Fiszbein - Avenida de los Incas 3518 (Le Balcon 2012 - Webcast)

Fernando Fiszbein - Avenida de los Incas 3518

Le Balcon, 2012

Maxime Pascal, Damien Bigourdan, Cyril Costanzo, Pablo Ramos, Rodrigo Ferreira, Elise Chauvin, Florent Baffi, Basile Seck, Camille Merckx, Minino Garay

lebalcon.com

The method of expression and how it relates dramatically to the storytelling is not always clear in Fernando Fiszbein's Avenida de los Incas 3518, but it's an intricate short opera that is well-staged and performed in this 2012 recording, commissioned and performed by the specialist contemporary music ensemble Le Balcon.

I'm tempted to say that the work operates on a number of levels - and I'm sure musically it does - but that would be too much of a play on the setting of the work. The opera does indeed take place entirely within an apartment block on 3518, Avenida de los Incas, presumably in Buenos Aires. Visually, the staging by Damien Bigourdan successfully gives the work a vertical dimension with the use of projections, but there's a similar dynamic in the rises and plunges of the music score.

Structurally, Avenida de los Incas 3518 opens with a murmur of intercutting voices from the different apartments of the high-rise block, and it ends with a cacophonic orgy of screams of pleasure and of fear. The main body of the story is furthermore played out in flashback at the moment that three men in a lift plunge down an elevator shaft. Pablo, Diego and Nico have discovered a service elevator from old blueprints of the building and have been using it to intrude on their neighbours apartments. Mostly, it's to have fun, get high and play pranks by removing small objects and placing them in other places, but occasionally their incursions can even be beneficial, such as the time that Alma, living alone, got locked in her bathroom.

From the minor incidents related above, it's not immediately obvious that the narrative or the structure of this drama merits the attention it has been given musically, vocally and theatrically. Reflecting its setting, it's a slice-of-life drama with several domestic situations that interlink in the manner of filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu's 'Amores Perros'. Like Iñárritu's film, there's an effort made to see the relatively simple but melodramatic soap-opera situations as relating to something that has connections to and resonance in the grander scheme of the universe. Fiszbein even introduces an omniscient narrator half-way though who provides a recap for the audience in French, possibly for those who haven't followed the Spanish language libretto.

Fernando Fiszbein's ambitions are not quite so elaborate as those of the Mexican filmmaker. Perhaps it's the use of music, the language of opera, that allows the opera to be rather more modest in its range and thus more successful in how it represents the story. Opera music traditionally has the function of heightening and expressing emotional content, but here it's employed differently, actually downplaying issues that would feel somewhat overblown if they were merely dramatically represented and artificially interconnected. There's a sense that the tumbling notes, the dissonant interjections of brass and flute trills (and even a section played on typewriters) are an attempt more to capture the background cacophony of life and its little moments of colour that arise out of it.

Running only to a modest 45 minutes moreover, Avenida de los Incas 3518 never tests the viewer's patience either. The staging engages interest with the simple use of a screen that projects the ascent and descent of the lift though an identical arrangement of rooms, occasionally using some filmed footage for more elaborate sequences. Even its difficult modern musical language, which is played with beautiful precision by the Le Balcon ensemble, is accessible at this length, working as it does with the tone of the drama and the singing. The singing performances are all excellent, capturing all the colour of personality, location and life as it's lived on Avenida de los Incas 3518.

Links: Lebalcon.com

Massenet - Don Quichotte

Jules Massenet - Don Quichotte

La Monnaie/De Munt, Brussels 2010

Marc Minkowski, Laurent Pelly, Silvia Tro Santafé, José van Dam, Werner Van Mechelen, Julie Mossay, Camille Merckx, Vincent Delhoume, Gijs Van der Linden, Bernard Villier

Naive

With piles of papers and documents piled up on the stage, Laurent Pelly’s production design for this 2010 performance of Massenet’s Don Quichotte at La Monnaie-De Munt in Brussels looks like something from an art installation, but it serves the opera well and in the process provides a suitable platform for José van Dam’s final bow from the opera stage. Taking a dream-like overview of the subject, Act I shows what looks like a the Don’s drawing room, where the aging knight is resting sitting in an armchair, a man past his prime, dreaming of better times, of his love for the beautiful Dulcinea that once inspired him to write verses of praise in her name - all of which are piled up in a small mountain below her balcony - and the idealism that drove him to what he believes to be chivalrous and intrepid acts of valour.

The dream world of the knight’s idealism in the subsequent four acts is similarly filled with sierras and landscapes made of hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper, reflecting the recreation of Don Quichotte’s exploits on paper and the lack of substantiality that these dreams are based on, the valiant knight forgetting that he is now just a foolish old man whose youth has faded. After a 50 year career, José van Dam’s voice may also lost some of its youthful vigour and strength, but the passion and sincerity is still there, and in that respect it’s a perfect fit for the role of Don Quixote that makes his performance of the role all the more poignant.

I’ve never really been able to find a distinctive stamp to Massenet’s varied opera styles, finding little that has made an impression beyond his most famous creations of Werther, Manon and Thaïs, but I’m always interested to find what can be brought out of the other works, particularly when they are fully staged. Don Quichotte seems like a rather slight work in this respect, but the composer nonetheless seems to find the right tone throughout for this ‘comédie-héroique en cinq actes’. A five-act opera, it is however surprisingly sprightly, each of the short brief scenes - the entire work coming in at under two hours - finding the right balance of adventure and nobility, foolishness and dignity, with little Spanish-inflected arrangements but also a certain French character. I don’t know if it gets to the essence of Cervantes (Massenet worked on a French adaptation “Le Chevalier de la Longue Figure” by Jacques Le Lorrain), but it seems to strike the right tone throughout that fits the character of the work.

Laurent Pelly’s production likewise seems an exceptionally good fit. The astonishing set designed by Barbara de Limburg is mostly static, but there are subtle changes over the course of the opera that reflect the deterioration of Don Quichotte’s mind, and a few neat touches - the battle with the windmills is well achieved - that bring the work to life at the right moments. The casting is also perfectly appropriate for this modest little work that is nonetheless not short on charm or beauty. Van Dam is Don Quixote incarnate, carrying himself as the “errant knight who rights wrongs” with exactly the right kind of proud nobility amid the confusion of old-age. He might not hold the low notes with the same rock-solid sureness, but it’s a lovely and thoughtful performance, sung very well indeed. Silvia Tro Santafé is a lovely Dulcinea, with a light, rich, sparkling tone to her French, even if the vibrato applied makes her at times sound like an old-time French cabaret singer, evoking Edith Piaf in places. Werner van Mechelen provides solid support as Sancho. Combined they form the kind of strong varied and sensitive trio of principals that the work needs, but the quartet roles and the chorus are also wonderful here.

Released on DVD only, the presentation of the performance is fine, if the image quality and sharpness is not quite as impressive as it might have been in HD. The audio likewise is disappointingly lower-spec, Dolby Digital 2.0 only, but the sound is clear and the tone is warm. The orchestration, conducted beautifully by Marc Minkowski, sounds wonderful, and the singing is mostly strong and clear in the mix. There are a few slight dips in the sound, usually only audible around the audience applause, but occasionally on the stage also, as if the microphones levels are being adjusted, but it’s a relative minor issue. The DVD includes an excellent hour-long feature that goes behind the scenes on the production in some detail.