Foccroulle - Cassandra (Brussels, 2023)

Bernard Foccroulle - Cassandra

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2023

Kazushi Ono, Marie-Ève Signeyrole, Katarina Bradić, Jessica Niles, Susan Bickley, Sarah Defrise, Paul Appleby, Joshua Hopkins, Gidon Saks, Sandrine Mairesse, Lisa Willems

OperaVision - 14th September 2023

There are any number of Greek dramas and myths that remain applicable to today, with themes that are still capable of inspiring contemporary operas. Matthew Aucoin's Eurydice adapts Sarah Ruhl's original play and libretto to explore deeper feminist and human themes explored by the Orpheus myth, while Aribert Reimann's Medea casts a shadow over a society intolerant of outsiders, its rulers obsessed with wealth and prestige, blind to the danger of failing to respond appropriately to the needs of those seeking asylum and the price that is paid by our children. Cassandra in as far as Bernard Foccroulle's opera presents it, clearly speaks to perhaps the most immediate global crisis facing modern society, one that is being warned about daily and becoming ever more urgent, but it's apparent that again, no one is listening. Climate change is the pre-warned disaster facing us all.

Cursed by Apollo so that her premonitions for the future will fall on deaf ears, the words "Ototoi popoi da” that Cassandra struggles to express at the start of Foccroulle's opera are unintelligible and unheeded until disaster strikes. She emerges here as a ghost of the past brought into the present, the two time periods combined and overlapping through a wall of literature written on the subject. The collapse of Troy with all its classical implications - traditionally well-served in opera as well as in Greek drama - is echoed in a modern disaster, as the wall collapses leaving devastation in its wake. People buried by the disaster emerge cut and bruised and crying over the dead in the rubble, as a camera operator zooms in showing the devastation in all its horror.

It's a familiar scene that we have seen repeatedly on our own screens over the last couple of years. There's really no beating around the bush here. The opening is direct and devastating, a classical style Cassandra in full outburst, carrying a dead bleeding child plucked from the ruins of Troy as a Greek chorus ominously intones the consequences of the failure to listen and the orchestra delivers jagged blocks of chords. It's a powerful opening, the impact heightened by Foccroulle's music, not to mention the reaction of Cassandra, and yet, despite all the power of classical-inspired opera, it's a message that is still likely one to go unheeded. It needs something more to bring that message up to date, and Foccroulle and librettist Matthew Jocelyn choose to find another way to get the message across.

There is an intentionally jarring change of tone as the setting abruptly changes to the present day, where a modern day Cassandra, PhD student and published climatologist Sandra Seymour, conscious that all other attempts to express the imminency of the danger have fallen on deaf ears, chooses to deliver her warning as a comedy routine. Running models and algorithms from her studies, Sandra knows danger is real, but chooses to approach the subject with the audience by blaming 'sex fiends' going under the names of Donald, Jeff and Vladimir raping the earth, as she shatters a block of ice. There's not really any beating around the here bush either (not much comedy either), but there is disagreement about her approach from an environmental activist, Blake, who who takes her message more seriously that she does. They share the same concerns however and end up in a relationship together.

Using such means, Fouccrolle's opera seeks to provide a wider context and every means at his disposal to draw together the classical warnings and the present crisis. There are plenty of 'sex fiends' in history bringing damage to humanity and mythology is full of them, not least Apollo, so the parallels are well-established and the musical language used for each of the scenes is appropriate and effective. The subject is not exactly a new concern expressed in modern opera - Sivan Eldar's Like Flesh, Tom Coult's Violet, Perocco's Aquagranda - but these are a little more allusive towards the subject and Foucrolle's opera strives to be more direct. It's important but difficult to do that without descending into preachiness. Cassandra does do a lot of telling, quoting statistics and figures on the melting of ice caps, but it tries to present these in an accessible way, looking at classical mythology for additional substance, using a modern couple debating with each other as a way of putting fire into their relationship and the best way of putting the message out there. This might work for some observers, not for others.

The classical story however does add another element, or at least it does in the way it is presented here as overlapping with the modern-day story. Priam and Hecuba are also brought back from the books, now able to reflect on what the plays written about the fall of Troy tell us, now fully aware of the consequences of failing to listen to the warnings of Cassandra. These scenes - which flow seamlessly from a dinner party scene with Sandra's well-to do parents who are more focussed on causes that boost their image and profits doubling up the roles of Priam and Hecuba - is as charged and anguished as you would expect, equally if not as much as a classical retelling, such as in Berlioz's Les Troyens for example. We already have the benefit of hindsight to act as foresight, the opera seems to be telling us, and we don't want future generations to look back on our society incredulous that we failed to heed the obvious present warnings of the fall of civilisation.

Belgian composer Bernard Foccroulle is a former director of La Monnaie in Brussels and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. This is his first opera composition and it's an ambitious full-scale work, attempting to encompass a number of styles, each effective for the requirements of the libretto and the message. There's Cassandra past blending into Sandra's present, the drama and music serious on one hand, seeming blithe on the other, reflecting two ways of viewing the subject. If we truly knew what is ahead we wouldn't treat it as a joke, but at the same time, most aren't taking it seriously. Foccroulle tries every means, style and views of these conflicting worlds and tries to replicate it in the music, not least in the strong writing for female voices and the short musical interludes, Scene Four and the final scene for example consisting only of a musical depiction of a swarm of bees.

There is inevitably some banality in the modern sections in the domestic relationships, the language, the swearing, the so-called comedy and in the family crises. There is a point to be made about preserving the world for future generations, but whether the opera and its approach hits the mark or is "bullshit" as is loudly heckled by an "audience member", the point isn't convincingly made. Opera has the power to raise a subject to a higher level, elevate the mere words and drama of a libretto, achieve impact through the music and singing, but it's by no means clear that Jocelyn and Foucroulle's approach to Cassandra will be heeded any more than those unheeded warnings of its title character.

Conducted by Kazushi Ono for the premiere of this new opera at La Monnaie, the music and its effectiveness to the subject and libretto can't be faulted, the fascinating and varied score inviting the audience to listen closer to what is being presented. There is much that is equally impressive in the singing and the stage production, so every effort has been made. A new opera, the singers cast are obviously chosen as perfect for the roles. There are singing and performing challenges here but each is outstanding, Katarina Bradić in particular in a gift of a role as Cassandra, but Sandra is also a large role and is impressively sung by Jessica Niles. I also thought the performances of her mother and father, sung by Susan Bickley and Gidon Saks, doubling as Hecuba and Priam were both terrific, contributing superbly to both sides of the work.

The stage production directed by Marie-Ève Signeyrole with sets by Fabien Teigné also plays an important part in maintaining an connection and fluidity between the 'classical' sections and the modern-day sections, as well as bringing out the underlying context of the climate change debate that is drawn between them. Projections and live filming are used, every means that can enhance the central key imagery of nature and devastation. There are blocks of ice, screens of hexagonal blocks, computer-generated swarms of bees, showing life and nature interwoven and in crisis. It's an impressive looking production, serving the subject, the music and the drama well, or as well as it is possible to do considering the limitations of what the arts can really be expected to contribute to the discussion.

Externa links: La Monnaie streaming, La Monnaie, OperaVision

Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel (Aix, 2018)

Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel

Festival d'Aix en Provence, 2018

Kazushi Ono, Mariusz Treliński, Aušrinė Stundytė, Scott Hendricks, Agnieszka Rehlis, Andreï Popov, Krzysztof Bączyk, Pavlo Tolstoy, Łukasz Goliński, Bernadetta Grabias, Bożena Bujnicka, Maria Stasiak

Culturebox - 15 July 2018

It's hard to say exactly what the true nature of Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel is, whether it's a satire, an exploration of mental illness, decadent, absurdist, symbolist, but I'm pretty sure it's not a comedy. Any yet it's a work that does push the boundaries of human experience or at least the expression of them, so the absurdity of madness can indeed appear to be strangely comic, a side of the work that Barrie Kosky emphasised in his typically colourful and somewhat camp 2015 Munich production of the work. Director Mariusz Treliński takes it a little more seriously and is more open to alternative interpretations, but The Fiery Angel remains an enigmatic experience.

Written by Valery Bryusov, whose work is associated with Russian Symbolism and the Decadent Movement, The Fiery Angel is intentionally allusive and unconnected to any superficial narrative viewpoint, more concerned with exploring hard to define and even taboo human states and emotions. If there's an edge of absurdity in The Fiery Angel it's because it heads towards those outer reaches, exploring the fragility of the human psyche and human desires, where love turns to obsession and where madness is just one step removed from reality, and it's an easy line to cross.

In The Fiery Angel, Ruprecht a German knight, finds a distressed woman in his lodgings. Renata tells him that she has lost the love of her life, Heinrich, a man she believes to be the human incarnation of the Madiel, the fiery angel. First encountering Madiel as an eight year old child, Renata has followed a chaste and ascetic path towards sainthood, walking barefoot and inflicting wounds on herself. Wishing a more physical communion however angered Madiel and he disappeared in a pillar of fire. Heinrich, although denying he was Madiel, has now left her, and Renata reaches out to Ruprecht, seeing advice and guidance from alchemists, spiritualists and occult practices, in hallucinatory drugs and all manner of strange rituals.

That suggests that there is a dividing line between reality and a world where visions, unconventional thought and even madness takes over, but it's not that clear-cut. Ruprecht's reactions towards Renata's story and her experience, not to mention the physical presence of this vulnerable woman, brings out a side to the knight that is split between chivalry and lust that - when he cannot resist the woman and in this production tries to rape her - is followed by subsequent feelings of guilt. Possibly. There's nothing about those areas of human behaviour that the work explores that can be determined to fit a logical, consistent thought process that makes rational sense. And that's before the work becomes even more complicated.

Although it is set in medieval Germany, there is an autobiographical element to The Fiery Angel in Bryusov's involvement with the poet Nina Petrovskaya who had just ended a relationship with fellow Symbolist writer Andrei Bely - all Russian artists personally known to Prokofiev. Petrovskaya committed suicide in 1927, the same year that Prokofiev finished The Fiery Angel, although the opera was never performed in his lifetime. There is however no correlative map to help you understand what is real, imagined and hallucinated, or what is merely a Symbolist writer's attempt to find a colourful and darkly poetic expression of deep emotional states.

For the Polish director Mariusz Treliński, directing The Fiery Angel for the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2018, Prokofiev's music is very much an expressionistic response to the meteoric decline in rational behaviour that occurs when love turns to obsession and madness, Ruprecht, Renata and Heinrich all coming crashing down to earth. Treliński's working methods often draw on cinema references and techniques; David Lynch's Blue Velvet is always going to be a reference for something like The Fiery Angel, but Treliński also seems to draw on the heightened expressionism in the neon and colour saturated imagery of Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives and Neon Demon.

It's a fluid dream-world then, the sets and locations blending and dissolving into one another. It looks amazing, nightmarishly surreal and hallucinogenic, finding creative ways to represent the intentions of the work, the feelings of the characters and the expression of it all in Prokofiev's music. In his duel with Heinrich, Ruprecht is transformed into a small child with an absurdly large Ruprecht head representing his feelings of inadequacy; the spiritualist Agrippa von Nettesheim appears in multiple forms that may part of his occult persona or just be one of many other visions that assail the Ruprecht in his impressionable drug-induced state.

The Fiery Angel however is not entirely just the subjective impressions of a disturbed mind or minds, but it does place them in the context of other social factors. Renata's behaviour and self-harm also suggests childhood sexual abuse and conflicting feelings for her abuser, but certainly in Prokofiev's version there is confrontation with a patriarchal society, with its institutions and with the repressive influence of religion. It suggests that evil can come in the form of what is perceived to be good, and how it can be difficult to tell the difference. There's a lot to take in here and much that won't make sense, but Treliński illustrates and delves into those mindsets as vigorously, unflinchingly and richly as Prokofiev's highly expressive score, conducted here by Kazushi Ono.

It would be harder to carry off however if you don't have someone like Aušrinė Stundytė singing the role of Renata, and she is simply phenomenal here. It's not enough that she can take on the challenge of the singing, being on stage continuously for most of the two hours of the opera, but director Treliński also expects her to act out Renata's condition as if she were a film actress. Filmed for live broadcast with close-ups that show every gesture and expression, it's a thoroughly convincing performance. The mostly Ukrainian, Polish and Russian cast have the advantage here with the language, which must have made it all the more of a challenge for Scott Hendricks as Ruprecht, but while I can't account for his Russian, it was an excellent performance, perfect for the demands of the role and the production.

Links: Festival d'Aix en Provence, Culturebox

Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Lyon, 2016 - Webcast)

Dmitri Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Opéra de Lyon, 2016

Kazushi Ono, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Ausrine Stundyte, Vladimir Ognovenko, Peter Hoare, John Daszak, Gennady Bezzubenkov, Almas Svilpa, Jeff Martin, Michaela Selinger, Clare Presland, Jeff Martin, Kwang Soun Kim

Culturebox - 4 February 2016

He remains a controversial and divisive figure in the opera world, but Dmitri Tcherniakov is nonetheless always an interesting director. In particular his work is often inspired when he is working in the Russian repertoire; opening up a whole new way of looking on works that are rarely performed and insufficiently explored. His production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, recently seen at the English National Opera but now transferred to Lyon and sung in its native language with Russian leads, is a typically strong reading of the work that has many of the director's familiar techniques. In fact, it would at first appear that there's not much the director has to offer a work that is surrounded in enough controversy of its own. The touches Tcherniakov introduces here however are subtle and achieve maximum impact.

For a while at least, it seems like business as usual. There are no unexpected twists that subvert the material, nothing too challenging or unexpected. It's updated evidently, but not in an extravagant way to make any obvious contemporary reference. Instead of being a wealthy flour merchant, Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov here runs a more modern warehouse, with workers in hi-vis jackets operating forklift trucks, with a row of secretaries in the office and employees all wearing security passes around their necks. Even from the point of view of merely indicating the banality of business interests and the uniformity of the modern workplace, and in how it pertains to the relative positions of men and women within it, Tcherniakov has it down to a tee.

The background setting is an important matter in the opera, but still, it's not anything that you wouldn't see in any other Tcherniakov production. This one doesn't look that much different from his productions of The Tsar's Bride or Verdi's Macbeth, and if that means that it's not quite as radical as the updating of those works were, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk already has all the sex and violence it needs. What becomes apparent then is not that Tcherniakov's approach is in any way 'tamer' here, or that he has run out of original ideas, as much as Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk may be the definitive Tcherniakov opera. It's as if the director has taken all the boldness, the shock and the impact of this opera and used it as a model that all other operas ought to aspire to match. Tcherniakov seems to want to bring the inner Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk out of every opera he works on.

In as far as dealing with the subjects that Shostakovich depicted in his version of Nikolai Leskov's work, there are certainly other levels that could be emphasised in the opera - and it seems amazing that the composer himself seemed to be unaware of how that might would play out to the Soviet censor - but Tcherniakov is not particularly concerned with those. The wider view of the Russian character, the implications of corruption within the system and the impact that has on a woman living within a male-dominated society are all still there as part of the wider canvas that Shostakovich paints so vividly in his score, but Tcherniakov recognises that there is also an attention in the music to the individual, and in this case that's evidently the 'Lady Macbeth' of the work, Katerina Lvovna Izmailova.

Having established the context only as far as it necessary, without any unnecessary emphasis or distortion, Tcherniakov's focus is almost wholly on Katia. The director often reduces the scene down to the small room where the wife of the boss's son is mostly confined. It's a warmly-lit room decorated with rugs covering the walls, Katia moreover dressed in a more 'traditional' way that emphasises the extent to which she is cut off and set apart from the rest of the world. She daren't venture too far out of that room, and when she does - in the only way that would be possible for a woman in her position - she's soon put back in her place. Her form of liberty eventually leads Katerina and her lover Sergei being arrested and sent to Siberia. As this just closes down her world further, Tcherniakov chooses to depict all the horror that follows within the confines of a small cell rather than on a forced march in the open outdoors.

Closing down the stage in this way, reducing it to a small block, allows Tcherniakov to work in closer detail, more like a film director than a stage director. There is even a fixed camera placed high within Katia's bedroom for the sake of the video recording of the performance in Lyon that allows the level of detail, nuance and intimacy created to be seen, but clearly the impact is felt even at the back of the theatre. Tcherniakov knows he doesn't have to make grand gestures because they are already there in the music and in the subject, and he focuses instead on the performers, on what their characters feel and endure. Even on that level, there's a huge range to cover in the vivid personalities of Katia, Boris, Sergei and Zynovny, to say nothing of the colourful secondary characters. Tcherniakov's direction of the performers is superb, making them and their actions feel utterly real, and it makes all the difference in this work.

The simmering passions and explosions of violence and aggressive sexual behaviour are all fully scored by Shostakovich and brought out in all their wonderful, lurid glory by Kazushi Ono and the orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon. It really is a wonderful account that makes no attempt to play down those verismo characteristics that are what gives the work such an impact. A few of the English cast remain here - John Daszak and Peter Hoare superbly reprising the roles of Sergei and Zynovny - but the Russian production of the opera undoubtedly benefits from having singers like Ausrine Stundyte and Vladimir Ognovenko play Katarina and Boris. Stundyte is exceptionally good in an understated but compelling performance that simmers with the underlying strength of Katia's passions and her capacity to love as violently as she kills.

Links: Culturebox, Opéra de Lyon

Britten - A Midsummer Night's Dream (Aix-en-Provence, 2015 - Webcast)

Benjamin Britten - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2015

Kazushi Ono, Robert Carsen, Sandrine Piau, Lawrence Zazzo, Miltos Yerolemou, Scott Conner, Allyson McHardy, Rupert Charlesworth, John Chest, Elizabeth DeShong, Layla Claire, Brindley Sherratt, Henry Waddington, Michael Slattery, Christopher Gillett, Simon Butterriss, Brian Bannatyne-Scott

Culturebox - July 2015

It's not the greatest idea that Robert Carsen ever had, but his huge bed setting for the 1991 production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, revived here for the 2015 Aix-en-Provence Festival, is stylish and has remained popular over the years. Although it doesn't seem entirely obvious, its bold conceptual approach isn't entirely without justification either, matching as it does Britten's very distinct and carefully structured take on the original Shakespeare play, while introducing even a little bit of Shakespearean vulgarity that Britten may have glossed over somewhat in the respectful translation to opera.

There is certainly a change of emphasis in Britten's version of the play, which places the dispute between the Fairy King and Queen Oberon and Titania at the centre of the opera. There are also two other love affairs that become entangled in this dispute in Act I, but quite whether this justifies having a huge bed taking up the whole of the stage in Act I is debatable. Most of Britten's adaptation actually takes place in the enchanted woods just outside Athens - Lysander and Hermia seeming to wander in there by chance, not so much fleeing the harsh Athenian law - but the idea is successfully developed and adapted to events in the subsequent acts.

Michael Levine's sets seem to take nature into the equation however in the blue/green colouration, the midsummer night mood and the spell it casts connecting the earthly and the spiritual, the human and the fairy. It's an expansive view of the world that is a key element to the original Shakespeare play and it's replicated in Britten's playful and meticulous musical mirroring of each of the various elements where each has their own particular style, sound and instrumentation. Most notably, considering their central position in the work, are the ethereal delicate sounds of the fairy world, with voices that include a countertenor for Oberon (a rarity in 1960 when the work was written) and a boy chorus for the elves.

There is however perhaps too much emphasis on the 'dreamier' side of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Britten's opera to the detriment of the more earthy and comic elements, but Carsen's production manages to redress the balance slightly. Mozart was undoubtedly an important influence on Britten, but although there are musical nods to older styles of music, including Baroque opera references in the third Act Pyramus and Thisbe drama, there are no obvious direct references to Mozart in the score. It's hard however not to imagine that The Magic Flute was very much in the composer's mind when it comes to bringing together diverse characters and musical styles and creating order out of the chaos in a celebration of love and harmonious accord.

It's interesting that Carsen's later take on Die Zauberflöte in a graveyard would indeed emphasise the harmony of all things more than the traditional divisions in Mozart's work, and to some extent that balance and Mozartian influence is evident in Carsen's much earlier production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In her blue attire, Titania is a Queen of the Night figure, while the green Oberon is a more earthly Sarastro figure (albeit at the other extreme end of the male voice). Their personal dispute, like the dispute between the opposing forces of Die Zauberflöte, is what causes discord in love among the various couples, and it's only by acceptance of the opposing sides of human rationality and spirituality in Carsen's interpretation of the Magic Flute (rather than one side defeating the other) that reconciliation to the wholeness of human brotherhood is possible.

This would coincide very well with Shakespeare's view in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which sees that inclusive union primarily brought together through Lysander and Hermia, the Tamino and Pamina of the work. You could also see parallels between the three boys of Die Zauberflote and the boy elf chorus of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bottom could be seen as a kind of Monostatos, and his getting into bed with the Queen of the Night is a catalyst, a monstrous alliance that does finally bring the opposing forces into a confrontation that requires a resolution. It's by no means a perfect fit, but there is much to be gained from comparing how Mozart deals with such questions and how Britten uses similar techniques to bring out similar sentiments in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

What Britten's opera lacks that Shakespeare's play relies on heavily (and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte), is the comedy to emphasise the earthy human spirit. Puck - the Papageno figure of the opera - is there to be used as a necessary force of chaos. Carsen and some good comic acting from Miltos Yerolemou, occasionally breaking the fourth wall, help bring that out a little more. Bottom is another vital part of this side of the work and it's scored beautifully for the lyrical bass-baritone voice by Britten. Played here by Brindley Sherratt, and sung wonderfully too, it still needs some good direction to bring out the comedic side of his bluster, and that's all there in the Aix production. A great donkey mask helps too and you couldn't ask for more than the well-designed one here that doesn't get in the way of the performer singing.

While comedy is an important part of A Midsummer Night's Dream, what is really important is that all of its diverse tones and moods come together to create a kind of wholeness that has a magic enchantment of its own. As numerous references in the play allude to, and they are there in Britten's version too, the whole play itself can be seen as something of a dream. Carsen's production in the courtyard of the Théâtre de l’Archevêché in Aix-en-Provence has all the scale and the style to make it work. The green/blue/white colour scheme, how it ties in with the music and instrumentation, the beds from one to six to the levitating three in the final act, all serve to create build up a sense of an enchanted world where love reigns as the mysterious force that binds us all together.

Links: Culturebox, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Ravel - L’Heure Espagnole, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges

Maurice Ravel - L’Heure Espagnole, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges

Glyndebourne, 2012

Kazushi Ono, Laurent Pelly, Elliot Madore, François Piolino, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Alek Shrader, Paul Gay, Khatouna Gadelia, Elodie Méchain, Julie Pasturaud, Kathleen Kim, Natalia Brzezinska, Hila Fahima, Kirsty Stokes

Live Internet Streaming - 19 August 2012

It seems only natural to bring together the two short one-act operas by Maurice Ravel, the only two opera works written by the French composer, but they are strangely - perhaps on account of the different challenges presented by the two works - more commonly performed separately or alongside short works by other composers (Zemlimsky’s fairytale Der Zwerg is often seen as a younger audience-friendly companion for L’Enfant et les Sortilèges than the risqué comedy of L’Heure Espagnole). Glyndebourne’s production for the 2012 Festival therefore provides an interesting opportunity to compare two works that aren’t often performed, all the more so since they are both directed for the stage by Laurent Pelly, a director with a good affinity for the works who is able to highlight both their commonalities and their contrasts.

One thing that both operas have in common, even if they use different means of expression, is Ravel’s playful and inventive approach to musical accompaniment. L’Enfant et les Sortilèges might be made up of apparently more conventional set pieces for singing, while L’Heure Espagnole is more declamatory in recitative than sung, but both make use of American influenced jazz and ragtime and other unconventional arrangements and instruments in order to express the variety of situations, movements, gestures and attitudes that take place from moment to moment over the course of both of the works.

Set inside a clock shop in Toledo, if the music of L’Heure Espagnole isn’t conventionally rhythmic outside of the famous synchronised ticking of three different clock times at its intro, there is nonetheless a definite metronomic timing to the pace of the opera itself. While the clockmaker is out of the shop for an hour - by deliberate arrangement - checking the town clocks, the presence of a customer, the muleteer, forces his wife Concepción to have her lovers transported pendulum-like back and forth to and from her bedroom inside grandfather clocks by the unwitting but brawny muleteer. The opera has all the timing and rhythm of a typical French farce of slamming doors and hiding of a succession of lovers in wardrobes, and the rhythm of all these comings and goings even reflects the sexual implications that are suggested but not shown.

If that seems a bit of a limp subject for an opera, well imagine how this only reflects the disappointment felt by the clockmaker’s wife at the disappointing performances of the poet Gonzalve and the banker Don Iñigo Gómez who talk a good line but prove to be not really up to the job - unlike the muleteer Ramiro who handles all the exertions demanded of him by Concepción unfailingly. All such considerations are taken into account by Ravel, as lightweight as they might seem, including the suggestive double-entendres that come along with talk of pendulums, and the work is scored accordingly with flirtatious melodies, bursts of bluster, and shrill lines of frustration and disappointment, everything moreover seeming to play to the deliberate pace dictated by the presence of the muleteer. Ravel’s knowing treatment belies the apparent lightness of the work - the nod-and-a-wink ensemble finale offers no moral other than the intention of the work to “stress the rhythm, spice up the lines, with a soupcon of Spain” - but it’s never so clever as to get in the way of the genuine comic potential and satire of the subject.

L’Heure Espagnole is not an opera that you would think requires much in the way of sets or props, but set designers Caroline Ginet and Florence Evrard pull out all the stops for this Glyndebourne production, fitting out the Toledo clock shop with a variety of timepieces, religious icons and assorted junk. It serves the purpose of being eye-catching as well as perfectly functional for the farcical operations of the plot, but it also serves that perfect sense of situation that you find in Laurent Pelly productions, where you feel not so much in a real-world location as in the world of the music itself. Evidently, in such a work it’s all about the timing and Pelly, along with conductor Kazushi Ono, find that ideal pace of rhythm and direct the five-person cast through the work wonderfully well.

The singers too realise that it’s all there in the music and match the tone of their performances to the sense of comic timing and the intricacies of the score. Stephanie d’Oustrac is alternately flirtatious and ferocious as the man-eater Concepción, commandingly delivering lines that demand obedience and satisfaction. Alex Shrader puts on a fine comic performance as the poetry-spinning Jim Morrison-lookalike Gonzalve, with a lovely tenor voice to match his lyrical musings, while Paul Gay’s bass-baritone seems better suited to the lighter comic delivery of Don Iñigo Gómez here than the heavier dramatic roles such as Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust that I’ve seen him sing before. Elliot Madore was excellent in the vital role of Ramiro, as was François Piolino as Torquemada.

With its surreal imagery, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges is a stage designer’s dream (or perhaps nightmare), but there is a deeper psychological element to author Colette’s original libretto of a naughty schoolboy and its treated to some ravishingly beautiful as well as inventive and playful arrangements by Ravel. In the case of the Glyndebourne production, it’s definitely a dream to have the imagination of Laurent Pelly set loose on a work like this. You get a sense of being somewhere unique with Pelly at the best of times, but it’s even more the case with a work like this. By the laugh raised from the Glyndebourne audience right from the moment the curtain opens on an over-large table and chair that miniaturises Khatouna Gadelia as an ‘enfant’, you can tell that the stage design has already made the right kind of impact. But there are still considerable challenges that have to be met not only to have the child’s mother appear as a grown-up within this set (it’s very well done), but in the rapid changes of scene that are required over the course of the rest of this short work that also relies on the keeping of a regular rhythm.

Having a tantrum at being told he has to do his homework, the victims of the child’s violent and selfish actions come back to haunt him as enchanted objects, each forming a little scene of their own. A dancing Sofa and an Armchair give way to a spinning Clock, than a Teapot and a China Cup, the Flames from the fireplace and then the Shepherd and Shepherdess from the wallpaper that the child has torn in his bad temper, each of them scolding the child for his behaviour, the Princess from the ripped-up storybook making him tearfully aware of the consequences of his actions. The separate pieces slip in and out of the dark like flitting figments of a child’s imagination, each imaginatively assembled, but contributing to create a surreal mood that has more sinister, or perhaps just deeper psychological significance that becomes clear with the final cry of ‘Maman’ at the arises out of the musical arrangements as much as from the psyche of the child.

The challenge of staging the work then is not just in keeping that procession of scenes moving, but in linking them together in a way that they lead to that natural conclusion. That progression is there in the music too, which seems to be made up of a variety of styles, some melodic, others less so, some abstract and playful, such as the song of the Cats, whose mewling vocalises their discontent just as effectively as an words. L’Enfant et les Sortilèges does feel at times like it’s trying to be too clever in this regard - and exercise in mood expressed very precisely and evocatively in musical and visual terms - all the more so considering the light subject of a naughty child being scolded by the objects that he has inflicted his anger upon, and it might indeed come across like that were it not for the ending in Colette’s libretto and the interpretation placed on it by the strong combination of Pelly’s direction and Ono’s approach to the score.

That really comes together then, as it should, in the final scenes where the knife-scored trees and the creatures of the woods - squirrels, dragonflies and frogs - bring us back to nature and, through them, to the essential nature of the child itself. L’Enfant et les Sortilèges isn’t just a clever theatrical show of animated objects and anthromophism - well, it is and it needs to be, but it’s also more than that. The director and conductor have their part to play in making the work more meaningful than that, in making its meaning come to life, but the singers have a large part to play in that as well, and it’s a work that is just as challenging in that regard. Khatouna Gadelia isn’t the strongest of singers to rise above this cacophony, but she doesn’t have to be, and it’s much more important that she gets across that this is the journey of a child’s experience. Kathleen Kim takes on the challenge of the coloratura Fire, Princess and Nightingale roles well, but there’s strong work here also from L’Heure Espagnole’s team of d’Oustrac, Gay, Madore and Piolino. The work of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Glyndebourne Chorus was also instrumental in maintaining that continuity within the work as well as in the combination of the two works as a fascinating double-bill.

The Ravel Double Bill was reviewed here from the Live Internet Streaming broadcast via The Guardian.