Leoš Janáček - From the House of the Dead
La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels, 2018
Michael
Boder, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Willard White, Pascal Charbonneau, Štefan
Margita, Nicky Spence, Ivan Ludlow, Alexander Vassiliev, Graham Clark,
Ladislav Elgr, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Aleš Jenis, Pavlo Hunka, Florian
Hoffmann, Natascha Petrinsky, John Graham-Hall, Peter Hoare, Alexander
Kravets, Alejandro Fonte, Maxime Melnik
La Monnaie Streaming - November 2018
Krzysztof Warlikowski's production of Janáček's From the House of the Dead
received mixed reviews when it opened at the Royal Opera House early
last year. Seen again as a co-production with La Monnaie in Brussels -
who would be much more familiar with the director's working methods -
it's clear that Warlikowski does try to impose too much onto Janáček's
final opera, but even though it has enough going on in its own terms,
it's not as if the opera can't take it. As with the Royal Opera House
production, if it serves just to get this magnificent work performed -
it's not only Warlikowski's debut there but From the House of the Dead
that had never before been performed at Covent Garden - then it's
job done, and despite the usual reservations and sometimes valid complaints about
the director's methods, it's largely a job well done.
As
far as trying to do too much, well Warlikowski could probably have done
without the theoretical philosophising of Michel Foucault distracting
from the strong musical opening scored by Janáček that takes you into a world of masculine power-play and violence that has a
heightened malevolence within the confines of a prison. It matters
little whether that is a work camp in Siberia, as it is in Dostoevsky's
original work - one written about from hard-earned experience as a
political prisoner - or in what looks more like an American prison yard.
It's a work about observations on the nature of life in the prison
camp, the kind of people from all walks of life who end up there and
what confinement does to them.
While the philosophical
elements add little to the essential meaning of the work, they do at
least present an observational view on the nature of justice and
imprisonment. Far more successful are the real-life observations
in the filmed interviews that give the production a more genuine human
touch that is far from theoretical. Projected onto the steel curtain
that drops between acts, a prisoner talks about his detachment from the
world around him and how it leads to a greater awareness of the
presence of death. It adds to the deeper exploration in Janáček's opera
of sentiments that are brought out rather than submerged or destroyed
by the pervasive violence, anger, hatred, bitterness and regret around
them. Women are almost never out of their thoughts or stories - love
and family - but even though it is twisted and distorted in this
all-male environment, it's a spark that still ignites passions.
That
spark needs to be there in a production and From the House of the Dead
doesn't have much in the way of action to dramatise. Warlikowski finds
other fine ways of expressing those inner underlying sentiments and the
complex way they manifest themselves in words and actions, stories acted
out with cartoon violence and life in the prison environment with much
more realistic brutality. He also avoids what would now appear to be
hackneyed imagery in the references to birds, and in particular an
injured eagle that is looked after by the inmates and released at the
same time as the political prisoner Gorjančikov. Warlikowski finds a
more modern and original form of expressing it using two black dancers
(dancers often serving a similar function in the director's
productions). Cross-dressing and play-acting out the drama in Act II is
given perhaps too much emphasis with too much going on that is
distracting (another frequent feature in Warlikowski's productions), but
it's an attempt find a modern way to relate to those deeper masculine
concerns expressed in the work.
From the House of the
Dead then is not a conventional work and it doesn't have a central
figure much less a hero, as that would go against the intentions of
what the work is about. Gorjančikov's narrator becomes an observer,
collecting not just stories but also recording the impact these significant incidents have had on
the inmates. It's about how hope and the spark of human kindness is
never extinguished, even in such a place, even after all they've been through. Each of the characters relate
their stories, their fears and complexes, their humanity submerged
by the proximity and behaviour of other male characters, of having to
get on and live with them, of having to survive not being shafted by
them in one way or another, and Warlikowski does this by focussing on
the relationships, on little acts of kindness between them, even after
acts of appalling violence.
Janáček was always a
progressive 20th century musical innovator, a unique voice who had
developed a few tricks in his time and never rested on a single simple
means of expression but was constantly seeking to innovate. His use of adapting the rhythms of the spoken voice to
determine flow and rhythm are expanded further here for the specific
challenges of adapting From the House of the Dead. The rhythmic pulse
could be seen as representing the monotony and repetition of daily
existence, but Janáček - particularly in this new critical edition of
the score, a score that Janáček was unable to oversee though to
completion - shows subtle shifts under Michael Boder's direction. Never
simply repetitive, it's constantly developing and changing, showing how
people can adapt to their surroundings and change it by degrees.
Within
the score and the world it depicts, human actions, words and
behaviours are not negligible and can cause unpredictable shifts
as hope turns to despair, the progressive rhythm broken by outbursts of
violence, then repaired and finding its rhythm again. It's an
incredibly rich work, Janáček also employing harder sounds and
unconventional instruments including chains, not as a dramatic element,
but as part of the fabric of the world the work operates within.
Ultimately however personal interpretation is vital to bring the work
to life and it's that investment that is brought to it by an outstanding
cast of singers who are given plenty to get their teeth into. Pavlo Hunka in particular makes Šiškov's Act III story heartbreaking
and Nicky Spence is a menacing figure in a number of character roles
that exhibit a surprising but necessary emotional range for this work.
That's all to fit perfectly not with Janáček's score, but with the
thoughtful interpretation of this remarkable work by Boder and
Warlikowski.
Links: La Monnaie-De Munt
Leoš Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen
La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2017
Antonello Manacorda, Christophe Coppens, Andrew Schroeder, Lenneke Ruiten, Sara Fulgoni, John Graham-Hall, Alexander Vassiliev, Vincent Le Texier, Yves Saelens, Mireille Capelle, Eleonore Maguerre, Maria Portela Larisch, Logan Lopez Gonzalez, Marion Bauwens, Kris Belligh
ARTE Concert - March 2017
In theory I like the way that La Monnaie actually take the animals out of their 2017 production of Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen, since the anthropomorphised creatures of the opera are really meant to teach us about human life. Yes, I'm aware that this seems to go against the whole purpose of the work being an allegory in the first place, but the danger with The Cunning Little Vixen is that the baby animals either make the work too cutesy trying to talk down to a younger audience or risk missing the point entirely. The Cunning Little Vixen can be a good opera for young children, but making the opera suitable for that particular audience can involve some amount of compromise.
In practice however, director Christophe Coppens' modernisation and de-animalisation of the work does also involve some measure of compromise with the original intentions of the work, to the extent that it almost - but not quite - distorts the meaning of the work; if you can even figure out what it is trying to achieve. In recognition perhaps that this version doesn't present the work entirely the way that Janáček intended, and does involve some reworking of the libretto (in the translation at least, but not in the actual sung text), the La Monnaie production of The Cunning Little Vixen is prefaced by the title Foxie!
It's not long before you recognise how much the original storyline is distorted in 'Foxie!'. The Forester in this version is something of a security guard for a school, with monitors in his office to keep an eye on the children going wild outside on a summer evening. The groups of children have their own little groups and cliques that match the creatures of the animal kingdom. Foxie is a young red-head girl phoning home for her 'Mami', but unable to get through, so the Security guy takes her across the way to a cafe. When he sees that Foxie still hasn't been picked up and is somewhat in distress, he brings her back to the control room and leads her to a backroom. Then it all goes a bit David Lynch.
The immediate problem that tends to go against the grain of the original to a worrying degree is that it changes the Forester capturing a fox into what looks like a case of child abduction and molestation. Foxie is introduced not into a yard with hens and a cockerel lording it over them, but some kind of surreal brothel from which she eventually escapes. This is definitely not a 'kiddie' version of The Cunning Little Vixen. Arguably, you could wonder whether that is not the underlying context of Janáček's version, which does indeed have a sexual undercurrent that is often played upon in other productions, but it still doesn't feel comfortable in this presentation. But I don't think it's meant to be comfortable, and Janáček's opera certainly doesn't offer any illusions about the harshness and cruelty of nature, and the nature of men.
While some of the imagery is indeed Lynchian, looking like it is a nightmare taken from 'Inland Empire', it's used to suggest a conflict in generational outlooks rather than attempt to probe split personalities or a mind in conflict with itself. There is also something of a Stefan Herheim feel to the production that is similar to his treatment of Rusalka at La Monnaie, where the water nymph was also a prostitute in an similarly elaborate street-scene production. The key difference however is that Herheim uses such techniques to delve beneath the surface of the fantasy to attempt to probe the underlying source or psychology of the story, either from what it tells us about the origins of the fairy-tale or what it tells us about the author and composer. In The Cunning Little Vixen the allegory is already there to allow us to explore and consider the underlying meaning, so any attempt by Christophe Coppens to change that risks altering its message.
But perhaps that's for a good reason. If there is a way of making sense of this production it's perhaps viewing the older Foxie as someone who is being persecuted by society for living an alternative lifestyle. That certainly is one notable change that is made in the subtitles, when Foxie accuses the poacher Harašta of wanting to kill her simply because she is different. That works with Foxie's back-to-nature fondness for the woods, living outside of conventional society. There also seems to be an emphasis on how her unconventional relationship with Goldie scandalises the neighbours, since there is little attempt here to make Goldie a male fox. You have to wonder whether the composer didn't intentionally score the role for a female to provoke just such a scandalous pairing, so there is validity in the production taking this path. The rather heavy petting that goes on between the two women does push this further than you might expect, so definitely not for the kids this one.
The question of how they produce cubs - such an essential element of the cycle of life that is the central theme of the work - is neatly covered by Foxie going on to become a gym teacher for a sports team of young girls. And it is all about allowing the younger generation to live free from the shackles of the tradition and morality of the previous generation, something that doesn't always come across in a more literal adaptation. Whether you find this all as an awkward attempt to fit an unwieldy, contradictory and often inexplicable concept on top of a work that has no real need to have any additional levels added to it, or whether you view the concept as having something meaningful to say about social change and tolerance being a necessary part of the cycle of life from one generation to the next, it does come up with a number of clever ways to make it work together, even if it takes it all a little further than Janáček might have intended.
The unconventional production certainly doesn't interfere in any way with the quality of the singing and musical performance. If anything, it gives the performances a youthful freshness and an extra edge. The role of Vixen/Foxie is sung exceptionally well by Lenneke Ruiten - one of the best performances I've heard of this role in recent times. The Forester is a rather more ambiguous figure in this production, but even there Andrew Schroeder makes it work and even come across as quite touching. There are no weak points anywhere else, all of the roles sung tremendously well. Antonello Manacorda's conducts the orchestra of La Monnaie and it's a vibrant, detailed and sensitive reading of the score that retains the rhythmic pulse and also recognises the folk elements of Janáček's brilliant, hypnotic score.
Links: La Monnaie-De Munt, ARTE Concert
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Golden Cockerel
La Monnaie-De Munt, 2016
Alain Altinoglu, Laurent Pelly, Pavlo Hunka, Alexey Dolgov, Alexander Vassiliev, Agnes Zwierko, Alexander Kravets, Venera Gimadieva, Konstantin Shushakov, Sheva Tehoval, Sarah Demarthe, John Manning, Marcel Schmitz, Marc Coulon
The Opera Platform - December 2016
These are undoubtedly strange times we are living through at the moment, so it's probably not a surprise that our views on artistic expression can be coloured and filtered by what is currently going on in the world. Who would have thought however that Rimsky-Korsakov's comic fairytale opera The Golden Cockerel could ever again be anything more than a satire on an obscure conflict long ago in a far off part of the world? Oh, how we used to laugh at the ridiculous ruler Dodon (now there's a name that is looking a little too close to reality for comfort) trying to keep foreign enemies out of his country and petulantly exclaiming "Laws? Don't know the meaning of the word. My whims and orders are the law".
But of course, Rimsky-Korsakov's satire was indeed based on reality of Russian imperialism, militarism during the Russo-Japanese war. That could perhaps account for its uncanny accuracy and relevance, revealing in the process how history has an unfortunate way of repeating itself. But let's not get either too carried away or demoralised at what seems to be a scarily realistic look at the Trump administration, or at least not just yet. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera is a delightful, colourful confection of amusing scenes and sparkling music, and representing that more so than any attempts at satire or contemporary relevance seems to be the main purpose of Laurent Pelly's production for La Monnaie in Brussels.
The set designs for Pelly's production of The Golden Cockerel are typically gorgeous, with bold cartoony figures that bring a comic energy to the work. And yet -not unlike his recent DNO production of Chabrier's L'Etoile - behind all the comic capers of stupid, incompetent and paranoid rulers, you can detect a darker and more sinister undercurrent. Tsar Dodon barks out his orders from a silver bed on a small mound of slate-coloured rocks of an almost post-apocalyptic world, his adoring people who never doubt his word all dressed in dark rags. Much of the atmosphere is achieved through Joël Adam's impeccable lighting and colouration, but the cartoon-like figures in outlandish costumes and wigs, and the strutting golden cockerel who calls out whenever the enemy's troops are approaching the border, all stand-out impressively from this background.
There are clearly no overt references to the current US administration in a production that I'm sure was prepared well in advance of its December 2016 performances at La Monnaie, but there is no bouffant combover needed to see the similarities in the dunderheaded policy decisions and arrogance of an incompetent ruler. Dodon's sons look a little like Jedward, and to be honest, I wouldn't rule them out as future candidates for the US President's team of advisors should he have any more firings and resignations. Nothing would surprise me about the Trump administration or indeed how applicable the author and librettist Vladimir Belsky's observations on such an administration seem to be. The Russian references and the 'sleeping with the enemy' aspect of the work however could be much too close for comfort.
Comparing the Tsarita Shemakha to Theresa May on the other hand might be taking contemporary analogies a little too far, but again - and maybe it's just because of the exceptional and deeply uncertain times we are living in at the moment - it's tempting to see something of the deluded British PM's unfathomable mishandling of the Brexit issue in the situations. Shemakha's kingdom is "a small island between sea and sky", where "everything obeys my whim and will (...) but it's all an illusion" and "I'm alone on my dream island". It's a tenuous comparison I admit, but you have to amuse yourself somehow, for as beautiful as Rimsky-Korsakov's music is with its little oriental touches and as pretty as Laurent Pelly's production looks, it's the satire that counts and there's not that much of it brought out here.
If The Golden Cockerel has any fault, it's that there's not much of dramatic interest in the opera. It's the kind of work where you get the message fairly quickly and can then just settle down to enjoy it for the music and hopefully some inspired fairytale visuals to match. By and large, that's what you get here, but not much else. Any 'interpretation' is entirely down to whatever you can apply to it from your own (over-)imagination. The performance at La Monnaie is fine but Alain Altinoglu, in his first opera as the new Music Director of La Monnaie, doesn't really succeed in making the music and the drama come to life. It's good/essential to have Russian leads in this work and Pavlo Hunka and Venera Gimadieva give enjoyable performances as Dodon and Shemakha, but neither are enough to elevate the opera in this production to anything more than just a colourful fairy tale.
Links: La Monnaie, The Opera Platform
