Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande (Geneva, 2021)

Claude Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande

Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2021

Jonathan Nott, Damien Jalet, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Marina Abramović, Jacques Imbrailo, Mari Eriksmoen, Leigh Melrose, Matthew Best, Yvonne Naef, Marie Lys, Justin Hopkins

GTG Digital - 18 January 2021

We have already seen how it is going to be necessary to adapt our lives post-Covid, if such a time is yet imaginable, and it looks like things might never be quite the same again. Opera however has always been adaptable and open to incorporating a variety of art forms, since music and theatre offer many means of expression, combining the abstract and the concrete. One opera that stands almost unique in its approach is Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, in the way that it sets drama to music, and not just any drama but a Symbolist drama by Maurice Maeterlinck. As such it offers many ways of interpretation of meaning and vision and you imagine that few works are as well suited to expressing social isolation and a sense of lockdown.

The Grand Théâtre de Genève have certainly put together an interesting and unconventional team for their social isolated lockdown version of the work and attempted to use it as a way of exploring another side of Debussy's enigmatic opera. The concept and performance artist Marina Abramović provides the concept for this production, and it's co-directed for the stage and choreographed with dance elements by Damien Jalet and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. With Jonathan Nott conducting the Suisse Romande orchestra in a spread-out fashion around him, you would expect the moody atmospherics to thrive in such an unconventional space, but somehow - too many cooks perhaps? - it doesn't quite live up to expectations. 

It at least approaches the idea of preserving the mystery and enigma of the opera rather than try to pin it down. I once observed in Robert Wilson's production of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Paris Opera that there was a kind of circularity to the work, Mélisande leaving one world and entering into another in much the same state of despair that she entered into it. Wilson's stylisations  - introducing social distancing on the opera stage long before it became necessary - had that haunted quality, of a never-ending story, of ghosts repeating and re-enacting a tragic tale for eternity. As an image of the abstract and enigmatic nature of Debussy's only opera, the circle is a symbol of infinity with no beginning and no end, works well, and it's used as such to similarly haunting effect in Marina Abramović's idea of expanding the work out into the infinite universe.

Space and circular imagery (planets, eyes) are evident throughout the Geneva production, and the circle can even be seen in the shape of the pool, one of infinite depths where Mélisande loses her ring (another circle). The circular image of the moon, reflected in the pool, also represents a cold enigma. In a Symbolist work like Maeterlinck's such ideas evidently work very well, particularly with the added mood that Debussy's music brings to this unique opera. Although it has a Gothic or Medieval character to it, the piece needs no concrete idea of time or place. It's as abstract and internalised a world as Tristan und Isolde, a work of forbidden love and obsession, something both works have in common if approached obviously in entirely different ways.

Approaching the work in an entirely different way is exactly what you expect from a production based on an idea by Abramović (who also recently devised an extraordinary new opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas for the Bavarian State Opera last year), and choreographed by Jalet and Cherouaki. Rather than rely too much on the usual symbols or place too much emphasis on physical locations or internal dark places, Abramović visualises the work in a much more open environment, but one equally as isolating to the individual; in space. Obelisk monolithic crystals form rocks and grottoes as well as suggest a space ship, as the universe revolves and expands around Pelléas, Mélisande and Golaud. The director(s) also use the symbol of the eye to gaze on them from the emptiness of the infinite abyss of a black hole.

The dance moves are superbly choreographed and performed, the dancers moving fluidly around to 'enhance' the drama. Using some simple Improbable-style effects with reflective tape, they can become the tangled branches of the forest where Golaud is lost at the start, or weave Pelléas into the trap of Mélisande's hair. It sounds simple, but it's incredible how well this needs to be choreographed to be this effective. They can be purely abstract shapes and movement that tap into the undercurrents of the music and the nature of the characters, representing the oppressive qualities of Allemonde in wrestling semi-naked twisting bodies. Golaud's role in particular is magnified and multiplied with a team of dancers who forcefully surround and impress upon Mélisande. Sometimes however they can be a bit of a distraction and often feel unnecessary, intruding on the minimalist beauty of the piece, as well as making additional noise that isn't needed either.

As gorgeous as the Geneva production is, it doesn't manage to penetrate or even bring anything new out of the opera's mysteries. Pelléas et Mélisande can be a cold and detached opera, but it can even thrive on that, and there are few who can do icy detached coolness as well as Robert Wilson. A little bit of humanness doesn't go amiss however and that's largely absent here. Jacques Imbrailo tries to bring some of that in as Pelléas, and it's hard to fault the performances of Mari Eriksmoen's Mélisande or Leigh Melrose's impressive Golaud, but despite everything none of them seem to make any real connection to the people, the place, the space or the music. I don't think it's the fact that the production had to be performed in an empty theatre or the arrangement of the orchestra spread are out into the parterre, but despite all the fine individual talents in place, there's a feeling that there is a connection missing to click it all into place.

Links: Grand Théâtre de Genève

Nikodijević & Abramović - 7 Deaths of Maria Callas (Munich, 2020)

Marko Nikodijević & Marina Abramović - 7 Deaths of Maria Callas

Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich - 2020

Marina Abramović, Lynsey Peisinger, Yoel Gamzou, Willem Dafoe, Hera Hyesang Park, Selene Zanetti, Leah Hawkins, Kiandra Howarth, Nadezhda Karyazina, Adela Zaharia, Lauren Fagan

Bayerische Staatsoper TV - 5 September 2020

The idea of building an opera around seven stage deaths enacted by Maria Callas in her most famous roles is such an extraordinary idea for an opera that it's likely to provoke two immediate and almost contradictory reactions. On the one hand you might think why did no one think of that before, even from the point of view of a gala performance of great arias. And then you realise why you can't do that. The emotional impact of all those tragic bel canto deaths all gathered together in one opera? And aligning them with the tragic circumstances of Maria Callas's death as well? It's going to be overload surely, emotionally overwrought and too much to take in all in one go?

Well, we are talking about the Serbian conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović, who often uses her self and her body as a provocative vehicle for her ideas, so she's not exactly one for low-key and understatement. This is a performance artist who for her piece "The Artist is Present" sat silently at a table every day at New York's Museum of Modern Art for nearly three months. Some might even see her as a narcissist and self-publicist who sees herself as something as a work of art, and in the case of her Maria Callas project for the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, she has no qualms about identifying closely with an artist in the opera world who was no stranger to making headlines.

In her opera piece, the seven operatic deaths of Maria Callas are enacted in movie sequences (directed by Nabil Elderkin) with Abramović and Willem Dafoe as her lover/killer. Abramović herself is present on the stage, lying silent and unmoving as Maria Callas on her death bed while the film sequences are projected on the walls of her hotel room in Paris, the most famous arias of those works accompanying the extravagant visuals of the re-imagined ways that those characters meet their death. The arias are all sung live by different opera singers who take to the stage like ghosts, none of them however really looking or singing like Callas. Which would be a bit much to ask for really. Abramović however ensures that there is no doubt as to who is the main subject (Callas/herself) and that it's more than just an opera gala of Callas's greatest hits.

In the first of the filmed sequences, Violetta (Hera Hyesang Park) sings 'Addio del passato' from La Traviata while lying dying of consumption in a bed, nursed and mourned by Willem Dafoe in a dreamscape of coloured mists and clouds. The death of Tosca, to the strains of Selene Zanetti singing 'Vissi d'arte' is enacted as Abramović falling from a New York skyscraper in slow motion to land with a crash on a car roof. She is wrapped in pythons as Desdemona (Leah Hawkins) in Otello, dies while removing her protective suit as Madama Butterfly's Cio-Cio-San (Kiandra Howarth) in a nuclear holocaust wasteland. And so on with Carmen (Nadezhda Karyazina), Adela Zaharia's rendition of the mad scene from Lucia Di Lammermoor and the immolation of Norma (Lauren Fagan) singing 'Casta Diva', all with a twist on the original traditional death scene.

So 7 Deaths of Maria Callas is clearly not an opera in the conventional sense, a cross between opera gala and performance art. Some might see opera as already tending in that direction, particularly if you've seen any of Romeo Castellucci's often even more abstract productions. It might not be quite as high concept as Castellucci, but as you might expect from an artist like Abramović, it's a more deeply personal and distinctive vision where the the artist/director puts herself into the art. It's a work that comes from the heart, in response to Callas and her fame as an opera singer, blending the two in a direct and emotional way. They could hardly be otherwise, the projected mini-movies accompanying the sentiments of these great arias powerful in their visual aesthetic and emotional punch.

It's clearly motivated principally by a love and perhaps even an obsession with Maria Callas, with whom Abramović clearly identifies. It blends the tragedy of Callas's life with that of opera, and that's certainly a subject worthy of an opera. It's surprising indeed that it hasn't been done before as far as I know, although Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna comes close and Franco Zeffirelli, a personal friend of Callas as well as her director, turned his fantasy about Callas into a movie Callas Forever. Evidently, focussing on the deaths of opera heroines, putting them all together like this dying in graphic and violent circumstances often at the hands of men, fits into Abramović's feminist perspective and invites you to think about the fate of women, but perhaps no more so and no more powerfully than say a full presentation of Madama Butterfly or La Traviata.

It's nearly all classic opera arias that are used for the first hour of the opera, with only recorded drone ambient noise in the interludes accompanying the Abramović voice-over of introductory texts of Callas reflecting on the different ways to die. It's a pasticcio of sorts with only an overture by fellow Serbian composer Marko Nikodijević that is new. It's only in the final third of the work that we really hear new music composed by Nikodijević as the focus for the remainder of the opera turns to Abramović as Callas in her bed in her room in Paris on the day that she dies. Dramatically there's not a lot here to grasp as Callas wills herself to get out of bed, wonders where all her former friends and colleagues have gone now, smashes a vase and leaves the room, taking her final exit. While the voice-over thoughts are distracting and scarcely illuminating, the music itself is a powerful requiem of sorts for Callas.

Is this a work of performance art that relies on the original creator? Abramović is on stage throughout and the focus in the mini movies as the tragic heroine who dies seven times in her greatest operas. Can 7 Deaths of Maria Callas have an independent life (or seven deaths) after these performances? I don't see why not. Yes, the personality of Abramović dominates but only in so far as it is she who is breathing life into the character of Callas here. Callas is big enough a personality not to be subsumed by that and there's no reason why - like any opera singer stepping into shoes that Callas once filled - that someone else can't bring their own reinterpretation of this opera performance piece. The concept is strong enough, the music is strong enough (old and new) and the work is open enough to interpretation for another artist with sufficient personality (and love for Callas and Abramović) to bring something new and personal to this. Whether anyone will want to is another matter, and whether Abramović becomes as enduring an artist as Callas worthy of being revived remains to be seen.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper TV