Adès - The Exterminating Angel (Paris, 2024)

Thomas Adès - The Exterminating Angel

Opéra National de Paris, 2024

Thomas Adès, Calixto Bieito, Jacquelyn Stucker, Gloria Tronel, Hilary Summers, Claudia Boyle, Christine Rice, Amina Edris, Nicky Spence, Frédéric Antoun, Jarrett Ott, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Filipe Manu, Philippe Sly, Paul Gay, Clive Bayley, Thomas Faulkner, Ilanah Lobel-Torres

Paris Opera Play - 5th March 2024

When it comes to the films of Luis Buñuel, the ideas and sentiment behind them isn't particularly deep or complicated, but it's the surrealist treatment that distinguishes the works. You could possibly break most of them down to the filmmaker rejecting and making fun of the establishment, the bourgeoisie, the church and their perversions, but he does so in a slightly surreal way that gives them an unexpected character, and a very daring one that challenged many sacred cows. Whether it's Catherine Deneuve as a young newlywed housewife who becomes a prostitute at a high-class brothel in order to enact the deepest sexual fantasies that her young husband is unable to fulfil in Belle de Jour, the story of a nun who resists the lecherous advances of her uncle, renounces her vows and gives his estate over to homeless beggars after his death in Viridiana (including a parody of the Last Supper), some of the images and situations in his films are indelible. None more so than The Exterminating Angel.

Again the idea is a simple one where things seem to go wrong at a dinner party organised by Edmundo de Nobile and his wife Lucia after an evening at the opera. They are surprised to find that the servants are not there to collect the coats of the guests, and this initial upset seems to be the catalyst for throwing the evening into turmoil. The scene is repeated as if to suggest that if the servants, the workers, aren't there to look after them, the upper classes don't know what to do or how to function. They drop their coats on the floor and thereafter everything rapidly falls apart. Enrique drops the hors d’oeuvre ragout, and then Pablo the chief wants to go an visit his sick sister. Even though everything has been prepared, Lucia is outraged. She is going to hold these useless servants to account.

The evening and the celebration for Leticia, the opera singer they call "the Valkyrie", never seems to take off and eventually they each decide to leave. This pleases Lucia, as she intends to conduct a little affair when they go, but somehow no-one seems to be able to leave the room. Perhaps the servants aren't there to open the doors for them. Trapped in uncomfortable proximity with each other in a room they are unable to leave, all the little insecurities they have kept hidden rise to the surface and they find themselves forced to enact them. The further the evening progresses and extends into days, the tensions and pretensions intensify and soon turn from petty arguments and affairs to violence and barbarism.

Buñuel's 1962 film is wildly absurd as it is, so imagine how much more the story must be when Thomas Adès and Calixto Bieito put their stamp on the opera version of the work. The essential theme that must carry over is surely to mercilessly rip into the pretensions of the upper classes and have fun in the process. Subtlety isn't essential, the more extreme the better. Adès certainly has fun introducing strange untypical sounds and instruments like the use of the ondes martenot into the buoyant orchestration. It's as richly and creatively scored as you can imagine, and Adès himself has tremendous fun conducting the Paris Orchestra through it. Yet it is not wild, but controlled, the implication being that the guests haven't lost their minds, they are simply being extreme, or perhaps just unrestrained versions of their true selves.

As a dramatic situation, that is inevitably limited. Taking place in one room where everyone seems to be losing their mind for two hours, the point seems to be made very quickly, and it's just a matter of seeing how far they can push this and what the eventual outcome or explanation for the strange event might be. Inevitably, there is no easy answer and there are many ways of looking at the resultant chaos and the ineffective ways they try to deal with it. The image of sheep - which Calixto Bieito manages to introduce in his own way - suggests conformity and inability to think for themselves to the extent that they are unable to leave a room unless everyone else does, or it could have religious connotations, which are certainly treated with scorn by Buñuel. That is also suggested here, even though the opera version does not include Buñuel's horror in the cathedral epilogue.

Given that, the question must be whether The Exterminating Angel gains anything by being an opera. Unquestionably Adès brings something fresh to the work. Making use of a wide variety of musical instruments and arrangements, it's as musically inventive as you would expect from this composer, finding varied expression for each of the characters, and layering them together with great skill. In terms of transferring those ideas to a stage production, this must be a rare case where the plot of the opera itself has an absurd side that even surpasses what Calixto Bieito usually brings to a production. But then we are talking about Luis Buñuel here, one of the original surrealists, and - while it might not seem like it - Bieito is actually more subtle and suggestive here than the original work. It could be just that the Catalan director has found a work that fits with his own sensibility and indeed I actually would be surprised if Buñuel wasn't a major influence.

If there is one slightly different stance or slant that the opera takes, it's maybe taking the opera evening aspect of the story and making a little more of the idea of musical resolution. This is there in the original, I seem to recall, but unsurprisingly perhaps it takes on another meaning when it is seen in the context of an opera itself, the guests seemingly unable to move until the unfinished playing of Paradisi by Blanca on the piano is brought to a conclusion. As if having to acknowledge that, Adès self-references his own music trapping the guests, and scores the opera singer at a higher pitch than the others, in the same range as Ariel in his version of The Tempest. The finale then, rather than follow Buñuel's cathedral ending, has all the surviving guests emerging dazed from the room, confronting their inner selves and suggesting (in my mind anyway) that the audience do likewise. You must wonder what the audience in the expensive seats at the Bastille make of it, and if that's the only intention in bringing The Exterminating Angel to the modern opera stage, it is surely justification enough.

While occasionally it seems like (controlled) chaos on the stage, there are actually many little touches in both the music, the direction and the singing performances to keep things moving along and give the viewer much to think about. Each of the characters have their own hang-ups and ways of dealing with being locked in that reveals another aspect of the society that the original creator wants to expose and mock. The singing alone is striking enough to grab your attention. There is an exceptional cast assembled here, and each have their own distinctive part to play. It's hard to just pick out one or two in a cast that includes great performances from Nicky Spence, Christine Rice, Philippe Sly, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Paul Gay and Clive Bayley, but Jacquelyn Stucker is exceptional as Lucia di Nobile, Claudia Boyle delivers an impressive lament/lullaby late in the opera for Silvia's son Yoli and Gloria Tronel hits those stratospheric heights as the opera singer Leticia.

External links: Opéra National de Paris, Paris Opera Play

Meyerbeer - Les Huguenots (Paris, 2018)

Giacomo Meyerbeer - Les Huguenots

L'Opéra de Paris, 2018

Michele Mariotti, Andreas Kriegenburg, Lisette Oropesa, Yosep Kang, Ermonela Jaho, Karine Deshayes, Nicolas Testé, Paul Gay, Florian Sempey, Julie Robard-Gendre, François Rougier, Cyrille Dubois, Michal Partyka, Patrick Bolleire

Culturebox - 4 October 2018

There's a strong case for keeping Meyerbeer in his own period and, so far, less of a case has been made for updating productions of his works to appeal to the tastes of a modern audience. Giacomo Meyerbeer's grand operas seem to be doomed to be consigned to history (along with so many other forgotten opera composers) as extravagant novelties to impress critics and elaborate entertainments for the rich. At a time when opera is going through a phase of reinvention as it attempts to be more expansive and inclusive, there doesn't seem to be a place for Meyerbeer any longer.

Which, along with the expense of putting on a Meyerbeer opera production, the sheer length of a five-act grand opera and the specialised singing required to sustain it, means that one of the most influential opera composers in its history hasn't been performed much in the 20th century. In the 21st century, there have been a few more adventurous attempts to rehabilitate Meyerbeer, to seek to restore and recognise his importance, or at least explore whether his works are worth reviving. The results have been mixed but tending towards 'problematic' and that's exactly where I think you could categorise Andreas Kriegenburg's new production of Les Huguenots for the Paris Opera.

Les Huguenots is an opera that can't be ignored, but it is in itself problematic. It's Meyerbeer's most famous work, it best displays many of his undoubted skills as a composer and it has a dramatic historical event as its subject - the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572 in which thousands of French Protestants (Huguenots) gathered in Paris for the royal wedding of Marguerite de Valois to Henry of Navarre were slaughtered by Catholics opposed to the Reformation during a period of heightened tensions, but it has to be said that its grand opera mannerisms don't make the subject friendly to modern interpretation. On the other hand, we are going through an age when religious conflict and intolerance to differences is a hot subject again, and what is Les Huguenots if not that?

Andreas Kriegenburg doesn't appear to be particularly concerned with the historical context of Les Huguenots, but choosing to set the work in the future it's questionable whether he thinks the work has anything to say about today either. If not that, then what? Well, it's far from clear, as other than a random piece of text setting the scene in 2063 there is actually nothing 'futuristic' about the production, and - other than costumes and the period - it actually adheres fairly closely to the composer's original intentions for the work, which is (unfortunately) as a romantic melodrama above all else.

Harald B Thor's set designs are very much in the Paris Opera house style; a brightly lit white stage, tasteful bold pastel colouration of costumes and semi-abstract sets that fill the vertical and horizontal space of the Bastille stage. There's a box-like grid construction for the Château of Count Nevers in Act I, there are platforms and tall thin bare bark trees to give an impression of the gardens and river of Marguerite de Valois' Château de Chenonceaux in La Touraine, with pale blue lighting. It's all very tasteful, with tasteful mild nudity, clean and uncluttered and it looks wonderful, but despite the supposedly futuristic sets, it does little for Meyerbeer's rather old-fashioned operatic style.

What it does do at least is highlight the brilliance and complexity of Meyerbeer's arrangements as well perhaps as its unnecessary over-elaboration. The famous Pré aux clercs scene in Act III in particular is impressive, the stage choreography and colouration highlighting the different colouration of the musical arrangements; a sequence that the singing of the Huguenot troops, the celebrations of Catholic students at the tavern, a procession of Sunday worshippers and the dance of a gypsy contingent. Then Meyerbeer brings them all together and the de-cluttered stage arrangements allow you to appreciate the skill involved in this.

The production is just as smooth elsewhere, Act IV sliding one set across to make way for another full stage set, with no over-elaboration or unnecessary detail, just simple elegant minimalism. Unfortunately, it's also just rather bland and non-committal, having nothing to offer in its futuristic setting, giving no reason why Catholics would be murdering Protestant Huguenots in the year 2063. As far as Meyerbeer and Scribe's drama goes, it accurately represents the original intentions with its romantic melodrama at the centre between Raoul and Valentine, but does nothing more than place it in a rather more tastefully decorated and designed setting.

It's a reasonably entertaining production then, which is important, made all the more enjoyable for the strong musical performance and exceptional singing. Marguerite has most of the technical challenges and Lisette Oropesa meets them extraordinarily well. Yosep Kang's Raoul de Nangis however is also very capably handled, the diction clear and lyrical. Ermonela Jaho is pushed into an uncomfortable range as Valentine, but she delivers the high notes impressively and with great expression, and actually comes across as one of the more 'human' characters here when everyone else seems to be playing grand opera. Paris Opera regulars Nicolas Testé, Paul Gay and Karine Deshayes all perform exceptionally well here, and the chorus also delivers.

Musically ...well, it's Meyerbeer so it has its longeurs, but it sounded great under Michele Mariotti. All the big bang conclusions at the end of each act really hit home and were well stage managed for additional effect, but there was also a lightness of touch and delicacy for the variety of sentiments that one finds in Les Huguenots, 'operatic' though they might be (drinking songs, lyrical love duets and romantic confrontations, religious pleas and calls to war with dramatic interventions). I don't usually hold to the view that some operas are better without the visuals, but in this case l found the work stronger and more interesting when just listening to the performance. I don't think that's as much to do with Kriegenburg's direction as the fact that Meyerbeer and Scribe's often ludicrously over-the-top sentiments don't really hold up to being taken seriously. Which is why Meyerbeer remains problematic, but Kriegenburg's direction does nothing to address it.

Links: L'Opéra de Paris, Culturebox

Donizetti - Lucrezia Borgia

Gaetano Donizetti - Lucrezia Borgia

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels, 2013

Julian Reynolds, Guy Joosten, Paul Gay, Elena Moşuc, Charles Castronovo, Silvia Tro Santafé, Roberto Covatta, Tijl Faveyts, Jean-Luc Ballestra, Jean Teitgen, Alexander Kravets, Justin Hopkins, Stefan Cifolelli, Alain-Pierre Wingelinckx

La Monnaie - Internet Streaming, February 2013

La Monnaie's production of Lucrezia Borgia maintains a consistency of style and quality of interpretation that has been evident in all their works broadcast this season via their internet streaming service.  Like La Traviata, Lulu and Manon Lescaut, it's not without a certain amount of controversy either.  Modern, boldly coloured and neon-lit, with a stage set that is far from conventional in concept and configuration, much less traditional in period in design, it was however another bold vision where the spectacle was rivalled by the interpretation of the music and excellent singing from an intriguing cast line-up.

It's well established that the plot and characterisation of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia are not the most convincing.  The work is filled with inconsistencies, improbabilities and weak characterisation.  Donizetti's music too, if we're honest, has its moments but there's an awful lot of plodding conventionality in the scoring.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense or at least it's expecting a bit much for the audience to sympathise with the idea that there's a loving mother beneath Lucrezia's notoriety as a monstrous killer who even in the opera commits a number of atrocities that include the inadvertent murder of her own son.  The nature of her love for Gennaro is itself somewhat dubious and borderline incestuous.  Gennaro's actions and motivations and love unfortunately are no more credible.  And that's to say nothing of the plot involving poisoned wines and antidote plot twists.

The complications of the characterisation and the melodrama in Lucrezia Borgia do however provide a wealth of material that can be worked effectively by a strong cast of real personality, particularly if they have strong direction.  It's a work that builds up scene upon scene towards a magnificent dramatic finale in the way that only Donizetti or Rossini can do, if the production has singers of sufficient stature to pull it off, particularly in the title role.  La Monnaie's production benefits in this respect from a strong committed central performance by Elena Moşuc, who not only hits all those extraordinarily difficult high notes but she does so with a soft unforced expressiveness and true dramatic conviction.

As Gennaro, Charles Castronovo's lovely rounded lyric tenor is more than capable of the necessary range and power, but he's a little declamatory and unable to really bring anything out of the role and the complicated (badly-written) relationship with Lucrezia.  There's a suggestion that the director has to some extent modelled this Gennaro on Donizetti himself, but I'm not sure this is established entirely successfully.  The adventurous and successful casting of the two leads extends to the other roles.  Paul Gay's lighter bass-baritone is revealed as being much better suited to the bel canto of Don Alfonso than the boom of Grand Opéra, while Silvia Tro Santafé makes a good impression as Orsini.

It's also been well established that a "realistic" period setting isn't necessarily going to make Lucrezia Borgia any more convincing.  It's not a historical drama nor is it a movie or a documentary.  Like any operatic work from this period, the emotions expressed principally through the singing - love, anger, betrayal and revenge - are far more important than the historical characters or the period.  Guy Joosten's setting of the opera, with sets by Johannes Leiacker, looks like a circus or even a nightclub with a catwalk leading down from a curtained entrance that has Borgia written up in neon-lights.  Large menacing figures representing aspects of Lucrezia (Maternity, Death, Evil, Nobility) loom over the circular stage of the Cirque Royal, with the orchestra located to the right hand side at the back.  There's evidently some conceptual layers added here, but the drama itself is nonetheless played out within this according the intentions of the libretto.  More or less.

There are some liberties taken then in the stage production, but no more than Donizetti and Felice Romano's working of Victor Hugo's fictional drama and only as much as is necessary to make the notoriously difficult and somewhat static dramatic staging for this opera work.  This was no stand-and-deliver performance and at the very least it was visually impressive in its colourful stylisations, with figures wearing masks and costumes - pigs, clowns, 'Clockwork Orange' droogs, topless ladies in saucy nun costumes - that not only fit with the Venetian Carnival revelry in Lucrezia Borgia, they also give a sense of characterisation and personality that is hard to find in the work itself.  The success of the production was assured by the superb playing of the La Monnaie symphony orchestra and a lively, intense and invigorating interpretation of the score by conductor Julian Reynolds.

La Monnaie/De Munt's production of Lucrezia Borgia was broadcast on the internet via their web streaming service, the performance recorded on the 23rd and 26th February 2013.  The next broadcast of their exceptional season is the world premiere of a new work by Benoît Mernier, La Dispute.

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.

Gounod - Faust

Charles Gounod - Faust

Opéra National de Paris, 2011

Alain Altinoglu, Jean-Louis Martinoty, Roberto Alagna, Paul Gay, Tassis Christoyannis, Alexander Duhamel, Inva Mula, Angélique Noldus, Marie-Ange Todorovitch

Opéra Bastille, Paris – 16th October 2011

When is Gounod’s Faust not Gounod’s Faust? For many people who think they know the opera well, I’m sure that they would find the new 2011 production for the Paris Opera unfamiliar in many respects – but the question is historically a great deal more complicated than that. A great admirer of Goethe’s work, Gounod had been planning an opera on Faust for almost thirty years, but between finally starting work on it in 1855, it receiving its first production at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris in 1859 in a heavily cut form, and its appearance at the Paris Opera, many subsequent revisions were made to the work.  With additional arias inserted later to suit singers in productions around Europe, with the whole work revised again by Gounod in 1866 to eliminate spoken dialogue and make it a fully-fledged opera, it can be difficult to determine what exactly is the true form of Gounod’s Faust.

Faust has probably been debased even further over the intervening years. A popular favourite, the dramatic representation and any sense of coherence has often come secondary to ensuring that the crowd-pleasing songs, marches and waltzes showcasing the extravagance of the orchestration, the singing and the famous setpieces meet audience expectations. Many operas have scenes of iconic power, but are there any with quite so many in each act as Faust? With its initial meeting between Faust and Mephistopheles, the Fairground waltz and the Ivan the Terrible soldier’s march in Act 2, Marguerite’s Jewel song in Act 3, Valentin’s duel in Act 4 and the Walpurgis Night debauch in Act 5 – to name just a few of the stand-out moments – Gounod’s Faust is one long procession of memorable moments, drama and melodrama, mixed up in meditations on love, romance, nihilism, philosophy and religion. With so much to cover and so many expectations to meet – and with such a history of cuts and revisions – there’s not however much sense of coherency in Faust, and there’s little that bears resemblance to the original work and themes of Goethe.

How much of the opera is as Gounod intended is difficult then to determine, but it has certainly been molded a great deal by the necessity of meeting the demands and conventions of the French Grand Opera tradition. That’s how it’s traditionally presented, that’s how I am familiar with it, and that’s pretty much the way it was played at the fine Royal Opera House production directed by David McVicar broadcast in HD around the world just a few weeks ago. Surprisingly then, few of the familiar conventions were adhered to in the Opéra National de Paris’ new 2011 production at the Bastille directed by Jean-Louis Martinoty and conducted by Alain Altinoglu (after the departure of Alain Lombard early in the production). If there is some inevitable disappointment that all the old favourites aren’t played out quite as you remember them or would like them, the new Paris Opera production is at least a brave attempt to restore some of the true qualities of the work back to its original form. If you are going to radically rework a familiar opera however, you need to have something else to pique the interest of the audience, and while that is admirably achieved here to a certain degree, some of the decisions are nonetheless questionable and some of the staging is quite curious.

The staging, as is often the case at the Bastille, appears to be aiming to fill the large stage with as much impressive set design, spectacle and colour as possible, rather than being quite so faithful to the demands of the opera. In the case of Faust however, there are certainly plenty of showcase scenes to merit the spectacle, and some of them really have an impact. The main body of the stage – as it was with McVicar’s production last month – uses the scientist’s study as the basis for the whole opera. Here, the semi-circular raised rows of bookcases are a constant reminder – while there is often not much else to remind you in the opera – of the desire for knowledge, experience and answers that has ultimately led the doctor Faust into a bargain with the demon Mephistopheles, selling his soul for a life of abandon and debauchery that, up until her dramatic sacrifice and salvation, almost also claims the pure and innocent soul of Marguerite.

Great vertical use is made of the stage, with huge crosses and an enormous skeleton descending down to the stage, as well as raising figures and objects, and no small amount of smoky dry ice from “down below”. If some of the choices are curious, not exactly naturalistic and perhaps not quite how we are used to seeing Faust depicted –the aforementioned skeleton and Marguerite’s bed covered in greenery and forming part of the garden scene some of the stranger elements – they all at least fit into the main themes and concepts of the battle between good and evil, science and nature, knowledge and the purposes that it is turned towards.

Some of this works however and some of it doesn’t. The skeleton forms one of the best effects during the waltz during the fair of Act II, whirling and trailing ribbons over Mephistopheles as he leads the dance beneath. On the other hand, Roberto Alagna’s transformation from old academic to young man isn’t the most inventive. Employing an actor who lip-sync mimes to Alagna’s off-stage singing, it avoids the tricky transformation (clevery done in quick change mode by Vittorio Grigolo in the ROH production) – but Alagna makes enough of an impression when he does appear to make up for this. Valentin’s death also lacks traditional impact, since he has no sword and is struck by Faust with an oblique blow (which indicates of course that it is Mepistopheles behind the action), but the extraordinary manner of him dying standing on his feet is quite striking.

Another reason for the seemingly deliberate lack of traditional impact however is the measured tempo of Alain Altinoglu’s conducting of the Paris Orchestra which avoids all the usual added punchy emphasis, sounding almost like how one would approach Wagner’s German Romanticism more than how we are accustomed to hearing Gounod played. The playing of the orchestra was marvellous and, although one misses all the usual tics, this more thoughtful and lyrical approach did however cast an entirely different perspective on the work and indeed worked marvellously with the romantic and religious elements that dominate it. The opera unfortunately still has many gaps and lapses of dramatic continuity that prevents such an approach from fully coming together, so it wasn’t entirely satisfactory, raising perhaps more questions in the curiosity and unfamiliarity of the staging instead of making it any clearer or coherent, but it was a welcome approach nonetheless.

Even if the dramatic action or the musical interpretation didn’t always play into the hands of the singer looking to make an impression in these great operatic roles, the singing was nonetheless wonderful. Roberto Alagna was in fine shape physically for the role and in good singing voice also. Personally speaking, I don’t find him the most charismatic of performers, but by the same token he’s not show-offy, he does have a beautiful tone to his voice and always delivers a flawless singing performance. You couldn’t ask for more from a Faust. Inva Mula, who I last saw singing wonderfully in the Paris Opera’s revision and restoration of Gounod’s almost forgotten Mireille (on Blu-ray), is in even finer voice here as Marguerite, her French pretty much faultless, her singing glorious, appropriate and in keeping with her character. Paul Gay didn’t always carry the kind of seductive charm of Mephistopheles or sound entirely firm on the lower register, but his performance was warmly received by the audience, as was Tassis Christoyannis – an excellent Valentin, even if he wasn’t given much leeway with the role.

Verdi - La Traviata (Salzburg, 2005)

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata

Salzburg Festival, 2005

Carlo Rizzi, Willy Decker, Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón, Thomas Hampson, Helene Schneiderman, Paul Gay, Diane Pilcher

Deutsche Grammaphon - DVD

Verdi’s La Traviata is certainly one of the world’s most famous operas, perhaps because, like La Bohême, Madama Butterfly and Carmen, it has all the dramatic elements that one associates with opera – a romantic affair that is too passionate or ill-matched to be sustained and a fallen woman who is destined to succumb to a tragic and untimely death. Adapted from a novel by Alexandre Dumas (‘La Dame aux Camelias’), based on a real life lover of his, Marie Duplessis, La Traviata also benefits from having the whiff of scandal about it (the title itself literally means, ‘The Fallen Woman’, suggesting ‘The Prostitute’). However, the real reason for its continued popularity must be down to two things – the timeless nature of its romantic subject matter and the sheer strength and character of some of the finest arias and music ever composed for opera.

Although there would scarcely be any courtesans around today as there would have been in 1840’s Paris, the subject matter of La Traviata is still universally recognisable. Violetta Valery is a scandalous, but glamorous woman, a celebrated Parisian courtesan who has known many lovers in her time, but never true love. She longs for acceptance into noble society, but her past haunts her – to such an extent that even when she does find a man who truly loves her, she finds she must give him up to protect his family from scandal. Slowly dying from consumption, she knows she must also spare him the ravages of her illness and tragically gives up her chance for love and respectability. The contemporariness of the emotional content and celebrity lifestyles also allows the opera to be imaginatively and inventively restaged. It is just such a modern updating of the story that was presented by Willy Decker for the 2005 Salzburger Festspiele, conducted by Carlo Rizzi with Anna Netrebko in the role of Violetta, and Rolando Villazón in the role of Alfredo.

The dramatic staging is initially very striking – the set design minimalist, yet thoroughly effective at conveying the tone and emotional pitch of the story. Verdi’s beautifully melancholic preludio is played out over a vast crescent shaped backdrop, adorned only by a large clock marking out the passing of time, Violetta to one side of the stage symbolically trying to escape the mysterious figure at the other end – The Doctor, a premonition of her approaching death, who nevertheless reaches her and passes her a single white camellia. Snapped out of her reverie, her weariness and disillusionment with the course of her life Violetta must fall back into the role of entertainer expected from her, as the guests from the party rush in – “I put my faith in pleasure, as a cure for all my ills”. The scene is brilliantly and colourfully staged to evoke a contemporary celebrity who fits the modern-day courtesan role-model equally well - Marilyn Monroe singing 'Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend' (or Madonna singing 'Material Girl' if you prefer).

These are bold strokes to be sure, but accurate and evocative. While there isn't quite anything else to match this fine and innovative opening act, the hard work has already been done, perfectly establishing the tone and content of what is to follow. Maintaining the minimalist staging Willy Decker then focuses on keeping the already concise and lean storyline (at only two hours long it’s rather nippy for an opera) moving along even through what can be dry, prosaic monologues by using some imaginative, unconventional and quite powerfully dynamic stage direction and performances. This is to say little of the opera itself, which has a great many delights, from Francesco Maria Piave’s incisive libretto to Verdi’s efficient yet brilliant score which is perfectly balanced in terms of light and shade, hitting the most effervescent of joys (the famous Brindisi and "Sempre libera") and the most lyrical of romantic arias ("Un di felice, eterea"), as well as the most bitter cruelty ("Ogni suo aver tal femmina") and the most tragic of death sequences ("Addio del passato"). The opera even manages to showcase an invigorating cabaret sequence and matador ballet that is a little incongruous to the dramatic unfolding of the story (although imaginatively staged here with Alfredo as the unfortunate bull), but emphasises the gulf between Violetta’s life of unbridled pleasure and the tragic circumstances to follow.

The production is also graced with two fine and compelling lead performances from the current “dream couple” teaming of Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón. Individually, they are both superb, Villazón particularly impassioned as Alfredo Germont. Unlike most readings of the role that I have seen, he is no impetuous, jealous young lover, weakly bowing down to his domineering father. Villazón’s Alfredo is ferociously single-minded in his passion, who fights all the way but cannot win, since it is Violetta herself who makes the final break for his sake. The young Russian soprano Netrebko is also technically flawless and really quite stunning in a role that is very demanding both dramatically and vocally. Although rather young to be playing an aging courtesan, she brings great character to the role – partly as I’ve indicated, through the clever staging, which presents her in a modern-day Marilyn Monroe role, but mainly through the impressive tone and range of her extraordinarily pure voice. Even with all this, I don’t think the opera would work quite as well if it didn’t have a strong, commanding presence from Alfredo’s father, and Thomas Hampson gives just that, adding the necessary baritone vocal weight and dramaturgical counterbalance.

DVD
This recording of La Traviata is released in the UK by Deutsche Grammaphon. The DVD, manufactured for international release is in NTSC format and is not region-encoded. It is available in a standard single-disc edition as well as a 2-disc Premium Edition, containing a number of extra features on the second disc. The Premium Edition is presented in a fold-out digipack and includes a booklet, which documents the event that was La Traviata at the 2005 Salzburg Festival, also providing a scene-by-scene synopsis and track-by-track listing. The booklet is in English, German and French.

Video
The opera is presented in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen. Filmed live for television broadcast, probably in High Definition Digital Video, it therefore is flawless in respect of any analogue marks or damage and inevitably looks very impressive. With the minimalist staging of the opera and the big bold expanses of colour, any digital flaws in the transfer would be readily apparent, yet there is scarcely a flicker or even a hint of any macro-blocking compression artefacts to be detected, nor aliasing or stepping in diagonal lines. The image is slightly soft, perhaps on account of the amount of red and blue lighting, but this only serves to take the edge of the overly clinical look of the image, which during brightly lit scenes has a disconcertingly immediate and lifelike presence. Colours and blacks are all reasonably well defined, with only a touch of blue line bleed and edge enhancement visible in some scenes. The only real issue that prevents the image from being quite perfect is some slight movement blurring.

Audio
Dispensing with Dolby Digital mixes, the opera is presented with a choice of higher quality DTS 5.1 and PCM Stereo options. The DTS mix is strong, clear and warmly toned, showing no obvious distortion or difficulties with reaching the highest notes and loudest of chorus singing. It does tend to slightly flatten out at higher levels and lose something in the higher dynamic range, but it copes with this with a pleasant rounded clarity. There is also a certain “airiness” in some passages, but this is nothing more than you would expect from the use of stage microphones recording a live performance. This is really as good as it gets. The PCM Stereo mix handles these issues a little more cleanly and accurately, but not by any great margin. The surround-sound for the DTS track is well mixed, singing being resolutely centre channel for individual voices, with choruses opening out slightly across the front channels for a quite effective wider dispersal of the sound. The orchestration is discretely mixed around all channels, often seemingly floating and filling the room from no direct source, which perhaps doesn’t give enough colour and detail to the individual sections of the orchestra. They are however brought forward and well placed towards the front for the major arias, complementing the centre channel singing, yet allowing it to remain distinct and clearly audible. Audience noise is similarly well dispersed, but tending towards the rear speakers.
As I noted above, the PCM Stereo mix is marginally clearer, stronger and more accurate in tone, but the enveloping DTS mix has a warmer, in-the-theatre sound and is probably the better option.

Subtitles
Optional English subtitles are provided and are slightly on the large and bold side. I’m always happy to see the original libretto provided on opera DVDs, and this is here on the Italian option. German, French, Spanish and Chinese options are also included.

Extras
Documentary: Behind The Scenes – The Rehearsals for La Traviata (43:58)
As the latest “dream couple”, the young performers are aware of the pressures on them to deliver, but seem to be completely at ease with their talent, having a great deal of fun during the rehearsals - Villazón in particular is irrepressible - but they are completely professional when it comes to performing, putting heart and soul into their preparations. With lots of interviews with cast and crew (although strangely mostly ignoring the conductor and the orchestra's rehearsals), this is a very insightful film into the process of putting a production like this together.

Introduction by Rolando Villazón (3:03)
Assuming the role of Alfredo, Villazón, speaking in German, gives a synopsis of the whole opera, doubtlessly recorded to introduce the acts to the TV audience.

Picture Gallery (2:17)
A selection of stills are played in a slideshow to the Brindisi.

A Netrebko Discography
Cover illustrations for Anna Netrebko's CD and DVD recordings for Deutsche Grammaphon.

Trailer: Anna Netrebko “The Woman – The Voice” (10:56)
A sample of the DVD is shown here and what I could see of it looked interesting, the director making promo-style videos for the soprano's performances. However, playback problems on my copy of the DVD prevented me from watching this in full.

Overall
Mainly delving through their back-catalogue for classic opera performances, Deutsche Grammaphon have perhaps lost a lot of ground to the likes of Arthaus and TDK when it comes to presenting new recordings of opera on DVD. Scooping the acclaimed 2005 Salzburger Festspiele production of La Traviata with the rising talents of Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón is a bit of a coup however and DG gives it the royal treatment it richly deserves in their 2-disc Premium Edition, superbly directed for television, as ever, by Brian Large. Not too many people were fortunate or rich enough to meet the extraordinary prices being asked for tickets at the original performance of this production at the Salzberg Festival, so we are fortunate enough to now be able to share in the experience and the buzz of this world-class opera production, and see it presented so well.

This review was first published in DVD Times/The Digital Fix in 2005