Charpentier - Louise (Aix-en-Provence, 2025)

Gustave Charpentier - Louise

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Giacomo Sagripanti, Christof Loy, Elsa Dreisig, Adam Smith, Nicolas Courjal, Sophie Koch, Marianne Croux, Annick Massis, Grégoire Mour, Carol Garcia, Karolina Bengtsson, Marie-Thérèse Keller, Julie Pasturaud, Marion Vergez-Pascal, Marion Lebègue, Jennifer Courcier. Céleste Pinel, Frédéric Caton, Filipp Varik, Alexander de Jong

La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 11th July 2025

When you look through any older books written about the history of opera, Gustave Charpentier's Louise is often referred to as one of the standards of the repertoire. Those days are long past and in all my time viewing opera, I don't recall an opportunity to have actually seen it performed. In its day, composed in 1900, it did indeed cause a scandal in France when it was presented at the Opéra-Comique with its bold depiction of female desire and rebellion against family, but that might be considered mild by today's standards and indeed it was out-played in that respect by Richard Strauss's Salome in 1905. Louise fell out of fashion and disappeared with many of the French works of this period by the likes of Massenet and Gounod, becoming the kind of works nostalgically revived usually only - again - at the current Opéra Comique in Paris.

Musically and in terms of its subject rather than chronologically sitting somewhere between Manon (1884) and La Bohème (1895) and maybe even an extension beyond both of them, Louise seems an odd choice for revival at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, but Christof Loy is the kind of director well equipped to examine such a work deep beneath the surface. He has an affinity for strong female characters in opera who find themselves condemned for seeking liberation from the oppression of social mores and conventions (Salome, Francesca da Rimini, Das Wunder der Heliane, Euryanthe, Jenůfa). While Louise may not measure up to some of those works in reputation, Loy's production makes you question why it has been neglected for so long, but without a director with that kind of clear vision and modern outlook, you can also understand why.

The re-location of the setting of the opera from the Belle Époque Paris to a mental institution department of a hospital in a more recent period however does not exactly strike you as a terribly original idea - off the top of my head I can recall the 2017 Vienna Parsifal directed by Alvis Hermanis and of course, there is Stefan Herheim's version of La Bohème that takes it to another extreme altogether - but it can be an effective distancing technique to cut through any fake operatic glamour that might distract from the reality of the circumstances. And Louise does need - and merits - a more rigorous approach. In the first act Louise sees herself as a Sleeping Beauty dreaming of her Prince, while the boy next door Julien sees her as his Ophelia. These happy scenes - as chaste as they are, relying on stolen glances - are of course a delusion, since Louise has strict parents who keep a tight rein on the young woman. But Charpentier's music and the libretto hint that there is more than that suggested in this situation.

Louise turns away from this restrictive hold on her life and does indeed run away to Paris, seeking to live an independent life and choose who to love. It's not just a dream for Louise, but many young women during this period living in the provinces. "A hellish life here" ("Notre vie d’enfer”), comments one father of three daughters, "Who can blame them for seeking paradise out there?"). Paris of course is that dream, but life there is difficult for Louise, who finds that it is not any easier there for a young woman seeking to live independently. The way that her dreams and illusions are shattered however suggests that the damage is inflicted not just by the sheltered life enforced by her parents, but that there is an element of abuse hinted at in their intimidating behaviour in the original opera that Loy is keen to draw out and make explicit. And apply in a wider context.

In the waiting room of the psychiatric hospital, the vision of Julien is just a warm memory, an allegorical illusion for the promise of the paradise of Paris, and that indeed is the reality that Charpentier depicts. Accompanied by her mother - wonderfully portrayed by Sophie Koch, a great role for her - she is not just over-protective, but overpowering and intimidating. Loy sees this oppressiveness as having a detrimental psychological impact on the young woman. As does her relationship with her father, not just cossetting her like a child, but fondling and caressing in an inappropriate and troubling way. The father is something of a bohemian, believing that money doesn't bring happiness and he thinks that they should all be content with their lot as a close family. You suspect the mother's objection to Julien is that the young man interested in her daughter too closely resembles her husband.

Loy pursues the inevitable consequence of this family background, combining it with the sinister setting of the psychiatric hospital in a way that changes the whole tone of the work, allowing for no real romantic scenes other than those in Louise's head. In this setting, Louise's fate becomes tied to that of Mimi in Henry Murger's original novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème, where the young woman is actually institutionalised - something skipped over in Puccini's opera adaptation. Herheim managed to introduce this stark reality in his adaptation of that opera and Loy likewise chops up the timeline to highlight the injustice and inequality of women and the fate that many would have been subjected to. It lets you know right from the start that there is going to be no happy ending here.

The Paris street scenes then all take on a hallucinatory quality, the patients, doctors and hospital employees taking the roles of the disillusioned lives on the street. The short Act II (presumably shortened by Loy as cuts have been employed for this production) offers some light relief, but it's also brief and carries this darker undercurrent. In the original Louise is in Paris, her colleagues in a stitching factory dreaming of love and suspecting that she has a lover. They sing of the romance of "the voice of Paris". In Loy's version, they are all hospital cleaners (quite a lot for a fairly rundown looking institution) and Louise imagines them making her wedding dress while she is serenaded by a street singer, Julien below the window. The chorus soon turns to threatening as they gang up on her and make fun of her situation.

Louise's continued idealisation of love and freedom in Paris, escaping from her abusive home life, is in reality short-lived as her father’s illness allows her parents to appeal for her return and, true to form, even blame her running away as the reason for his illness. Her return to the place of unhappiness takes on an almost unbearable intensity in Loy’s suggestion of the extent and nature of the abuse, but again it does seem to be a justifiable response to what appears to be hinted at in the original work. Pelléas et Mélisande comes to mind, the father - an absolutely brilliant performance by Nicolas Courjal - sounding Golaud-like with his imprecations to his "p’tite enfant". Louise premiered in 1900, two years before Pelléas et Mélisande, but it seems to have tapped into the same undercurrents, finding another elliptical way of expressing them. The final act and fate of the young woman is almost devastating in the intensity of the emotions and the naturalistic treatment employed here.

Although Loy has found a serious line to follow through the work, you do get the impression that otherwise there might not be a great deal to the opera and that any serious intent would get lost in the conventionality of the operatic arrangements. Nonetheless, musically it's rich and beautifully scored, with a distinct French character; Ravel comes to mind, Massenet of course and, as mentioned, even a little Debussy (but I have to say almost everything that has a shimmery quality and a French spoken rhythm reminds me of Pelléas et Mélisande). For the sake of a modern revival and tighter focus, conductor Giacomo Sagripanti seems to accept that some cuts are necessary, stating that its length is part of the weakness of the opera which tries to take in too much. Do we lose out on the colour of the work? I don't think so. Even with cuts, there is an extravagance still there in the sentiments, the choral pieces and the wild romanticism; the production just puts a different shade on it, one that is suggested to a large extent by the nature of the subject, the female perspective of romantic illusion being crushed by reality.

A lot rides on Elsa Dreisig as Louise and of course she is outstanding, both in her singing and acting. Louise even seems somewhat oppressed vocally in first two acts, but literally finds her voice in Act III, and in that original controversial expression of female sexual pleasure. Loy uses that same sense of oppression and liberation to a slightly different purpose of course, presenting an interesting modern insight into the character, although it's clear that the darker intent is there to a large extent in the actual composition. Done this way, as with Herheim, does force you to look more critically beneath the surface of the glittery first half of the work and see that it is not all lovely and romantic being a young woman running away from abusive parents and finding it difficult to live a life as an independent woman on the streets of Paris. "Cité de joie! cité d'amour!… Protège tes enfants!" ("City of joy, city of love... Protect your children").

The character of Julien might suffer from such a reworking, becoming an ideal, an illusory dream of love and romance, but Adam Smith's singing is superb and makes a great impression. To Louise's claim that "It's Paradise" and "It's a fairy dream”, his character repeatedly tells her that "No, it's life", trying to keep the young woman grounded in the real world that would be normal for anyone except someone who has not been used to such love and acceptance. With those terrific performances from Sophie Koch and Nicolas Courjal distorting that picture as her oppressive parents, Christof Loy succeeds in bringing into the present Charpentier's attempt to introduce naturalism into opera as a "roman musical", a musical novel. It's not a profound work; it has limited drama; but it has a firm basis in reality and in the psychology that still can hold true for many young women today.

External links: ARTE Concert, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Rossini - William Tell (London, 2015)

Giacomo Rossini - Guillaume Tell

Royal Opera House, 2015

Antonio Pappano, Damiano Michieletto, Gerald Finley, John Osborn, Malin Byström, Alexander Vinogradov, Sofia Fomina, Enkelejda Shkosa, Nicolas Courjal, Eric Halfvarson, Michael Colvin, Samuel Dale Johnson, Enea Scala

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

The Royal Opera House production of William Tell caused a bit of an uproar over some explicit content that some thought had no place in Rossini's opera, specifically a scene depicting the rape of a young village woman by Gesler's soldiers. As is often the case, it appears that one scene has come in for undue attention, taken out of context of the production as a whole. While it is uncomfortably long it's meant to make the audience feel uncomfortable, and if so Damiano Michieletto succeeds in getting across the reality of military oppression and war crimes, which is surely what the legend of William Tell and Rossini's opera is all about. Or is it?

Well, there's an argument to be made on both sides. For a start, Michieletto is not recounting the legend of William Tell and the Swiss rebellion against the oppressive Austrian Habsburg regime in the 14th century, but rather updates it to a more modern setting that looks more like it takes place in one of the Balkan states, the Ukraine or Crimea. It's not just that the director wants to de-romanticise the William Tell legend, since it's apparent to anyone who listens closely to the score that Rossini by no means romanticises the subject of military oppression and genocide. All Michieletto is doing is bringing the underlying reality of that to the stage rather than hide it behind costume drama theatrics.

There's a case to be made however that Rossini's music - in that controversial scene certainly - doesn't depict that kind of brutal realism. And even if it has been toned down a little for this video recording, do we really want to see it acted out in this way on the stage? We wouldn't watch it if it was on the news and surely acting out a rape scene on the stage and choreographing it to Rossini's music risks cheapening the horror of the reality. Well, that's why we have directors to make decisions about how far to go in the visual staging of an opera and Damiano Michieletto takes sensitivities on both sides into account in the Royal Opera House production.

Rossini's music might indeed suggest more of mythological hero of the kind that Jemmy reads about in his comic books, while playing with his toy soldiers, as we see during the famous four-part overture that Rossini devises for the opera - an overture that is unlike any of his previous dashed-out-in-minutes-just-before-the-opening-night overtures for his earlier operas. The overture captures the sense of human suffering and endurance, buoyed by a sense of unquenchable spirit for heroic resistance, and finally acceptance of the human reality and the cost that must be paid for it. It's all there in Rossini's overture, it's expanded on (considerably) over the long opera, and all that is there in Michieletto's production as well.

The romantic image of the 14th century folk legend and what he stands for is there in Jemmy's imagination; a figure who steps off the comic book page in this production and gives the strength and inspiration of the ideal to those living with the reality. The Robin Hood-like figure tries to rouse the people of the little village of Bürglen with his arrow, but the despairing villagers are clearly too terrified having suffered at the hands of the brutal Austrian governor of the region, Gesler. William Tell, all too aware of the bitter reality that they have to live with on a daily basis, is himself is disgusted at his son's nonsense, and is reluctant to take up the quiver presented to him by the ghostly figure of legend.

But take it up he does. He first attempts passive resistance (refusing to bow before Gesler's hat) and appeasement (shooting the apple from his son's head), before realising that other more direct and violent means are necessary. It's not acceptable to just heroically storm in there and Rossini's opera, based on Friedrich Schiller's play, incorporates a variety of real human responses, not just through Tell and his family, but also the suffering endured by Arnold Melchtal through the murder of his father, and the compromised position he is in with regards to his post in the Austrian army and his relationship with Mathilde. Family, above all is what is important, and it's complicated. There's also a sense of the community as a family and it is in the realisation of the greater good being served for the sake of this family that the path to action becomes clearer.

Michieletto's production takes all of this into account, placing great emphasis on the family connections and the depth of feeling that Rossini's score gives them in the opera. He contrasts this - in sharp lighting with long shadows - with the devastation that had been done, the landscape a wasteland with uprooted trees featuring prominently. Nature has been defiled. At the same time, it's important that the turning point that is reached is one that justifies Tell's actions. The horror of Tell having to shoot an apple off the head of his own son is vividly depicted in the opera, but the folk legend is unlikely to have the same impact for a modern audience used to seeing worse horrors on the TV every night, and if Michieletto deems it necessary to elaborate on a scene that is discreetly alluded to in the libretto in order to make the work function dramatically, well, that's his job.

Obviously not everyone will agree with the means employed, but regardless of the merits of the production designs and the concept employed, the musical and singing performances make a convincing case for the brilliance of Rossini's masterpiece. The Royal Opera House orchestra under Antonio Pappano put in an outstanding performance, forceful, lyrical and dynamic, never over-playing or over-emphasising Rossini score into grand opera mannerisms, but remaining sensitive to the pace and varied moods of the piece. It's often dazzling, particularly with the uncompressed high quality audio mixing on the Blu-ray disc.

The casting too is of the highest order for what is undoubtedly an extremely challenging and a long work to sing for all its principals. I'm not sure why I never get terribly excited about Gerald Finley in a leading role, but perhaps it's because there are just never any airs or showiness attached to his performances. That doesn't mean that he is ever merely filling a role functionally; his William Tell here is faultlessly controlled and expressive in singing, his acting performance completely within character. John Osborn is one of the most underrated Rossini tenors out there, and one of the few who can really do justice to a role as challenging as Arnold. He's quite brilliant here. I've been hard on Malin Byström in the past, but she amply demonstrates how good she can be here and is simply extraordinary as Mathilde. Keeping the emphasis essentially on the family theme, Sofia Fomina presents a lively, spirited Jemmy and Enkelejda Shkosa a touching Hedwige. Nicolas Courjal is a force to be reckoned with, as you would expect Gesler to be. The chorus also play their important role in the opera exceptionally well.

Links: Royal Opera House

Meyerbeer - Robert Le Diable

Giacomo Meyerbeer - Robert Le Diable

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - 2012

Daniel Oren, Laurent Pelly, Bryan Hymel, John Relyea, Jean-François Borras, Marina Poplavskaya, Patrizia Ciofi, Nicolas Courjal, Jihoon Kim, Pablo Bemsch, David Butt Philip, Ashley Riches, Dušica Bijelić

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

The folly and the controversy surrounding the Royal Opera House's production of Meyerbeer's Robert Le Diable have been extensively reported elsewhere, from the cast changes and departures through to its critical mauling in the press. While I've no doubt that a full evening of a misconceived five-act Meyerbeer opera could well have been a painful experience live at the Royal Opera House, a filmed recording of the production is however another thing entirely. That's not to say that some of the problems with the production are any less evident, but there are compensating factors that one can perhaps better appreciate from the comfort of one's own living room.

Even the undoubted weaknesses in the production can be offset to a large degree in this case just by the rare opportunity to see one of the greatest works of 19th century opera performed on the stage. Meyerbeer was one of the most important and composers of his time, an influence on both Verdi and Wagner, but his extravagant style and grandeur hasn't remained fashionable, and even his greatest works - huge successes in their day - have fallen from the popular repertoire. Such is the case with Robert le Diable, a work which drew wide acclaim from fellow composers, critics and achieved wide popular international success following its premiere in 1831. The work was last performed at Covent Garden however in 1890, and it hasn't been performed much anywhere in the world over the last century.

The fundamental difficulty with putting on a staging a work of 19th century Grand Opera does indeed have to do with it being at odds with popular tastes and fashions. It's not so much a reflection on the quality of the work as the fact that modern audience has very different expectations from opera, and the old-style can be hard to swallow for a modernist, post-modernist, post-post-modernist audience. It's like expecting a reader of Harlan Coben thrillers to adapt to reading Walter Scott, or for readers of Ian McEwan to engage with the themes of Victor Hugo. The challenge that faced director Laurent Pelly then is not an enviable one. He may not entirely have succeeded, but although his production for the Royal Opera House was heavily criticised in a way Pelly does capture the spirit of Meyerbeer to some extent. Perhaps it's more of a case that audiences still aren't ready for Meyerbeer.

Which is understandable, but a pity nonetheless. If nothing else Robert le Diable is an opera experience like no other. Musically and in terms of plotting it's not the most sophisticated, but Meyerbeer packs the five acts of the opera so full of melodies and dramatic development, underlining it with grand choral refrains, lyrical expression, comic interplay and over-the-top gothic imagery with some ballet sequences thrown in for good measure, that it's never anything less than pure value-for-money entertainment. Pelly's production, unfairly criticised I feel, attempts to put all the colour and the darkness of the work up there on the stage in the sets and costumes, and he does so rather well. It's faithful to the spirit of the work, playing it straight where it ought to be, exaggerating in other places, but never stooping to making fun of the melodramatic developments and wild declarations.

Aiming for the middle ground between period fidelity and modernism, there's a "cardboard cutout" feel to the scenery then that is reminiscent in places of David Hockney's designs for the Glyndebourne production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. It's like an ancient black and white engraving that has been garishly hand-coloured, or even a medieval tapestry that might lack realistic detail and proportion, but nonetheless has the power to evoke the history and the values of another period far from our own. Sometimes this works exceptionally well (Act III's vision of Hell on a mountain pass like something out of an Hieronymus Bosch painting), at other times the imagery feels a little forced (the ultimate battle between the good of Alice and the evil of Bertram in Act V), and sometimes it's just a little too kitsch and reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail to take seriously (the colour of the medieval tournament in Act II).  

In most cases however, even those mentioned above, these are valid responses to the nature and tone of the material itself. Stravinsky and Meyerbeer may have little in common (Gounod's Faust might be a better model to consider), but Robert le Diable does indeed relate an exaggerated morality tale of the battle between good and evil similar to the one in The Rake's Progress. Here, Robert of Normandy is rumoured to be the son of beautiful princess who married a demon from Hell. Robert however has the choice to follow a path of righteousness, and demonstrates his leniency by sparing the life of the minstrel Rimbaut who relates the story of Robert the Devil to assembled knights at an inn in Palermo. He could choose also to win the hand of Isabelle in the traditional way through a tournament, but despite the warnings of his late mother and his foster sister Alice, is laid astray by the machinations of his companion Bertrand, the real devil of the work. If he steals a magic branch from the tomb of Saint Rosalie, he can win Isabelle by other means.

Barring some questionable choices - I'm still in two minds about the choreography of the zombie sisters of St Rosalie during the opera's most famous/notorious Dance of the Nuns ballet - Pelly's staging is sympathetic to the shifts of tone in the work itself and gets fully behind it, never attempting to make it into something else entirely with conceptual cleverness. Daniel Oren too shows great feeling for the work, its rhythms and variations, and - regardless of what you think of the merits or otherwise of Meyerbeer's score - it's simply a delight to see this type of work being put through its paces. There is however one other problem associated with putting on a Meyerbeer opera that the best efforts of the conductor, director and the Royal Opera House seem powerless to influence. It seems like we really don't have the singers for this type of work any longer.

It's understandable that singers who would be suited to or capable of singing Meyerbeer are obviously more focussed on the greater career opportunities afforded by singing Wagner or bel canto. Even good Verdi singers are thin on the ground nowadays and the demands of Meyerbeer are often greater. Singing the title role, Bryan Hymel proves that he is up there and his performance is not only commendable, it's almost heroic. His voice might not be to everyone's taste, and it does start to grate and go a little bit wayward as the opera progresses through the final acts, but the effort is considerable. No less demanding is the role of Bertram and John Relyea handles it superbly and with great character. Despite her commitment, Marina Poplavskaya however is terribly miscast here, as is Patrizia Ciofi, who really doesn't have a large enough voice for this style of work, her singing sounding like a whimper that is lost in the orchestration and big choruses.

It's this aspect of the production that is the most problematic. While there are advantages to watching Robert le Diable on the screen that allow one to better to appreciate the full Meyerbeer experience that Oren and Pelly recreate, it only emphasises the unsuitability of some of the singing. There's no doubting the commitment of the performances however, and for all its flaws this is a sincere and a valiant effort to stage one of the great opera masterworks of yesteryear. The recording of the work and its presentation on the Opus Arte Blu-ray (which comes in a die-cut slipcase) is of course of the highest quality in both image and sound. The extra features however are slim, with only a Cast Gallery and a five-minute presentation on the legacy of the work, which does nonetheless give you an idea of the challenges of putting on this work. There's an essay and a full synopsis in the enclosed booklet. The disc is BD50, Full-HD, Region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.

Thomas - Mignon

Ambroise Thomas - Mignon

Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2012

Frédéric Chaslin, Jean-Louis Benoît, Sophie Koch, Paolo Fanale, Diana Damrau, Nicolas Courjal, Carine Séchaye, Emilio Pons, Frédéric Goncalves, Laurent Delvert

Geneva, 16 May 2012

There seems to have been some initial confusion over whether Mignon was destined to be a grand opera or an opéra comique. The libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré was first offered to Meyerbeer, who refused it, then Gounod, before being taken on by Ambroise Thomas now in his 50s at the time of writing in 1866, as a commission for the Opéra Comique in Paris. Based on Goethe’s famous Bildungsroman, ‘The Apprentice Years of Wilhelm Meister’ (1795), there were however certain changes that required that altered the original intentions of the work, such as expanding the role of Philine for a lyric soprano and rewriting the ending from the tragic conclusion of the original. Whatever the intentions of the original librettists, Thomas found a perfect expression for the work in the lighter of the two opera styles, composing with pleasant melodies as well as with delicacy for the emotional content and Mignon was a great success, the greatest of his career thus far (two years before his next success in Hamlet), the work even surviving past the fire that destroyed the Salle Favart in 1887 to run beyond a 1000 performances in Paris.

Those qualities in Thomas’s writing, particularly in the characterisation assigned to each of the main roles, was certainly evident in the 2012 revival production of the opera at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, which benefitted moreover from the outstanding casting of the French mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch in the title role of Mignon. A young innocent of indeterminate gender who has been brought up by gypsies, Mignon has been forced to perform what seems to be a rather humiliating egg dance for the public, finally refusing to continue any longer at a show in the courtyard of a country inn where Wilhelm Meister is present. Taking pity on her predicament and attracted to the ambiguous nature of this strange creature dressed in boyish clothes, Wilhelm buys her freedom from Jarno, the leader of the gypsies. To protect her from the attentions of a crazed troubadour, Lothario, mad from the loss of his daughter, Wilhelm allows Mignon to accompany him as his page.

References to such figures, many derived from Goethe’s Mignon, are common in literature in figures such as Lolita as well as in the cinema - Gelsomina in Fellini’s La Strada, for example - but some such as Lulu have also travelled through to opera and continue to exercise the same strange fascination. In some respects, the Mignon figure, looking for a father-figure, a lover, a husband, contains a purity which can inspire the artist (who can forget the poetic raptures of Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita?), but the same figure can also reflect darker and more ambiguous impulses that are protective and dangerously possessive. It’s perfect material for musical and poetical expression, but while there is a great deal of such qualities in Thomas’s writing, his opera Mignon perhaps doesn’t always reflect both sides of the coin with equal success. It’s a lovely little opera to listen to, but perhaps a little old-fashioned and restricted in this respect by the conventions of the opéra comiquestyle.

It could be enlivened certainly through inventive stage direction and perhaps an updating of the settings, but there was nothing like that in Jean-Louis Benoît’s production for Geneva. If the props however were reduced to a bare minimum on the stage, it was to leave all the more room for it to be filled with singers and chorus, all dressed in fine, period costumes. A little character was introduced with a humorous setting up of chairs which became a game of skittles every time someone made a rushed entrance to the stage through them, and there was a minor skit involving the flames that destroy Baron Rosemburg’s castle at the end of the second act, but little else of note to suggest a theme or concept being explored. Even so, with the fine costume designs and the actual stage direction - Diana Damrau in particular being a swirling, sparkling presence as Philine - the production looked well and was never less than effective for the purposes of a traditional, theatrical presentation.

It was left to the singers to bring whatever they could to the roles through the performances. Sophie Koch brought a fabulous air of wistful melancholy to the famous aria ‘Connais-tu le pays où fleurent l’oranger?/Le pays des fruits d’or et les roses vermeilles?’ (“Do you know the land where orange flowers bloom?/A land of golden fruit and crimson roses?”), which along with her boyish appearance, lent some interesting ambiguity to the androgynous character and how she is perceived by both Wilhelm and Lothario. There was a hint here of other depths that could be explored, but neither Thomas’s music not the direction seemed capable of drawing anything more out of this as the performance progressed. Koch however was fabulous in the role, singing a choice mezzo-soprano role wonderfully. Taking on a broad range of roles that stretch from this light lyrical opéra comique to heavier Wagner roles, there really doesn’t seem to be anything she isn’t capable of, and she sounds more and more impressive each time I hear her.

It was a double luxury then to also have Diana Damrau as Philine in this production. She played a crucial part in the success of the production, and her role is also crucial to making the opera work so well. Her flowing coloratura in the soprano range certainly adds considerable colour to the range of voices as well as some well-needed sparkle to a story that lacks the depth that it might have acquired in a tragic grand opera style, but there’s much more to her character than that and the role serves a vital dramatic function. Philine, along with sidekick Laërte as the leaders of a bohemian troupe of actors, is the catalyst that brings Wilhelm Meister and Mignon together, but Philine also has other outgoing feminine qualities and her flirting introduces the necessary element of conflict that pushes the romantic element to the fore. Her extravagant character and the extravagant singing that goes along with it were well-served here by Diana Damrau. Her ‘Je suis Titania la blonde’ polonaise, given after a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the baron’s castle, was every bit as rivetting and magnetic as it ought to be.

The two exceptionally talented leading ladies were well supported by an excellent Paolo Fanale as Wilhelm Meister, by Nicholas Courjal’s beautifully lucid baritone Lothario, and by Emilio Pons as Laërte. All of them sang very well, but none were really able to make much more of the parts beyond the limitations of the original characterisation and within the constraints of the unexceptional stage direction. A good energetic and entertaining performance from Carine Séchaye in the trouser-role of Frédéric also added to the overall quality and dynamic of the singing. Frédéric Chaslin conducted the orchestra of the Suisse Romande delightfully through Thomas’s lovely score, the production using the original version of the opera with spoken dialogue (only a few short passages) rather than the later revised German version with recitative that, like Thomas’s similar rearrangement of Hamlet, attempted to come closer to the tragic ending for an audience more familiar with the original work. The happy ending however seemed very much in line with the lightness and delicacy of touch that characterised the whole production here in Geneva.