Charpentier - Louise (Aix-en-Provence, 2025)

Gustave Charpentier - Louise

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Giacomo Sagripanti, Christof Loy, Elsa Dreisig, Adam Smith, Nicolas Courjal, Sophie Koch, Marianne Croux, Annick Massis, Grégoire Mour, Carol Garcia, Karolina Bengtsson, Marie-Thérèse Keller, Julie Pasturaud, Marion Vergez-Pascal, Marion Lebègue, Jennifer Courcier. Céleste Pinel, Frédéric Caton, Filipp Varik, Alexander de Jong

La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 11th July 2025

When you look through any older books written about the history of opera, Gustave Charpentier's Louise is often referred to as one of the standards of the repertoire. Those days are long past and in all my time viewing opera, I don't recall an opportunity to have actually seen it performed. In its day, composed in 1900, it did indeed cause a scandal in France when it was presented at the Opéra-Comique with its bold depiction of female desire and rebellion against family, but that might be considered mild by today's standards and indeed it was out-played in that respect by Richard Strauss's Salome in 1905. Louise fell out of fashion and disappeared with many of the French works of this period by the likes of Massenet and Gounod, becoming the kind of works nostalgically revived usually only - again - at the current Opéra Comique in Paris.

Musically and in terms of its subject, rather than chronologically, sitting somewhere between Manon (1884) and La Bohème (1895) and maybe even an extension beyond both of them, Louise seems an odd choice for revival at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, but Christof Loy is the kind of director well equipped to examine such a work deep beneath the surface. He has an affinity for strong female characters in opera who find themselves condemned for seeking liberation from the oppression of social mores and conventions (Salome, Francesca da Rimini, Das Wunder der Heliane, Euryanthe, Jenůfa). While Louise may not measure up to some of those works in reputation, Loy's production makes you question why it has been neglected for so long, but without a director with that kind of clear vision and modern outlook, you can also understand why.

The re-location of the setting of the opera from the Belle Époque Paris to a mental institution department of a hospital in a more recent period however does not exactly strike you as a terribly original idea - off the top of my head I can recall the 2017 Vienna Parsifal directed by Alvis Hermanis and of course, there is Stefan Herheim's version of La Bohème that takes it to another extreme altogether - but it can be an effective distancing technique to cut through any fake operatic glamour that might distract from the reality of the circumstances. And Louise does need - and merits - a more rigorous approach. In the first act Louise sees herself as a Sleeping Beauty dreaming of her Prince, while the boy next door Julien sees her as his Ophelia. These happy scenes - as chaste as they are, relying on stolen glances - are of course a delusion, since Louise has strict parents who keep a tight rein on the young woman. But Charpentier's music and the libretto hint that there is more than that suggested in this situation.

Louise turns away from this restrictive hold on her life and does indeed run away to Paris, seeking to live an independent life and choose who to love. It's not just a dream for Louise, but many young women during this period living in the provinces. "A hellish life here" ("Notre vie d’enfer”), comments one father of three daughters, "Who can blame them for seeking paradise out there?"). Paris of course is that dream, but life there is difficult for Louise, who finds that it is not any easier there for a young woman seeking to live independently. The way that her dreams and illusions are shattered however suggests that the damage is inflicted not just by the sheltered life enforced by her parents, but that there is an element of abuse hinted at in their intimidating behaviour in the original opera that Loy is keen to draw out and make explicit. And apply in a wider context.

In the waiting room of the psychiatric hospital, the vision of Julien is just a warm memory, an allegorical illusion for the promise of the paradise of Paris, and that indeed is the reality that Charpentier depicts. Accompanied by her mother - wonderfully portrayed by Sophie Koch, a great role for her - she is not just over-protective, but overpowering and intimidating. Loy sees this oppressiveness as having a detrimental psychological impact on the young woman. As does her relationship with her father, not just cossetting her like a child, but fondling and caressing in an inappropriate and troubling way. The father is something of a bohemian, believing that money doesn't bring happiness and he thinks that they should all be content with their lot as a close family. You suspect the mother's objection is that the young man interested in her daughter too closely resembles her husband.

Loy pursues the inevitable consequence of this family background, combining it with the sinister setting of the psychiatric hospital in a way that changes the whole tone of the work, allowing for no real romantic scenes other than those in Louise's head. In this setting, Louise's fate becomes tied to that of Mimi in Henry Murger's original novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème, where the young woman is actually institutionalised - something skipped over in Puccini's opera adaptation. Herheim managed to introduce this stark reality in his adaptation of that opera and Loy likewise chops up the timeline to highlight the injustice and inequality of women and the fate that many would have been subjected to. It lets you know right from the start that there is going to be no happy ending here.

The Paris street scenes then all take on a hallucinatory quality, the patients, doctors and hospital employees taking the roles of the disillusioned lives on the street. The short Act II (presumably shortened by Loy as cuts have been employed for this production) offers some light relief, but it's also brief and carries this darker undercurrent. In the original Louise is in Paris, her colleagues in a stitching factory dreaming of love and suspecting that she has a lover. They sing of the romance of "the voice of Paris". In Loy's version, they are all hospital cleaners (quite a lot for a fairly rundown looking institution) and Louise imagines them making her wedding dress while she is serenaded by a street singer, Julien below the window. The chorus soon turns to threatening as they gang up on her and make fun of her situation.

Louise's continued idealisation of love and freedom in Paris, escaping from her abusive home life, is in reality short-lived as her father’s illness allows her parents to appeal for her return and, true to form, even blame her running away as the reason for his illness. Her return to the place of unhappiness takes on an almost unbearable intensity in Loy’s suggestion of the extent and nature of the abuse, but again it does seem to be a justifiable response to what appears to be hinted at in the original work. Pelléas et Mélisande comes to mind, the father - an absolutely brilliant performance by Nicolas Courjal - sounding Golaud-like with his imprecations to his "p’tite enfant". Louise premiered in 1900, two years before Pelléas et Mélisande, but it seems to have tapped into the same undercurrents, finding another elliptical way of expressing them. The final act and fate of the young woman is almost devastating in the intensity of the emotions and the naturalistic treatment employed here.

Although Loy has found a serious line to follow through the work, you do get the impression that otherwise there might not be a great deal to the opera and that any serious intent would get lost in the conventionality of the operatic arrangements. Nonetheless, musically it's rich and beautifully scored, with a distinct French character; Ravel comes to mind, Massenet of course and, as mentioned, even a little Debussy (but I have to say almost everything that has a shimmery quality and a French spoken rhythm reminds me of Pelléas et Mélisande). For the sake of a modern revival and tighter focus, conductor Giacomo Sagripanti seems to accept that some cuts are necessary, stating that its length is part of the weakness of the opera which tries to take in too much. Do we lose out on the colour of the work? I don't think so. Even with cuts, there is an extravagance still there in the sentiments, the choral pieces and the wild romanticism; the production just puts a different shade on it, one that is suggested to a large extent by the nature of the subject, the female perspective of romantic illusion being crushed by reality.

A lot rides on Elsa Dreisig as Louise and of course she is outstanding, both in her singing and acting. Louise even seems somewhat oppressed vocally in first two acts, but literally finds her voice in Act III, and in that original controversial expression of female sexual pleasure. Loy uses that same sense of oppression and liberation to a slightly different purpose of course, presenting an interesting modern insight into the character, although it's clear that the darker intent is there to a large extent in the actual composition. Done this way, as with Herheim, does force you to look more critically beneath the surface of the glittery first half of the work and see that it is not all lovely and romantic being a young woman running away from abusive parents and finding it difficult to live a life as an independent woman on the streets of Paris. "Cité de joie! cité d'amour!… Protège tes enfants!" ("City of joy, city of love... Protect your children").

The character of Julien might suffer from such a reworking, becoming an ideal, an illusory dream of love and romance, but Adam Smith's singing is superb and makes a great impression. To Louise's claim that "It's Paradise" and "It's a fairy dream”, his character repeatedly tells her that "No, it's life", trying to keep the young woman grounded in the real world that would be normal for anyone except someone who has not been used to such love and acceptance. With those terrific performances from Sophie Koch and Nicolas Courjal distorting that picture as her oppressive parents, Christof Loy succeeds in bringing into the present Charpentier's attempt to introduce naturalism into opera as a "roman musical", a musical novel. It's not a profound work; it has limited drama; but it has a firm basis in reality and in the psychology that still can hold true for many young women today.

External links: ARTE Concert, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Rameau - Samson (Aix-en-Provence, 2024)

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Samson

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2024

Raphaël Pichon, Claus Guth, Jarrett Ott, Jacquelyn Stucker, Lea Desandre, Nahuel di Pierro, Laurence Kilsby, Julie Roset, Antonin Rondepierre, René Ramos Premier, Andréa Ferréol, Gabriel Coullaud-Rosseel, Pascal Lifschutz

ARTE Concert - 12th July 2024

There's an art to reviving a lost work, even more so recreating an opera where one of the original elements of the libretto or the music are lost, missing or perhaps never even completed in the first place. Which of those categories Jean-Philippe Rameau's Samson, developed as a world premiere for the Aix-en-Provence 2024 festival by Claus Guth and Raphaël Pinchon, falls into isn't quite clear from the documentation provided on their web site or from the interviews with the stage and music directors, but historical documentation suggests that it would have been no small task to research, reconstruct and stage an opera that was written almost 300 years ago and never fully performed.

What we do know is that, composed in 1734 after Hippolyte et Aricie, the libretto for Samson by Voltaire - who was not greatly loved by the French authorities - fell victim to the censor and despite several attempts to have it staged, the complete work remained unperformed. Some of Rameau's music ended up elsewhere, some reportedly reused for Les Indes galantes, but how those pieces were meant to appear in their original form in Samson, is anyone's guess. Or, in this case, the experience and research of Raphaël Pinchon, who would have had the unenviable but fascinating task of reconstructing the opera as a kind of pasticcio, setting the libretto which still exists to other sources of music and opera written by Rameau.

Figuring out which music has been taken from which opera and how it has been repurposed to work in the reconstruction of Samson would be interesting to find out, but to be honest I'm not sure it really matters. That's of academic interest only and even then, who can say that a reconstruction like this is authentic or not when there is no original to compare it to. Like Wolfgang Mitterer's recomposition of Heinrich Schütz's Dafne, or indeed like Pinchon's creation of a Bach opera from various sources for Trauernacht at Aix in 2014 and the patchwork Purcell creation of Miranda in 2017, what really counts is whether the newly (re)created opera works in a dramatic stage setting. And surely any attempt to bring more Rameau to the opera stage can only be seen as a good thing.

That said, Rameau is not easy opera. An 18th century musical academic and theorist of harmonic structures, his works are long, can be rather dry and challenging to a modern audience. Even Voltaire, his librettist here for Samson, described Rameau as a "pedant", his approach "meticulous and tedious". The director for this Aix production of Samson, Claus Guth, clearly aware of this, aims to find a mid-way position where the original dramatic points from the original libretto are adhered to, honouring as much as possible Voltaire's directions for reducing recitative and placing emphasis on the choruses, while at the same time striving to bring it up to date and make it fitting for a modern audience to appreciate the deeper context and meaning of the biblical story.

For the source material then the creators don't have to delve too far for authenticity, taking the story of Samson from the Book of Judges. Biblical passages are highlighted and projected above the stage, introducing chapters or eliding them (we don't see the young Samson tearing a lion apart with his bare hands, nor him attaching flaming torches to the tails of 300 of foxes to burn down the lands of the Philistines). There is an effort to retain certain bold biblical imagery in the angel appearing to Samson’s mother, the wife of Manoah, in an Annunciation scene, telling her that she will bear a son who will be blessed with God's strength to free the Israelites from their captors. As long as his hair is not cut. The other key scenes, Samson's seduction by Delilah and his destruction of temple of Dogon, are also dramatically staged, as you would expect.

In order to dispense with long passages of recitative however certain scenes are acted out without words, stage choreographed in step with Rameau's music. Using just mime acting with grand gestures, this has the consequence of appearing a little too "formal", with little in the way of engaging realism. Again that's an artistic choice, one suggested undoubted by the manner in which the story is told in grand gestures in black and white, lacking nuance and playing to the structural formality of the baroque musical arrangements from sections which were perhaps evidently never attuned to dramatic expression or presentation. So we have choreographed movements of baton wielding Philistines, led by a sneering cruel ruler dressed in all black bearing down on the enslaved and put upon Israelites who are dressed in purest white, chasing them from the land. As well as staged movements and bold gestures, the direction also employs slow motion sequences and strobing lights, with extra thudding electronic sound effects bring a cinematic edge to Samson's demonstrations of strength and acts of violence. It's certainly effective for all the stylisation. 

That said, elsewhere the fitting of the music to the drama is good, Rameau's music, even the dance music proving to be quite adaptable to scenes when they are permitted to engage with the stage action. The Paris Opera were perhaps the first to highlight this quality, bringing Krumping to Rameau to stunning effect and here the melodies even seen to have an Eastern flavour - the music also presumably being taken from Les Indes galantes - at the dance of Samson's wedding to Timnah. The singing with the familiar cadences of tragédie en musique and tragédie lyrique are also well suited to depth of expression, and this comes into play much more effectively in the famous actions of the concluding scenes with Delilah and in the temple.

Of course, there is no way that any new production of a newly reconstructed opera, one which was never performed as is may have been intended, is going to be staged as a story in biblical times and period costume. The Aix-en-Provence production takes place in a ruined building not unlike many we can see today in Gaza, with the roof blown in and fallen beams and rubble lying around. Workmen in hard hats wander on in one or two points, surveying the reconstruction. Within this the biblical story of Act I and II is the most stylised, while Act III's encounter with Delilah is a little more dark, gritty and graphically violent. both in the seduction by Delilah and in the bloody result of her betrayal. Delilah is no traditional dark seductress here - well, up to a point. She is used by the king and discarded when he gets the power over Samson and this has great impact, not least because of the remarkable performance of Jacquelyn Stucker in the aria 'Tristes apprêtes, pâles flambeaux' where she contemplates and carries out suicide over what has occurred while holding the bloody blanket of her betrayal.

One element introduced by Guth that I could have done without is the old fallback of the modern day spoken word narrator to link past and present. An old lady, the mother of Samson now transported to the present day, reflects on the events that she witnessed, the joys and the regrets, walking amongst the ghosts of the past. This was done recently, similarly to no real effective purpose or benefit, in the Northern Ireland Opera production of Eugene Onegin. If it's an attempt to draw comparison to present day events in the Middle East, it's a brave or foolhardy decision depending on one's reading of the wiping out of a race of people and an act of mass murder in an opera that contains the lines "Vengez le peuple d’Israël… écrasez ce peuple furieux”. Drawing comparisons with the present day is perhaps unavoidable even when watching a work composed 300 years ago, but the manner in which it is imposed here feels unnecessary and adds nothing for me.

The inclusion of the old lady to link the past and present is only really used to any extent in the first two acts, the role lessening as the drama progresses. Despite reservations about that and about some of the stylisations used, the result of this project to revive Samson must still be seen as a great success. The employment of Rameau's arias feels authentic, matching at least the mood and character of the scenes if not always really serving the function of moving the drama forward. The choruses often prove to have more dramatic drive, as Voltaire perhaps intended. They are marvellous and carry the first half of the opera, while the Samson and Delilah part of the story has more than sufficient power to carry drama and tragedy of Act III and IV.

The singing performances of course contribute to that. Jarrett Ott was suitably robust, lyrical and bright as Samson, but perhaps because of the varied source material it's a role that covers a wide tessitura and was clearly tricky at the lower end. As mentioned earlier, Jacquelyn Stucker's Dalila was superb, as was a beautifully lyrical Lea Desandre as Tinmah. I suspect this biblical character many have been an addition to the new version of the opera, as it is documented that there were no female voices in first two acts. Either way, her role brings welcome colour and drama that is needed in these earlier scenes.

External links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Aix Digital Stage

Gluck - Iphigénie en Aulide/Iphigénie en Tauride (Aix-en-Provence, 2024)

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2024

Emmanuelle Haïm, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Corinne Winters, Russell Braun, Véronique Gens, Alasdair Kent, Florian Sempey, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Alexandre Duhamel, Nicolas Cavallier, Soula Parassidis, Lukáš Zeman, Tomasz Kumięga, Timothé Rieu, Daphné Guivarch

ARTE Concert - 11th July 2024

The important and influential reforms that Christoph Willibald Gluck brought to opera seria are still impressive and remain an evident feature in his versions of two connected Greek dramas for the French stage, Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). If you are used to viewing opera seria - and there have been many opportunities to revisit some of these great works in an authentic form over recent years - Gluck’s concise, minimal compositional form and the dramatic drive of through-composition feels thoroughly modern compared to the old traditional recitative and da capo aria form. And since the Greek dramas still have meaning that tells us about something about human experience in the modern world, so too do they benefit from this being highlighted in a modern production. All the more so when the two works are staged side by side as a single unit by Dmitri Tcherniakov for the 2024 Aix-en-Provence Festival 

Even the manner in which each of the works are presented on the stage allows for a continuous flow of drama that allows those themes to be better connected and explored. The overture for Iphigénie en Aulide shows Agamemnon's nightmare of carrying through his intention to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, demanded by the gods to ensure the safe passage of the Greek forces to Troy. Despite his pleas to Calchas, the Gods and even trying to ensure that Iphigenia doesn't arrive in Aulis, his efforts are in vain. The nightmare has a force of its own that will see it carried though by the time we get to the conclusion. The danger of what lies ahead remains as a driving force all the way through the opera, even if it doesn't come to pass that way in the opera, except for this one where it kind of does...

You can feel it even when, led to believe that Achilles who Iphigenia is to be married to has been unfaithful, Clytemnestra immediately pleads with her daughter to leave, but Iphigenia wants to find out the truth. There is an urgency here in the drama, in the music, which you can imagine intensifies as the drama progresses. There is no time for self-indulgent arias that stop the flow so that the tenor, soprano or mezzo-soprano can reflect on their misfortune. The dilemma can be felt, discussions and exchanges must be made (and perhaps there is still some aspects remaining for the seria form) but every scene feels like it is moving the drama forward, that events are happening quickly and there is an immediate need to act. The production bears that out while all the time maintaining an unreal air of regal sang froid, propriety and elegance, again all of which can be heard in the music. And in the voice, with Corrine Winters impressive in the title role.

Gluck's sense of pure musical drama is perhaps still not fully formed in Iphigénie en Aulide, and it is considered the lesser of the two works performed here. It's certainly less frequently staged than Iphigénie en Tauride. I personally don't buy into the idea of lesser Gluck. Lesser is just never a word I would use to describe any Gluck opera. Even his pre-reform works (all too rarely revived, alas) are superb and have their own qualities. It's not even a question of refinement, just that the later works benefit from a greater unity of form and content. It's hard however to see any weakness in Iphigénie en Aulide, particularly when it is well directed, as it is here. The music is beautiful and the sentiments are sincerely expressed without over-emphasis. It's a serious matter, a horrific one, a father about to sacrifice his daughter. You would actually expect there to be more outrage at the situation, but there is that element of knowing their duty, following the will of the gods and Iphigenia's love for her father, so instead it is profound grief that is evident here and expressed beautifully in the music and the singing.

To possibly overstate the relationship between the music and the direction, you could see the same intentions reflected in Elena Zaytseva set showing the house of Agamemnon as a house with transparent walls. It's elegant and stately, but there is nothing that can be kept hidden behind its doors. Tcherniakov takes that consistent worldview approach in most of his productions now, and it's evident here in the gloomy sepia tones, in the corruption of the royal family. The lengths to which they are prepared to go to cannot be overstated, so Tcherniakov puts it up there. The dream played out in the overture is a terrible presentiment and with the uniformity of the stage setting you can feel that tension reach a peak as Iphigenia dresses for wedding and brings herself closer to the terrible fate that awaits her after the celebrations. You see the nightmare unfold and repeat before your eyes.

We are dealing with mythology here so there is or should be no need to align this with any modern reality, although Krzysztof Warlikowski certainly managed to use contemporary themes successfully in his production of Gluck's Alceste. To say it's just mythology however doesn't take away from the human experience that Gluck presents in his version of Racine's tragedy, and it is enough for Tcherniakov to get that across. As well as highlighting the horror faced by Iphigenia, he doesn't neglect the fact that it is also a difficult duty for Agamemnon as a father, taking into account the contradiction between the public and private aspects of a king who needs to appear firm, commanding, brooking no doubt, no argument. Gluck's score bears all the complexity of these competing demands, Russell Braun's Agamemnon bringing this out in a fury out of remorse.

Considering the dramatic drive, there is nonetheless a variety of sentiments expressed. The wonderful dance music for the celebrations for Achilles and Iphigenia's marriage are retained and fit in well, and Achilles has a considerable part to play in the variations of tone and character as a figure caught in the middle of this absurd affair. Achilles is sung brilliantly by Alasdair Kent in the high tenor range, abruptly interrupting the course of events (and even the course of the music), and Véronique Gens is superb as Clytemnestra, inhabiting the role, responding with the dramatic expression of an expectantly grieving mother. That said, the sentiments expressed are limited by the singular drive of the situation towards a horrific notion of sacrifice, which might account for why the work is not more often revived.

As such it's a good idea then to expand the production to pair Iphigénie en Aulide with Iphigénie en Tauride, making this Aix-en-Provence production more of a fuller experience. It's been done before, relatively successfully at the Dutch National Opera. Tcherniakov however has a habit of overturning expectations and killing off figures who don't usually expire at the end of the opera and keeps alive those who traditionally die at the conclusion. At least here you would expect him to keep he needs to keep Iphigenia alive for "Part 2", but, well, that wouldn't be like Tcherniakov to make things easy now, would it? The impact of the family joining in a celebratory dance of death at the conclusion is certainly effective in its own way.

Iphigénie en Tauride is indeed then like a mirror image of Iphigénie en Aulide, Part 2: The Nightmare Continues. And indeed it opens with another nightmare, that of Clytemnestra murdering her husband Agamemnon. It takes place in the same outline of the house, only this time only a framework remains, sometimes neon lit (like Tcherniakov's Lulu), which when dulled down takes the appearance of a cage, a prison. Again, it's the overall tone that is important to the director, to establish the character of the work and make it effective rather than trying to find a way to make the archaic mythology work as a drama. Tcherniakov appropriately then plays Iphigénie en Tauride like it was Strauss’s Elektra, the tone one of the weight of crimes bringing increasing derangement and madness. Which is to be expected also on an island that executes any visitors, including a couple of shipwrecked Greek sailors who arrive there. Orestes too is damaged, deranged, tormented and full of aggression from his experiences.

Another characteristic found in Dmitri Tcherniakov productions is his intention to humanise works, bringing elevated mythological themes down to a level where everyone can relate to what is going on. There are no mystical priestesses in robes here, no high priest, as for example with the Met production. The inhabitants of Tauris look like refugees, like Tcherniakov's Knights of the Holy Grail in his Parsifal, wrapped up in heavy clothing to protect against the elements. The framework of a set becomes more a place of the mind here, an echo or a shadow of Aulis, where Orestes murders his mother in a ghostly recurrent nightmare. With its use of lighting illuminating scenes from the waking nightmare, it strikes a contrast that explores the work from the human experience as well as the deeper level of the psychological impact. As such, it reflects of course Gluck's musical exploration of the tone, mood and intent of the work.

Considering how he left things at the conclusion of Aulide, you can be sure that the director will - and consequently needs to - reinvent what takes place at the conclusion of this work, but it also has an impact elsewhere. Tcherniakov very much underplays the traditional key scene of the revelation of brother and sister. There is a gap of shocked silence, but Iphigenia seems to already know it's Orestes and is just waiting on her brother to finally acknowledge the reality of the tragic family misfortune. And again, it would be wrong to think that it's just Orestes who has suffered. As in Aulide, the goddess Diana (Soula Parassidis) appears at the conclusion as a double of Iphigenia. Quite what you are to make of that and how much psychoanalytical examination you want to subject the work to is up to you, but it's consistent in its reference back to what takes place in Aulis. What is perhaps more worthy of consideration is how this applies to the state of the world today, to current wars where victims become executioners. The horror of that doesn't need to be spelled out.

Whether you like Tcherniakov's work on the operas or not, the intentions are sincere and thought-provoking. What is not questionable however is the quality of these works themselves and the impact they have in this production by the joining the two operas together. The singing in Iphigénie en Tauride relies as much in the impact of the choral work, which was excellent throughout, as it does on Orestes and Iphigenia. Both Florian Sempey and Corrine Winters were fine, but it was certainly more of a challenge for Winters, singing two operas back-to-back and the latter in a lower tessitura than she would normally sing. It felt a little less dynamic as a result, but the direction also called for a muted performance here. The real winner here was Gluck, the music side-by-side, back-to-back and end-to-end doubly glorious under the baton of conductor Emmanuelle Haïm.

External links: ARTE Concert, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Aix Festival Digital Stage

Saariaho - Innocence (Aix, 2021)

Kaija Saariaho - Innocence

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2021

Susanna Mälkki, Simon Stone, Magdalena Kožená, Sandrine Piau, Tuomas Pursio, Lilian Farahani, Markus Nykänen, Jukka Rasilainen, Lucy Shelton, Vilma Jää, Beate Mordal, Julie Hega, Simon Kluth,Camilo Delgado Díaz, Marina Dumont

ARTE Concert - 10th July 2021

The loss of Kaija Saariaho in June 2023 came as a shock to those who recognised her as one of the most brilliant of contemporary composers. I saw her twice in person, once at the premiere of her opera Only the Sound Remains in Amsterdam in 2016, where she was present in the foyer posing for press photos. It was a surprise however to walk into a coffee shop in Dundalk in Ireland in June 2019 and see her sitting there with her husband Jean-Baptiste Barrière. Even though I knew she was there as a guest for a performance of her works at the Louth Contemporary Music Society's annual two-day summer festival, and Dundalk has seen many famous modern composers appear in town, it still felt strange to see the composer of such sublime music in such an everyday place. I think I made a brief nod and smile of acknowledgement, unwilling to disturb her. The performance of Terra Memoria that evening by the Meta4 string quartet was extraordinary and thrilling.

I greatly admired her music, even though like most contemporary music, you had to search it out and rarely had the opportunity to have it brought to you. For various reasons I never found the time to watch the streaming of Innocence at the Aix-en-Provence festival in 2021 even though I had read good reports about it. Sadly, now that there won't be another, this final work will remain her last contribution to the world of lyric drama and, belatedly taking the opportunity to view it now, the work is even more poignant now, deeply moving and surely a masterpiece, a fine testament to the wondrous complexity of her musical range. The beauty and power of her music is fully evident here, the restless striving to push her music into new ground through the use of unconventional instruments like the kantele and exploring the range of the voice as an instrument.

Innocence is in almost complete contrast to her previous opera Only the Sound Remains. It exudes menace and sorrow from the outset even as the drama opens on the day of a wedding that is a supposedly happy occasion for the bride, the groom and his family. But not everyone is happy, the celebrations tainted, almost overwhelmed by a greater emotion; the shock and horror of the caterer Tereza who has been asked to provide service at the last moment. To her horror, she has just come to the realisation that the eldest son of the family she is working for killed her daughter Markéta along with a number of other children in a gun rampage through a school ten years previously. As she relives the experience, the family are forced to confront the reality that this event cannot be erased or forgotten about.

Going into the opera without knowing what is to take place, there is nonetheless an evident rawness and complexity in the situation, one that is trying to bring together two contrasting events that do not sit well together. The music tries to encapsulate these conflicting sentiments, as well as find a way to suggest that something has taken place that is almost too deeply disturbing and horrific to depict or even speak out loud. It takes a while before the libretto make that realisation explicit, the present and past playing out at the same time, and when it comes it still feels painful, even if it remains too horrific to show with any kind of dramatic realism. And yet, through the music and the direction, it manages to truly get to the heart of the mixed emotions surrounding it in place and time.

Simon Stone is a good director to bring out the complexity of undercurrents and contrasting viewpoints (see his extraordinary Tristan und Isolde, also performed at Aix in 2021) and he finds a creative way of allowing it to work coherently, but it's Saariaho's music, conducted at the premiere by Susanna Mälkki, that really brings it together. The score gets to the heart of the situation and sentiments without resorting to cinematic techniques or the conventional dramatic orchestration that you might expect, but rather with a delicacy and sensitivity of touch, the music plunging deeply into the interior world rather than the external drama.

That's quite a challenge. For a start there is a large cast of individual figures in Sofi Oksanen's original libretto, each of the children international students, speaking in a mix of languages, who each tell their own story while simultaneously living and reliving their experience. Some are now dead, others express fear blended with survivor guilt, constantly questioning how they reacted at the time, how they could possibly have helped. This plays out at the same time and alongside the parents of the killer feeling concern about bringing an innocent new bride into this family, mixed with guilt about their son's actions, questioning whether they are in some way to blame, whether they failed to notice the warning signs, whether they were complicit to one extent or another in what has happened.

Then there is the challenge of exploring the act of the school shooting itself, trying to present a rounded account of the complex motivations that may have lain behind it; was it inspired by racism? was it a terrorist act? and the impossibility of even being able to fully explaining it. The stage shows commemorations taking place simultaneously with the bloodbath, the occasion contaminated by a sense of anger at the tragedy being used and exploited for political gain, with politicians making fake promises of changes to gun laws. The pain of some has value, the pain endured by others none at all, as one of the victims puts it, words and good intentions replacing any real action; nothing will be done, until the next shooting.

The singing has its own complexity, in a multiplicity of languages, English, Finnish, French, Spanish and German are spoken, and even the singing voices have an uncommon range, from background choral voices used as an instrument, to spoken recitative and folk-inspired arrangements on the part of Markéta, the dead daughter of the catering server at the wedding party. The work also captures Saariaho's fascination for time, how it can be subjective, seeming to stretch out when one is bored and in other moments it can feel like time seems to stop. This feeds into how she composes the music for each overlaid and overlayered scene. Time has stopped for some, it is repeating for others, past and present coexist. The music ambitiously attempts to bring this all together, bringing together the experiences of many into the same period of time.

The opera is superbly directed by Simon Stone for the Aix festival. It's not just the concept of the rotating box of rooms and split levels that keep the continuity flowing and scenes overlapping, but much like how the same idea was applied to his Wozzeck, the clarity with which the complexity of the story is allowed to unfold is impressive. The scene of the shooting is horrific enough without it requiring blazing guns, the testimonies from blood-splattered victims and survivors tells the story in its own horrific fashion, but the scene where Tereza confronts the family and the new bride with the deception they have been carrying out, pouring out all the pain she has had to live with is truly harrowing. Nothing however is as clear cut as we would like it to be when it comes to identifying who is a victim. The performances here from Sandrine Piau and Magdalena Kožená is this scene are extraordinary, but then they are both remarkable throughout. The filming for screen is also superb, the close-ups in this scene showing the intensity of the dramatic performances.

The singing is outstanding, Saariaho writing beautifully for the voice with singers clearly chosen as best for the roles and all of them outstanding. Markus Nykänen as Tuomas, the Finnish groom, and Lilian Farahani, his Romanian bride Stela, both give notable performances of great emotion and intensity at the situation they find themselves in. Saariaho is not afraid to use spoken recitation when it is required for its own effect, for the direct expression of the students, rising into singing under the strain of the experience. Choral arrangements of chants and humming vocalisations underline the ambiguity of the unspoken and the inexplicable. The high pitch yelps of Vilma Jää's Finnish folk singing for the dead Markéta takes getting used to but have their part to play also and work effectively for the dramatic purposes of the opera. Combined, it makes Innocence an almost overwhelming experience, for all it takes in, for all it expresses, for it being a work of unparalleled ambition and genius. 

External links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Benjamin - Picture A Day Like This (Aix-en-Provence, 2023)

George Benjamin - Picture A Day Like This

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, 2023

George Benjamin, Daniel Jeanneteau, Marie-Christine Soma, Marianne Crebassa, Anna Prohaska, Beate Mordal, Cameron Shahbazi, John Brancy, Lisa Grandmottet, Eulalie Rambaud, Matthieu Baquey

ARTE Concert - 14 July 2023

I have to say that my first impression of the new opera from George Benjamin and Martin Crimp premiered at the 2023 Aix-en-Provence Festival was that it appeared to be a slight work; a simple story, a fable, a fairy tale with a fairly obvious moral and meaning. Such thoughts were also there to an extent while viewing the previous two operas, Written on Skin and Lessons in Love and Violence, at least in as far as they seemed overly studied and mannered, removed from the everyday. Both those operas however nonetheless left a great impression and have rewarded further listening for detail and substance, and I have little doubt that Picture A Day Like This will be the same.

Running to around 65 minutes Picture A Day Like This is certainly shorter and perhaps even slighter than the previous two operas by Benjamin and Crimp, but it is by no means a lesser work, since it deals with deep emotional reaction to difficult human experiences and situations. It doesn't employ a full orchestra, nor does it appear to take in the wide range of emotions and dramatic action as the previous two works. Rather it's a chamber opera with a smaller cast and orchestra, although it does have at least as few principal roles as Written on Skin. Like that work, it's equally as intense and bristling with underlying menace and unease, only here it does so in an appropriately more concentrated form. Such is the impact that it's only when you come out of it that you realise how successfully the composer and librettist have gripped you in their world.

The plot is related in the simplistic manner of a fairy-tale, but also similarly touching on deep human emotions and universal experiences the way a fairy-tale can do. And, in the opera form, that means that it has the benefit of music to delve even further, and we know that Benjamin's music is highly capable of doing that. The story relates the loss of a child by the Woman (the creators like to operate on the idea of general human rather than specific), who is so distraught she searches for a means to bring him back to life. She is told that if by the end of the day she can find a single person who is happy with their life and cut a button from their sleeve, her child will be returned to her, and she is given a list of a number of people who all seem to be living a life of perfect bliss. Evidently, their lives are not as filled with contentment as they appear to be.

The implication or moral is clearly evident. Everyone carries their own burdens, and if they appear to be happy, it's only because they have had to learn live with their fears and trauma - some more successfully than others. Ultimately, many of those strategies have failed and there is no real pleasure to be found in material possessions, in fame or success, even love has its limitations. None of these situations is comparable to living with the death of your young child, nor is it that the intention when it comes to the Woman's final encounter with Zabelle and the beautiful garden she has created to suggest that it's in any way similar to a composer's struggle with their art, but the latter suggests that is important is finding a way of living with your unhappiness, making it a part of you, not denying it.

It's a simple moral or message then, one that shouldn't need dressed up in a fairy-tale situation with intense music, but here is no question that bereavement - particularly of a child - is a challenging and multi-faceted subject to explore. The coming to any realisation is a journey that the Woman has to make and be experienced, and - to a much lesser extent obviously - the listener has to make that same journey over the course of the opera. And to be honest, that would be hard to endure over anything longer than the running time of just over an hour. Nonetheless, George Benjamin uses every minute of that to find the right note, taking care not to overload it, using space and silence as important elements to give room for the music, the situation and the content to breathe and express itself to the fullest extent. There are few if any dramatic flourishes, and nothing seems superfluous. At times the score feels like 'mood music' or soundtrack backing in the way that it rarely draws attention to itself, but it nonetheless weaves a complex way through the emotional and dramatic content.

The impression that this is slight and lacking in dramatic action is probably also due to the mostly dark, minimalist stage direction, but this is also deceptive. Carefully directed by Daniel Jeanneteau and Marie-Christine Soma, as well has handling the set design, dramaturgy and lighting design, it's actually appropriate and essential that the attention isn't drawn away from the emotional impact of the primary expression of the music and the singers. As such it's highly effective, using glass and mirrors so that figures seem to appear from nowhere and vanish like in a dream. When it comes then to stressing the vital importance of the impact of Zabelle's garden then, the effects are extraordinary and almost magical. All of it contributes to enveloping you in this otherworldly place, the otherworldly place where grief takes you.

Since all the singers were hand-picked by the composer, who worked with them to play to their strengths, it's no wonder that the singing is so effective in the part it plays in this. The performances are as carefully calibrated as the music, with Marianne Crebassa creating the vital central role of the Woman. Crebassa's ability is well known on these pages, but here in such a role where a huge journey has to be undertaken over the running time of little more than an hour, it goes beyond technical ability and into timing, delivery, expression, feeling and being. Similarly, you might regret that Anna Prohaska doesn't have a larger and more showy role, but again it's a case of providing only what is essential to the work. The other singing roles of the happy but not happy people the Woman encounters - Beate Mordal, Cameron Shahbazi and John Brancy - are likewise impressive in their ability to tap into the essence of the situation and what lies behind in the music.

Benjamin, as is customary for this composer, conducts the score himself, leading the Mahler Chamber Orchestra through the dark intricacies of the score. It's a short work with few characters, few situations and minimal orchestration, but when Marianne Crebassa gazes out as the dying notes remain suspended in the air and the listener emerges out of this dream-like state, any suggestion or impression that this is a minor work is immediately erased. I've no doubt that not only does it reach as deep as Benjamin and Crimp's previous collaborations. but as well as standing on its own terms, Picture A Day Like This actually contributes another level to their body of work as a whole.

External links: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, ARTE Concert

Mozart - Idomeneo (Aix-en-Provence, 2022)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Idomeneo, Re di Creta

Festival Aix-en-Provence, 2022

Raphaël Pichon, Satoshi Miyagi, Michael Spyres, Sabine Devieilhe, Anna Bonitatibus, Nicole Chevalier, Linard Vrielink, Krešimir Špicer, Alexandros Stavrakakis

ARTE Concert - July 2022

There's no question that Mozart's operas are beautifully expressive of the whole range of human feelings and experience. Even at the age of 24 in his earliest masterpiece Idomeneo, Re di Creta he defies the often dry conventions and expectations of the opera seria format to create a work that imbues ancient Greek mythology with a rare humanity and authenticity. A stage director can choose to work to bring those human elements out, to interpret or reinterpret them, or they can quite reasonably rely on the music to speak for itself. That appears to be the intention of the director Satoshi Miyagi at this production for Aix-en-Provence 2022, but whether it supports Mozart's music or works against it is less certain.

There is certainly nothing wrong with updating the setting of Idomeneo or using it to express the original ideas and themes in a different context. I must admit I had my doubts about it being a neat fit for the director's proposed intention of using the Japanese wartime emperor Hirohito as a substitute for Idomeneus the King of Crete, or whether this would be in any other way meaningful or revelatory, but it has to be said that this notion never really asserts influence over the performance of the work here. What is far more significant to how the opera plays out in this production is decision to present it in a Noh drama fashion, with minimal but highly stylised sets and movements.

It certainly looks impressive, achieving the same kind of glacial quality that Robert Wilson employs in his opera and stage productions, and they are - usually but not always - none the worse off for it. Consequently, the principal performers here, dressed in stylised Japanese costumes, remain expressionless with minimal movement, often raised on their own platforms at a distance from one another. The chorus meanwhile, wearing more familiar military uniforms, merge with the sets, becoming part of them, part of the while fabric of the opera.

As far as that goes it's fine, the sets remain fluid and slowly moving and changing, ensuring that everything doesn't remain too static. If Idomeneo were a typical opera seria, it might not be enough to enliven the work and make the drama come to life, but despite the qualities of the music and the fact that it does indeed speak for itself, it seemed to me that it didn't do Mozart any favours. Not only does the intention to relate this to Hirohito and the Japanese people fail to make any impression - the opera has been staged as a modern post-war conflict much more successfully elsewhere in numerous updated productions - but it even seems to almost work against and neutralise the music, and that is not a good thing.

Fortunately it doesn't quite do that thanks to conductor Raphaël Pichon. If there are any doubts that remain about the quality of this early Mozart opera and how it stacks up against his mature works, this was certainly dispelled by the musical direction. Sure, the composition of Idomeneo can't compare to the great Mozart operas with Da Ponte, but much of what is great about those later works can already be heard developing here in a truly exciting way. It's a strong enough work on its own terms - more than strong and certainly if compared to what preceded it in opera seria, it's hugely progressive, devoid of the mannerisms and much more relatable, the characters really seeming to engage with one another and not just wrapped in their own worlds. Which, when you get right down to it, might just be what Mozart's operas are all about and what makes them great.

Unfortunately the production's stylised Noh influenced staging pushes the opera back onto those mannerisms, removing emotional connections, putting physical distance between the characters. I personally found Satoshi Miyagi's direction cold and distracting, at odds with Mozart's warm sympathetic and deeply expressive music. Worse, it simply offered no way in to relate to the plot and the drama to find a reason to care about each of the characters, much less offer an interpretation as to their motivations and behaviours as others have done, particularly into the complex nature and behaviours of Elettra and the king himself. There is no denying however that the set designs and the lighting were terrific and this was beautiful to look at, and it did suit the elegant formality of Mozart's music, if not bring out anything deeper from it.

Up until the conclusion, that is. A blood red backdrop is projected against the characters, showing them set against the horror and devastation that their decisions have caused. While mainly abstract in its human shapes and shadows cast against the horror of war, the suffering, the trauma, the eventual release and the recognition of the folly of its leaders acting like gods, it did hit home effectively, particularly with Mozart's music and with the soaring singing of the principals and chorus. It's here that Hirohito is most effectively evoked through the voice of the god Neptune, his broadcast voice coming from a record player that appears on its own raised platform. The slow and detached build-up might have been testing, but by the time the conclusion was reached, you were left in no doubt that this production did justice to Mozart, if perhaps not exactly find anything new in it.

Despite the impositions placed on the singers to remain mainly impassive and inexpressive, there was also much to enjoy in the singing. These are already challenging roles - Mozart composing this in 1781 for the best singers in Munich at the time - and the casting of the right kind of Mozartian voices is ideal for this production at Aix-en-Provence's Théâtre de l’Archevêché. If the director had little in the way of showing any nuance in the character of Idomeneo, who can be played sympathetically or as a misguided relic of the past who gets his just desserts, Michael Spyres's soft timbre brought warmth and humanity to the role. Soprano Sabine Devieilhe's singing brought more feeling and drama to the role of Ilia than the minimal direction allowed. Anna Bonitatibus as Idamante and Nicole Chevalier as Elettra were more constricted by their roles having little room for interpretation, but both sang superbly. With a cast like that and Mozart's music beautifully interpreted by Pinchon and the Pygmalion orchestra and chorus, the greatness of Idomeneo remains indisputable. 

Links: ARTE Concert, Festival Aix-en-Provence

Mahler - Resurrection (Aix-en-Provence, 2022)

Gustav Mahler - Resurrection

Festival Aix-en-Provence, 2022

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Romeo Castellucci, Golda Schultz, Marianne Crebassa, Maïlys Castets, Simone Gatti, Michelle Salvatore, Raphaël Sawadogo-Mas

ARTE Concert - 13th July 2022

I don't think we need to get into a debate about what is an opera and what isn't. The definition is so wide now that there are works with less singing and drama and indeed music than Mahler's Second Symphony. There can be little argument however about the fact that Auferstehung, Resurrection, was conceived as a symphony, but symphonies have a narrative of their own and Mahler's symphonies are by no means conventional. The composer might have had his own intentions for the work but the listener is free to let the music speak directly to each of us as individuals and interpret in their own way. Romeo Castellucci, much as many begrudge him even directing an opera in his own way, is likewise free to do so, and comes up with a bold visual narrative for this performance of Mahler's great work (they are all great as far as I'm concerned) for the Aix-en-Provence festival.

Knowing Castellucci, and knowing indeed what he made of Mozart's Requiem for the 2019 Aix-en-Provence Festival, his vision for what we think of as a resurrection is certainly far from what either you or indeed Mahler might have imagined. Almost as a companion piece to the Requiem, this time there is little in the way of a set for Resurrection. The location of the abandoned and graffiti vandalised sports stadium in Vitrolles is in a way 'resurrected' for this production and performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2. The audience however are greeted with the site of an empty mud covered floor to look down on, as a white horse wanders onto the muddy expanse that constitutes a "stage". His owner comes looking for the horse and finds nearby what looks like the remains of a body. After a panicked phone call a UNCHR team in white overalls begin digging up not just one buried body but discover that they have begun excavating a mass grave.

By any standards, it's a grim notion of a resurrection. In a way though it is a true modern secular idea of a resurrection, one that nonetheless has a meaningful role to play for many families who have lost family in such horrendous circumstances that constitute war crimes all over the world. Buried in mass graves, their recovery, identification and re-burial is a resurrection of sorts, one that allows the dead to be accorded after death and burial with a dignified and proper interment, as well as giving grieving families the release of knowing what has happened to their loved ones and the opportunity to pay respects. So yes, a resurrection of sorts, a necessary disinterment, even if it is quite a grim process.

Castellucci's production spares the viewer little of the grim reality of such a find. It is a frighteningly realistic depiction of just how such a process would take place. Emaciated semi-decomposed bodies, including a number of children and newborn babies, are unearthed by hand and delicately lifted over to be placed in rows on white sheets. Vehicles for heavy digging are brought in as the scale of the horror becomes evident, vans arrive for the collection and the forensic examination of the bodies. There is little of the familiar Castellucci abstraction or symbolism here, this is as direct as it gets. If the audience were unaware of what would take place, this would certainly come as something of a shock.

That sense of shock, or deep emotional impact is undoubtedly provoked just as much by the scene being set against Mahler's powerful, expressive and deeply emotional music, conducted here by Esa-Pekka Salonen. I've questioned before (in Calixto Bieito's Turandot) how far it is necessary and permissible to stage indescribable horrors, and whether the opera stage is really a suitable vehicle for such statements. There of course should be no limits to artistic expression, even if it feels like there is a subversion where the intentions of an original work of art are used to express something other than they are intended. That's down to the individual to react or take what they wish, but it's certainly is important that an artist is free to interpret as they see fit.

What is essential for any work of art - particularly performance art - is that it remains vital and meaningful. Musical fashions change and even Mahler might not withstand the reality of philistinism from deeply conservative and right-wing culture war attacks on multiculturalism and freedom of expression as a means of stirring up fear and division. (Bieto's Turandot more or less addresses this). As far as Resurrection goes, Castellucci piles horror upon horror that no viewer could remain unmoved by what is shown, and there is evidently justification for showing it this way. This however is only a stage representation. Imagine how utterly devastating it must be to know that such situation are not uncommon in real-life.

You don't need examples to confirm that such scenes have taken place and many times even in living memory. It's not even really a surprise that even as this production was being conceived and developed, that similar gruesome discoveries were being made in Mariupol in Ukraine. Dealing with such a subject in this day and age, there is no place for Castellucci provocation in the staging or for sentimentality in the musical performance, and both were resolutely direct and had real impact. The text of Des Knaben Wunderhorn in the fourth movement, sung by Marianne Crenbassa certainly hit home, as did Golda Schultz as the soprano in this performance. With superb choral work, the production unearthed and laid bare the underlying humanism and spirituality of the various stages of the process of death, mourning and rebirth in this remarkable work.

Links: Festival Aix-en-Provence, ARTE Concert