Chabrier - L'Etoile (De Nederlandse, 2014 - Webcast)

Emmanuel Chabrier - L'Etoile

De Nationale, Amsterdam, 2014

Patrick Fournillier, Laurent Pelly, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Christophe Mortagne, Hélène Guilmette, Jérôme Varnier, Elliot Madore, Julie Boulianne, François Piolino, François Soons, Harry Teeuwen, Jeroen van Glabbeek, Richard Prada

Culturebox - 16 October 2014

Aside from Offenbach, we don't often get the opportunity to see much French comic operetta outside of France. In Paris, the Opéra Comique do outstanding work in keeping this distinctive lyric tradition alive and presented in its best light. And, it might be a bit of an obvious remark to make but it's true - Chabrier's L'Etoile is one of the brightest stars of the repertoire that is rarely performed nowadays. It's surprising then to see it performed and done so well in this recent production at DNO in Amsterdam, but there's a well-appointed French production team in place here with Patrick Fournillier conducting and Laurent Pelly directing, that does justice to the musical and comic qualities of the opera.

What makes Chabrier's L'Etoile great are the same things that make any opéra-comique or opéra bouffe great. It's funny and it has great tunes. It does however need a good comic actors/singers and direction that plays to these advantages, and that's all perfectly in place here with Stéphanie d’Oustrac leading the cast and Laurent Pelly bringing his colourful and often absurd sense of style and fun to the proceedings. Optionally, a great comic opera can have a satirical leaning, or it can have one worked into it by the director, but I don't detect any particularly subtle social commentary in L'Etoile or much opportunity for including one. The plot, as silly as it is, is however a lot of fun and moves along well, providing plenty of opportunity for comic situations, romance and lovely music.

We're in the kingdom of King Ouf I. He's a ruler who likes to keep his people entertained. A few fireworks on special occasions and the odd impalement - what better way to keep the populace happy and maintain order? Traditionally, it's a troublesome rebel who is executed on these occasions, but such is the terror among the general public that even in his best disguise, setting traps and making provocations, Ouf can't find a single unruly citizen. But the king has another problem. According to the constitution, the ruler must announce his successor by his 40th birthday, and King Ouf is 39. Ouf depends on the court astrologer Siroco to help guide him though this dilemma through observation of the stars.

Princess Laoula has however just arrived incognito from a neighbouring kingdom to sound out the possibility of a marriage alliance, but on their way they meet Lazuli, a travelling salesman who falls in love with the Princess. Rebuffed by her minder, the ambassador Hérisson de Porc-Épic, Lazuli strikes out at the next person he meets, who just happens to be King Ouf. Ouf is livid and delighted that he now has a legitimate victim to execute. Siroco however warns the king that the stars indicate that his and Lazuli's destinies are connected, and that the king's death will follow within 24 hours of Lazuli's. Lazuli is therefore treated like a Prince at the palace, until the Mataquin royal delegation arrives and Lazuli's elopement with the Princess throws everything into turmoil.

As inconsequential as the plot might seem - despite the contrivances, it's not even particularly involved - Chabrier's music for L'Etoile is beautiful, melodic and sophisticated. In contrast to much comic operetta and even Offenbach's straightforward arrangements, Chabrier's music is much more operatic and fitted to the mood as well as the dramatic context. It's also wonderfully paced, the spoken dialogue sections kept to a minimum, moving rapidly from one situation with a beautiful aria to another. Much of the work revolves around solo singing in this respect, but there are also some duets - appropriately in those love scenes, of course - and some wonderful chorus work, all of which enlivens the work with great variety.

It's this colour and variety that is reflected in Laurent Pelly's direction and in the set designs by Chantal Thomas. The setting of the opera is abstract enough that it can work in any time period, but Pelly resists modernising what is an old-fashioned work too much and keeps it playful. The idea that we are in a police-state is indicated in Act I not with spy cameras but with loudspeakers on numerous poles, with fearful citizens scurrying around in trenchcoats. Later we see secret police with hound heads, and Ouf himself is depicted as a pantomime Teutonic dictator in oversize shorts. Stylised old-fashioned vehicles are used for Lazuli's mobile shop and for the Mataquin entourage, and the devices for impalement and astrological observation are clockwork cog, wheel and pulley operated. Even the pink puffball dresses of the maids of honour fit in perfectly with the cartoon look and feel of the work.

Pelly's direction of the cast also contributes greatly to the success of the production. The acting is comically exaggerated, but not overly so, letting the delivery of the libretto carry the humour. Stéphanie d’Oustrac is particularly good here in her inhabiting the trouser-role of Lazuli. I'm more used to seeing the mezzo-soprano in rather more glamorous roles and in Baroque opera, but her opéra bouffe work is just great. It's a tricky role to sing, and the physical acting required doesn't make it any easier, but that lovely rich voice is full of colour and character. Christophe Mortagne is an energetic Ouf, perfectly pitched in the comic acting with a lovely lyrical tenor voice. Hélène Guilmette's Laoula is also well sung. Patrick Fournillier and the Residentie Orkest fairly romp through Chabrier's delightful score, and the De Nederlandse chorus are as impressive as ever.

Links: Culturebox, Dutch National Opera

Thomas - Hamlet

Ambroise Thomas - Hamlet

Opéra National du Rhin

Patrick Fournillier, Vincent Boussard, Stéphane Degout, Ana Camelia Stefanescu, Marie-Ange Todorovitch, Nicolas Cavallier, Christophe Berry, Vincent Pavesi, Mark Van Arsdale, Jean-Gabriel Saint-Martin, Dimitri Pkhaladze

Strasbourg, France - 26 June 2011

To be or not to be... an opera... that is the question.

That’s a bit of a predictable way to start a review of Ambroise Thomas’ opera version of Hamlet, but it’s still a relevant question that has divided opera-goers for years. Your view on that is likely to depend on whether you are an English-speaker and familiar with the Shakespeare drama or otherwise, and if you are more attuned to the traditions of French grand opera. The problem with Shakespeare in French – even though his work is venerated there almost as much as in the UK – is that it’s not really Shakespeare. In French it has none of the poetry of his Elizabethan period verse, and it translated into a rather prosaic, ordinary, commonplace (I know these all mean the same thing, I’m just listing them for effect) French that is almost indistinguishable from how modern French is spoken.

Adapting Shakespeare to opera is not without its problems either, but there are plenty of examples from Berlioz to Wagner, but most notably Rossini and Verdi, to indicate that there’s no reason why a lyrical presentation of the Bard’s dramas can’t work, and in some cases… dare I say it… even improve on the original. Well, maybe not improve, but there are certainly examples, such as Iago’s Credo in Verdi’s Otello, where the original elements are expanded upon to superb effect, but it’s hard to see how even the Gesamtkunstwerk nature of opera can add much that isn’t already contained within the original Shakespearean drama.

Particularly Hamlet, which in my view, and many others, is the greatest drama ever written. I may have been biased from the outset then, but, never having had the opportunity before to see Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet – or indeed anything by one of France’s most respected if little-known composers – I was keen to take the opportunity to see it performed on French soil in Strasbourg. Ambroise Thomas’ works are rarely performed, with only Hamlet and Mignon staged with any kind of regularity in France, but even here at the Opéra National du Rhin, Hamlet was billed as a rare classic rediscovered. Try as I might however, I couldn’t get the original text out of my head as the rather drab, colourless, dull (yes, for effect) and prosaic French libretto singularly failed to bring the drama and the poetry to life.

Act I and II set out the dramatic content of the opera. It opens with the marriage of Gertrude to Claudius (a invented scene not in the original, but effective enough to establish the context of the drama) two months after his brother King Hamlet’s death, and is then followed by the appearance of the ghost of the father talking to his son Prince Hamlet, telling him that he was poisoned by Claudius and that he must be avenged (“but go easy on Gertrude”, he bizarrely warns), and Act II ends with the travelling players re-enacting the crime (strangely and confusingly in this production, implicating the real people into the drama and not leaving much room for ambiguity).

Musically, it’s hard to find anything attractive about the early scenes, the score conventional and dull, full of old-fashioned academicism that has little relation to the dramatic tone or context of the piece, with one-note continuo during speaking sections and only the chorus coming in from time to time to add dramatic emphasis. Any attempts at originality are quite eccentric, such as a solo saxophone at one point. The staging at Strasbourg Opéra didn’t really find any interesting way to make this come to life (the appearance of the King’s ghost walking vertically down a wall notwithstanding), with a generic Court setting that never changed, with variation only in the lighting – but it did at least keep the dramatic action fluid.

Act III and IV however, post interval, present a totally different side to the opera, putting aside the exposition of the dramatic plot and allowing the emotional tone to find its own footing through some lovely duets and arias – in Hamlet’s confrontation with the Queen, and particularly in Ophelia’s extended lament and death scene. It becomes more like scenes from Hamlet (or inspired by Hamlet) set to music, and it certainly kills the plot progression stone dead, but the musical qualities work in favour of the opera and this is certainly preferable to the dreary dramatisation of the first half. As wonderful as this might be, it comes at the cost of the excision of some important and famous scenes, with several of the characters given short shrift. Laertes has a walk-on/walk-off part (pointlessly wandering through the dramatic scene between Hamlet and Ophelia with a suitcase at one point in this production), there are no Rosencrantz or Guildenstern (not a loss really), and alas, poor Yorick’s name is forgotten by the gravediggers, giving Hamlet no opportunity to pose with a skull and meditate upon life (although he does so here, and quite effectively, in relation to Ophelia’s death). Even Polonius is reduced to a bit-part of about three lines, playing no significant part in the drama, and consequently coming out of the drama alive!

As do many other characters, for Thomas and his librettists Michel Carré and Jules Barbier (taken admittedly from a reworking of the drama by Alexandre Dumas) – suddenly realise that they need to find a way to quickly wrap-up this non-drama. Shakespeare is thrown out the window and instead they tack on their own ending where the ghost of the dead King appears before the assembled guests, hands a knife to Hamlet and tells him to get on with it (“but don’t forget, go easy on your mother”). Hamlet duly obliges, despatching Claudius before himself expiring over the grave of Ophelia. To say I was bemused at the finale would be an understatement – flabberghasted, perhaps – and this is the revised version of the opera that was forced upon Thomas for the English permiere of the opera, as it was felt that the English audience wouldn’t accept the happy ending in the original version where Hamlet lives on and is crowned King! Putting Shakespeare aside however – and the developments of Act III and IV are such a thoroughly enjoyable musical experience that one is finally able to do this – it was a however a dramatically effective conclusion.

It helped that the singing at Strasbourg was of a fairly high standard. Hamlet is a baritone role, which one feels it should be even though it’s not a great operatic role (he’s even upstaged by Ophelia), but we had Stéphane Degout here (who I’ve previously seen doing Rameau) and he was in fine voice, as was Nicolas Cavallier in the bass role of Claudius. Hamlet of course notes that women are fickle and inconstant, and there was some inconsistency to the Romanian Ana Camelia Stefanescu as Ophelia, and Marie-Ange Todorovitch’s Gertrude, but they were mainly hampered by the dramatic expression of the first two acts and both came through to excellent effect in the final two acts, particularly in Ophelia’s beautifully heartfelt lament. Despite the liberties taken with Shakespeare’s verse and characterisation then, and despite some conservative grand opera tedium in the drama of the first half, and with the help of some judicious pruning by Patrick Fournillier of the opera’s ballet sequences, Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet proved to be such an experience that one can see why the opera remains popular in France, as well as why it’s not so highly thought of elsewhere.

Alfano - Cyrano de Bergerac

Franco Alfano - Cyrano de Bergerac

Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia, 2007

Patrick Fournillier, Michal Znaniecki, Plácido Domingo, Sondra Radvanovsky, Arturo Chacón Cruz, Rod Gilfry, Corrado Carmelo Caruso, Roberto Accurso, Javier Franco

Naxos

The story of Edmond Rostand’s epic romantic drama 'Cyrano de Bergerac' (1897) should be known to most audiences from the various film versions that have been made – some of them even predating Alfano’s 1937 opera – the most notable being Gérard Depardieu’s performance as the long-nosed character in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s popular French film from 1990, but it may also be known to more through Steve Martin’s modern updating of the role in 'Roxane'. The story however is essentially the same, that of a man with an exceedingly large nose that disfigures his face, who believes that he is ugly and unworthy of the love of his beautiful cousin Roxane. Working closely to Rostand’s original text, Rappeneau’s film captured all the comedy, wit, romance and tragedy of the situation, retaining the verse format of the original, and did it so well that it’s impossible for anyone who knows and loves the film version not to measure up Franco Alfano’s opera against it. It has to be said that the opera compares very favourably, working so naturally that one wonders why it isn’t better known and more frequently performed.

Alfano, who is now only really known for the rarely performed Cyrano and for completing Puccini’s final opera Turandot after the composer’s death, only succeeds intermittently in finding the right tone and melody to engage the audience in the drama, but he is wholly convincing in the areas where it counts most – in the romantic expressions of love between Cyrano (acting on behalf of another man) and Roxane. The arias and duets that consolidate the nature of their love (“Sens to mon âme un peu dans cette ombre qui monte?” and “Je lisais, je relisais. J’étais à toi”) achieve a perfect expression of the highly florid nature of the romantic declarations and the underlying depth and sincerity of the sentiments with all the mastery of a student of Puccini. If it were just for these two arias alone, Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac does complete justice to the work, but there is great skill in how the essence of the story fits around it. The dramatic action is somewhat condensed in the opera but it retains all the essential qualities that make the work so charming and doesn’t lose a fraction of the emotional depth or spirit of the original.

It does so of course, because that is the great strength of opera, allowing expression of such elements through the music and the singing, and Alfano plays to these strengths. In the film version, I find Roxane comes across as somewhat bland, insipid and superficial, and you need to will a sense of disbelief to understand what inspires such passion in Cyrano apart from her beauty, but here she has a much more active role and is much better characterised, principally through the musical arrangements, and, of course through the singing. Here we have Sondra Radvanovsky, who conveys the full force of her character’s nature and passion through her singing, if not so well in her acting or facial expressions. Rod Gilfry is marvellous as De Guiche, actually almost making his character sympathetic and less of a moustache-twirling villain. Arturo Chacón Cruz is fine as Christian, but it’s a thankless role that has no real arias and is always upstaged by Cyrano. As Cyrano, you couldn’t have anyone more charismatic than Plácido Domingo. His French diction isn’t the strongest, but he has all the passion and charm that the swashbuckling hero demands and is in fine voice in his 121 role.

The staging at the Palau des Arts in Valencia is fine, striking a good balance between the period and a modern approach to staging it, without introducing any incongruous elements. The stage however is a little dark and the recording, even in High Definition on the Blu-ray, doesn’t enable you to see the detail and the overall impact of it all. The audio, even in lossless LPCM stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1, is also lacking, but mainly due to how it was recorded. The microphones are clearly far from the singers, as there is a lot of ambient noise and stage clatter, the singing sounding rather echoing, occasionally drowning out the rather thin orchestration but at other times being overwhelmed by it. For the most part however, the qualities of the singing and the music, and the opera itself are no less evident. Overall, it’s a slightly imperfect live recording, but an otherwise fine presentation and performance of an opera that really deserves to be better known.