Jules Massenet - Cendrillon
Glyndebourne 2019
John Wilson, Fiona Shaw, Danielle de Niese, Kate Lindsey, Lionel Lhote, Nina Minasyan, Agnes Zwierko, Eduarda Melo, Julie Pasturaud, Romanas Kudriašovas, Anthony Osborne, Michael Wallace, Adam Marsden
Opus Arte - Blu ray
There are many variations of the Cinderella fairy-tale, each of them with their own twist on the meaning or moral of the story. Composed by Massenet based on the version by Charles Perrault, this Cendrillon inevitably has something of a French flavour but the essential qualities of the subject remain the same and, if handled well, can still be adapted to apply to contemporary matters. Fiona Shaw's production for Glyndebourne makes a fine effort towards achieving that. Whether you can say that Massenet's music still has anything new to say to a modern audience is debatable but conducted here by John Wilson it's certainly light and entertaining, in a very French kind of way.
Differences in the family dynamic can often determine the treatment of the subject and Massenet version varies a little from the operatic treatments of Rossini's La Cenerentola and Pauline Viardot's Cendrillon. Here Cinderella or Cendrillon is called Lucette and her father is not a bad or cruel man. Pandolfe is a widower who feels sorry for his daughter and how she is mistreated by his new wife Madame de la Haltière and her stepsisters who delight in spending his money while his own daughter dresses in rags and is treated like a maid. They are particularly extravagant at the moment as they are on their way to the royal court for a special occasion and well, you usually can pick up the rest of the story from that point.
There's a good balance between modernisation and classical fairy-tale glamour in Fiona Shaw's Glyndebourne production that captures some contemporary relevance as well as the work's comic possibilities. Playing on the consumerist angle, it gets across the moral that expensive clothes, beauty products and the fake glamour loved by Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters are no substitute for the true quality of a beautiful soul. The comedy is all there to be found in the exaggerated characters, and the most colourful character here in Massenet's opera is not so much the traditional cruel stepsisters but Madame de la Haltière, superbly played up here by Agnes Zwierko.
Shaw also plays on the idea of Cendrillon as Papillon. The story is indeed about transformation, and like a butterfly the change in Cinderella comes from within. It's inspired by nature, the stars and the skies, the fairy godmother using moths, midges, honeybees and dragonflies, ladybirds and glowworms, tulips and jasmine to work her magic. Lucette/Cendrillon is a flower ready to bloom. Here she is wrapped in a cocoon before being transformed into an eye-catching beauty to attract the Prince. But she also has to remain true to her better nature; there's to be no staying out late or overnight no matter how much she is enjoying her newfound self. It's this inner purity that will win hearts more than simple superficial attraction.
What's good and original about Massenet's version of Cendrillon comes in Act II where the Prince takes centre stage and has much more of a role and personality than simply being the male love interest. He's someone who is unable to love, feels his despair deeply, seeking a fleeting image or ideal. Even then, making Prince Charming three-dimensionally human is still a challenge and Shaw perhaps tries to be a little bit overly clever by staging this characterisation of the Prince as a projection of Cinderella's. She lies sleeping at the front of the stage while her dream shadow drifts into the Prince's bedroom (in her 'rags' once again rather than in beautiful dress) and 'directs' the drama.
This makes the story seem more like a romantic fantasy, which is fair enough, for what else is Cinderella at heart as we traditionally know it but a romantic fantasy? Musically a romantic fantasy is as deep as Massenet takes it anyway, for the scene at the royal court is of a more opéra-comique lightness with choruses and ballets - Massenet unable to resist the opportunity to score large sections of dance music for the ball - but there are no particularly wonderful or memorable melodies. Cendrillon is workman-like Massenet (or slightly better) rather than the inspired and exotic Massenet of Werther, Don Quixote or Thaïs. Beautiful certainly, lovely arrangements and dramatic purpose, but not in any way that hints at anything deeper or more challenging. Not that it should, it's Cinderella, and it's primary purpose is to capture the fairy tale character, and it does that at least as well as Rimsky-Korsakov, which is certainly not faint praise.
Fiona Shaw however has another trick up her sleeve. More than just modernising for the sake of it with mobile phones and late night takeaways after the party at the palace - all of which are amusing and relatable - Shaw's idea is to make this romantic fantasy of Cinderella's a projection of her confused same-sex feelings about the family's maid. That's not just a modernism for the sake of diversity but a genuine way of dealing with the reality of Cinderella's feelings of being a victim of mistreatment, isolation and social exclusion, of not understanding how to deal with who she is and unsure how that fits into the adult world. I think it successfully taps into this deeper side of Cinderella without imposing on the entertainment, the fairy tale element or Massenet's opera. Playing on the role of Prince Charming being sung by a female and also apparently struggling with finding a partner, it even manages to make this a double Cinderella story.
It takes a little bit of smoke and mirrors - quite literally - to make this fit into the narrative and the production design contributes enormously and impressively with hologram-like box mirror projections of Cinderella that are then turned into a digital clock countdown at the approach of midnight. It does a great job of modernising the story while remaining true to the underlying sentiments and retaining the magic of the fairy tale.
The performances certainly help. Danielle de Niese is understandably Glyndebourne's first choice soprano for the lighter comic and bel canto works and I think she fares better in this lighter repertoire without the challenge of high coloratura, bringing charm to the role of Cendrillon. There's still a little unsteadiness in places, which is highlighted more by the soaring qualities of the ever impressive Kate Lindsay as Prince Charming. Lionel Lhote and Agnes Zwierko are both excellent, as are the stepsisters Eduarda Melo and Julie Pasturaud, even though they have a lesser role here than more traditional or pantomime versions of Cinderella. Nina Minasyan carries off the role of the Fairy Godmother well.
Technically this is another superb High Definition Blu-ray release from Opus Arte. The transfer does justice to the detail and colouration of the production, even in the darker forest scenes of Act III. There's a little bit of a curious digital wobble at the start of Act IV Scene II, but it's an isolated and barely noticeable glitch. The Hi-Res and lossless audio tracks are just glorious, warmly toned and detailed with individual instruments standing out and real impact in the fuller orchestrated sections. It certainly shows where the qualities of Massenet's score are here. There are no extra features but the enclosed booklet contains a synopsis and an interview with Fiona Shaw on her thoughts on the opera and the fairy-tale.
Links: Glyndebourne
Luigi Cherubini - Medea
Wexford Festival Opera, 2017
Stephen Barlow, Fiona Shaw, Lise Davidsen, Ruth Iniesta, Raffaella Lupinacci, Sergey Romanovsky, Adam Lau
National Opera House, Wexford - 31 October 2017
There's one essential element that you need for a performance of Cherubini's Medea and it's a fairly obvious one. No, it's not Maria Callas, but you're on the right track; it needs a character with the fire and personality that Maria Callas was capable of bringing to one of the most challenging roles in opera - or theatre, for that matter. There aren't too many Maria Callases around obviously, which might be one of the reasons why Cherubini's opera isn't performed more often these days, but there's no question that the Wexford Festival have found a great Medea in Lise Davidsen.
Finding a singer capable of harnessing the forces and challenges of this particular role is not however the only element that is essential to putting on a successful Medea, and there are other reasons why the opera is not performed very often. There are questions over which version to go with (French or Italian? The opéra-comique version with passages of spoken dialogue or the musical interpolations for the recitative provided by Franz Lachner for a German version of the work?). There's also the nature of the Classical opera and its fashionability, and Cherubini has never really been fashionable, not even in his own time.
All of those issues are well-addressed by Stephen Barlow, who conducts a magnificent account of the Italian version with Lachner recitatives at Wexford, and it truly reveals the merits of the work. There's no overblown Romanticism, but rather the restrained and measured elegance of the Classical tradition is adhered to; a sense of order in the music however that feels constantly threatened by the actions of its principal character. The music carries within it a hint of that menace, tying it to the dominant nature of the role that Medea exerts on the piece, her efforts to maintain control over her actions and her life always seeming to be in danger of giving in to her darker nature and spilling over into horrible violence.
Finding a way to meaningfully draw out that aspect of the work also seems to inform Fiona Shaw's approach to the direction. She takes into consideration that Cherubini composed the opera in 1797, with the horrors and dark violence of the French revolution would undoubtedly found its way into the composition. Certainly there are parallels to be drawn towards violence being inflicted on an unsuspecting royal family, but as an actress who has played this role on the stage, Shaw looks beyond that and tries to examine where exactly such murderous thoughts and intent might have derived from. She finds that in the references in Medea's murder of her own brother to help Jason steal the Golden Fleece and that idea is woven into the production. Violence begets violence, as the Greek classics often warn us, and it's hard to argue with how this element in presented here.
The overture hints at the sins of the mother being visited upon the children of the next generation. The Wexford production opens with the children of Medea playing as they make the sea crossing to Corinth, but the storms left behind on Colchis are still present with them in the figure of Medea's brother who has a silent physical presence here. It's this more than any classical references that are important, and the nature of this corruption of the soul should still have relevance today. It doesn't necessarily have to be spelled out in terms of contemporary political topicality, but there is certainly room for that if the audience want to apply it to the world around them.
Shaw's production at least makes a more open interpretation possible by placing the action of the drama in a more contemporary setting. Act I sees Glaucis and her ladies working out at the gym, getting into shape for her forthcoming wedding to Jason. The arrival of Medea then is in marked contrast to this scene, bringing an unwelcome dose of reality into the picture. "Hey, Jason - what about those promises you made to me? What about the kids? What about the brother I killed just so that you could give the Golden Fleece as a wedding present to your new bride?"
Heavily paraphrased by me, that is nonetheless the import of Medea's words, and the contemporary setting just hits home the human sense of betrayal that Medea feels. But it's not just a matter of reducing classical mythology down to the level of a domestic dispute, and Shaw's production delves deeper into those archetypal themes with the symbolism of the sea, the waves, an island - all of it suggesting isolation, raging emotions, deep pain and urges towards violence that result in Medea's descent into madness.
The singing is fully up to the demands of the work and the intent of the production, showing just what Cherubini's opera has to offer. Lise Davidsen, in casual jeans and jumper, doesn't look at all like a demented enchantress, but that's the point. You don't know what will trigger Medea's reactions, but if those buttons are continually pushed, you will know all about it. You'll also know it from Davidsen's delivery, which is just phenomenal. It's not just that Davidsen meets the technical demands of the role, but she really does make it seem like Medea is on a hair-trigger, treading a line between outrage and entreaty, so that when she does finally explode and kill her children, it almost seems proportionate. And when it comes to it, the size of that voice does as much damage as Medea does to the gym equipment.
Ruth Iniesta also has a strong voice as Glauce, but it felt a bit overpowering, not quite as refined and controlled as Davidsen and almost too big for the O'Reilly Theatre. Raffaella Lupinacci made a terrific impression as Neris with some lovely lyrical singing. Sergey Romanovsky couldn't be faulted as Jason and his characterisation was also good, fitting in well with the production. While you can never have any real sympathy for Jason, his fault here is not so much betrayal and serial infidelity (as it can be in other opera versions of this story), but rather he is undone by his own weakness and misjudgement of Medea. There needs to be some kind of understanding of his position in order for the loss he suffers as a consequence to be utterly devastating, and in combination with Fiona Shaw's direction and Stephen Barlow's conducting - not to mention some impressive work from the orchestra and the chorus - the full force of Cherubini's Medea is felt by the time we get to that conclusion.
Links: Wexford Festival Opera
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2013
Valery Gergiev, Deborah Warner, Fiona Shaw, Anna Netrebko, Mariusz Kwiecień, Oksana Volkova, Piotr Beczala, Elena Zaremba, Larissa Diadkova, John Graham-Hall, Alexei Tanovitski, David Crawford, Richard Bernstein
The Met: Live in HD - 5th October 2013
No matter how many times the story is told, no matter how simple that story seems to be on the surface, there always seems to be something new you can draw out of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, a fact that testifies to its reputation as being a supreme work of art. The artistry of the opera was in evidence in some aspects of the Met's new 2013 production season opener - broadcast live in HD to cinemas across the world - but in others it didn't quite live up to the high expectations we've come to expect from Tchaikovsky's masterpiece or the strengths in it that have been recognised in other recent productions.
Musically, everything was in place with Valery Gergiev drawing a muscular performance out of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, sensitive to the distinctly Russian rhythms and tones of the work. Grandly romantic and at the same time intimate, any sense of sentimentality or wishy-washiness would be fatal to the work (particularly in this production), but there wasn't a trace of it here. As if to emphasise this robust performance, the Met's chorus were also in fine voice, bringing their presence to bear on each of the scenes where they appear, alerting the viewer to the fact that they are there for more than just mere decoration, but are an integral part of the Russian character of the work and the society.
What was also apparent when conducted in this way is how much the characters develop throughout Eugene Onegin and how the story - which on the surface is simple enough - develops in accordance with the growth of each of the characters. Circumstances force each of the main characters - Tatiana, Onegin and Lenski - to reflect on their situation at various points, principally in their monologues, which they come out from as different people. For Tatiana, it's the crushing humiliation of Onegin's response to her love letter in Act I, for Lenski it's the reflection on the golden days of his youth as he faces death in a duel in Act II, and for Onegin it all comes much too late in Act III. In a very Russian way however, all of the characters feel compelled to play out their fates, Tatiana as much as Onegin, already aware as soon as she places pen to paper that she's writing her future one way or the other.
Like the characters, the opera also grows and accumulates greater force, meaning and significance as it reaches each of those points and builds towards its devastating conclusion. Unfortunately, the Met's production by Deborah Warner, directed here by Fiona Shaw, seemed determined to undercut each of those important three act moments with ill-advised physical contact between the characters, when they should really be alone in their own world. Act I bewilderingly ended with Onegin kissing Tatiana after rejecting her, Act II featured an unlikely brotherly embrace between the two combatants of a duel of honour, and Act III climaxed with a passionately reciprocated kiss from Tatiana after she deals the defeated Onegin his fatal blow. No, no and no. None of it made any sense in terms of the drama or in terms of what the music is expressing.
Aside from these appalling missteps, there wasn't much to recommend in the production as a whole either. Tom Pye's sets were functional and representational of the Larin estate and Gremin ballroom in St Petersberg. The Polonaise and the Ecossaise that have been put to good use in other productions as connecting interludes for the passage of years between the duel scene and Onegin's return many years later to St Petersberg, were wasted here as mere background dance music to the ball in Act III. Compared to recent productions of the opera from Kasper Holten's dancers at the Royal Opera House, Stefan Herheim's huge tapestry of Russian life in the Amsterdam production, Krzysztof Warlikowski's queer reading of the work for Munich or indeed the Met's previous version employing Robert Carsen's seasonal light-box, this was a very drab and uninspired production that had neither the epic qualities nor the intimacy that the work should achieve.
With some minor or perhaps not so minor reservations, the singing however almost made it all worthwhile. It would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that the Met's opening production was almost entirely constructed to be a showpiece (yet again) for Anna Netrebko, and if the production didn't entirely live up to expectations, the same can't be said about Netrebko. The Russian soprano has been taking some good advice, or perhaps just letting her own voice tell her when it was ready to leave behind the bel canto roles and start to tackle some of the darker dramatic repertoire. The combination of a youthful innocent appearance with maturity of voice and expression for Tatiana is a difficult balance to achieve in one singer but Anna Netrebko has it all in looks, in voice and in acting ability, her burnished dark timbre soaring through those intensely dramatic moments with the sincerity of feeling that the role needs.
Despite the billing, this was no diva star-turn either, and Netrebko gave as much in her performance to all those sharing the stage with her. Some of them however weren't quite up to her stature, and unfortunately for the success of the production as a whole, that includes Mariusz Kwiecień's Onegin. There was little wrong with his singing, Kwiecień clearly a strong performer who is more than capable for the role, but he just didn't have the personality or character to be an Onegin opposite Anna Netrebko. I don't think the confused direction did him any favours either. Elsewhere however, the singing performances were just superb. Piotr Beczala is becoming a house favourite at the Met, and deservedly so. Whether he has great personality of his own or not, he's a fine singer in the classic tenor mould and capable of great beauty in his expression, bringing the necessary quality to those key emotional moments and famous arias. For Lenski, that's 'Kuda, kuda vï udalilis', and Beczala's delivery of it was heartfelt and beautiful.
Oksana Volkova was an impressive Olga and there were even solid, shining contributions from Elena Zaremba's Madame Larina and from Larissa Diadkova as Filippyevna. John Graham-Hall's Monsieur Triquet was however just bewildering, his role overworked in the context of the opera to little real effect. Sadly, it was this kind of misplaced emphasis that contributed to the imbalance between the work, the music and the dramatic presentation of its real human qualities. Combined with the lack of any real insight or ideas this Eugene Onegin was far from being totally satisfactory, but all the same there was nothing here to take the shine off Anna Netrebko's impressive venture into the new territory and future greatness.
