and almost deliberately contrary. He reverses the traditional division of the two-part work, depicting Act I's Peace section as War, and Act II's War section as Peace. He's not too subtle about it either.
The intent is made clear right from the opening scene, as Prince Andrei Bolonsky looks out over the garden in dark contemplation over the turn his life has taken, leaving him a widower. In Vick's interpretation, he's at war with himself, contemplating suicide with a gun held to his head, only to be saved at the last moment by the freshness of Natasha Rostova's appreciation of the beauty of the spring night with her sister Sonya. It's a strong opening scene that sets the tone for the work and encapsulates much of Tolstoy's views of the individual human experience in relation to history and historical events, and Vick's staging of this scene alone brings that out very well. In reality however it does much more than that.
Already Paul Brown's busy set designs hint at a wider view of history and war that goes beyond the traditional military one. A class war might be an obvious one to allude to in the Russian context, but as I've said, Vick doesn't do obvious. The second scene, at the ball, more or less suggests that a rather more self-destructive aristocracy. Actually, never mind 'less', it's clearly 'more'. Footmen wear gas masks set out chairs for the ball, and they are worn also by the dancing guests. And just in case the poster images of designer goods, commercialism, wealth, industry and gold don't make it clear enough, a tank also rolls across the stage. All this is in the traditional 'Peace' section of the opera.
Arguably, although the score for this section is quite lyrical with a hint of Tchaikovsky in the ballroom dances, Prokofiev's rather more modern score brings out this sense of unease and corruption within a decadent aristocracy. That edge is certainly given full expression in Vick's staging, Hélène Bezukhova's meeting with Natasha, for example, taking place in a gilt-marbled bathroom with gold fittings where the Countess has been snorting cocaine, both women dressed and looking like fashion-models (and as such both very HD-friendly for this live broadcast). Similar scenes are played out by Hélène's brother Anatole's attempted elopement with Natasha in a limousine where a gun is brandished by his driver, and cocaine use is again in evidence.
There's clearly a war of some sorts here, but Vick isn't able to pin it down to any one thing, and as a consequence risks dissipating any impact that might be gained through a more specific contemporary commentary. Act II then throws in footage of WWII (which would indeed have been relevant to Prokofiev writing in 1942) and mixes troops in modern combat gear with officers in Napoleonic uniforms (mostly on the high command, if that's a purposeful distinction). The context is however very specifically Russian, but there's no getting around that fact with the nature of the work, and the addition of all the huge nationalistic choral pieces, added by the composer at the behest of the Russian censor.
There's no more rousing piece in this respect than Field-Marshal Kutuzov's rousing proclamation in Act II over the fate of the Russian people and the decision to temporarily sacrifice Moscow to Napoleon's army. Vick stages it marvellously - and it's sung marvellously too by Gennady Bezzubenkov - the Commander striding out afterwards into the Orchestra Stalls of the Mariinsky II to receive approval, handshakes and high-fives from members of his people. Most significantly here, as throughout the whole of Act II, is the slogan of 'Peace' (мир) featuring prominently in the background. As he depicted 'War' in Act I (война), Act II in Vick's production is all about 'Peace' and, arguably, the sacrifice of Moscow and all the efforts of the heroic Kutuzov are designed to bring about peace, not wage war.
Dividing such an epic work up into a number of scenes makes it difficult for Prokofiev to really do justice to Tolstoy's masterpiece. This is my first time hearing the work, so it might reveal other aspects in time, but the score does indeed seem to be patchwork in nature, not really grasping the scope or bringing it together in as consistent a manner as Tolstoy. On the other hand, certain important aspects work very well on both the grand scale and the intimate. Pierre's declaration scene to Natasha in Act I is very lyrical and affecting. Pierre is the heart of the work, the one whose eyes are open to the corruption of the elite in Act I, the only hope of decency in this vile society of wealth and privilege, and his resolve in Act II brings about a sense of healing and continuity. As such he's also central to Vick's concept and in terms of staging and singing (a heartfelt performance by Yevgeny Akimov) this works remarkably well.
Also important to the work and well-arranged by Prokofiev - although the immense scope of the work means that they only have relatively minor roles in Act II - are Natasha and Andrei. Again, hope, reconciliation and mutual understanding on the small scale is important if it is to be understood in terms of the grander picture of history, and that's all there in the opera. Vick's attempt to put all that on the stage isn't always successful and Paul Brown's busy set designs can be a little messy and not too pretty to look at, not always complementing Valery Gergiev's conducting of the work at the Mariinsky II, but the singing contributes immeasurably towards making this work. More than just being HD-friendly in appearance, the young cast are also incredibly talented singers. There's not a weak element here, but Aida Garifullina is simply outstanding as Natasha and is a fine match for Andrei Bondarenko's sensitive account of Andrei.
Christoph Willibald Gluck - Orphée et Eurydice
La Monnaie-De Munt, 2014
Hervé Niquet, Romeo Castellucci, Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Sabine Devieilhe, Fanny Dupont
La Monnaie, Internet Streaming - June 2014
Orphée et Eurydice has the distinction not only of being one of the purest and most pared-back expressions of Gluck's reformist agenda, reducing extravagant ornamentation and bringing opera back to its strength as a dramatic artform, but it's exquisitely beautiful in its simplicity. The intent of the work is carried principally through the expression of one singer and the music itself. And, even though it has an ancient mythological subject, Orphée et Eurydice is not some lofty expression of sentiments detached from everyday life, but it has something real and meaningful to communicate to its audience. To its credit, I've never seen a performance of the work - in any of its many forms - that was anything but deeply heartfelt and humanistic in its outlook, but Romeo Castellucci's extraordinary 2014 production for La Monnaie touches deeply on the themes in the work in a way that takes it to an entirely new level.
Dealing with gods, demigods and supernatural events, it's easy to forget that there is a real human element to grand mythological subjects. They are only myths because they speak for all of our suffering, our struggles to exist, live, find love and happiness. Using the story of Orpheus, who in his overwhelming grief for the death of his wife Eurydice travels to the Underworld to retrieve her, Gluck recognises that the Orpheus myth is all about love, loss and bereavement. Despite the beauty of the sentiment and the sincerity of his intentions, it of course proves impossible for Orpheus to bring his loved one back to life (notwithstanding the reworked happy ending in the opera version). Those sentiments can work perfectly well in the concise and expressive beauty of Gluck's score alone, but the dramatic expression on the stage is also a vital part of opera, and Castellucci finds an innovative way to reconnect the myth with the reality.
Like mythology, opera too must not be lofty and detached, but should be relatable on a human level. Having carried out extensive research into 'locked-in syndrome' Castellucci literally takes the opera beyond the stage of La Monnaie and out into the world, the production being broadcast live directly to a medical ward 14km outside Brussels where a young Belgian woman called Els lies in bed, completely paralysed. She's effectively dead to the world, beyond the reach of her husband and loved-ones, unable to move or communicate other than through the blinking of her eyes that allow her to painstakingly form words and sentences one letter at a time. At the same time as the music of Orpheus reaches out to her in her condition, Gluck's music reaches out to express Els/Eurydice's condition to the audience and give us some indication of how her family must feel about their loss.
How this is achieved in the production is, like Gluck's music, outwardly simple, but in reality very precise and sophisticated technical measures are used to present art as an expression of deeper truths. For almost the entirety of the performance, Stéphanie d'Oustrac sings the role of Orpheus on a dark bare stage with only a pseudo-microphone in front of her. To the right of the stage is what looks like a life-support system, although it has lights showing music volume-control levels, so it could represent a transmitter of sorts. While Orpheus sings of his loss, the captions on the screen behind the singer show English captions that have nothing to do with the libretto, but rather tell the story of Els, a 28 year-old woman who has been in a pseudocoma for the last 18 months, suffering complete paralysis but retaining full cognitive abilities after brainstem damage caused by a thrombosis. The audience are advised that the opera is being broadcast live to her at this moment.
There's evidently no direct correlation between the story of Els and the Orpheus myth, but the broad sense of losing a person, of them being present but beyond reach and unable to interact with the world outside is identical to how Orpheus, despite every effort to reach Eurydice, is unable to bring her back to life. The descent to the Underworld is in some respect mirrored in the blurred black-and-white footage on the screen that shows a journey towards the medical centre where this real-life Eurydice lies, arriving there as Orpheus finds Eurydice among the spirits of Elysium ("Cet asile aimable et tranquille"). As the on-stage Eurydice (Sabine Devieilhe) appears behind the mesh screen, we meet Els, lying in her bed, blinking but unmoving, a pair of headphones relaying the song of Orpheus direct from the opera house of La Monnaie.
Castellucci's direction is simple but daring and completely in touch with what the work is all about - human grief, battling against outrageous fortune - and relating it back to ordinary people who suffer terribly from everyday trials. Although there's nothing abstract about Gluck's music, it takes the drama away from mere theatricality to show how it fully explores and expresses these vital aspects of the human condition. Castellucci even takes into consideration the happy ending that Gluck was obliged to provide for the stage, showing an Eurydice revived and alive, but - reflecting Els' condition - remaining behind a veil, unable to fully return to the world. This works for the audience and for the intent of Gluck's music drama, making the story vividly real and deeply moving, but Castellucci's production goes beyond even this, telling us something about the power of music and opera to touch on aspects of our lives that other arts cannot reach.
One person who recognised the power of the work and who was instrumental in keeping this Baroque work alive through the 19th century and beyond, was Hector Berlioz. The French version is understandably more popular in French-speaking countries than Gluck's original Italian version, and if Berlioz's 1859 version is not the most "authentic" edition (Gluck wrote a "definitive" French version himself as well as the original Italian and even a German-language version), it at least brings together the best elements of Gluck's variations while retaining the purity of its expression. I have a particular fondness for the Berlioz version myself and this is a superb performance of the work conducted at La Monnaie by Hervé Niquet. It's played slightly faster than usual, the overture in particular a little rushed when it should be a more brooding, but the tone and expression of the work is all there.
It's also there in the singing, which is just as vital in a work with only three individual roles. The singing here is just outstanding, Stéphanie d'Oustrac one of the best mezzo-soprano singers I've heard singing Orpheus, and you could hardly expect to find a brighter or more colourful voice for Eurydice than Sabine Devieilhe, who continues to impress. Also worth mentioning are Fanny Dupont's sensitive and delicate Amour and the powerful work of the Chorus that also serves to establish that otherworldly character of Orphée et Eurydice. It's no coincidence that the Orpheus myth was frequently chosen as the subject for the very first works of opera almost 400 years ago, exploring as it does the power of music to take us to those kind of unreachable places. That myth found its purest expression in Gluck's opera, and Romeo Castellucci's remarkable production of it is one of the finest expressions of opera as both art and life.
Links: La Monnaie - De Munt, RTBF Musiq3
Jean-Philippe Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie
Glyndebourne 2013
William Christie, Jonathan Kent, Ed Lyon, Christiane Karg, Sarah Connolly, Stéphane Degout, Katherine Watson, François Lis, Julie Pasturaud, Samuel Boden, Aimery Lefèvre, Loic Felix, Ana Quintans, Emmanuelle de Negri, Mathias Vidal, Callum Thorpe, Charlotte Beament, Timothy Dickinson
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
On previous experience of this early work of French Baroque opera at a production in Paris a few years ago, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie can often feel like a rather dry classical text adapted to the lyric stage by an experienced composer already well-renowned for his academic approach to the musical form. With William Christie leading the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment however in this rather more lively production for Glyndebourne, it's evident that the elegant rhythms and melodies of the work can actually be sensitive, expressive, witty, thoughtful and movingly tragic. The scenes in Hippolyte et Aricie moreover also offer opportunities for great spectacle, another vital component of Baroque opera and Glyndebourne is traditionally good at that. The 2013 production does indeed offer considerable spectacle, and if its relevance is not always clear it is at least in tune with the tone and the spirit of the work and the musical interpretation.
Questions about the relevance of Jonathan Kent's staging are sure to arise however in the Prologue. In Hippolyte et Aricie, it's a typically Baroque one that has opposing deities in dispute with one another in a way that is to have a profound affect on ordinary mortals (and some semi-deities) over the course of the subsequent drama. Quite why this takes place inside a giant fridge is hard to fathom and likely to come as a bit of a shock to the bewildered viewer, but there's no question that it fully lives up to the requirement to provide wonderful spectacle. It looks marvellous and is certainly inventive as cauliflower clouds hover over the stage, a lemon slice becomes the sun, and broccoli stalks descend to turn into trees. It's at least appropriate to characterise the icy detachment of the goddess Diana by confining her to the ice-box, while a fiery Cupid, whose influence is to cause such havoc to Diana's followers and worshippers, hatches out of an egg - but what on earth are the gods doing in a fridge in the first place?
Well, in addition to being a classical text, Hippolyte et Aricie is - as this production emphasises in its own very stylised way - very much a domestic drama, a point emphasised when the Three Fates warn Theseus at the end of Act II that he will escape from the Underworld only to find Hell at home. Hell as it happens is depicted cleverly and imaginatively here in Paul Brown's amazing designs as existing at the back of the very same fridge where the gods reside, and if you've ever ventured behind your own kitchen, you'll know how accurate an analogy that is. The Fates' prediction of "domestic Hell" proves to be true for the son of Neptune, who returns to find that his wife Phaedre, believing Theseus dead (usually a requirement for access to the Underworld), has fallen in love with his son Hippolytus. Mythological it might be and inspired by the actions and whims of the immortals, but Cupid has indeed brought disharmony into the formerly very secure, cool and detached "innocent" world of Diana's followers and their blood sacrifices. The fall-out is very real and domestic, Phaedre bemoaning that she is "unable to kill this detestable love" for her stepson.
What's missing of course is harmony between the Gods and, thereby, between ordinary mortals. Neptune appeals to Pluto for the release of Theseus from the Underworld in Act II saying that "the well-being of the universe depends on your common harmony", but the balance has been disturbed by Cupid's intervention, inspiring Hippolytus to love Aricia, in the process incurring Phaedre's jealousy and suppressed feelings for Hippolytus. As an opera, in its structure and in its musical arrangements as well as in its subject, Hippolyte et Aricie also operates very much on this notion of harmony and the balancing of elements, and Rameau - as academic a composer as he might be - makes the case not only structurally and harmonically, but with a sensibility for the beauty of such imperfect human sentiments in the sphere of what makes them aspire to be gods.
William Christie fully explores all the melodic and harmonic richness of what Rameau expresses so brilliantly in the musical arrangements, but also balances this with the requirements of the singing. Spectacle ("le merveilleux") and entertainment ("divertissement") are other factors that count towards this balance and harmony of all the elements, and that's all there too in the gorgeous but dramatically pointless ballet interludes and in the big and smaller details of the production design. The fridge in the Prologue is followed by a more traditional scene in the forests for the followers of Diana that nonetheless reflects the horrors (hanging deer, corpses dragged across the stage, copious blood) of the sacrifices. The Hell behind the fridge meanwhile has dancing flies, infernal devices in the shape of power units, with all sorts of horrible gunk and creatures caught up in the extractor grille.
As well as being visually inventive and thematically attuned to the work, the sets also demonstrate good storytelling technique that is accessible and allows the audience to better engage with a work that what could otherwise appear rather dry and fusty. Some elements however work better than others, so while it's meaningful to have the home of Theseus and Phaedre look like a tastefully-decorated suburban semi-detached (shown in cutaway cross-section in a manner reminiscent of Katie Mitchell's designs for Written on Skin), you miss out on the traditonal spectacle of Neptune's grand entrance by reflecting it through a living-room fish tank. The later acts might not always find imagery as strong the fire and ice of the earlier acts - Act V taking place in a mortuary - but there is some attempt to retain a dramatic narrative in the ballet sequences, and the singing performances too are strong enough to take up the lack of drive in the latter half of the work.
Several of the best performers seen in the Paris production reprise their roles here to even more dazzling effect, while those that have been changed are often just as fine if not better in the roles. That means we not only have the excellent Stéphane Degout as Theseus, but we also have the simply stunning Sarah Connolly again in the role of Phaedre. In addition to being merely a formidable presence, as she was in Paris, Christie's arrangements and Connolly's performance also manages to elicit some sympathy for her character's predicament. As Hippolytus, Ed Lyons is perfect for the intentions of this production, his voice delicate but also strong enough to be capable of matching and standing up to Connolly/Phaedra. If he was weaker, this wouldn't work half as well. Christiane Karg however just didn't work for me as Aricia. It can be somewhat of a bland role, but Karg didn't really have anything to enliven it here. Ana Quintans was a bright Cupid however, François Lis majestic as Pluto, Neptune and Jupiter, and Katherine Watson an icily aloof Diana.
On Blu-ray, this Hippolyte et Aricie looks and sounds every bit as spectacular as the production itself, with a bold colourful video transfer of the performance and crystal clear sound mixes in LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1. Aside from the Cast Gallery, there's only one extra feature on the disc, a fifteen-minute making of that covers all aspects of the production, interviewing Christie and Kent, but takes a particular interest into Paul Brown's unusual costume and set designs. The disc is BD50, region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.
