Bellini - Beatrice di Tenda (Paris, 2024)

Vincenzo Bellini - Beatrice di Tenda

Opéra National de Paris, 2024

Mark Wigglesworth, Peter Sellars, Tamara Wilson, Quinn Kelsey, Theresa Kronthaler, Pene Pati, Amitai Pati, Taesung Lee

Paris Opera Play - 15th February 2024

It surprises me that Beatrice di Tenda isn't a better known opera. Most of Bellini's works are revived on a semi-regular basis and his significance is hardly underestimated as an important figure in the development of Italian opera, but his works don't seem to get the attention they deserve and this one in particular is largely neglected. Why? Perhaps it's a little old fashioned for modern tastes, or perhaps the challenge of this opera is that it needs skilled singers in all the key soprano, tenor and baritone roles. It's telling the title role is defined by recordings made by the likes of Joan Sutherland, Mirella Freni and Edita Gruberova. If it's a case of needing it to be modernised a little or waiting for the right singers to come along, well, then the Paris Opera get it right with this 2024 production directed by Peter Sellars.

That's not all they get right. There's a lot more to successfully producing an opera like this and it really needs commitment, belief and passion on every level, but it also needs to be carefully pitched. Passion is at the core of the opera, but it is also surrounded in coldness and that is identified and brilliantly reflected in how the production design here contrasts with the delicacy of the playing of the exquisite melodies. It's not that the plot has a lot to offer other than romantic drama, as Italian opera thrives on that, but it's how those passions conflict with power that drive the musical drama. Bellini is masterful in his treatment of such material, no less than Verdi, Donizetti or the opera seria of Rossini, but for me the characteristic that sets Bellini apart is not just the passion, not just the sophistication of the writing, but a sense of refinement. That's fully in evidence in this lovely opera, and I think that's what the director Peter Sellars attempts to retain and reflect it in a modern light.

On the face of it the drama has little to distinguish it from many other Italian operas. Based on a historical figure, Beatrice, the Duchess of Milan, is now married to her second husband Filippo Visconti, a union that has given him great power and influence, but they now have very different ideas about how to use their position. Beatrice wishes to support social programmes, while Filippo wields his authority ruthlessly over the people. Beatrice is horrified at the impact that their marriage has inflicted on the people of the nation and considers ending the marriage, which is not easy for a woman to do. Filippo too is being advised to end the marriage, but in order to cling to the power he finds an excuse to have her reputation destroyed by accusing her of conducting an affair with the minstrel Orombello, and tortures the man into a confession.

There are a lot of familiar elements here that can be found in the historical operas of Donizetti, in Anna Bolena and Roberto Devereaux, but Bellini's opera here has a distinct character and it's the duty of director to bring that out. There is an edge to Beatrice di Tenda in a libretto doesn't hold back on the details of the violence inflicted on the people on Orombello or the cruelty of Filippo's regime, and Sellars strives to make that as hard-hitting as possible. The music might sound beautiful but it doesn't soften the darkness at the heart of the work. There is a nobility in confronting such horrors head on, never bowing, and that's what Bellini's music counters. Even Filippo in the end recognises where real power lies. Well, almost. The second concluding act of the opera consequently is extraordinary and enormously powerful. Evidently however, it's how the subject is sung by the performers is perhaps the most vital element contributing to that impact.

Bel canto is all about the singing. It's in the name and it needs to be done well or not done at all. Italian bel canto opera is not a repertoire that I have been following lately however, so few of these performers are familiar to me, but even so I can't remember hearing bel canto sung so well as it's done here. Singers and performers like this are not just there to show off the beauty of their voices, but also bring out the qualities of the music and the form, and in that respect, this is singing of the highest calibre. It's interesting too that it is American singers who shine in the main roles. Tamara Wilson's Beatrice is just phenomenal, her range impressive, her delivery and performance perfectly judged. Hawaiian born baritone Quinn Kelsey is a strong counterweight that makes Filippo a formidable opponent. No less impressive here are Theresa Kronthaler as Agnese and Pene Pati as Orombello. 

Act I consequently is impressive and immersive despite the conventionality of the plotting, while Act II is just off-the-scale brilliant, the increased intensity and emotional drama between the principal characters and their conflicting worldviews reaching almost fever pitch as they hold firmly to their beliefs and inner nature - for good and for ill. As it's Bellini, the chorus also play a large part in the swaying between these opposing positions. Like La Sonnambula, like La Straniera, they provide commentary and reaction, reflecting confusion and the horror of the people observing the troubles of high society - "Nothing escapes our eyes" -  but they have a participatory role here as well, influencing as well as being affected by what occurs. All of this not only underlines the intensity of the operatic drama, but it gives the plot considerably more weight beyond it being merely a historical royal intrigue.

Director Peter Sellars introduces a clean grand set designed by George Tsypin for La Bastille. All of the action and intrigue takes place in the palace gardens, within a low maze of hedges made of mesh steel and tall conical trees. It has a cool elegance. Costumes are modern, smart, elegant befitting the high society. Evidently there is no need to distance the drama by setting it in the original time period of 1418, but I'm not convinced that introducing laptops and mobile phones is really necessary either. When Filippo confronts Beatrice with evidence of what he sees as plotting to Beatrice's outrage as the violation of her personal secrets, he presents her with a laptop computer as evidence. Agnese can be seen later scrolling on her mobile phone doubtlessly checking how many likes she is getting on social media for her actions. It feels a little heavy-handed and doesn't really make any commentary that is worth making a point about. Window cleaners and hedge trimmers are also a distraction that add nothing to the production design.

Sellers, who incredibly has never directed an Italian opera, not even Verdi, does much more than update the production with modern technological devices. He also has some interesting things to say about the opera in an interview shown during the interval of the Paris Opera Play live broadcast of the opera. He makes a strong case for the effectiveness of the work to really touch on the horror of living under a dictatorship, about the fragility of human beings within such a regime and the possibility of them being broken. It's clearly all laid out in the libretto and in how Bellini scores it, making Beatrice di Tenda really quite revolutionary in terms of Italian opera up to that point in 1833, and unquestionably still relevant as a subject today.

Bellini's penultimate opera, I find this a much more interesting work than his more famous final opera I Puritani, but evidently a lot depends on how well individual productions are directed and sung. Sellars direction makes a strong case for the relevance in the work, Mark Wigglesworth conducts the Paris Opera orchestra with fervour, but it's the quality of the singing performances in this Paris Opera production that truly raise Beatrice di Tenda to a level of greatness.

External links: Opéra National de Paris, Paris Opera Play, 

Photos : © Franck Ferville/OnP

Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen

Leoš Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen

Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2009

Seiji Ozawa, Laurent Pelly, Isabel Bayarakdarian, Quinn Kelsey, Judith Christin, Dennis Petersen, Kevin Langan, Gustáv Belácek, Federico Lepre, marcella Polidori, Lauren Curnow, Eleonora Bravi

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

Leoš Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen really is one of the great opera works of the 20th century. The music is modern but at the same time it is enchanting and accessible and, most importantly, it's completely in tune with its characters and its subject. That's by no means a simple matter either since the opera deals unsentimentally with a subject as big as the wonder and magic of life, the joys and the sadness it brings and the very nature of how those things are all tied up in the passing of time. All of that is contained in Janáček's score and how it matches the situations. In terms of the singing and the musical performance, this 2009 production at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino gets everything right, finding the right tone and revealing the true beauty of the work. There's a tricky balance to maintain however in terms of how to pitch the production so that it's not viewed as a children's opera, and that's not managed quite as well in Laurent Pelly's production.

There is a tendency to play up the cuddly animal aspects of The Cunning Little Vixen to make it appeal to a younger audience, when in reality there is nothing at all cute or sentimental about the work. On the other hand, a production that tries to emphasise the human element of the work often loses the necessary balance and the point that the work is a celebration of all life, of human and animal life in balance and essentially the same. The human characters in the opera are very much a part of the cyclical nature of life, just as capable of cunning in matters of self-preservation, just as desirous of winning a worthy partner, but they are also vulnerable to the hardships and cruelty that life, time and change - reflected in the seasons - throws at them. Occasionally when they observe the actions of the animals, they become reflective of their own situations, but it's through Janáček's arrangements that the audience is able to better see the bigger picture.

The Cunning Little Vixen is an opera that speaks our language. It may be sung in Czech and the rhythms might be those that the composer very specifically developed to match the cadences of the Czech tongue, but in a way the music speaks a universal language. Rolling, flowing and swirling, it captures the rhythm of life for animal and humans alike, expressing the deeper connections between them, as well as the measure and the passage of time that puts everything into a context of something greater. Musically, this is a beautiful account of this extraordinary work that uses the full orchestra but lets you see the importance of each individual instrument to the whole (much like the subject of the work itself). The arrangements allow the lyricism and beauty of the actual composition to speak for itself with a delicate touch, but it doesn't manipulate the emotions either. The Cunning Little Vixen should in some respects be matter-of-fact about life. Not wallowing in sentimentality, but acknowledging that even the most significant of events is subject to and diminished by the passing of time.

The pacing is all-important then, and I love the tempo that is measured out here by Seiji Ozawa, allowing the score to breathe and weave its magic, giving the voices of the singers room to place their characters within the fabric of its world, who are subject to its rhythms but view them in their own subjective context. Like the music, the use of voices is an integral part of the work then and it's sung wonderfully here. From the chorus to the individual performers, the singing really can't be faulted, Isabel Bayarakdarian, in particular bringing all the necessary character to Vixen Sharp Ears, much of which comes essentially with the precision and expression inherent within Janáček's writing for the voice. This is as fine an expression of that as you will find. Quinn Kelsey may look a little too young for the gamekeeper, but he sings the role well, and maybe even better than most.

Laurent Pelly's designs for the production are visually impressive and colourful, providing all the necessary situations with a certain amount of style, but it's all a little too safe and sanitised and definitely falls on the side of it being a cute animal opera for children. The badger's set shown in cutaway cross-section is particularly impressive and the transformation of the set from that into Pácek's Inn is brilliantly achieved. The harsh and sometimes unpleasant realities of nature don't really feature, the opera lacking, for example, any blood or mayhem or indeed any frolicing in the hen house. There's only one brief moment where Pelly really tries to draw the connection between the animals and the humans, showing vixen in a dream having the shadow of a young woman, but other than that Pelly lets the work speak for itself.

The production design might not capture the full earthy beauty of the work or its intent, but it still has many good features. The recreation of animals and their movements is very realistic. It's not entirely cartoony either. The foxes in particular look authentically like a mix of human and fox, while the other creatures are similarly easily identifiable. If it is a little too sanitised, this Cunning Little Vixen at least never falls into the trap of sentimentality. As good as they are here, the performances and the music would never allow that to happen, and all the essential points, the purpose and the sheer beauty of this remarkable work come across wonderfully.

The Blu-ray recording of this production captures both the visual qualities and the wonderful performances well in glorious High Definition. The mixing of the orchestra in particular is just outstanding in both the PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 tracks. There are no extras on the disc other than Trailers for other releases, but the booklet comes with an essay and a synopsis. The Blu-ray is a BD25, full-HD 1080/i, and region-free with subtitles in Italian, English, French, Spanish and Korean.