Purcell - Miranda (Paris, 2017)

Henry Purcell - Miranda

L'Opéra Comique, Paris - 2017

Raphaël Pichon, Katie Mitchell, Kate Lindsey, Henry Waddington, Katherine Watson, Allan Clayton, Marc Mauillon, Aksel Rykkvin

ARTE Concert - 29 September 2017

You can't argue with the pedigree of the sources involved in the creation of Miranda. It's a 'new' opera based on characters in Shakespeare's The Tempest, set to music written some 300 years ago by Henry Purcell. And yet adapted by Cordelia Lynn Miranda is also a contemporary opera, set in the present day, with a very different outlook brought to the characters, the drama and the music by director Katie Mitchell and Raphaël Pichon.

The idea of creating a new opera out of existing material or adapting pieces to work in a new context isn't a new innovation in opera. Rossini frequently revised and cannibalised his own works in the 19th century - why waste a good tune? - but the practice is older than that. The pasticcio, an opera made of cobbled together 'hits' from other operas, was popular in the 18th century, and the practice was revived a few years ago for the Metropolitan Opera's The Enchanted Island (interestingly, also based around Shakespeare's The Tempest).

Katie Mitchell and Raphaël Pichon have good form in such matters, collaborating to create the sublime Trauernacht for Aix-en-Provence in 2014, an opera assembled out of cantatas by J.S. Bach. Whether it added up to a convincing dramatic piece was debatable, but the choice of music, the coherence and beauty of the sentiments expressed in bringing them together, certainly added up to a work that was greater than the sum of its parts. Even if you saw it as nothing more than a rare opportunity to bring Bach to the opera stage and hear some beautiful performances of his cantatas, there was merit in that alone.

The same unfortunately can't be said for how Shakespeare and Purcell are treated in the semi-opera Miranda. Shakespeare's The Tempest is pretty much jettisoned right from the start, or rather its themes and intent are casually dismissed by Katie Mitchell and librettist Cordelia Lynn in favour of a more feminist reading that sets out to "correct" the patriarchal attitudes and male power play expressed in the original. Miranda, now a young woman with a child, Anthony, has come to the realisation that she's been a victim of child abuse, and she's going to confront her aggressors; her father Prospero and her husband Ferdinand.

I'm not quite sure how the creators of this 'sequel' to the Tempest have come to this particular reading from Shakespeare's play or why they've chosen to ignore the multiplicity of other themes that can be found in the work, but the implication is that we've only heard one side of the story and it's been an exclusively male one. Miranda has had enough of being misrepresented and she's not going to take any more. It's time, she tells us, to tell the true story. She's accuses her father of forcing her into exile, permitting her to be raped by Caliban on the island, marrying her as a child bride and giving birth to a child when she was only 17. "You're an ego maniac", she challenges her father, "You need to shut up. I'm telling the story now".

Well, as you can see, in addition to being a rather dubious rewriting and imposition of a modern feminist perspective on The Tempest, Lynn's libretto lacks the finesse and poetry of Shakespeare's valedictory work for the stage. Miranda is also rather deficient in dramatic coherence, credibility and, well... taste basically. Miranda decides to stage her confrontation with her male aggressors in the most absurd way imaginable: as a terrorist hostage situation at a funeral where her family are mourning her death. Believed drowned, her body never recovered, Miranda has a surprise for the mourners, turning up at the church with a small terrorist unit, wearing a black mask and a wedding dress and waving a pistol in the faces of the shocked and terrified congregation.

It's nothing apparently to what Miranda has had to endure, and she sets the record straight with a pantomime act that fulfils the masque aspect of the semi-opera. The drama however doesn't really elaborate any further on the contention that "I was exiled. I was raped. I was a child bride", which is all Miranda seems to want to get off her chest. Having stage-managed this little melodrama for attention and revealed to an appalled Anna the true nature of her husband Prospero by whom she is bringing another child into this brave new world, it's all hunky-dory once again when Ferdinand begs forgiveness ('Then pity me, who am your slave / And grant me a reprieve' from O! Fair Cedaria); the presumption being - in the absence of any dramatic credibility or winning way with words - that the beauty of the sentiments expressed in Purcell's music is enough to make everything all right.

And in a way, it almost is. It's clear that there has to be some sort of dramatic compromise made in order to fit the chosen Purcell pieces into a coherent drama, and the suspicion is that the funeral is there to provide a suitable setting for a selection of Purcell's sacred music, the highlight here being the Evening Hymn 'Now that the sun hath veiled his light'. 'Dido's Lament' from Dido and Aeneas, sung here by Anna, does feel rather shoe-horned into the situation, but even in a situation as ludicrous as this the sincerity of the sentiments can't be denied in Miranda's forgiving/recriminating arias to Ferdinand, 'Oh! Lead me to some peaceful gloom' from Bonduca with the lines "What glory can a woman have / To conquer, yet be still a slave" ('woman' substituting 'lover' in the original) and to Prospero 'They tell us that your mighty powers above' from The Indian Queen.

The singers do their best to put some dramatic feeling into this, but there's not much for them to do as Miranda and Anna look sad and angry and take out their frustrations on Prospero and Ferdinand, who look embarrassed and ashamed. And that really sums up the very limited ambitions of Miranda, emasculating or reducing Shakespeare's achievements in The Tempest down to a one-way protest of anger and recrimination by women against men. Despite being shoehorned into such a situation, the beauty of Purcell's composition and sentiments still comes through in a way that makes Miranda more successful as a musical piece than a dramatic one.

Kate Lindsey obviously has the biggest say and platform here as Miranda and is excellent, firm and clear of voice if somewhat driven to over-expression by the drama. Katherine Watson also makes a good impression, but again the context of Dido's Lament doesn't perhaps permit its best expression. Allan Clayton and Henry Waddington have thankless roles (the brutes!) which they nonetheless sing well and are at least better fitted to their roles than Marc Mauillon's strained priest. Aksel Rykkvin's Anthony is worthy of a mention for a lovely performance of An Evening Hymn: 'Now that the sun hath veiled his light'.  Despite my reservations about the libretto and direction, the qualities of Purcell's music and the performances here under the direction of Raphaël Pichon brought me back to watch this for a repeat viewing - much like Trauernacht - so there are certainly pleasures to be found here.

Links: L'Opéra Comique, ARTE Concert

Rameau - Dardanus (Bordeaux, 2015 - Webcast)

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Dardanus

L'Opéra de Bordeaux, 2015

Raphaël Pichon, Michel Fau, Karina Gauvin, Gaëlle Arquez, Reinoud van Mechelen, Florian Sempey, Nahuel di Pierro, Katherine Watson, Etienne Bazola, Virgile Ancely, Guillaume Gutiérrez

Culturebox - 22 April 2015

You could criticise Jean-Philippe Rameau's Dardanus - and indeed most of the composer's tragédie-lyriques - as being a little too stiff, formal and serious, the work straight-jacketed by precise rules and conventions that Rameau and his predecessor Lully before him helped establish. You could however admire Dardanus for the very same reasons, for its ability to fit such beautiful music, song and dance into a very rigid format, making it a wonderfully entertaining spectacle.

And there's the key to how you make Dardanus, composed in 1739 and scarcely heard of again until the present day, work today for a modern audience. It's by not playing it with stiff, rigid formality, but finding a natural warmth in the beauty of the composition, the structure and the melody. It's also about presenting the work with some respect for its intention to entertain, with plenty of colour and spectacle.

Bordeaux have a good recent history with Rameau. Their modernisation of Les Indes Galantes last year (for the 250th anniversary of the death of Rameau) was an absolute marvel, updating the work certainly way beyond its original settings but completely respecting the intentions and the spirit of the opéra-ballet with all its wonderful verve, energy and inventiveness. A classical drama in the tragédie-lyrique vein, Dardanus is a different prospect but, Michel Fau's direction for the Bordeaux stage, in a co-production with Versailles, never forgets the primary purpose and delivers a colourful drama that is matched by the warmth of Raphaël Pichon's conducting of his Pygmalion ensemble.

As it adheres very much to a classic narrative, the primary purpose of Dardanus is not, clearly, to present any kind of credible or coherent drama, but to present a drama in music. The plot involves a ruler, King Teucer, who has plans for his daughter Princess Iphise's marriage to King Anténor. Iphise doesn't want to marry Anténor, but is troubled that her affections seem to be swaying her towards tender feelings for Teucer's enemy Dardanus. Dardanus, Anténor and Iphise all venture into the magic kingdom of Isménor, where the true intentions of each are brought into the open and made known to each other, causing a lot of confusion and trouble for all.

Opening with the obligatory Prologue featuring Vénus and Amour ('Triomphe, tendre amour"), Dardanus then is five acts of fairly standard plotting with sentiments of forbidden love and conflict leading to a rather contrived conclusion. For some not entirely convincing reason, other than perhaps to provide the opera with a necessary bit of merveilleux stage spectacle at the necessary point, Neptune sends a sea monster to attack Teucer. Dardanus saves the King's champion Anténor from bring devoured by the sea monster, and thereby wins the right to marry Iphise. Rameau pads all this out with lots of dancing and a structure that seems to run on an aria-ballet-chorus-ballet-recitative-ballet-aria loop. Dardanus has the potential to be very dry indeed with all these interruptions to the dramatic flow.

Rameau's music however is much too good to let it be drowned in a dull academic presentation. There is a sense of establishing beauty and order on the world in the music itself - learning to love instead of hate - and Raphaël Pichon finds the beautiful warmth in Rameau's writing that underlines such sentiments, as much in the interplay of the instruments as in their individual qualities. There are moments of sheer wonder here, even in those little side events, such as in the little pastorale 'Paix favorable, paix adorable' which takes the form of a chorus, turning into a ballet and then into a duet which has all the joyous quality of a Handel oratorio.

Michel Fau's direction and Emmanuel Charles' set designs don't feel the need to update all this to a modern setting, but recognise that Dardanus can work on its own terms if it holds true to this original purpose and intent. That doesn't mean that they settle for trying to recreate baroque theatre effects, but find instead a new, modern and colourful way using projections as well as traditional costumes and stage effects to achieve the same impact. It never quite resorts to kitsch or parody - other than where the occasion really leaves no alternative - but finds its own dazzling vision for the work. A good example of this is in how they approach the battle of the sea monster, which is done in a hugely entertaining fashion without the need to create any cardboard sea monster special effects. All the ballets are included, sometimes inventively other times just bringing the dancers onto the stage where indicated and letting them do their piece.

There's no room for extravagant arias in French tragédie-lyrique, and reportedly there wasn't any particular need for clarity of diction, but the libretto is beautifully articulated here by some beautiful and appropriately pitched voices. Florian Sempey carried the honours as Anténor, his lyrical baritone carrying the kind of warmth that was complementary to the production. In his actions as well as his voice, there was a genuine sensitivity that made Anténor a little more sympathetic and not just a caricature villain,. He's clearly devastated that Iphise doesn't love him, valiantly entering into battle with the sea monster to prove his worth. Sempey's voice holds firm and lyrical throughout.

Gaëlle Arquez complements him well as Iphise, her voice bright, her emotional conflicts expressed purposefully, never faltering. The figure of Dardanus is relatively bland by comparison, and characterised as such by Reinoud van Mechelen's light but sweet tenor. Although limited to only a few scenes, Karina Gauvin is the kind of singer you want to impress when Vénus makes an appearance, and she fulfils that role well, but it's Katherine Watson taking up the bit-part roles of Amore, a Shepherdess, Bellone and a Dream, who gets to feature in some of Rameau's most beautiful little incidental arrangements, and she makes a fine impression here.

Links: Culturebox

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.

Cavalli - La Didone

Francesco Cavalli - La Didone

Théâtre de Caen, 2011

William Christie, Clément Herve-Léger, Anna Bonitatibus, Kresimir Spicer, Xavier Sabata, Maria Streijffert, Terry Wey, Katherine Watson, Tehila Nini Goldstein, Claire Debono, Joseph Cornwell, Victor Torres, Valerio Contaldo, Mariana Rewerski, Matthias Vidal, Francisco Javier Borda

Opus Arte

Depending on the work, depending on who is playing it and depending on how it is staged, Cavalli’s operas - some of the oldest works in existence - can struggle to hold the attention of a modern audience. They can be long, usually based on classical subjects, consist of long stretches of recitative accompanied principally on harpsichord and lyrone basso continuo with a limited range of period string instruments. There’s little in the works that lends itself to exciting staging in the way of, for example, the French regal entertainments of Lully and Campra, with all their ballet sequences and choral arrangements. There are no such difficulties with this particular work - one of Cavalli’s earliest operas first performed in 1641 - a version of the familiar story of the Fall of Troy and the love story of Dido and Aeneas, and with the production being in the hands of William Christie and his company, Les Arts Florissants, there are no concerns either about the musical interpretation of La Didone, which is staged with dramatic intensity by Clément Herve-Léger.

What makes La Didone rather more accessible than some works of early opera is the libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, the librettist responsible for Monteverdi’s ground-breaking L’Incoronazione di Poppea, an opera that daringly put real characters onto the stage for the first time rather than the gods and heroes of ancient mythology. Even though La Didone is related to the mythological figures of Virgil’s epic Latin poem ‘The Aeneid‘, it benefits nonetheless from Busenello’s wonderful humanising of the characters and indeed the gods. The libretto isn’t made up of the usual vague pronouncements and declarations, but is dramatically and poetically expressive of the range of human emotions and passions that are brought out by this expansive work. In the first half - in the model followed by Berlioz in the now more familiar Les Troyens - the libretto captures the true horror and nature of the experience of war, the destruction of one’s country and with it one’s hopes and dreams. The second half also corresponds with Berlioz’s division, with Aeneas’ arrival in Carthage and with the trials that are brought by love and betrayal, expressed in a variety of ways, through Dido’s love for her dead husband, her rejection of Iarbas, and in her love for Aeneas’ that is curtailed by his sense of duty (to the gods) to abandon her and strike out for Italy.

This wonderfully rich story is brilliantly described in Busenello’s libretto, but if it truly achieves the same kind of expression of human passions that can be found in L’Incoronazione di Poppea, it’s also due to the musical compositions of Cavalli, himself a pupil of Monteverdi. William Christie directs this from the harpsichord and the rhythms and tone are clear, precise and dynamically attuned to the emotional content of the work, emphasising the horror with driving chords and accompanying the delicate laments and love-songs with heartfelt lyricism. Even without a synopsis (there isn’t a detailed one with this DVD/BD release unfortunately), it’s not difficult to follow what is going on thanks to the clear libretto where figures introduce themselves naturally, and due to the musical accompaniment that defines them. This is particularly strong in the tricky first Act, where in addition to gods directing the events, numerous figures wander around the dark ruins of Troy in despair, terrorised by marauding Greeks - Coroebus dying in the arms of Cassandra, Hecuba’s despair for the fate of the women, Aeneas’s wife Creusa murdered and returning as a ghostly figure. Appropriately then, it all looks and sounds like the Hades of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo supplanted into the hell of a destroyed Troy.

Things actually become a little more confusing in the Carthage sections in this production with the doubling up of roles, when the same singer who played Aeneas’ dead wife Creusa in Act 1 (Tehila Nini Goldstein) turns up in Act 2 as Juno trying to destroy him. Even trickier, Cupid disguises himself as Aeneas’ son Ascanio in Act 2 to bring about the love between Aeneas and Dido, so although it makes for a convincing disguise when both Cupid and Ascanio are played by the same person (Terry Wey), it could be just a little confusing. (The chaptering, available as a pop-up on BD, will however clarify any other confusion over which characters are singing at any time). The fact that it works is down to the strong direction and staging working in perfect accordance with the music and the drama of the libretto. Clément Herve-Léger keeps the sets simple, employing only one or two large and effective symbolic gestures. It’s not period, but other than the inappropriate scaffolding for the down-to-earth gods and Venus lugging a suitcase for her journey to Carthage - an effort to humanise the appearances of the gods in line with the nature of the work and against the tradition of big fanfares and mechanical stage entrances - there are no distracting modern anachronisms.

With the simplicity of the staging and the sparseness of the orchestration, compared to conventional opera, much depends on the quality of the singing here. Populated extensively from Christie’s ‘Jardin des Voix‘ school for new young talent, the singing is exceptional right across the whole cast. Anna Bonitatibus is a clear, powerful and resonant Didone (Dido), and Kresimir Spicer a gentle lyrical Enea (Aeneas), both of them commanding and deeply expressive in the central roles, but the cast - clearly trained for this kind of singing - is made up of youthful voices filled with passion, clarity and a purity of tone that is well suited to early opera (some however - such as Francisco Javier Borda playing both Ilioneo and Mercury - try a little too hard). La Didone is still not without some longeurs for anyone unfamiliar with early opera, but this is certainly one of the more accessible works of this period, treated to a beautiful looking and fresh sounding production from Les Arts Florissants, that brings a much needed vitality to this rare 370 year-old work.

Opus Arte’s Blu-ray release comes with impressive specifications in terms of High Definition image and sound. The period instruments in particular have a wonderful clarity of tone within the natural reverb of the Caen theatre. It sounds a little bright and there’s no low-frequency range at all in the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mix, but it’s distributed well emphasising the fragility of the delicate playing and the strength of the vocal expression. The PCM Stereo mix is also clear and true. The BD is dual-layer BD50, 1080i and all-region compatible, with subtitles in English, French and German only. There are no extra features other than a Cast Gallery and a booklet with an essay on the work which has a brief outline of the story, but there is no detailed synopsis.