Rameau - Samson (Aix-en-Provence, 2024)

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Samson

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2024

Raphaël Pichon, Claus Guth, Jarrett Ott, Jacquelyn Stucker, Lea Desandre, Nahuel di Pierro, Laurence Kilsby, Julie Roset, Antonin Rondepierre, René Ramos Premier, Andréa Ferréol, Gabriel Coullaud-Rosseel, Pascal Lifschutz

ARTE Concert - 12th July 2024

There's an art to reviving a lost work, even more so recreating an opera where one of the original elements of the libretto or the music are lost, missing or perhaps never even completed in the first place. Which of those categories Jean-Philippe Rameau's Samson, developed as a world premiere for the Aix-en-Provence 2024 festival by Claus Guth and Raphaël Pinchon, falls into isn't quite clear from the documentation provided on their web site or from the interviews with the stage and music directors, but historical documentation suggests that it would have been no small task to research, reconstruct and stage an opera that was written almost 300 years ago and never fully performed.

What we do know is that, composed in 1734 after Hippolyte et Aricie, the libretto for Samson by Voltaire - who was not greatly loved by the French authorities - fell victim to the censor and despite several attempts to have it staged, the complete work remained unperformed. Some of Rameau's music ended up elsewhere, some reportedly reused for Les Indes galantes, but how those pieces were meant to appear in their original form in Samson, is anyone's guess. Or, in this case, the experience and research of Raphaël Pinchon, who would have had the unenviable but fascinating task of reconstructing the opera as a kind of pasticcio, setting the libretto which still exists to other sources of music and opera written by Rameau.

Figuring out which music has been taken from which opera and how it has been repurposed to work in the reconstruction of Samson would be interesting to find out, but to be honest I'm not sure it really matters. That's of academic interest only and even then, who can say that a reconstruction like this is authentic or not when there is no original to compare it to. Like Wolfgang Mitterer's recomposition of Heinrich Schütz's Dafne, or indeed like Pinchon's creation of a Bach opera from various sources for Trauernacht at Aix in 2014 and the patchwork Purcell creation of Miranda in 2017, what really counts is whether the newly (re)created opera works in a dramatic stage setting. And surely any attempt to bring more Rameau to the opera stage can only be seen as a good thing.

That said, Rameau is not easy opera. An 18th century musical academic and theorist of harmonic structures, his works are long, can be rather dry and challenging to a modern audience. Even Voltaire, his librettist here for Samson, described Rameau as a "pedant", his approach "meticulous and tedious". The director for this Aix production of Samson, Claus Guth, clearly aware of this, aims to find a mid-way position where the original dramatic points from the original libretto are adhered to, honouring as much as possible Voltaire's directions for reducing recitative and placing emphasis on the choruses, while at the same time striving to bring it up to date and make it fitting for a modern audience to appreciate the deeper context and meaning of the biblical story.

For the source material then the creators don't have to delve too far for authenticity, taking the story of Samson from the Book of Judges. Biblical passages are highlighted and projected above the stage, introducing chapters or eliding them (we don't see the young Samson tearing a lion apart with his bare hands, nor him attaching flaming torches to the tails of 300 of foxes to burn down the lands of the Philistines). There is an effort to retain certain bold biblical imagery in the angel appearing to Samson’s mother, the wife of Manoah, in an Annunciation scene, telling her that she will bear a son who will be blessed with God's strength to free the Israelites from their captors. As long as his hair is not cut. The other key scenes, Samson's seduction by Delilah and his destruction of temple of Dogon, are also dramatically staged, as you would expect.

In order to dispense with long passages of recitative however certain scenes are acted out without words, stage choreographed in step with Rameau's music. Using just mime acting with grand gestures, this has the consequence of appearing a little too "formal", with little in the way of engaging realism. Again that's an artistic choice, one suggested undoubted by the manner in which the story is told in grand gestures in black and white, lacking nuance and playing to the structural formality of the baroque musical arrangements from sections which were perhaps evidently never attuned to dramatic expression or presentation. So we have choreographed movements of baton wielding Philistines, led by a sneering cruel ruler dressed in all black bearing down on the enslaved and put upon Israelites who are dressed in purest white, chasing them from the land. As well as staged movements and bold gestures, the direction also employs slow motion sequences and strobing lights, with extra thudding electronic sound effects bring a cinematic edge to Samson's demonstrations of strength and acts of violence. It's certainly effective for all the stylisation. 

That said, elsewhere the fitting of the music to the drama is good, Rameau's music, even the dance music proving to be quite adaptable to scenes when they are permitted to engage with the stage action. The Paris Opera were perhaps the first to highlight this quality, bringing Krumping to Rameau to stunning effect and here the melodies even seen to have an Eastern flavour - the music also presumably being taken from Les Indes galantes - at the dance of Samson's wedding to Timnah. The singing with the familiar cadences of tragédie en musique and tragédie lyrique are also well suited to depth of expression, and this comes into play much more effectively in the famous actions of the concluding scenes with Delilah and in the temple.

Of course, there is no way that any new production of a newly reconstructed opera, one which was never performed as is may have been intended, is going to be staged as a story in biblical times and period costume. The Aix-en-Provence production takes place in a ruined building not unlike many we can see today in Gaza, with the roof blown in and fallen beams and rubble lying around. Workmen in hard hats wander on in one or two points, surveying the reconstruction. Within this the biblical story of Act I and II is the most stylised, while Act III's encounter with Delilah is a little more dark, gritty and graphically violent. both in the seduction by Delilah and in the bloody result of her betrayal. Delilah is no traditional dark seductress here - well, up to a point. She is used by the king and discarded when he gets the power over Samson and this has great impact, not least because of the remarkable performance of Jacquelyn Stucker in the aria 'Tristes apprêtes, pâles flambeaux' where she contemplates and carries out suicide over what has occurred while holding the bloody blanket of her betrayal.

One element introduced by Guth that I could have done without is the old fallback of the modern day spoken word narrator to link past and present. An old lady, the mother of Samson now transported to the present day, reflects on the events that she witnessed, the joys and the regrets, walking amongst the ghosts of the past. This was done recently, similarly to no real effective purpose or benefit, in the Northern Ireland Opera production of Eugene Onegin. If it's an attempt to draw comparison to present day events in the Middle East, it's a brave or foolhardy decision depending on one's reading of the wiping out of a race of people and an act of mass murder in an opera that contains the lines "Vengez le peuple d’Israël… écrasez ce peuple furieux”. Drawing comparisons with the present day is perhaps unavoidable even when watching a work composed 300 years ago, but the manner in which it is imposed here feels unnecessary and adds nothing for me.

The inclusion of the old lady to link the past and present is only really used to any extent in the first two acts, the role lessening as the drama progresses. Despite reservations about that and about some of the stylisations used, the result of this project to revive Samson must still be seen as a great success. The employment of Rameau's arias feels authentic, matching at least the mood and character of the scenes if not always really serving the function of moving the drama forward. The choruses often prove to have more dramatic drive, as Voltaire perhaps intended. They are marvellous and carry the first half of the opera, while the Samson and Delilah part of the story has more than sufficient power to carry drama and tragedy of Act III and IV.

The singing performances of course contribute to that. Jarrett Ott was suitably robust, lyrical and bright as Samson, but perhaps because of the varied source material it's a role that covers a wide tessitura and was clearly tricky at the lower end. As mentioned earlier, Jacquelyn Stucker's Dalila was superb, as was a beautifully lyrical Lea Desandre as Tinmah. I suspect this biblical character many have been an addition to the new version of the opera, as it is documented that there were no female voices in first two acts. Either way, her role brings welcome colour and drama that is needed in these earlier scenes.

External links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Aix Digital Stage

Mozart - Idomeneo (Aix-en-Provence, 2022)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Idomeneo, Re di Creta

Festival Aix-en-Provence, 2022

Raphaël Pichon, Satoshi Miyagi, Michael Spyres, Sabine Devieilhe, Anna Bonitatibus, Nicole Chevalier, Linard Vrielink, Krešimir Špicer, Alexandros Stavrakakis

ARTE Concert - July 2022

There's no question that Mozart's operas are beautifully expressive of the whole range of human feelings and experience. Even at the age of 24 in his earliest masterpiece Idomeneo, Re di Creta he defies the often dry conventions and expectations of the opera seria format to create a work that imbues ancient Greek mythology with a rare humanity and authenticity. A stage director can choose to work to bring those human elements out, to interpret or reinterpret them, or they can quite reasonably rely on the music to speak for itself. That appears to be the intention of the director Satoshi Miyagi at this production for Aix-en-Provence 2022, but whether it supports Mozart's music or works against it is less certain.

There is certainly nothing wrong with updating the setting of Idomeneo or using it to express the original ideas and themes in a different context. I must admit I had my doubts about it being a neat fit for the director's proposed intention of using the Japanese wartime emperor Hirohito as a substitute for Idomeneus the King of Crete, or whether this would be in any other way meaningful or revelatory, but it has to be said that this notion never really asserts influence over the performance of the work here. What is far more significant to how the opera plays out in this production is decision to present it in a Noh drama fashion, with minimal but highly stylised sets and movements.

It certainly looks impressive, achieving the same kind of glacial quality that Robert Wilson employs in his opera and stage productions, and they are - usually but not always - none the worse off for it. Consequently, the principal performers here, dressed in stylised Japanese costumes, remain expressionless with minimal movement, often raised on their own platforms at a distance from one another. The chorus meanwhile, wearing more familiar military uniforms, merge with the sets, becoming part of them, part of the while fabric of the opera.

As far as that goes it's fine, the sets remain fluid and slowly moving and changing, ensuring that everything doesn't remain too static. If Idomeneo were a typical opera seria, it might not be enough to enliven the work and make the drama come to life, but despite the qualities of the music and the fact that it does indeed speak for itself, it seemed to me that it didn't do Mozart any favours. Not only does the intention to relate this to Hirohito and the Japanese people fail to make any impression - the opera has been staged as a modern post-war conflict much more successfully elsewhere in numerous updated productions - but it even seems to almost work against and neutralise the music, and that is not a good thing.

Fortunately it doesn't quite do that thanks to conductor Raphaël Pichon. If there are any doubts that remain about the quality of this early Mozart opera and how it stacks up against his mature works, this was certainly dispelled by the musical direction. Sure, the composition of Idomeneo can't compare to the great Mozart operas with Da Ponte, but much of what is great about those later works can already be heard developing here in a truly exciting way. It's a strong enough work on its own terms - more than strong and certainly if compared to what preceded it in opera seria, it's hugely progressive, devoid of the mannerisms and much more relatable, the characters really seeming to engage with one another and not just wrapped in their own worlds. Which, when you get right down to it, might just be what Mozart's operas are all about and what makes them great.

Unfortunately the production's stylised Noh influenced staging pushes the opera back onto those mannerisms, removing emotional connections, putting physical distance between the characters. I personally found Satoshi Miyagi's direction cold and distracting, at odds with Mozart's warm sympathetic and deeply expressive music. Worse, it simply offered no way in to relate to the plot and the drama to find a reason to care about each of the characters, much less offer an interpretation as to their motivations and behaviours as others have done, particularly into the complex nature and behaviours of Elettra and the king himself. There is no denying however that the set designs and the lighting were terrific and this was beautiful to look at, and it did suit the elegant formality of Mozart's music, if not bring out anything deeper from it.

Up until the conclusion, that is. A blood red backdrop is projected against the characters, showing them set against the horror and devastation that their decisions have caused. While mainly abstract in its human shapes and shadows cast against the horror of war, the suffering, the trauma, the eventual release and the recognition of the folly of its leaders acting like gods, it did hit home effectively, particularly with Mozart's music and with the soaring singing of the principals and chorus. It's here that Hirohito is most effectively evoked through the voice of the god Neptune, his broadcast voice coming from a record player that appears on its own raised platform. The slow and detached build-up might have been testing, but by the time the conclusion was reached, you were left in no doubt that this production did justice to Mozart, if perhaps not exactly find anything new in it.

Despite the impositions placed on the singers to remain mainly impassive and inexpressive, there was also much to enjoy in the singing. These are already challenging roles - Mozart composing this in 1781 for the best singers in Munich at the time - and the casting of the right kind of Mozartian voices is ideal for this production at Aix-en-Provence's Théâtre de l’Archevêché. If the director had little in the way of showing any nuance in the character of Idomeneo, who can be played sympathetically or as a misguided relic of the past who gets his just desserts, Michael Spyres's soft timbre brought warmth and humanity to the role. Soprano Sabine Devieilhe's singing brought more feeling and drama to the role of Ilia than the minimal direction allowed. Anna Bonitatibus as Idamante and Nicole Chevalier as Elettra were more constricted by their roles having little room for interpretation, but both sang superbly. With a cast like that and Mozart's music beautifully interpreted by Pinchon and the Pygmalion orchestra and chorus, the greatness of Idomeneo remains indisputable. 

Links: ARTE Concert, Festival Aix-en-Provence

Mozart - Requiem (Aix, 2019)

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2019

Raphaël Pichon, Romeo Castellucci, Siobhan Stagg, Sara Mingardo, Martin Mitterrutzner, Luca Tittoto, Ensemble Pygmalion

ARTE Concert - 10 July 2019 

Romeo Castellucci's directorial projects are becoming less interested in the traditional narrative aspect of opera direction and more concerned with exploring and representing the spiritual side of humanity within the works. Of course, the works in question have to be capable of possessing this quality, and that's certainly the case for the likes of his La Monnaie Parsifal, his Paris Moses und Aron and his Hamburg Matthew's Passion. More recently he has set about exploring this in other less obviously spiritual works, in Salome for Salzburg and Tannhäuser for Munich, but perhaps the most interesting exploration of the spiritual existing with the physical nature of humanity has been in his stunning La Monnaie production of Die Zauberflöte. Mozart is of course fully open to be explored in this area and nowhere more so than in the Requiem.

Mozart's Requiem however isn't an opera, and the idea of setting it to a manufactured narrative would evidently be presumptuous, if not actually impossible. For the purposes of this Aix-en-Provence production - an ambitious one in Pierre Audi's first season as artistic director of the festival - Castellucci associates the work with a growing awareness of the temporality of human existence as individuals and as a species, as well as the fleeting impermanence of what our relatively brief presence on the planet leaves behind. The best way of looking at this approach to Requiem is that the director is seeking a way to extend the work far beyond its own confines, showing or at least suggesting connections it makes - musical, spiritual and existential - to the condition of being human and being mortal.

To extend the scope of Requiem further for this purpose, Castellucci makes use of several other Mozart sacred pieces and Masonic hymns in including the Kyrie from the Mass in C Minor, O Gottes Lamm, and opens the theatrical presentation of this work with a Gregorian chant. Essentially, this production of Requiem becomes a ritual of song and dance, celebrating life in the face of the certainty of extinction. It's this theme that dominates as, in typical Castellucci fashion, words are projected to the back of the stage, an 'Atlas of Extinction', that enumerates the extinction of creatures that no longer exist, to extinct plants, disappeared lakes, extinct tribes and races, extinct cities, lost languages, religions, buildings and works of art.

It's a fascinating device that really has an impact in conjunction with the performance and the music, showing that as well as being something sad there's also something beautiful in the contemplation of the awareness that all things come to an end. The catalogue however doesn't restrict itself to known extinctions but gnomically reminds us in its list of "present-day extinctions", of the extinction of I, of the extinction even the of the word I, of wind, water, grass, thought, fish in the sea, time, even the extinction of this music. And ultimately of course, an extinction of this day, the 10th July 2019. Indeed, if there is anything that can testify to the glory of human existence over its relatively short presence on Earth, it's Mozart's Requiem. Eternal rest grant unto them.

On the stage meanwhile, Romeo Castellucci makes use of the Pygmalion Vocal Ensemble to enact ritual dances for Mozart's music, placing quite a different character on the work that you would typically get from a solemn concert performance. Moving ever closer towards performance art or art installations, Castellucci has extras representing all the ages of woman (from old age to birth) splatters the stage and bodies with Holi-like coloured power and honey, with soil, spray painting the backdrops, as the chorus move into formations to put on folk dances, a maypole dance and ritualistic representations of life and death, all the while that Mozart's music plays and the backscreen runs through its seemingly endless catalogue of extinction.

Seen in this context it's extraordinarily beautiful, invigorating, thought-provoking and often very moving; but even so, the question remains about whether it is worthy of Mozart's music. I return to that statement at the start of the presumption or impossibility of staging Mozart's Requiem, or believe that it can be elevated to anything greater than it already is. Given that, yes, Romeo Castellucci creates a presentation that is indeed worthy of the piece as a sincere artistic response to this great work. Like Katie Mitchell's and Raphaël Pichon's attempt to do the same for J.S. Bach at the 2014 Aix Festival (Trauernacht), or indeed like Robert Wilson's reworking of Arvo Pärt's sacred music for Adam's Passion, it is of course the music that must be the heart and soul of the production.

That relies of course principally on the musical direction of Raphaël Pichon, the Ensemble Pygmalion Orchestra and Chorus. Even in the open-air conditions of the theatre of the Théâtre de l’Archevêché in Aix in a theatrical presentation, the performances and the singing of the principals Siobhan Stagg (soprano), Sara Mingardo (alto), Martin Mitterrutzner (tenor) and Luca Tittoto (bass) - not to forget the beautiful acapella Kyrie by boy alto Chadi Lazreq - captures all the glory and solemnity of the work. It's not enhanced by the visual representation, but the busy and sometimes strange imagery of the production design doesn't detract from it either. What it does is prompt you to think about not just death but extinction, and as a mass for the death of everything, Mozart's Requiem couldn't be more fitting.

Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Gluck - Orphée et Eurydice (Paris, 2018)

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Orphée et Eurydice

Opéra Comique, Paris - 2018

Raphaël Pichon, Aurélien Bory, Marianne Crebassa, Hélène Gilmette, Lea Desandre

ARTE Concert - October 2018

Gluck's original Italian version of Orfeo ed Euridice may already be considered as close to perfection as an opera can get, but you can't really argue that Hector Berlioz's version of the work doesn't respect and have equal value to the original. Well, you could argue the point that it doesn't entirely respect the reformist instrumental minimalism and that it includes a little ornamentation and extensions to suit the taste of a 19th century French audience, but by and large Orphée et Eurydice retains the essential quality of the music being entirely in service to the drama.

You know that because every scene and every note in Gluck's opera is necessary, heartfelt and powerful in conveying the meaning of the work, and the subjects it deals with are the deepest and most heartfelt of human emotions - love, loss, grief and redemption. Although in the latter case, even Gluck might have compromised the qualities of truth for the sake of narrative requirements and audience expectations, even if it remains a work of supreme beauty. Working with Berlioz's 1859 version, Raphaël Pichon attempts his own slight corrective to the 'happy' ending for the Opéra Comique's production, but the purity of Gluck's intentions remain even in their absence.

Directed by Aurélien Bory, the Paris production adheres to those basic principles in Gluck's musical composition and in how best to express the sentiments that lie behind the work in terms of the stage production that achieves maximum impact from minimal means. Berlioz's extended overture permits a way of showing Orpheus's loss of Eurydice, a simple large mirror over the stage giving an overview of the horror of her death. Eurydice falls to the ground, a hole opens up in the stage, a grave, and Eurydice is sucked down into it, the whole backdrop of Orpheus's world dragged down along with her.

The mirror also works effective for the appearance of Amore to inhabit the real world and also be representative of the metaphorical meaning of her presence. Borne aloft by dancing figures dressed in black, she appears in the mirror to float above the stage, achieving maximum impact with minimal means. Another effective use of stage craft is used to represent the Furies as dancers who are appeased by Orpheus, marking his descent into the underworld.

There's nothing old-fashioned in the costume designs, but nothing obtrusively modern about them either, the work inhabiting the same timeless place as the sentiments it is principally concerned with. With his smart suit and clicked back white hair, Orpheus looks less like a businessman and more like a music impresario, and it's in the voice, the musical qualities of that voice, that Orpheus embodies and expresses those qualities that represent humanity in its purest state, vulnerable and yet capable of striving to overcome adversity.

Musically at least, Raphaël Pichon brings out the beauty of this in Gluck's score, even if Berlioz's instrumentation doesn't quite pack the same edge and directness as it would on Gluck's period instruments. A contralto or mezzo-soprano however can bring great range to Orpheus in the Berlioz edition and Marianne Crebassa has tenderness and depth of expression in Orpheus's song of grief. There's a similar purity of expression that is appropriate for Eurydice and Amore in the singing of Hélène Gilmette and Lea Desandre, the overall impact that this gives to the work just breathtaking.

I'm less convinced that you can get away with correcting the limitations imposed on Gluck to provide a happy ending by simply cutting Amore's gift of returning Eurydice to life. I think that this is something that can be redeemed creatively to some extent in the stage directions, as Romeo Castellucci inventively managed in his production of Orphée et Eurydice for La Monnaie, but ending it prematurely by cutting the final scenes just leaves the opera feeling incomplete. Still, the acceptance of loss and bearing grief is perhaps closer to the truth for everyone, and Gluck certainly provides the necessary sombre reflection in that music that still makes for a thoughtful conclusion in this Opéra Comique production.

Links: Opéra Comique, ARTE Concert

Purcell - Miranda (Paris, 2017)

Henry Purcell - Miranda

L'Opéra Comique, Paris - 2017

Raphaël Pichon, Katie Mitchell, Kate Lindsey, Henry Waddington, Katherine Watson, Allan Clayton, Marc Mauillon, Aksel Rykkvin

ARTE Concert - 29 September 2017

You can't argue with the pedigree of the sources involved in the creation of Miranda. It's a 'new' opera based on characters in Shakespeare's The Tempest, set to music written some 300 years ago by Henry Purcell. And yet adapted by Cordelia Lynn Miranda is also a contemporary opera, set in the present day, with a very different outlook brought to the characters, the drama and the music by director Katie Mitchell and Raphaël Pichon.

The idea of creating a new opera out of existing material or adapting pieces to work in a new context isn't a new innovation in opera. Rossini frequently revised and cannibalised his own works in the 19th century - why waste a good tune? - but the practice is older than that. The pasticcio, an opera made of cobbled together 'hits' from other operas, was popular in the 18th century, and the practice was revived a few years ago for the Metropolitan Opera's The Enchanted Island (interestingly, also based around Shakespeare's The Tempest).

Katie Mitchell and Raphaël Pichon have good form in such matters, collaborating to create the sublime Trauernacht for Aix-en-Provence in 2014, an opera assembled out of cantatas by J.S. Bach. Whether it added up to a convincing dramatic piece was debatable, but the choice of music, the coherence and beauty of the sentiments expressed in bringing them together, certainly added up to a work that was greater than the sum of its parts. Even if you saw it as nothing more than a rare opportunity to bring Bach to the opera stage and hear some beautiful performances of his cantatas, there was merit in that alone.

The same unfortunately can't be said for how Shakespeare and Purcell are treated in the semi-opera Miranda. Shakespeare's The Tempest is pretty much jettisoned right from the start, or rather its themes and intent are casually dismissed by Katie Mitchell and librettist Cordelia Lynn in favour of a more feminist reading that sets out to "correct" the patriarchal attitudes and male power play expressed in the original. Miranda, now a young woman with a child, Anthony, has come to the realisation that she's been a victim of child abuse, and she's going to confront her aggressors; her father Prospero and her husband Ferdinand.

I'm not quite sure how the creators of this 'sequel' to the Tempest have come to this particular reading from Shakespeare's play or why they've chosen to ignore the multiplicity of other themes that can be found in the work, but the implication is that we've only heard one side of the story and it's been an exclusively male one. Miranda has had enough of being misrepresented and she's not going to take any more. It's time, she tells us, to tell the true story. She's accuses her father of forcing her into exile, permitting her to be raped by Caliban on the island, marrying her as a child bride and giving birth to a child when she was only 17. "You're an ego maniac", she challenges her father, "You need to shut up. I'm telling the story now".

Well, as you can see, in addition to being a rather dubious rewriting and imposition of a modern feminist perspective on The Tempest, Lynn's libretto lacks the finesse and poetry of Shakespeare's valedictory work for the stage. Miranda is also rather deficient in dramatic coherence, credibility and, well... taste basically. Miranda decides to stage her confrontation with her male aggressors in the most absurd way imaginable: as a terrorist hostage situation at a funeral where her family are mourning her death. Believed drowned, her body never recovered, Miranda has a surprise for the mourners, turning up at the church with a small terrorist unit, wearing a black mask and a wedding dress and waving a pistol in the faces of the shocked and terrified congregation.

It's nothing apparently to what Miranda has had to endure, and she sets the record straight with a pantomime act that fulfils the masque aspect of the semi-opera. The drama however doesn't really elaborate any further on the contention that "I was exiled. I was raped. I was a child bride", which is all Miranda seems to want to get off her chest. Having stage-managed this little melodrama for attention and revealed to an appalled Anna the true nature of her husband Prospero by whom she is bringing another child into this brave new world, it's all hunky-dory once again when Ferdinand begs forgiveness ('Then pity me, who am your slave / And grant me a reprieve' from O! Fair Cedaria); the presumption being - in the absence of any dramatic credibility or winning way with words - that the beauty of the sentiments expressed in Purcell's music is enough to make everything all right.

And in a way, it almost is. It's clear that there has to be some sort of dramatic compromise made in order to fit the chosen Purcell pieces into a coherent drama, and the suspicion is that the funeral is there to provide a suitable setting for a selection of Purcell's sacred music, the highlight here being the Evening Hymn 'Now that the sun hath veiled his light'. 'Dido's Lament' from Dido and Aeneas, sung here by Anna, does feel rather shoe-horned into the situation, but even in a situation as ludicrous as this the sincerity of the sentiments can't be denied in Miranda's forgiving/recriminating arias to Ferdinand, 'Oh! Lead me to some peaceful gloom' from Bonduca with the lines "What glory can a woman have / To conquer, yet be still a slave" ('woman' substituting 'lover' in the original) and to Prospero 'They tell us that your mighty powers above' from The Indian Queen.

The singers do their best to put some dramatic feeling into this, but there's not much for them to do as Miranda and Anna look sad and angry and take out their frustrations on Prospero and Ferdinand, who look embarrassed and ashamed. And that really sums up the very limited ambitions of Miranda, emasculating or reducing Shakespeare's achievements in The Tempest down to a one-way protest of anger and recrimination by women against men. Despite being shoehorned into such a situation, the beauty of Purcell's composition and sentiments still comes through in a way that makes Miranda more successful as a musical piece than a dramatic one.

Kate Lindsey obviously has the biggest say and platform here as Miranda and is excellent, firm and clear of voice if somewhat driven to over-expression by the drama. Katherine Watson also makes a good impression, but again the context of Dido's Lament doesn't perhaps permit its best expression. Allan Clayton and Henry Waddington have thankless roles (the brutes!) which they nonetheless sing well and are at least better fitted to their roles than Marc Mauillon's strained priest. Aksel Rykkvin's Anthony is worthy of a mention for a lovely performance of An Evening Hymn: 'Now that the sun hath veiled his light'.  Despite my reservations about the libretto and direction, the qualities of Purcell's music and the performances here under the direction of Raphaël Pichon brought me back to watch this for a repeat viewing - much like Trauernacht - so there are certainly pleasures to be found here.

Links: L'Opéra Comique, ARTE Concert

Rameau - Dardanus (Bordeaux, 2015 - Webcast)

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Dardanus

L'Opéra de Bordeaux, 2015

Raphaël Pichon, Michel Fau, Karina Gauvin, Gaëlle Arquez, Reinoud van Mechelen, Florian Sempey, Nahuel di Pierro, Katherine Watson, Etienne Bazola, Virgile Ancely, Guillaume Gutiérrez

Culturebox - 22 April 2015

You could criticise Jean-Philippe Rameau's Dardanus - and indeed most of the composer's tragédie-lyriques - as being a little too stiff, formal and serious, the work straight-jacketed by precise rules and conventions that Rameau and his predecessor Lully before him helped establish. You could however admire Dardanus for the very same reasons, for its ability to fit such beautiful music, song and dance into a very rigid format, making it a wonderfully entertaining spectacle.

And there's the key to how you make Dardanus, composed in 1739 and scarcely heard of again until the present day, work today for a modern audience. It's by not playing it with stiff, rigid formality, but finding a natural warmth in the beauty of the composition, the structure and the melody. It's also about presenting the work with some respect for its intention to entertain, with plenty of colour and spectacle.

Bordeaux have a good recent history with Rameau. Their modernisation of Les Indes Galantes last year (for the 250th anniversary of the death of Rameau) was an absolute marvel, updating the work certainly way beyond its original settings but completely respecting the intentions and the spirit of the opéra-ballet with all its wonderful verve, energy and inventiveness. A classical drama in the tragédie-lyrique vein, Dardanus is a different prospect but, Michel Fau's direction for the Bordeaux stage, in a co-production with Versailles, never forgets the primary purpose and delivers a colourful drama that is matched by the warmth of Raphaël Pichon's conducting of his Pygmalion ensemble.

As it adheres very much to a classic narrative, the primary purpose of Dardanus is not, clearly, to present any kind of credible or coherent drama, but to present a drama in music. The plot involves a ruler, King Teucer, who has plans for his daughter Princess Iphise's marriage to King Anténor. Iphise doesn't want to marry Anténor, but is troubled that her affections seem to be swaying her towards tender feelings for Teucer's enemy Dardanus. Dardanus, Anténor and Iphise all venture into the magic kingdom of Isménor, where the true intentions of each are brought into the open and made known to each other, causing a lot of confusion and trouble for all.

Opening with the obligatory Prologue featuring Vénus and Amour ('Triomphe, tendre amour"), Dardanus then is five acts of fairly standard plotting with sentiments of forbidden love and conflict leading to a rather contrived conclusion. For some not entirely convincing reason, other than perhaps to provide the opera with a necessary bit of merveilleux stage spectacle at the necessary point, Neptune sends a sea monster to attack Teucer. Dardanus saves the King's champion Anténor from bring devoured by the sea monster, and thereby wins the right to marry Iphise. Rameau pads all this out with lots of dancing and a structure that seems to run on an aria-ballet-chorus-ballet-recitative-ballet-aria loop. Dardanus has the potential to be very dry indeed with all these interruptions to the dramatic flow.

Rameau's music however is much too good to let it be drowned in a dull academic presentation. There is a sense of establishing beauty and order on the world in the music itself - learning to love instead of hate - and Raphaël Pichon finds the beautiful warmth in Rameau's writing that underlines such sentiments, as much in the interplay of the instruments as in their individual qualities. There are moments of sheer wonder here, even in those little side events, such as in the little pastorale 'Paix favorable, paix adorable' which takes the form of a chorus, turning into a ballet and then into a duet which has all the joyous quality of a Handel oratorio.

Michel Fau's direction and Emmanuel Charles' set designs don't feel the need to update all this to a modern setting, but recognise that Dardanus can work on its own terms if it holds true to this original purpose and intent. That doesn't mean that they settle for trying to recreate baroque theatre effects, but find instead a new, modern and colourful way using projections as well as traditional costumes and stage effects to achieve the same impact. It never quite resorts to kitsch or parody - other than where the occasion really leaves no alternative - but finds its own dazzling vision for the work. A good example of this is in how they approach the battle of the sea monster, which is done in a hugely entertaining fashion without the need to create any cardboard sea monster special effects. All the ballets are included, sometimes inventively other times just bringing the dancers onto the stage where indicated and letting them do their piece.

There's no room for extravagant arias in French tragédie-lyrique, and reportedly there wasn't any particular need for clarity of diction, but the libretto is beautifully articulated here by some beautiful and appropriately pitched voices. Florian Sempey carried the honours as Anténor, his lyrical baritone carrying the kind of warmth that was complementary to the production. In his actions as well as his voice, there was a genuine sensitivity that made Anténor a little more sympathetic and not just a caricature villain,. He's clearly devastated that Iphise doesn't love him, valiantly entering into battle with the sea monster to prove his worth. Sempey's voice holds firm and lyrical throughout.

Gaëlle Arquez complements him well as Iphise, her voice bright, her emotional conflicts expressed purposefully, never faltering. The figure of Dardanus is relatively bland by comparison, and characterised as such by Reinoud van Mechelen's light but sweet tenor. Although limited to only a few scenes, Karina Gauvin is the kind of singer you want to impress when Vénus makes an appearance, and she fulfils that role well, but it's Katherine Watson taking up the bit-part roles of Amore, a Shepherdess, Bellone and a Dream, who gets to feature in some of Rameau's most beautiful little incidental arrangements, and she makes a fine impression here.

Links: Culturebox

Bach - Trauernacht (Aix-en-Provence, 2014 - Webcast)

Johann Sebastian Bach - Trauernacht

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2014 

Raphaël Pichon, Katie Mitchell, Frode Olsen, Aoife Miskelly, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Rupert Charlesworth, Andri Björn Robertsson

Medici, Culturebox - Live Streaming, July 2014

J.S Bach didn't actually write any operas, so it's rare indeed to find his work in the schedule of an opera festival. Bach's Passions have a dramatic line that has seen them adapted to the stage on occasion, but the work Trauernacht, presented at the 2014 Aix-en-Provence festival, is unlikely to mean anything to opera-goers. Trauernacht (subtitled 'The Angel's Hand', but literally meaning 'Night of Mourning') is actually a collection of a number of similarly themed religious Bach cantatas gathered together and developed into a kind of narrative line by conductor Raphaël Pichon and director Katie Mitchell.

Bach wrote over 200 cantatas while he was in the position of  Cantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, sacred pieces of varying length for solo performers and small choirs quoting lines from the Bible or religious meditations on scripture. If it's a case that, like Handel's religious oratorios, these exquisite little pieces can be given a new life through a stage performance, then there's merit in the exercise for that reason alone. Unlike Handel's oratorios however, it rather more difficult (and potentially controversial) to select and adapt these works to fit a dramatic narrative. There is however a very specific sentiment explored musically in the pieces chosen for Trauernacht, and there is even an inherent drama in how the music expresses the sentiments of the few lines of text and scripture in them.

As the title of the work tells us, that sentiment is associated with questions of death and mourning. Although death is a common enough occurrence in opera works, nowhere is it meditated on at such length (even though the work runs to less than 80 minutes) and with such sensitivity as it is here in Trauernacht. The exquisite beauty of the music and an abstract mediation on such matters would then more than justify the creation of such a work, but Mitchell also attempts to find a narrative path of sorts that takes a meaningful line from sorrow and incomprehension among a family over bereavement suffered by the death of a father, through to acceptance that this is the fate of us all.

In terms of staging, this doesn't require anything too elaborate. Vicki Mortimer's designs for the Katie Mitchell's Aix production (the two of them previously collaborated in the creation of George Benjamin's Written on Skin for Aix in 2012, Mitchell also involved with The House Taken Over by Vasco Mendonça en 2013) provide a table with four chairs, a dinner table where the family place the remaining belongings - a folded suit and a pair of shoes - of their recently buried or cremated father. A fifth figure sits recessed in the darkness in the background who evidently represents the father (Frode Olsen in the main providing a haunting low whistle between cantatas), but by the same token he can be seen as merely the presence of the father or even an angel. His main role is as a focus for the thoughts and meditations of the other four members of the family to work through their anger, grief and sorrow as they move around, sometimes in slow motion, and sit down later for a meal together.

To set the funereal mood for the piece, the opening prologue is not by actually by J.S. Bach, but a motet written by his cousin Johann Christoph Bach, "Mit Weinen hebt’s sich an". All the other compositions however come from J.S. Bach cantatas, often consisting of short recitative or a single repeated line as each of the family members - in solo air, in duet and sometimes in small choral arrangements - express their thoughts and process their grief. The tenor rages at the terrible fate that awaits them all in cantata BWV 90, "Es reißet euch ein schrecklich Ende", the four singers come together at the centre of the piece to sing of their submission to the Lord's will in an extract from cantata BWV 71 "Du wollest dem Feinde nicht geben" taken from Psalm 74 ("You would not give the soul of Your turtledove to the enemy"). The father himself comes forward to sing BWV 159 "Es ist vollbracht" ("It is finished"), bringing the family to acceptance in the bass air BWV 82 "Ich habe genug" ("I am content"), and in the choral BWV 668, "Vor deinen Thron" ("Before thy throne, O Lord, I present myself").

In terms of staging, the narrative developed by Katie Michell and Raphaël Pichon for Trauernacht is very simple, but it's entirely appropriate, respectful and meaningful. The directors successfully retain the religious origins and significance of these profound meditations on death, while at the same time giving them context and expression in everyday actions and places. That's as much in the singing and the performances, the words and the sentiments behind them not merely chanted or recited, but given full dramatic expression. There's a spiritual purity in these musical compositions, in the lilting tone of the recorder, oboe and viola da gamba that mournfully accompanies the singing, weaving through the voices, granting them an uplifting grace that carries them through to a beautiful resolution.

Links: Medici, Culturebox, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence