Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie (Glyndebourne 2013 - Blu-ray)

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie

Glyndebourne 2013

William Christie, Jonathan Kent, Ed Lyon, Christiane Karg, Sarah Connolly, Stéphane Degout, Katherine Watson, François Lis, Julie Pasturaud, Samuel Boden, Aimery Lefèvre, Loic Felix, Ana Quintans, Emmanuelle de Negri, Mathias Vidal, Callum Thorpe, Charlotte Beament, Timothy Dickinson

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

On previous experience of this early work of French Baroque opera at a production in Paris a few years ago, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie can often feel like a rather dry classical text adapted to the lyric stage by an experienced composer already well-renowned for his academic approach to the musical form. With William Christie leading the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment however in this rather more lively production for Glyndebourne, it's evident that the elegant rhythms and melodies of the work can actually be sensitive, expressive, witty, thoughtful and movingly tragic. The scenes in Hippolyte et Aricie moreover also offer opportunities for great spectacle, another vital component of Baroque opera and Glyndebourne is traditionally good at that. The 2013 production does indeed offer considerable spectacle, and if its relevance is not always clear it is at least in tune with the tone and the spirit of the work and the musical interpretation.

Questions about the relevance of Jonathan Kent's staging are sure to arise however in the Prologue. In Hippolyte et Aricie, it's a typically Baroque one that has opposing deities in dispute with one another in a way that is to have a profound affect on ordinary mortals (and some semi-deities) over the course of the subsequent drama. Quite why this takes place inside a giant fridge is hard to fathom and likely to come as a bit of a shock to the bewildered viewer, but there's no question that it fully lives up to the requirement to provide wonderful spectacle. It looks marvellous and is certainly inventive as cauliflower clouds hover over the stage, a lemon slice becomes the sun, and broccoli stalks descend to turn into trees. It's at least appropriate to characterise the icy detachment of the goddess Diana by confining her to the ice-box, while a fiery Cupid, whose influence is to cause such havoc to Diana's followers and worshippers, hatches out of an egg - but what on earth are the gods doing in a fridge in the first place?

Well, in addition to being a classical text, Hippolyte et Aricie is - as this production emphasises in its own very stylised way - very much a domestic drama, a point emphasised when the Three Fates warn Theseus at the end of Act II that he will escape from the Underworld only to find Hell at home. Hell as it happens is depicted cleverly and imaginatively here in Paul Brown's amazing designs as existing at the back of the very same fridge where the gods reside, and if you've ever ventured behind your own kitchen, you'll know how accurate an analogy that is. The Fates' prediction of "domestic Hell" proves to be true for the son of Neptune, who returns to find that his wife Phaedre, believing Theseus dead (usually a requirement for access to the Underworld), has fallen in love with his son Hippolytus. Mythological it might be and inspired by the actions and whims of the immortals, but Cupid has indeed brought disharmony into the formerly very secure, cool and detached "innocent" world of Diana's followers and their blood sacrifices. The fall-out is very real and domestic, Phaedre bemoaning that she is "unable to kill this detestable love" for her stepson.

What's missing of course is harmony between the Gods and, thereby, between ordinary mortals. Neptune appeals to Pluto for the release of Theseus from the Underworld in Act II saying that "the well-being of the universe depends on your common harmony", but the balance has been disturbed by Cupid's intervention, inspiring Hippolytus to love Aricia, in the process incurring Phaedre's jealousy and suppressed feelings for Hippolytus. As an opera, in its structure and in its musical arrangements as well as in its subject, Hippolyte et Aricie also operates very much on this notion of harmony and the balancing of elements, and Rameau - as academic a composer as he might be - makes the case not only structurally and harmonically, but with a sensibility for the beauty of such imperfect human sentiments in the sphere of what makes them aspire to be gods.

William Christie fully explores all the melodic and harmonic richness of what Rameau expresses so brilliantly in the musical arrangements, but also balances this with the requirements of the singing. Spectacle ("le merveilleux") and entertainment ("divertissement") are other factors that count towards this balance and harmony of all the elements, and that's all there too in the gorgeous but dramatically pointless ballet interludes and in the big and smaller details of the production design. The fridge in the Prologue is followed by a more traditional scene in the forests for the followers of Diana that nonetheless reflects the horrors (hanging deer, corpses dragged across the stage, copious blood) of the sacrifices. The Hell behind the fridge meanwhile has dancing flies, infernal devices in the shape of power units, with all sorts of horrible gunk and creatures caught up in the extractor grille.

As well as being visually inventive and thematically attuned to the work, the sets also demonstrate good storytelling technique that is accessible and allows the audience to better engage with a work that what could otherwise appear rather dry and fusty. Some elements however work better than others, so while it's meaningful to have the home of Theseus and Phaedre look like a tastefully-decorated suburban semi-detached (shown in cutaway cross-section in a manner reminiscent of Katie Mitchell's designs for Written on Skin), you miss out on the traditonal spectacle of Neptune's grand entrance by reflecting it through a living-room fish tank. The later acts might not always find imagery as strong the fire and ice of the earlier acts - Act V taking place in a mortuary - but there is some attempt to retain a dramatic narrative in the ballet sequences, and the singing performances too are strong enough to take up the lack of drive in the latter half of the work. 

Several of the best performers seen in the Paris production reprise their roles here to even more dazzling effect, while those that have been changed are often just as fine if not better in the roles. That means we not only have the excellent Stéphane Degout as Theseus, but we also have the simply stunning Sarah Connolly again in the role of Phaedre. In addition to being merely a formidable presence, as she was in Paris, Christie's arrangements and Connolly's performance also manages to elicit some sympathy for her character's predicament. As Hippolytus, Ed Lyons is perfect for the intentions of this production, his voice delicate but also strong enough to be capable of matching and standing up to Connolly/Phaedra. If he was weaker, this wouldn't work half as well. Christiane Karg however just didn't work for me as Aricia. It can be somewhat of a bland role, but Karg didn't really have anything to enliven it here. Ana Quintans was a bright Cupid however, François Lis majestic as Pluto, Neptune and Jupiter, and Katherine Watson an icily aloof Diana.

On Blu-ray, this Hippolyte et Aricie looks and sounds every bit as spectacular as the production itself, with a bold colourful video transfer of the performance and crystal clear sound mixes in LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1. Aside from the Cast Gallery, there's only one extra feature on the disc, a fifteen-minute making of that covers all aspects of the production, interviewing Christie and Kent, but takes a particular interest into Paul Brown's unusual costume and set designs. The disc is BD50, region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.

Pfitzner - Palestrina

Hans Pfitzner - Palestrina

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2009

Simone Young, Christian Stückl, Christopher Ventris, Peter Rose, Michael Volle, John Daszak, Roland Bracht, Falk Struckmann, Christiane Karg, Stephen Humes, Kenneth Robertson, Christian Rieger, Wolfgang Köch, Ulrich Reß, Kevin Conners, Alfred Kuhn, Claudia Mahnke

EuroArts - Blu-ray

Although its setting is in the sixteenth century, Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina is a work that is very much defined by the time of its own creation. It's consequently something of a curiosity in that it celebrates the spirit of creativity and progression of music as an artform through one of its earliest innovators, yet in many ways its a very conservative work that attempts to preserve the turn-of the 20th century post-Wagernian Romantic style in the face of the threat of what Pfitzner saw as the decadent experiments of Schoenberg, Strauss (in Salome and Elektra), Berg and Hindemith. Time and history haven't been kind then to Pfitzner with his legacy being associated with Nazi sympathising and anti-semitism, but the scale and force of the work itself - a grand epic that seems to attempt to steamroller over and crush all dissenting voices - is impressive nonetheless.

Impressive perhaps, beautifully orchestrated and quite unlike anything else out there (with the exception perhaps of some thematic connections with Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), but Palestrina could also be considered rather long-winded, dramatically limited and somewhat esoteric in its subject matter. It's set in 1563, around the time that the Council of Trent is being brought to a conclusion in Rome, where archbishops and cardinals from all around the world have been gathered together to hammer out the finer details of reform of the Catholic Church. One of the many important questions to be considered is the nature of the music to be used in Masses and whether it should adhere to the Gregorian model or embrace polyphony.

It may not seem like an important matter, but the patronage of the Church was undoubtedly important in the commissioning of new music in these early years, and it would exert great influence over its form and construction. In Pfitzner's opera, the charge of this matter has been given over to Cardinal Borromeo, who is convinced that the composer Pierluigi Palestrina, currently the Choirmaster at the Santa Maria Maggiore, is capable of providing the kind of polyphonic Mass music that Pope Pius IV hopes will win over the Council and "give meaning to the age". Palestrina however has long been out of favour since he married and thereby lost the papal patronage, but he's also a broken man who hasn't been able to write a note of music since the death of his wife. Inspired by past masters and angels, Palestrina composes his Mass in a single feverish night.

Much of what Pfitzner has to say about the nature of music, creativity, inspiration and composition (he also wrote the libretto for the opera himself) is all there in Palestrina's remarkable first Act. Through contrasting Palestrina with Silla, a pupil of the old composer who wants to go to Florence to write "experimental" music, Pfitzner considers the nature of the composer as an artist who stands above the people and follows his own muse, or as one who writes music for the public, for the people, for it to contribute to and be part of "the universal whole". Aside from academic matters, the weight of history and divine inspiration, Pfitzner is also content to fictionalise elements of Palestrina's life (his wife had not died at the time of the composition of his Mass for the Council of Trent in 1563), in order to consider the question of the human input and the heavy burdens of the composer.

All the marvel of the work, its intent and brilliance of expression, is there in this first Act which culminates with the marvellous ensemble of the Past Masters and choirs of angels that drive and herald the composition of a masterpiece, and it's brought spectacularly to life in this rare 2009 production of the work at the Nationaltheater in Munich by the Bavarian State Opera. Pfitzner was a Munich composer and it's apparent that no-one knows better how to deal with the complexity, contradictions, controversy and conservatism of Pfitzner than the Bayerische Staatsoper. With roots in the theatre and in the Passion plays at Oberammergau rather than in opera, Christian Stückl is a bit of a gamble as a director, but he finds some marvellous ways to illustrate and illuminates the work without straying too far into either literalism or symbolism.

The stage looks highly stylised though the bold use of bright, striking, almost luminous colours - black and white, cardinal pink and angel green - but in reality it's a relatively simple reflection and representation of the subject on an earthly level as well as on a spiritual level. With such bold simple statements, it makes the dramatic monotony of Act II's nit-picking disputes and rivalries between the cardinals and archbishops still look staggeringly impressive simply through the sheer population of the stage by the singers in these fine, bright costumes, and, of course, through the force of the singing and the writing for a cast of almost entirely male Wagnerian singers. The third Act, where Palestrina's music is accepted and praised, ensuring his release from prison, would be almost anti-climatic after all this were the use of colours and lighting not likewise complementary to the work.

In terms of performance, Simone Young's conducting of the orchestra might not have the grand Romantic sweep that the music of Palestrina calls for, but there's a recognition of the human character in the music here with its sorrowful undercurrents, and it's brought out well with good attention to individual instruments and expression. The large cast assembled here contain some of the best German Wagner and Strauss singers around at the moment - Christopher Ventris and Michael Volle in particular standing out in the demanding roles of Palestrina and Morone - all of them combining that necessary heft with lyrical beauty with all the necessary stamina required. Falk Struckmann is also notable for his Borromeo and Christiane Karg is impressive in range and lyrical expression as Palestrina's son Ighino.

Palestrina may not be the be-all-and-end-all that Pfitzner aspired it to be - other than perhaps inadvertently turning out to be one of the final words on a dying operatic legacy left by Wagner - but it's a fascinating and extraordinary work nonetheless, particularly in this fine production. It's looks every bit as impressive as it should in the Blu-ray's HD transfer and it sounds marvellous also in the high-resolution PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.0 audio tracks. The Blu-ray also includes a 10-minute 'Making of', which consists of interviews and behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage.