Spontini - Fernand Cortez (Florence, 2019)

Gaspare Spontini - Fernand Cortez ou la Conquète du Mexique

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2019

Jean-Luc Tingaud, Cecilia Legorio, Dario Schmunck, Alexia Voulgaridou, Luca Lombardo, David Ferri Durà, André Courville, Gianluca Margheri, Lisandro Guinis, Davide Ciarrocchi, Nicolò Ayroldi, Leonardo Melani, Davide Siega Silvia Capra, Delia Palmieri

Dynamic DVD

The early-to-mid 19th Century is crowded with opera classics but those we see regularly tend to be the works of a small number of Italian composers, mostly Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, who dominate the era and push any other notable composers into the shade. Certainly by the time that Verdi and Wagner came along, the fate of those who came before was sealed as being somewhat old-fashioned and destined to fall into neglect and obscurity. When composers like Paer, Catalani, Mercadante or Ponchielli do get some recognition, it's usually for one celebrated work that occasionally gets a revival. In Spontini's case that work is La Vestale, an opera that stands up more as an example of good craftsmanship where any real creativity has been stifled by the necessity of  formal adherence to conventional numbers, a style that means that such works have little to offer the world today. But, is it fair to judge a composer on a single work, and should we not be looking further into this neglected back catalogue?

Well, thankfully that's what the Pergolesi Spontini Foundation have been doing for two significant composers associated with the town of Jesi in the Marche region of Italy over the last decade or so. Several rare Pergolesi masterpieces have been unearthed and new critical editions established leading to some revelatory productions. The efforts of the Foundation are also aimed now at boosting the profile of Gaspare Spontini and, on the basis of this Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production of his 1809 French opera Fernand Cortez, ou La conquête du Mexique, early 19th century Spontini doesn't seem to be quite as tied to opera seria as Rossini or Donizetti but more forward looking, already pointing in the direction of Meyerbeer, Verdi and Berlioz.

There's plenty to grab the attention in the situation, plotting and aspirations towards grand-opera in the opening scenes of this almost three hour long opera. Set during of the conquest of Mexico, the forces of the Conquistador Hernán Cortés are starting to get restless, fearing that they will eventually have to pay a high price for their commander's drive for glory against the Aztec emperor Montezuma. There's inevitably a romantic angle brought into the opera through Amazily, a Mexican princess who Cortez has saved from death, and who in turn has also saved his life, and their love for each other also faces challenges. Another danger is that Montezuma has acquired weapons and is threatening to sacrifice Cortez's brother Alvaro and two of his men.

All of this in Act I provides opportunities for declarations of love, war and peace, with exotic colour, marches, large choruses and ballets, Spontini making the most of these promising situations with an explosive finale at the end of the Act that you would expect. There's nothing out of the ordinary here - as with La Vestale Spontini approaches the drama with a sense of beauty and melody that is somewhat conventional - but it certainly holds attention. The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production likewise plays it fairly conventionally in historical period costumes and theatrical in its presentation, in the main letting the music get on with the hard work. The chorus of 'Enfants du dieu de la lumière', for example, where the Mexican women seduce the Spanish troops with their charms, is done sitting down and is very static.

By way of contrast however the subsequent scene has seven ballets. Traditionally in a modern revival of a work like this, these would likely be cut, as they often slow down the drama. Director Cecilia Legorio however doesn't take the easy option and recognises that the ballet scenes are key to the work. In this sequence the different music composed for each of the sections serves to emphasise the difference and disparity between the opposing forces. The women of the Mexican tribes are freer and closer to nature but somehow heathen and dangerously unholy with their human sacrifices. while the marching of European conquistadors, trampling underfoot, are masters of their own fate, guided by lust for power, gold and conquest, a machine that marches onward, destroying whatever stands in its way. It's a little reductive but it's meant to be, and musically at least Spontini's expression comes into its element in these scenes, creating a huge sound with large orchestral forces.

If it seems somewhat heavy-handed, it needs to be borne in mind that Spontini wrote Fernand Cortez as a commission for Napoleon who in 1808 was waging a campaign against Spain. In order to counteract this propaganda somewhat, the director adds a little of a framing device at the beginning and end of each act. It's nothing too elaborate, just extracts from the diary of Moralez, one of Cortez's officers, but it helps put into context the rationale behind those who follow Cortez on his conquest, and it's doubtless the same rationale that led to the support of Napoleon in France. That provides a necessary sense of reflection on the work, and it's notable that after fall of Napoleon, Spontini himself reworked elements of the opera in 1817 to put a different perspective on it, but work here is as close to the original performed 1809 Paris version as possible, and the first performance of it in modern times.

After the impressive set up of Act I, Act II and III hold little in the way of surprises or deviation from what we expect to see in most Conquistador operas (see Graun's Montezuma, Gomes' Lo Schiavo or Verdi's Alzira), where family concerns and romance mix with captures and hostage swaps, leading to threats of human sacrifice and offers of self-sacrifice. Spontini enlivens the conventional developments with choruses, dances, marches and a lovely unaccompanied harmonised trio from Alvaro and his two companion prisoners. Cecilia Legorio takes full advantage of the opportunities in the music however and the concluding ballets to show what might not always be evident in the work, hinting that behind the glorious image of conquest, subjugation of the savages and bringing of civilisation, there lies a darker truth and reality.

The quality of the singing is excellent in this 2019 Florence production. Dario Schmunck is solid, authoritative and impressive as Cortez. Alexia Voulgaridou has a challenging vocal line and holds her own against Schmunck, although she is pushed to her limits in more ways than one in the singing and drama of Act II. There's notable singing too from Luca Lombardo as Amazily's brother Telasco. If the family torn apart by war is conventional in many ways, the experience of Amazily, Telasco and their mother is essential to the humanising of the story beyond the typical intrigues of plot and the performers bring this out do this well. There are no weaknesses elsewhere in the singing, David Ferri Durà as Alvaro leads the beautiful trio 'Créateur de ce nouveau monde' and André Courville cuts an imposing figure as an Aztec High Priest.

Instead of the Blu-ray I picked up Dynamic's 2-DVD edition of Fernand Cortez by mistake but the presentation is excellent, the NTSC standard definition image clear, colourful and reasonably detailed. The DVD still has an uncompressed LPCM stereo track in addition to the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track and the sound mixing on both is excellent, exhibiting a beautiful warm orchestral sound that shows the quality and detail of the composition and the performance. On the DVD are interviews with the conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud and director Cecilia Legorio. In the booklet there's a detailed tracklisting, a synopsis and good historical background info on Cortez and on the composition history of Spontini's opera.

Links: Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Puccini - Madama Butterfly (La Monnaie, 2017)

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2017

Roberto Rizzi-Brignoli, Kirsten Dehlholm, Alexia Voulgaridou, Ning Liang, Marta Beretta, Marcelo Puente, Riccardo Botta, Aris Argiris, Aldo Heo, Mikhail Kolelishvili, Wiard Witholt, René Laryea, Rosa Brandao, Birgitte Bønding, Adrienne Visser

Opera Platform - February 2017

If Kirsten Dehlholm of the Danish art collective Hotel Pro Forma succeeds in one area where productions of Madama Butterfly often fail, it's in the manner of how to make a considerably older soprano convincingly pass for a 15 year old geisha. The La Monnaie production uses a life-sized puppet stand-in with two handlers for the main role, while it is sung at the side of the stage by Alexia Voulgaridou. Voulgaridou has of course sang the role convincingly enough before in many conventionally staged performances, but Dehlholm has other intentions for her role and the production as a whole. Some of those ideas have merit, but whether they actually work in the context of performance to do justice to Puccini's masterpiece is another matter.

The use of a puppet doll for Madama Butterfly has an authenticity and justification in that it is derived from the Japanese theatre tradition of Bunraku. It does helps envision Cio-Cio-San as a mere child, with an advantage that the skilled handlers are able to give a more authentic emphasis on mannerisms and gestures that might not otherwise be there with the same lightness and delicacy with an older woman playing the role. The use of a puppet also gives rise to other impressions that might seem appropriate in the context, viewing Butterfly as little more than a plaything of others with no real volition of her own.

The downside to this however is that, whether intentional or not, the impression it gives is fairly limited in terms of characterisation and lacks nuance. Butterfly is far from a passive puppet; she is determined and knows her own mind, even if she is often mistaken or misled in her belief that her marriage to American sailor Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton is anything other than a sham or a marriage for his convenience. To perhaps try and find other ways of giving expression to the real content and meaning of the work, the director has some other ideas, but most of them are fairly abstract and difficult to decode.

Aside from the Bunraku marionettes, the production tries to make a claim for a Nôh theatre influence, but it's far from authentic and mixed in with an indeterminate approach that makes it neither one thing nor another. The setting is not period specific. Pinkerton wears a generic military-style uniform, while the Japanese characters wear kimonos and obis. The set is mostly bare, there are no walls and only really a Japanese temple style roof hanging over the stage. Screens and projections present a mixture of abstract images and - bizarrely - a modern cruise ship for Pinkerton's return. Dancers in eccentrically designed origami folded costumes appear now and again and for some unfathomable reason, it looks like stage hands appear at the side of the stage for 'Un bel di vedremo'.

It's all a bit cool and detached from the real emotion that lies at the heart of the work. That can be a viable approach to Madama Butterfly to counteract the overheated drama (Robert Wilson's production is no less effective for it), but alongside the puppet/singer division, it creates too much distance between the story and the telling, even though Alexia Voulgaridou is far from dispassionate in her performance and not entirely disengaged from the drama. Wearing a white wig and an identical costume to the marionette, you might think she is an elderly version of Madama Butterfly reflecting on past mistakes, were it not for the fact that Cio-Cio-San doesn't live past the age of 18 (sorry for the spoiler). In reality, it's just another (misguided and mishandled) attempt to bring Japanese folklore into the production in the form of the traditional ghost story.

Not unlike the director's striking work for La Monnaie on Rachmaninoff's Troika, the production seems to arbitrarily place emphasis on light, colour and patterns as if it is enough to get across the deeper themes of the opera that have been left out of the traditional stage production. It can be refreshing to see something different attempted like this and there's no question it's a colourful and attractive production, but in the effort to be original you get the impression that the production team is more often missing the point, or worse - such as in the appearance of an oversized toy representing the child and the flock of birds that fall to the stage when the cannon fires to announce the arrival of Pinkerton's ship in Nagasaki - don't seem to be taking it terribly seriously at all.

Whether they are taking it seriously or not, it seems fairly certain that at least in how it presents Puccini's score, the production utterly fails to hit its musical and emotional high points. The singing is merely adequate, Voulgaridou trying to put a little more feeling into the proceedings but sounding sometimes a little over-stretched. Marcelo Puente's singing is fine but he fails to make an impression one way or the other in respect of how we feel about Pinkerton and his treatment of his Japanese child bride. Ning Liang is not a strong Suzuki, Riccardo Botta's Goro and Aris Argiris' Sharpless are rote and largely ineffectual. The orchestra under Roberto Rizzi-Brignoli sounds a little reduced and don't quite convey the Romantic sweep of the work, but other colours are brought out and there is impact where you would expect to find it.

Unfortunately none of this impact makes even the smallest dent on the dispassionately impervious production. It's perhaps not always necessary to fully embrace Puccini's melodrama, but if you are going to undermine the emotional delivery and tragic consequences of the final scenes, it would help if you had an alternative message or some surprise revelation to pull out in its place. The only surprise here is that you really couldn't care less at the conclusion, which is admittedly an incredible achievement for any Madama Butterfly. On the other hand, judging from the enthusiastic response of the audience perhaps this worked better in the theatre than it did on the screen, but as far as the live streaming is concerned this Madama Butterfly died in more ways than one.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt, Opera Platform

Puccini - Madama Butterfly (Hamburg 2012 - Blu-ray)

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Staatsoper Hamburg, 2012

Alexander Joel, Vincent Boussard, Alexia Voulgaridou, Christina Damian, Ida Aldrian, Teodor Ilincal, Lauri Vascar, Jürgen Scaher, Viktor Rud, Jongmin Park, Thomas Florio

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

One thing I've noticed about the  few opera productions I've seen by Vincent Boussard (La Finta Giardiniera, La Favorite), other than the fact that he likes reflective stages, is that he manages to do a lot with very little, with minimalist stagings that are eye-catching and give the impression of being more elaborate. There are some places where this approach works better than others, and it's usually when the music and the libretto of the operas in question are strong enough to stand on their own. Madama Butterfly is certainly a work that fits into that category, but it nevertheless usually comes with a lot of additional stage baggage and stereotypical imagery that borders on kitsch.  Can Madama Butterfly survive without cherry blossoms, silk kimonos and bamboo houses with paper screens?

Boussard finds a way to retain the essence of this imagery, but presents it in a relatively minimalist fashion in this Hamburg production of Madama Butterfly, and he does so without losing anything of the exotic spectacle. That much is essential in as far as it presents the idealised beauty and perfection of an arranged marriage that underneath isn't quite as ideal as it appears on the surface. That is something that Boussard takes as the basis for the overall concept here and by and large it works without distorting the intent of the work, but there are also one or two interpretative twists here that everyone might not agree work as well or even consider necessary.

The costumes, by Christian Lacroix, look stylised traditional, with obis and big hats, although reflecting Cio-Cio-San's adoption of American ways she wears jeans and a sweatshirt for Act II. In terms of the set design itself however, this Madama Butterfly looks every bit as minimalistically oriental and yet subtly elegant as it ought to do. Largely, the set for the entire three acts is based around a spiral staircase at the centre of the stage, with only large panels behind. These however slide back to open up to the seasons and the passage of the day outside, as well as being used for off-stage locations for Madama Butterfly and Suzuki to retire to at significant points. It's very much an 'interior' design then and functional for the purposes of the work, but a subtle play of light and colour suggests other moods and situations.

If it's all about establishing the essential mood for each scene, you could say that Boussard's production is a little over-elaborate in its use of colour. More than just reflecting the time of day or the seasons, the lighting here changes from moment to moment with purple and yellow washes adjusted by bold reds and greens, saturating the stage like a scene from a Wong Kar-wai movie. Whether Puccini's rich scoring and balance of moods needs that kind emphasis is debatable and a matter of taste, but there's no doubt that the set and lighting follows and relates closely to those rapid switches between one extreme emotion and another.

It's this idea of extremes, of being bathed in an image of perfection and an ideal, that lies at the heart of Madama Butterfly. The exotic of the Oriental appeals to US Navy Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. His marriage to a young 15 year-old Japanese girl something of a dream in which he succumbs to the illusion of a perfect marriage to a submissive and attentive wife for a brief period before having to deal with the reality back home. For Cio-Cio-San, the fantasy is more deep-rooted and necessary to escape from an otherwise terrible fate as a geisha, a prostitute or bound to a loveless marriage in the Japanese style.

This is why Cio-Cio-San buys into her husband's American lifestyle with the Western ideal of it being a marriage based on love. She can't afford to consider the event, even after three years absence, the Pinkerton will not return. Her illusions are all crystallised in her centrepiece aria 'Un bel di vedremo', where every detail and every gesture of their joyful reunion is perfectly rehearsed in her mind. Those hopes are confounded if not entirely shattered in the very next scene with the Consul bringing a letter with news from Pinkerton, since Cio-Cio-San is unwilling to admit the intent of the words and Sharpless can't quite bring himself to deliver them.

This creates a kind of dramatic tension between two different kinds of reality that Puccini, with his basis in verismo, vividly depicts. The romantic illusions that sustain both Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton are just as "real" to them as reality, and they consequently pack a full emotional punch as they are elaborated and just as quickly punctured in the next scene. More than just holding a suspension between illusions and reality however, Madama Butterfly likewise swings between the difference between male and female sensibilities, as well as between the clash of cultures and it sustains a similar weighted tension between them all.

Boussard's production, mood and lighting, follows these developments very closely but it leads the director to make a few decisions that don't perhaps hold up as well. One can understand how Cio-Cio-San can make a little shrine to her delusions - a letter, a whisky glass and a bottle of liquor - but whether those should be seen as extending to their child is another matter. It's clear from the libretto that the child is real, but Boussard muddies the issue by not having a real child on the stage, but making use of a large doll instead. He also takes the final death scene off-stage, which is a brave decision, but there's no denying that it does rob the conclusion of some of its intended emotional impact.

If the intention is to let the strength of the music and the singing speak for itself, at least the Hamburg production has some fine singers who are capable of giving the work a full and nuanced expression. It's absolutely essential that you believe in these characters that are so well written by Puccini (in spite of some stereotypes), and if sung well they work. They work here. Freed from the usual mannerisms, Alexia Voulgaridou is able to emotionally delve into the work anew and sings wonderfully and with tremendous force. It's a riveting performance. Teodor Ilincal is a lyrical tenor in the classic traditional mould, his B.F. Pinkerton naive and romantic rather than exploitative and insensitive. Christina Damian's Suzuki is also very fine and adds considerably to the overall quality of this production. As too does the excellent account of the work by the Hamburg Philharmonic conducted by Alexander Joel.

On Blu-ray, the video transfer is very good. It looks a little softer than most, mainly on account of the colour saturation, but the colour reproduction and the beauty of the set is impressive. There's only one audio track on this release, a PCM stereo track, but it's strong and gives a good account of the singing and the orchestration. Other than trailers, there are no extra features on the BD, but the booklet comes with an interview with Vincent Boussard that discusses his approach to the work. Region-free, subtitles on the release are in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Korean.

Poulenc - Dialogues des Carmélites

Francis Poulenc - Dialogues des Carmélites

Staatsoper Hamburg, 2008

Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Andreas Morell, Simone Young, Anne Schwanewilms, Alexia Voulgaridou, Nikolai Schukoff, Wolfgang Schöne

Arthaus Musik

Francis Poulenc’s 1957 opera, for which he both composed the music and wrote the libretto (from a play by Georges Bernanos), has many distinct and individualistic qualities that set it apart, not least of which is the unique subject matter of the execution of Carmelite nuns by French Revolutionaries in 1794. The treatment however is just as fascinating, the subject of death ominously present not only through the novice nun Blanche’s pathological fear of death, through the suffering of ailing Mother Superior and the eventual martyrdom of the nuns, but also in the delicacy of the musical accompaniments that evoke an almost romantic relationship or fascination with the idea of death.

One other notable and unusual aspect of Dialogues des Carmélites is the dominance and importance of female voices, in recitative dialogue and in relation to one another. The opera really is a celebration of the female voice, ranging from soprano to mezzo-soprano and contralto, all used marvellously and, it has to be said, sung magnificently in this production. There are male roles in the opera and they are not insignificant, lending a welcome variety of colour and tone to the overpowering predominance of female singing that could otherwise become a little tiring at such length.

The staging of this Hamburg production is a masterpiece of the minimalist style, well suited to the dark subject matter and achieving incredible intensity and drama mainly from its use of light and shade and some subtle colouration. It’s perhaps a little too intense and austere when the opera is more lyrically varied in its score and libretto, but it’s true that the sense of death is omnipresent, the questions of faith and life discussed by the nuns all coloured by consideration of death. When combined with the remarkable singing, the power of the denouement is simply shattering. A truly unique opera experience.

The Blu-ray quality is superb, certainly in terms of the audio - an exceptional DTS HD Master Audio 7.1 mix - although, as noted elsewhere, there are issues with the image. Rather than being a flaw with the recording or the transfer, the mosquito noise dots actually seem to be part of the staging, caused by a fine gauze screen at the front of the stage. This is often used in stage productions for light diffusion, but rarely throughout a whole opera. Although it seems a strange decision to film the opera with a screen in-between, it’s presumably part of the production design to soften the otherwise harsh direct lighting. The dots are not always noticeable - only when performers are filmed in close-up and when they are towards the front of the stage. There’s little here however that spoils the enjoyment of this beautifully staged and fascinating opera.