Showing posts with label Reinoud Van Mechelen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reinoud Van Mechelen. Show all posts

Thursday, 17 April 2025

Charpentier - Médée (Paris, 2024)


Marc-Antoine Charpentier - Médée

Opéra National de Paris, 2024

William Christie, David McVicar, Lea Desandre, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Laurent Naouri, Ana Vieira Leite, Gordon Bintner, Emmanuelle de Negri, Élodie Fonnard, Lisandro Abadie, Julie Roset, Mariasole Mainini, Maud Gnidzaz, Juliette Perret, Virginie Thomas, Julia Wischniewski, Alice Gregorio, Bastien Rimondi, Clément Debieuvre, Matthieu Walendzik

ARTE Concert - 3rd and 7th May 2024

Euripides' ancient Greek tragedy of Medea is a sensational tale of sex and violence of love and betrayal that has long inspired theatre and the arts and of course countless opera versions over the centuries, from Francesco Cavalli's Il Giasone in 1649 to Aribert Riemann's Medea in 2010. The most famous opera version, its status defined by Maria Callas, is Luigi Cherubini’s Médée, and that's the version you are most likely to still see performed. With the works of Marc-Antoine Charpentier having their turn in the early opera spotlight, William Christie again being at the forefront of reviving great forgotten works of the early period of classic French 17th century opera, you aren't going to get a better opportunity to experience the quality of his version of Médée than this production on the Paris stage at the Palais Garnier.

With a libretto by French dramatist Thomas Corneille, who composed libretti for Lully's operas, and it being an opera composed during the reign of Louis XIV, you might have some expectations as to how this will play out. If you are thinking rather dry 17th century drama with some longeurs, noble sentiments and classical formality that require some patience and familiarity with the style to appreciate, you'd be partly right, but with Charpentier and French music of this period, you can also expect the flavour of wonderful dance music, choruses and spectacle all fulfilling the dramatic punch of the story. You definitely get that in this opera and it's brought out effectively in a manner that ensures accessibility in Christie's musical direction and in this production directed by David McVicar.

But there is a little scene setting required first of all to establish the situation that is going to lead to Jason's betrayal of his wife Medea and fire such fury in her that she is going to do the unthinkable. The context is their exile from Thessaly driven by the people's fear of Medea's magical powers, and Jason's seeking an alliance that will give them safe haven with King Creon in Corinth. He is prepared to lead a joint Corinthian and Argive army against Thessaly and extend the power of the rule of Creon. Although his daughter Creusa has been promised to Oronte, the Prince of Argos, Creon thinks Jason would make a better husband for the Princess. Jason sees that as an opportunity to secure and elevate his own position, but how will Medea take the news?

Well, I think we all know how that goes, and although the phrase "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" wasn't around at the time (it being coined just 4 years after Charpentier's opera in 1697 by William Congreve), there is no surer description for what takes place in the final act here. There is however other shades and colours of dramatic action and sentiment that Corneille and Charpentier have to work with before Act V of Médée. Act I starts slowly with Medea expressing misgivings about Jason's mission, Jason himself confessing love for Creusa to his confidant Arcus, but it soon picks up with the armies assembling for the attack against the Thessalonians.

The Paris Opera production sets this version in a more recent and familiar wartime setting, Creon a de Gaulle like figure, Oronte a brash American fighter pilot, Jason of course a naval officer. It works fine, removing it from the Greek classicism and giving it an attractive freshness and colour on the Palais Garnier stage. Dance routines from a small troupe of six male and six female dancers enliven the stage choreography and choral arrangements considerably; they are not overly elaborate, more formation dancing that suits the militaristic look and feel of the setting. The real battle here however is more the one between Jason and Oronte for the favour of Creusa than a concerted fight against the foreign enemy.

That more or less establishes the template for what follows in subsequent acts of Médée; a little bit of accompanied recitative exposition followed by some invigorating music, singing and dancing as the emotional temperature rises. The stage production rises to those moments as well with - it being a David McVicar production - a few surprising twists. A glittering US fighter plane is wheeled on at the end of Act II for a nightclub scene with L’Amour/Cupid appearing as a cabaret act, the whole scene bathed in purple and pink light. Yes, it's a little bit camp, in a McVicar way, but not excessively so. It's a good way to treat the mythological characters that appear in the opera and it seems to fit musically.

The latter is essential really, since musically this production has the complete William Christie attention to detail and above all rhythm. The use of period instruments is invigorating in those dance and choral pieces, with soft flute and plucked theorbo or lute accompanying the expressions of troubled emotions. Authenticity is a matter for the musical director of course and I'm in no position to dispute or approve the choices Christie makes, but he always makes early music that could otherwise sound alien to a modern classical audience feel accessible and beautiful as well as expressive of emotional and dramatic content.

There's a sweetness to the music that is reflected in the singing voices. Yes, that even goes for Lea Desandre as Medea, but the softness of her voice has an underlying steeliness that leaves you in no doubt as to the depths of feeling love and betrayal inspired in her, nor the horrors she is capable of inflicting because of them. Corneille provides adequate motivation, character definition and some poetic beauty in the libretto for Medea. Vowing vengeance in collaboration with Oronte in Act III, she instinctively softens in the face of Jason and believes she can persuade him away from the fatal course he is on. (Jason is also well sung in this scene by Reinoud Van Mechelen, but perhaps lacks the same depth of character). This leads to a beautiful lament "Quel prix de mon amour, quel fruit de mes forfaits" where Desandre shines, pouring out the complexity and depth of Medea's love for Jason. It's a pivotal scene that the outcome depends on and everything about this is convincing for what follows.

What follows is of course all the horrors of hell, and there Desandre is also wonderfully convincing. The early dance rhythms of the period music might not seem best designed for that kind of darkness, but the fury within is there in Desandre and in McVicar's direction of the subsequent acts and scenes with dancers and demons adding emphasis and impact to the intent. It's not a particularly thrilling or insightful production, more typical 'neoclassical' McVicar, but the way it is modernised is enough really to be able to appreciate the true qualities of the work. Under William Christie the work's beauty, its charm, its seductiveness, as well as its edge of menace are all there in a wonderful combination of soft flutes and flurries of plucked and hammered strings.


External links: Opéra National de Paris, ARTE Concert

Saturday, 23 February 2019

Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie (Berlin, 2018)


Jean-Philippe Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie

Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 2018

Simon Rattle, Aletta Collins, Anna Prohaska, Magdalena Kožená, Gyula Orendt, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Peter Rose, Adriane Queiroz, Elsa Dreisig, Sarah Aristidou, Slávka Zámečníková, Serena Sáenz Molinero, Roman Trekel, Michael Smallwood, Linard Vrielink, Arttu Kataja, Jan Martiník

ARTE Concert

The tragédie lyrique operas of Lully and Rameau, since they were written for the French royal court in the 18th century, must be seen above all as grand spectacles. There are moral lessons to be imparted in their treatments of ancient Greek mythology that can still carry through, but what essentially strikes a modern audience when these works are performed is their extravagant blend of music, dance and colourful dramatic presentations that they seem to inspire. That spectacle can take many forms, from the ultra-traditional (Hippolyte et Aricie, 2012 Atys 2011) to the stylishly modern (Les Boréades, 2003),  or radically reworked (Les Indes Galantes, Bordeaux 2014) but whatever the case, the visuals must match up with the elaborate musical arrangements.

The 2018 Berlin Staatsoper production of Hippolyte et Aricie clearly doesn't go for the traditional approach of Paris 2012, and to be frank, it doesn't even go for anything recognisably contemporary like Jonathan Kent's 2013 Glyndebourne production or anything remotely naturalistic. On the other hand, there's nothing particularly naturalistic about the mythological subject and, looking back on Rameau's musical presentation of Racine's Phèdre today, there is something now otherworldly about the arrangements and the sound of the instruments themselves that, apart from Handel making them a little more familiar, is not commonly heard in the main repertoire.



Since the story revolves around Theseus's descent into Hades (following the traditional prelude of a dispute between the gods) you might at least expect there to be an otherworldly quality to the presentation, but this production very much has its own visual interpretation of those places. When you delve into such places and act outside the laws of nature - Phèdre falling in love with her husband's son Hippolyte and upsetting the order of her own marriage and Hippolyte's marriage to Aricie - well, then those consequences have far-reaching impact. That's something you can hear in the music and that's interpreted with some originality in the Berlin staging.

It certainly has extravagance and spectacle. The opening prelude is a dazzling display of mirrors and laser beams that are reflected and spread out across the auditorium of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Jupiter takes the form of a glitterball and even Phèdre is dressed in a gown of small fractured mirrors. The subsequent scene in the Underworld sees Theseus, Pluton and Tsiphone under individual coloured lights, each with their upper body bound up in a frame of interlocking circles, while dark furies shuffle around them on the stage, and the Parques (Fates) fire out superhero-like laser beams from their fists. Designer Ólafur Elíasson puts on quite a show.



So the production certainly has a distinct character of its own and is appropriately and literally dazzling as a spectacle, but it is still very much in keeping with the otherworldly character of the operatic places of mythology evoked by Rameau's elaborate rhythms and harmonies. Those aspects of the world of the immortals spills over into the 'real' world of Hippolyte and Aricie, and the production design takes this into account, allowing the dramatic impact of all this on the human characters to play out and speak for itself when Theseus returns to find his wife in a compromising situation with his son. You don't need special effects to see how he feels. Is this any way to greet someone who has just come back from the dead?

In the second half of the production Aletta Collins continues to explore whatever elements of stagecraft and choreography can best represent the underlying sentiments of Hippolyte et Aricie, never settling for anything conventional, but simplifying it to let the human emotions reassert their prominence. Sometimes that is nothing more than a Bill Viola-like projection of rippling water, but when Rameau's music steps up a gear, you get the full visual accompaniment and dancing.



It's a worthy attempt to revisit and re-envisualise Rameau, but it doesn't really make the work come alive, engage and having meaning the way that the impressive 2013 Glyndebourne production did. It's always great to hear what other performers can bring to these roles however and I think Gyula Orendt comes out as the strongest character here with his Theseus. Magdalena Kožená is not ideally suited to Phaedre or is perhaps not best suited to the more elaborate rhythms of French Baroque (even though her Gluck Orphée et Eurydice in the Paris Robert Wilson production is still a favourite of mine). Anna Prohaska and Reinoud Van Mechelen are fine as Hippolyte and Aricie, but they always feel like bland roles to me. Peter Rose is an excellent Pluto. Simon Rattle's conducting of the Freiburger Barockorchester didn't really grab me, but like most period baroque, it probably needs to be best experienced live. That perhaps goes for the production as a whole as well.

Links: Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, ARTE Concert

Friday, 15 May 2015

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

Friday, 10 April 2015

Campra - Les Fêtes Vénitiennes (Opéra Comique, 2015 - Webcast)

André Campra - Les Fêtes Vénitiennes

Opéra Comique, 2015

William Christie, Robert Carsen, Emmanuelle de Negri, Élodie Fonnard, Rachel Redmond, Emilie Renard, Cyril Auvity, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Marcel Beekman, Marc Mauillon, François Lis, Sean Clayton, Geoffroy Buffière

Culturebox - 30 January 2015

 
So far, André Campra's operas haven't received as much attention as the two French royal court appointed composers on either side of his career, Lully and Rameau. As the person responsible to a large degree for the revival of interest in many of the great forgotten French works those two composers, with academically informed performances on period instruments, it's great to see how William Christie and Les Arts Florissants' interpretation of Campra's most famous and emblematic work compares. Having also directed a number of stage productions of Lully and Rameau for Christie to terrific effect (Armide, Les Boréades, Platée), Robert Carsen's production of Les Fêtes Vénitiennes for the Opéra Comique in Paris combines with Christie's interpretation to present the work in as spectacular and entertaining a way as you might expect.

Lully's beautiful tragédies-lyriques might have been a hard act to follow, but at least as far as Les Fêtes Vénitiennes goes, Campra manages to retain what is good about Lully's work - principally the splendour and the rhythmic pulse of the dance music - without the longeurs that go along with it. There's a Prologue here invoking the Gods that leads to conflict among mortals, but none of the lengthy praises to the Sun God, Louis XIV, that open Lully's tragédies-lyriques. And instead of one long mythological subject drawn out and interspersed at every opportunity with dances and choral pieces, Campra hits upon a more accessible format that would later become known as the opéra-ballet.

It's a format that if it is recognisable at all now, it will be because of Rameau's similarly frivolous portmanteau entertainment of Prologue and Entrées, Les Indes Galantes. The style was perhaps hit upon accidentally by Campra during the first performances of Les Fêtes Vénitiennes in 1710, the work evolving as it was performed, with some new episodes added and old ones dropped, according to their popularity with audiences. The intent is clearly that this is all in the name of entertainment and spectacle, and Les Fêtes Vénitiennes is as lively and entertaining as they come.




In keeping with the spirit of the work, it would be a mistake to over-extend the piece by showing as many of the Entrées as possible, but rather it's more important to try to retain the variety and concision of the original. From the 4 Prologues and 9 Entrées available then, Christie selects one Prologue ('The Triumph of Folly over Reason') and 3 of the Entrées ('The Ball or the Dance Master', 'The Serenades and the Gamblers' and 'The Opera or the Singing Master'). There's a certain amount of cross-over between the four parts - and, of course Carsen and Christie focus on the 'theatrical' theme - but really the only real connection linking the different interchangeable parts of the works is that they all fit within the rather open concept of being based around the celebrations of the Carnival in Venice.

The Prologue opens with a group of modern-day tourists visiting St Mark's Square and being taken with the colourful pageantry of the Carnival, abandoning Reason to the Folly of the festivities, much to the displeasure of the religious orders. This allows the work to then fall back on a stylised imagining (no more authentic I imagine than Campra's original vision) of the exaggerated colour, exotic locations and all the pleasure-seeking and romance associated with Les Fêtes Vénitiennes. In Le Bal, a wealthy prince wants to test the constancy of a young Venetian woman he is in love with, exchanging positions with his Dance Master to see if she truly loves him or is only interested in wealth and position. Les Sérénades features two women, Isabella and Lucile, both of them competing for the love of Léandre, who is really in love with another beauty, Irène. L'Opéra also deals with love affairs, where a group of opera singers love-lives become enmeshed in the opera they are singing.

Most of the Entrées are played out in a fairly straightforward manner here, albeit in highly-stylised sets and wearing boldly-coloured and extravagant costumes. There are a few characteristic twists - Fortune for example dressed (or semi-undressed) as a walking Casino - but they all remain in the spirit of the work and within the context of the Venetian setting. There's some recognition that L'Opéra ou le maître à chanter, with its opera-within-an-opera setting, is a kind of baroque Ariadne auf Naxos and perhaps some parody of Lully's operas is implied, so we get all kinds of theatrical tricks, even dancing sheep. In the main however, the idea is simply to get as much of the entertaining variety that makes the work a delight to watch, with frequent dances, colourful costumes, clever stage craft, choruses, duets and arias.




Some of the pieces take a little longer to get going, the final
L'Opéra Entrée in particular requiring quite a bit of recitative to set up its plot, but in terms of the variety of the selections and their individual make-up, their purpose is clear, their balance of singing, ballet dancing and spectacle all seeking to entertain. Carsen provides the context for that marvellously, but the real test of the work is in the musical performances and the singing, and the production doesn't let us down on those points. William Christie and Les Arts Florissants bring all the inherent vibrancy out of the work and it's simply marvellous to hear on period instruments, Campra's arrangements, particularly the ballet sections, having a popular folk-dance character that sounds closer to Cavalli than the rather more stately regal rhythms of Lully and Rameau.

The singing is also outstanding, many of these singers well-schooled in the Arts Florissants style, with much experience in the music of this period. Some of the familiar names playing multiple roles, as is often the case in such works, are Marc Mauillon, baritone François Lis as Léandre and Emmanuelle de Negri as Reason, Lucile and Lucie, all of them wonderful. Élodie Fonnard also makes a terrific impression in the eye-catching role of Fortune as well as playing Iphise in L'Opéra, and Reinoud Van Mechelen wonderful light lyrical tenor shines out in the countertenor roles of Thémir and Zéphir. With so much talent packed into such variety of scenes and situations, there's never a dull moment here.

Links: Culturebox, L'Opéra Comique