Jules Massenet - Don Quichotte
Wexford Festival Opera, 2019
Timothy Myers, Rodula Gaitanou, Aigul Akhmetshina, Goderdzi Janelidze, Olafur Sigurdarson, Gavan Ring, Gabrielle Dundon, Elly Hunter Smith, Dominick Felix, Thomas Chenhall, René Bloice-Sanders
National Opera House, Wexford - 29 October 2019
Most of Massenet's operas I can take or leave. I wouldn't exactly describe them as workman-like - they're a little better than that, some of them are actually quite beautiful and they always have the potential to aspire to something greater, particularly when you have the opportunity to see them staged and performed live. Workman-like is however never a phrase you would ever think to use in any circumstances to describe Massenet's greater works Werther, Manon and Don Quichotte. Don Quichotte however remains far from being a staple of the main repertoire and, on the basis of this outstanding Wexford production, it surely deserves to be rated higher.
What stands out for me and distinguishes those greater Massenet works is in how the composer succeeds in capturing within the situations a sense of romantic idealism clashing with reality, and there's a deep melancholy associated with this in the music. The music of Don Quichotte is strikingly beautiful but it is not sweet; it's fully aligned with the nature of the Knight Errant and the impossible foolhardy quest of an old man setting out to confront a bunch of bandits on the whim of a woman (or a modern age) undeserving of such purity and idealism. There's a nobility in his pureness of heart, and Massenet taps into that, as does conductor Timothy Myers in a gorgeous account of Don Quichotte that sounded simply ravishing in the acoustics of the National Opera House in Wexford.
So brilliantly was this characteristic of Massenet's music realised that for the first time it struck me how much Don Quixote's journey aligns with the ambition of Orpheus who undertakes another impossible quest on the guidance of Amore, love. There are several scenes where the parallels stood out, in Quixote's writing and composition of a song of love for Dulcinea, in his launching himself at the windmills as if they were demons of the Underworld, and in his confrontation with the bandits who are like furies that he transforms into blessed spirits with the purity of his soul. His return to the land of the living is no less miraculous than that of Orpheus and the reward is similarly double-edged.
In that respect, Don Quichotte could also be seen - as the Orpheus myth has often been treated in opera - as an ode to opera itself, to the creation or belief in a world that is better than the one we live in. Opera elevates life and imbues our human endeavours with just such nobility, but it takes ambition for a work to not only aspire to such heights but also reach them. Monteverdi did it, Gluck did it, Mozart does it in all his operas, but particularly in The Magic Flute, which it now strikes me is essentially another Orphic journey, and Massenet puts that same romantic melancholy to just such an effect here and to an even greater extent than even the heart-rending strains of Werther. There's nothing prosaic, run of the mill or workman-like about it, and potentially it is worthy of sitting alongside those great masterpieces.
Nor wonderfully is there anything workman-like about the Wexford Festival Opera production in terms of musical excellence, singing performances or the stage direction of Rodula Gaitanou. Everything is of the highest quality, also living up to the fundamental nature of the work, showing it for it's true worth. Even the use of lighting and colour by Simon Corder could be seen to feed in and contribute to the whole mood of the piece, a stormy sunset in the background hinting at the end of an era. It was simply - although there's nothing simple about such artistic excellence - outstanding. This was the highlight of the Festival programme as far as I was concerned.
There's a carnival setting that suits Massenet's attempts to inject a little Spanish gypsy music into the opera, but it also marks well the contrast between the sincerity of Don Quixote's view of the old ways and the frivolity of the modern world. Beauty is timeless however and Dulcinea is the star attraction who turns the head of Don Quixote. He arrives on the scene with Sancho Panza on rundown old-fashioned scooter bikes, artefacts (all of them) from another age, one where Quixote believes that chivalry is the only way to behave, particularly towards the fairer sex. It's an idealism that is obviously lacking in the artificial world of the carnival group, their audience and hangers on.
Quixote's quest to uphold his dream of course results in tragic consequences that are simple in their telling and yet memorable for their beauty and wild idealism. "He may be a fool but his heart is sublime", Dulcinea acknowledges when the others mock the Chevalier. His attack on the windmills is one of the essential and memorable scenes in the work and it's superbly realised in Massenet's opera and in the Wexford production. Again it uses a framework set that provides all the necessary means to depict and gain an impression of the construction, artificiality and lack of stability of this world.
It looks marvellous it sounds marvellous. Timothy Myers's conducting and the glorious playing of the Wexford Festival Orchestra captures the romanticism of the score and the melancholy underpinning it with no sense of sweetness or sentimentality. The singing performance are also everything you could hope for, with Olafur Sigurdarson in particular outstanding as Sancho Panza. Goderdzi Janelidze's Don Quixote was also impressive and sympathetically characterised with no need for grandstanding, Aigul Akhmetshina was a soaring Dulcinea and the Wexford Chorus sounded marvellous. It may not be the most obscure work selected for a festival that specialises in rareties, but Don Quichotte is certainly one that deserves greater recognition and Wexford Festival Opera demonstrated perfectly the qualities of this wonderful opera.
Links: Wexford Festival Opera
Franco Leoni - L’Oracolo
Umberto Giordano - Mala vita
Wexford Festival Opera, 2018
Francesco
Cilluffo, Rodula Gaitanou, Joo Won Kang, Sergio Escobar, Leon Kim,
Benjamin Cho, Elisabetta Farris, Louise Innes, Francesca Tiburzi,
Dorothea Spilger, Anna Jeffers
O'Reilly Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 25 October 2018
You
can always count on some Italian verismo to give Wexford
Festival Opera a bit of an edge. Alfano's Risurrezione at last year's
festival packed quite a punch, and if anything the impact is even more
intense in this year's double-bill of two concise little gems that
Wexford with Francesco Cilluffo at the helm once again have rescued
from semi-obscurity for the 2018 festival programme. Franco Leoni's
L'Oracolo and Umberto Giordano's Mala vita proved to be a fine
complementary pairing that doubled-up the verismo impact.
To
all appearances the two works don't have that much in common. Leoni's
L'Oracolo (The Oracle) is set in San Francisco's Chinatown, a sordid
tale of opium dens, kidnapping, betrayal and murder all squeezed into a one-act one-hour package. Giordano's Mala vita is more Italian in its Neapolitan setting of
passionate outpourings in the realm of love and betrayal. There are
however a few interesting commonalities brought out by the pairing
together of the two works.
Essentially, both works are
about ordinary human lives where the poverty of their environment has a
lot to do with their actions. With nothing left to live for, characters
are forced to resort to other means to lift them out of the misery of
their situation, with drugs and criminality one indication of this in
the backstreets of Chinatown in L'Oracolo. In L'Oracolo however, some
turn to superstition in fortune-telling, and in Mala vita others turn to
religion - or superstition again, if you like. In both cases however
human nature proves to be stronger and it's not the good side of it.
In
terms of verismo, L'Oracolo, written in 1905 could probably be most
closely associated with Puccini's Il Tabarro (from Il Trittico), not
least in its shock conclusion of the fate of the victim of a murder
being disguised. Musically however, Leoni is in advance of Puccini in his
use of street sounds and noises feeding into the score as atmospherics.
Dramatically, it's pure Grand Guignol, involving opium den owner
Cim-Fen kidnapping her young brother so that he can impress Ah-Joe when he
'recovers' the child. His efforts are hampered however by a rival for
Ah-Joe's affections when San-Lui discovers his plot, forcing Cim-Fen to
brutally kill him.
As if this isn't colourful enough L'Oracolo also has a number of busy street scenes set around the
beginning of the Chinese New Year, with partying, dancing, a
dragon procession, a lantern festival and the fortune-telling scene by
the oracle that gives the opera its title, predicting two
deaths to come. It also embarks on a revenge killing when San-Lui's
father, the owner of a Chinese medicine shop, goes off to exact bloody
retribution on the murderer of his son. As if that's not enough,
director Rodula Gaitanou piles on the gore in place of the attempt to
hide the death from the unfortunate policeman who works on this beat.
If
Leoni's score is more impressionistic and dynamic in its balance of
light and shade, Giordano's goes for an all-out Italian passions in Mala
vita in a manner that takes it closer to Cavalleria Rusticana. Like L'Oracolo
however its tale of poverty and the law of honour killings in the countryside, but is set in the poor district of the city
of Naples. Religion and community however still play an important part,
and in Giordano's three-act short work, Vito who is suffering from
tuberculosis is inspired to seek out and help an unfortunate woman on
the streets as a way of atonement and a plea to God for a cure for his
illness.
Vito pledges to take prostitute Cristina out of
the den she works in and promises to marry her, much to the fury of
Amalia his mistress who is married to Annetiello, a sleazy character
who already 'knows' Chrstina. The fallen woman gratefully accepts Vito's promise
of redemption (shades of Alfano's Risurrezione there too) but is
ultimately let down by Vito, who finds that his feelings for the
spiteful Amalia are greater than his sacred vows to God and to a lowly
prostitute. Left destitute once again, Cristina in this production
- again rather emphasising the tone of lives in desperation - kills herself.
Musically,
Giordano's score is every bit as overpowering as Cavalleria Rusticana,
filled with religious processions, singing and dancing and huge choruses
that are almost declamatory in delivery. You would almost think it
might be taking things a little bit over-the-top, but then you remember
Mala vita is set in Naples, so it might even be considered understated in that
light. Francesco Cilluffo brings the fire out of both works, with a
more appropriate lighter touch for L'Oracolo, while the orchestra is
boosted by a larger string section to draw out the darker tones for
Mala vita.
The singing performances also exhibit a
similar range and appropriateness of tone. Mala vita provides the best
opportunities for the lead soloists to shine, particularly for the
competitive female leads of Cristina and Amalia, which are sung superbly by
Francesca Tiburzi and Dorothea Spilger. Sergio Escobar, also singing
San-Lui in L'Oracolo, was really given a chance to let his ringing tenor
shine as Vito in Mala vita, fearlessly and impressively hitting all the
expressive high notes.
The set designs and costume
design (vaguely 1930s backstreet poverty) by Cordelia Chisholm were
impressive; a rotating block of tenement flats with lower-floor shops
and buildings that moved fluidly form one scene to the next. How the
cast managed to keep up with this from one moment to the next and get
themselves into position in the crowded stage is another wonder of stage
management. All that was required for the change was to turn the shop
signs from Chinatown shops to Italian ones, even if it still retained
more of a San Francisco feel than an authentic Neapolitan scene. More important however
was that it permitted a direct comparison and transference of theme
across the two works, and - with those superb musical and singing
performances - both accordingly came over with tremendous power.
Links: Wexford Festival Opera
