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 to Julien 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

Donizetti - Lucia di Lammermoor (Liège, 2015 - Webcast)

Gaetano Donizetti - Lucia di Lammermoor 

Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège - 2015

Jesús Lopez Cobos, Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera, Annick Massis, Celso Albelo, Ivan Thirion, Roberto Tagliavini, Pietro Picone, Alexise Yerna, Denzil Delaere

Culturebox - 25 November 2015

Donizetti's opera adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's 'The Bride of Lammermoor' is so bound up in the period gothic themes of ghosts, revenge and madness that there seems to be little point in updating the work on the stage or seek to deconstruct it for any deeper meaning. The best that one can do is frame the work with a little historical distance from the melodrama, but as we've seen with the Royal Opera House's production of that other Scott adaptation, Rossini's La Donna del Lago (The Lady of the Lake), there's not an awful lot to be gained from such an approach either. Better surely to just present the work in its own terms.

We'll reserve judgement on that until we see Katie Mitchell's new production at Covent Garden next year, but in the meantime, the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège under the direction of Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera decide to stick with the traditional approach for Lucia del Lammermoor, and in a big way too. Conductor Jesús Lopez Cobos even goes right back to Donizetti's original manuscript to find a purer dramatic version of the composer's vision before it and its famous mad scene became the favourite toy of the world's greatest coloratura sopranos over the ages.

Make no mistake though, whatever way you approach Lucia di Lammermoor you still need a soprano of great ability and you also need to convey the essence of the gothic, with thunderstorms and heavy mists drenching the stage in the atmosphere of its Scottish locations. It wouldn't be like Stefano Mazzonis or Liège to let us down on either front, and indeed they manage to give a fair account of the work as it is on its own terms with even a little bit of necessary flair where it is required. Rather than appear stuffily traditional then, there is a wonderful solidity to the Liège production in both the staging and the singing that anchors the opera a little more securely than might otherwise be the case.

That doesn't mean that there is any lack of distinct interpretation or personality applied to the work. There's a full three-dimensional quality to the music and to the staging here that allows us to explore the heart of the drama. Jesús Lopez Cobos sets the tone well in the moody, rumbling overture, while the stage is coloured a bruised purplish-blue to presage the gothic storm to come. The set gives us castle ramparts, a forest and a fountain, as well as a full tower that rotates to let us in on the looming crisis between rival Ashton and Ravenswood clans. Enrico has plans for his sister Lucia's marriage, but she is in love with Edgardo from the Ravenswood family and Enrico intends to put a stop to that.

The lighting in particular reflects all the moods and conflicting emotions that are bound up in the story, and the costume design of the well-wrapped clansmen is also far more realistic of what one would wear living in a Scottish castle in a 17th century winter. Even that however is not without some stylistic flair that seems to give real substance and body to a romantic melodrama. Settling for a largely traditional approach in the production then, you have to take the rough with the smooth, and there is inevitably a bit of both here, but it ultimately yields worthwhile results.

The dramatic declamations of the overheated (or hard-to-swallow) libretto and the more prosaic moments of the music would be difficult to get through if everyone was standing around and singing out to the audience, but Mazzonis manages to keep the characters engaged with one another. The upside of this is that combined with the attractive staging it's enough to keep the audience engaged and ready for the big moments when they occur. As long as you have good singers in the roles - and that's a big enough ask - you're on sure footing with this approach.

The ghost in the fountain aria ("Regnava nel silenzio"), the sextet and the ending of Act II, the mad scene in Act III and the conclusion are all vital, and fortunately the main performers and the chorus are all up to the task. Annick Massis has force and control of the coloratura, but more importantly has what Cobos demands for this production and that's the dramatic character to get the essence across without the unnecessary elaboration that has been added to the role over the years. Celso Abelo is Spanish, but he has a great Italian tenor voice and is impressive in the role of Edgardo. This is the kind of strong central singing team that is required for this work and they acquit themselves admirably.

Another original element that Cobos brings back to the work is the use of the glass harmonica for Lucia's mad scene. Along with a more restrained approach to the singing by Massis, this gives the scene more of an effective haunting quality rather than the full-blown off-her-rocker insanity with which Lucia is more often characterised. Or, depending on your expectations for this work, it could come across like the murder and decapitation scene that takes place in a room on the tower; a rather a rather bloodless affair, lacking in the kind of intensity you might expect.

There is more enough drama within the storyline and within the original musical score however for it to work on its own terms and for the purposes of this production, and it is indeed an enjoyable account of the work that clearly meets with the approval of the Liège audience. If Massis takes the role of Lucia down a step, Abelo is good enough to make up for the difference for the final scene to have all the necessary impact. Even if the blocks of masonry that he pulls down upon himself seem to bounce in rather too much of a rubbery fashion to do any real damage, the illusion of opera staging, brought together on so many other levels here, provides all the necessary weight.


Links: Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Culturebox

Verdi - La Traviata

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata

Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liège, 2012

Luciano Acocella, Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera, Annick Massis, Xavier Cortes, Giovanni Meoni, Alexise Yerna, Cristiano Cremonini, Julie Bailly, Roger Joakim, Ziyan Atfeh, Patrick Delcour, Marcel Arpots, Iouri Lel, Marc Tissons

Live Internet Streaming, 26 April 2012

It’s almost becoming de rigueur for nudity and topless women to feature in opera productions these days, but up until Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera’s production for the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège, I’d never seen it done before in La Traviata. A popular repertory work, Verdi’s La Traviata is usually done in a straightforward traditional period manner, but Verdi - himself subject to gossip and rumour about his relationship with Giuseppina Strepponi at the time of writing the work - wanted the opera to challenge contemporary attitudes towards unconventional relationships, and the frank directness of the La Traviata was indeed quite shocking for its time. Now all we have to “shock” an audience is a flash of a topless woman. I don’t want to be seen to be making excuses for the practice, but you can see how it could be valid in the context of Verdi’s other shocker of this period, Rigoletto, where nudity featured during the orgies of the Duke of Mantua in David McVicar’s production at the Royal Opera House, and I suppose the same case could be made for La Traviata. When you think about it, Violetta Valéry’s profession as a courtesan - the “fallen woman” of the opera’s title, necessarily treated with circumspection due to censorship restrictions in Verdi’s time - is likewise often also delicately glossed over in stage productions. Not so here.

One could make a case then that the use of nudity in all three acts in the Liège production is not just there for shock or titillation, but that it’s relevant to the themes and tied in with the structure of La Traviata itself. Originally titled ‘Love and Death’ during its composition, these two themes are vital to the impact of the work and they are where Verdi places the most emphasis in his scoring, with Violetta considering the possibilities of true love in the beautiful ‘Ah, fors’è lui’ in Act I, and reflecting on her death in ‘Addio del passato’ in Act III. On their own, certainly, these pieces are strong enough to encompass the beauty, the tragedy and complexity of emotions that have been engendered in Violetta over the short period of her time with Alfredo, but if the staging can draw the attention of the audience to what is being expressed, then so much the better. In Act I then, the aria is set alongside beside the revelry of the guests on a huge bed during ‘Si ridesta in ciel l’aurora’, while in Act III, there is an echo of a reminder of these times as Violetta hears the revelry of party-goers from her death bed. Act II meanwhile uses the nudity effect of the “bella ritrosetta” (“saucy little beauty”) to emphasis the connection between Love and Death in the play of Gastone and the Bullfighters, which otherwise seems like a piece of entertainment unconnected with the work.

Unfortunately, while there is relevance in how this all fits in with the opera and its themes - scored brilliantly by Verdi at his most melodic and inventive - there’s not a great deal else that stands out in the direction of this production, which struggles to find any interesting way to respond to the challenge of staging the familiar settings of the work. The first scene of Act II in particular really drags along. As heartfelt as the emotions are during the long scene between Violetta and Alfredo’s father Giorgio Germont as he tries to persuade her to give up her love affair with his son for the sake of his reputation and his family, and as well sung as these key moments of appeal are from both sides here during ‘Pura siccome un angelo’ and ‘Ah, dite alla giovine’, they gain nothing from having the two principals sit at the front of the stage and sing out towards the audience. There needs to be a little more connection felt, or at least tension between them over their respective desires and fears, and that’s hard to achieve without some good stage direction.

Aside from the use of brief nudity, the other two acts and the second scene of Act II then are otherwise unexceptional, but the staging does at least serve its function reasonably well. Even if the budget doesn’t always stretch to elaborate sets and designs, the Opéra at Liège under the direction of Mazzonis di Pralafera, seem to me at least to always manage to include a few original touches that allow them to strike a strong balance between traditional theatricality and some personal character. There are a few other minor touches here - Alfredo clutching Violetta’s bloodstained white nightgown during the overture, the guests at the society parties seated as if to watching the unfolding of the latest theatrical developments in society - which are interesting without straining the traditional narrative too much. The same principal would apply, it would seem, to the casting of singers who more than meet the demands of the work if not perhaps with any great distinction. As Alfredo, Xavier Cortes sings well - clear, strong and resonant, and Giovanni Meoni is a grave and dignified Germont Snr., but neither bring any great interpretation to the roles and they don’t look like they have been given a great deal of acting direction either.

Demonstrating however, in line with the rest of the production, that they know exactly the right places to place the emphasis, the performance of the orchestra under Luciano Acocella is marvellous and Annick Massis stands out as an exceptional Violetta Valéry. Even during the otherwise dull staging of the Germont/Violetta duets in Act II, the tempo and balance is considered throughout to give the performers the opportunity to really enter into the emotions of this critical scene. If the staging doesn’t work in favour of the singers there, elsewhere it has all the necessary impact, particularly in those aforementioned key moments of Act I and III, and their fine delivery by Annick Massis. She perhaps doesn’t have the fragile delicacy of Violetta in Act I, hitching up her skirt, hopping on a table with a glass of champagne and kicking off her shoes for her ‘Sempre libera’, but it captures the nature of the extraordinary new sensations awakened within her and it’s sung with strength, passion and character. On the flipside of those emotions, her ‘Addio del passato’ is filled with all the longing and heartrending emotion that likewise underpins the strength of the third Act. It’s a superb performance.

If the Opéra Royal de Wallonie’s production then doesn’t always demonstrate great originality, it does nonetheless manage to find its own character within the limitations of the setting, but more significantly, it knows exactly where to place the emphasis for the maximum impact and it takes great care with the casting to ensure that those moments can be achieved. With Annick Massis as an impressive Violetta Valéry, particularly strong in the Act III conclusion, and with Luciano Acocella directing the orchestra through a terrific performance that draws all those considerable qualities out of Verdi’s great score, this production, broadcast live via the website of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège, amounted to a very fine and occasionally impressive La Traviata.