Dukas - Ariane et Barbe-bleue

Paul Dukas - Ariane et Barbe-bleue

Gran Teatre del Liceu, 2011

Stéphane Denêve, Claus Guth, Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, José van Dam, Patricia Bardon, Gemma Coma-Alabert, Beatriz Jiménez, Elena Copons, Salomé Haller, Alba Valldaura, Pierpaolo Palloni, Xavier Martínez, Dimitar Darlev

Opus Arte

There are many meanings and cautionary messages that can be drawn from the fairytales of Charles Perrault, but 'Bluebeard' - the tale of an aristocratic serial killer who murders his wives - is surely one of the most gruesome and darkly enigmatic.  Even more so in Ariane et Barbe-bleue, the version penned by the Symbolist Belgian dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck, the author of Pelléas et Mélisande, who himself adapted the work - again practically intact - as a libretto for the French composer Paul Dukas.  Comparisons with Debussy's opera - written only five years previously in 1902 - are inevitable, but if the musical influences that Dukas draws from are more evident and less distinctive than Debussy, the turn of the 20th century psychological exploration of the characters through the combination of Maeterlinck's words and Dukas's music is no less endlessly fascinating and deeply compelling.

In Maeterlinck's hands, the perspective of the Bluebeard folktale is rather different from Perrault's, the dark horror and cautionary note of the serial killer storyline rather less prominent than the exploration of the psychology of the female protagonists who seem to willingly submit to the thrall of masculine power and domination through marriage.  The story here does indeed touch on the dark fascination of female curiosity for the violent danger of a male sexuality that simultaneously attracts and repels.  In Maeterlinck's story, Bluebeard's latest bride, Ariane, has given herself in marriage to the notorious aristocrat who is believed to have murdered his previous five wives, but she has not submitted entirely to his authority.  The six silver keys he has given that open doors to wonderful treasures represent the rewards and the boundaries of what Ariane can expect by following the rules set out by the marriage - each of the doors opening to rooms containing amethysts, sapphires, pearls, emeralds, rubies and, finally, diamonds - pure and eternal.  That doesn't stop Ariane however from opening the forbidden door locked by the gold key - "After diamonds, there can only be fire and death", she observes.

The final door inevitably holds the secret to the fate of Bluebeard's previous five wives, and it relates to some extent to a female curiosity based on an urge on the part of Ariane to explore the sexual history of her husband.  While there is some psychological exploration of that impulse that verges on self-destructive, Maeterlinck and Dukas use that drive towards a more progressive feminist view in Ariane et Barbe-bleue.  Ariane may driven by unknown impulses and working to guidelines set out by Bluebeard, but she is not in the thrall of the "enchantment" of her husband in the same way as the other wives.  Their charms - the flaming hair of Mélisande, the delicate arms of Ygraine, the fair shoulders of Bellangère - have been hidden by marriage, whereas Ariane is forceful and secure in asserting her own personality and determined to help the other women achieve their own independence and expression.  Like Pelléas et Mélisande however, Maeterlinck's work and symbolism defies any simple allegorical meaning and one shouldn't be strictly be applied to the exclusion of other resonances and mysteries that lie within it.

Although it is rather more emphatic in highlighting the specifics of the drama and the words than Debussy, Dukas' score also hints at those other meanings and ambiguities.  The references to Debussy's impressionism may be apparent - just as Maeterlinck uses characters from his other works (like Mélisande) for Bluebeard's wives - but Dukas more obviously draws from Wagner and particularly Strauss in Salome (in the scoring of the dark undercurrents in the relationship between Salome and Jochanaan) for more explicit, direct expression.  It's a fascinating and rich musical exploration by Dukas in his only opera work, powerful, beautiful and modern, possibly even more influential than Debussy's unique and inimitable opera, with the associations and female psychology explored here evidently influential on Strauss and Hofmannstahl's fairytale-like Die Frau ohne Schatten and its extraordinary use of female voices is matched only by Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites.

Considering the psychological nature of the work and the necessity of allowing its openness, ambiguity and symbolism to speak for itself, it's perhaps not surprising that director Claus Guth doesn't follow the libretto too literally.  He avoids what would now be considered clichéd imagery in the opening scene of mobs of angry townspeople bearing pitchforks and firebrands, as the latest young bride seems to go willingly to her doom in Bluebeard's castle.  The castle here is nothing more than a modern suburban residence, but it's what it represents that is important, and evidently the house is Bluebeard himself and it's the uncomfortable and dangerous nature of the masculinity that Ariane examines, challenges and delves into, not only opening doors, but breaking through the surface of the floor to the horrors that lie underneath.  The set design works well in this respect, keeping the visuals clean, simple and symbolic, allowing the singers the necessary space to express the layers of meaning that lie within Maeterlinck's libretto and Dukas' seething score.

Much of the power of the work is indeed delivered through the scoring for powerful mezzo-soprano and contralto female voices and this cast proves to be highly effective in conveying its force.  Ariane requires a strong Wagnerian soprano to express her character's inner strength of personality and purposefulness and Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet's rich tone is commanding and persuasive, yet sensitive to the shimmering suggestion of the score.  She is well supported by an equally strong and wonderfully measured Patricia Bardon as the nurse, but all of the female cast here are impressive here as the other wives, although Gemma Coma-Alabert's fiery Sélysette is the only one with a significant role.  As the male at the centre of the work, Bluebeard is evidently an important role in Ariane et Barbe-bleue, even if the singing is limited to only a few lines.  José van Dam - who has mostly retired from big-scale stage productions - is no longer in possession of a voice as commanding as it once was, but there's consequently a vulnerability as well as a necessary strength of personality here that puts an interesting spin on his Barbe-bleue.

This is an extremely rare work but one that deserves to be better known, and - appearing for the first time on either DVD or Blu-ray - this is a marvellous production of a fascinating work, emphatically delivered with force and sensitivity by the orchestra of the Liceu under Stéphane Denêve.  The quality of the Blu-ray's HD image and high resolution sound mixes ensures that the performance is given the best possible presentation.  I personally found the surround DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mix a little too open, and that it suited the more direct stereo PCM mix better, with the full detail of the orchestration clearer through headphones.  Other than a Cast Gallery, there are no extra features on the disc, but the booklet contains a good essay by Gavin Plumley, whose reading of Ariane striking out towards the 20th century while the others refuse to take the freedom offered is a good one, and there's a full, detailed synopsis.  The BD is all-region compatible with subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Japanese and Korean.

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.

Mozart - Don Giovanni (Joseph Losey, 1979)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni

Lorin Maazel, Joseph Losey, Ruggero Raimondi, José van Dam, Edda Moser, John Macurdy, Kenneth Riegel, Teresa Berganza, Malcolm King, Kiri Te Kanawa

Second Sight DVD

Joseph Losey’s 1979 screen version of Mozart and da Ponte’s opera was a production beset with difficulties. Undertaken as a commission, Losey saw it as an opportunity to make a classic work and thrilling story more accessible by taking it out of the opera house and bringing it to a new audience at the cinema, with the advantages of the newly developed Dolby Stereo Surround process for the score. And take it out of the opera house is quite literally what Losey did, using world class opera performers and filming Don Giovanni in real Venetian locations. The intentions were good, but the results were never entirely satisfactory, either from a technical or artistic viewpoint, but recently restored by Gaumont and brought to DVD in the UK by Second Sight in a lavish 3-disc set with a DTS soundtrack, the qualities of Losey’s version of Mozart’s dark masterpiece can certainly be better appreciated.

The exploits of Don Giovanni are renowned the world over, his seduction of ladies across the continent – young and old, ugly and beautiful, rich and poor alike (anything in a skirt really) - constituting an impressive tally (2065 at the last count), one that is dutifully noted and recorded by his valet Leporello (José van Dam). On one particular night however, Don Giovanni (Ruggero Raimondi) takes his libertine ways a little too far, slipping into the room of Donna Anna (Edda Moser) for an attempted seduction, but in his haste to remain anonymous and beat a hasty retreat, he kills her father, Il Commendatore (John Macurdy), who has arrived to defend her honour. Donna Anna is devastated by what has occurred and calls on her fiancé Don Ottavio (Kenneth Riegel), in the manner of any good dramatic opera, to avenge his blood.

They’ll have to move quickly to keep up with Don Giovanni however, who has quickly moved on to his next conquest – a young peasant girl named Zerlina (Teresa Berganza), who he rakishly intends to seduce on the eve of her marriage to Masetto (Malcolm King). They find an ally however in the form of Donna Elvira (Kiri Te Kanawa), another woman who has fallen victim to his charms only to be immediately abandoned after their wedding. Discovering that Don Giovanni is up to his old tricks, she does everything in her power to save other women from a similar fate. Pursued on all sides – Masetto is none too pleased with the behaviour of the cavalier either – Don Giovanni’s wicked past is about to catch up with him.

Mozart’s darkest opera, based on a long literary tradition going back to Tirso de Molina, is a subject with a fascinating variety of social and behavioural issues, with enough complex themes and contradictory elements to provide rich ground for any director to work with (it was recently effectively updated into a modern setting for the Paris Opéra by the filmmaker Michael Haneke under the opera’s original title - Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni). Joseph Losey’s film version however is rather traditional in its period setting and, barring the superb use of original locations, is also somewhat unimaginative in its staging. Certainly, the conditions of the filming present a number of difficulties, using world class opera singers, taking them away from the familiar surroundings of a opera stage and subjecting them to a cinematic stop-start form of performance very different from what they are used to, one that is dependent upon the setting up of technical equipment and outdoor weather conditions. Moreover, the singers have to concentrate on lip-syncing to already recorded performances, since dragging the orchestra of the Opéra de Paris around the locations for the length of the production for a live recording is completely unfeasible.

Even despite the evident technical constraints however, there is little evidence of Losey placing any kind of personal stamp or interpretation on the material. Technically, it is often brilliant – the use of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda Venetian mansion provides a perfect, stunning backdrop for the performances, and Losey certainly manages to direct and stage the opera’s female characters - whose role is so vital to the dynamic of the piece - extremely well. The scene where Donna Anna recognises the murderer of her father is chilling - image, tone and performance coming together in perfect harmony. Her character is balanced with the resigned, but determined Donna Elvira, who believes despite all evidence that Don Giovanni’s salvation can be still somehow be attained, and the flighty and independent Zerlina, who believes she can handle the cavalier (and her husband Masetto) on her own terms. The principal male characters are less well defined, with surprisingly little evidence of the black humour, complicity and even the latent homosexuality that can be drawn from the relationship between Don Giovanni and his valet Leporello. The use of real opera singers doesn’t help make a successful transition from stage to screen either. The performers are all fine actors, and the female performances are often exceptional, but they remain stage performances, prone to mannerisms and exaggeration - the worst offender being Masetto, who overacts dreadfully - which don’t work well or at all naturally on the screen.

All is not lost however. The locations are well used, and Mozart and da Ponte’s opera is so rich, musically, lyrically and thematically that even a straightforward traditional depiction of its power play, sexual politics and thrilling revenge story make the film an often thrilling romp, with Ruggero Raimondi a fine Don Giovanni. And in terms of the opera itself, there is certainly much to admire in the performances of the singers and things to discover in the minor tweaking in the instrumentation of Mozart’s brooding, playful and lyrical music score. While the staging is period, traditional and certainly operatic in dramatic terms, Losey does manage to impose a tone on the piece with the presence of a “black valet” in a non-singing role. This figure does manage to bring some sense of ambiguity to the proceedings, but his impassive presence is more that of an impartial spectator, mournful but resigned to inevitable downfall and death of his master, but even this is something that is already implicit within the music, the libretto and most obviously within the nature of Don Giovanni himself.

DVD
Don Giovanni is released in the UK by Second Sight as a 3-disc set. The film is spread across two dual-layer discs separating the opera with a natural division between Act 1 and Act 2. The extra features are contained on a third dual-layer disc. The set is in PAL format, and is encoded for Region 2.

Video
The extra features go into quite a bit of detail on the restoration and remastering of the audio track, but there is no mention of how much work went into cleaning-up the image quality. On the evidence of what you can see however, there must have been quite a bit of work done for the image to look as impressive as it does here, although some elements of the transfer are less than perfect. The print itself looks remarkably clear, free from even the smallest mark or dustspot. The original 1.66:1 aspect ratio is retained and presented with anamorphic enhancement, transferred progressively. As a result, the image is remarkably stable and free from any brightness flicker whatsoever, to such an extent that in places the film looks as if it had been shot yesterday in Digital High Definition.

Such an appearance does give the impression that the image has been heavily filtered and indeed, contrast is not strong, with the image tending towards brightness, dulled colours and flattened blacks, making the film look like it is permanently in the shadow of dusk. Skin tones, often a good indicator of the correctness of colouration, look slightly off and lacking fine detail, though the performers are certainly heavily made-up in line with the period. Close-ups however reveal a rainbow cross-colouration effect. There are some other minor issues with the digital transfer, with some stepping in lines caused by compression and edge-enhancement. Surprisingly, considering that the film is spread across 2 dual-layer discs, the full capacity of the discs hasn’t been taken advantage of, Disc One taking up 6.08GB and Disc Two only 5.64GB. Overall however, the transfer is stable, detail is good and the print itself is just about flawless.

Audio
Clearly the most important aspect in an opera film is to get the music right, and in this area it’s hard to find fault. It clearly wasn’t an easy task, since Losey and Raimondi were never happy with the original mix provided by a Dolby Stereo system still in its early stages of development. An enormous amount of work however has gone into finding and restoring the original 16-track master, and the results speak for themselves. Reworked by the original sound engineers, the new DTS 5.1 96/24 mix is astonishingly good, achieving a wonderfully warm rounded tone with good definition in the low-frequency range, while remaining stable and free from distortion on the higher end. Much of the recitative was done on location and still suffers slightly from the reverb of the original surroundings, but has been remixed and improved as much as possible to fit in with the pre-recorded elements. While the music and singing obviously dominates, the use of surround effects is also well distributed, not making the surrounds overly busy, but blending in well with the natural ambience.

All of this wouldn’t be worth the effort if the sound was not pitch corrected to allow for the 4% PAL speed-up issues when transferring the elements to DVD for home viewing, but thankfully and essentially, that seems to have been done at least for both the DTS mix and for the new remastered Dolby Digital Surround score. The much-maligned original Dolby Digital Surround mix is also included, but is of little value other than for comparison to the thundering DTS mix, which is really in a different league altogether. It’s hard to imagine how the original elements could be made to sound much better than this.

Subtitles
The opera is sung in the original Italian, with optional English subtitles provided in a clear white font. The subtitles are fine and do a reasonable job of translating the libretto.

Extras
About Don Giovanni (26:17)
An archive French television documentary covers the making of the film in quite a bit of detail. Losey and a narrator guide the viewer through the locations and the reasoning behind the filming choices made. There is extensive footage of the director on set, shooting scenes and numerous retakes.

Losey and Don Giovanni (15:21)
Subtitled “a thematic analysis by Michel Ciment”, the French film critic for Positif covers the history, and reputation of Losey from a French perspective and examines the revolutionary themes in Don Giovanni which he feels mirror Losey’s own circumstances to some extent and are recurrent in the director’s work.

The Sound Odyssey 1978 – 2006 (41:19)
The most detailed documentary among the extra features covers the extensive work that went into recovering and restoring the original masters as closely as they could be to the intention Losey had but was unable to achieve with the technology of the time. At the same time, there is a desire to correct original errors and improve on the original through remixing. The restoration process - literally “baking” the original masters - is explained in great detail, making this a fascinating feature, one that makes the achievement of the restoration team even more admirable.

Trailer (3:46)
The original trailer makes use of selected striking scenes from the film and is set to the opera’s overture, and is very effective.

Overall
Joseph Losey’s screen movie version of Don Giovanni certainly takes the opera out of the theatre, but doesn’t manage to take the theatricality out of the opera. Other than the use of real locations, there is little imagination shown in the rather stiff period staging, and little invention shown in the interpretation of the characters or themes of the opera. Mozart and da Ponte’s genius remains clearly evident however, and even though traditionally staged, Don Giovanni remains a lively, lyrical, provocative, dynamic and timeless masterpiece. Those qualities are brought out in the astonishing restoration work that has been carried out on the film’s original score for this DVD release, which Second Sight have certainly done justice to in their lavish Deluxe 3-disc set.

This review was originally published in DVD Times/The Digital Fix in 2008