Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Champs-Elysées Paris, 2016)

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris - 2016

Daniele Gatti, Pierre Audi, Torsten Kerl, Rachel Nicholls, Steven Humes, Brett Polegato, Andrew Rees, Michelle Breedt, Marc Larcher, Francis Dudziak

Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris - 15 May 2016

There wasn't much that was traditional about the setting of Pierre Audi's new production of Tristan und Isolde for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, but Wagner's groundbreaking opera works on a different plane from most and its internalised exploration of desire is given much better expression in its music than in its dramatic presentation. In that respect Daniele Gatti, conducting this Wagner opera for the first time, found the perfect measure of expression that complemented Audi's representation of the work's complex and sometimes contradictory themes.

In terms of its look and symbolism, the set doesn't appear particularly new or inspired. Instead of a ship in Act I we get large upright panels that vaguely give the impression of a ship's hull. The panels move around the stage to set up barriers, create divisions, opening up and closing down spaces. Instead of a tower, Act II features the huge curved ribs of a leviathan that rise out of the stage, creating wishbone-like formations around a framework that is covered to look like a black standing stone. For the island of Kareol in Act III, the wounded, dying Tristan agonises in a dark box with a mirrored background that opens up to let in the light during Isolde's transfiguration.

Principally however, the expression of the set reflects the work's play of darkness and light. The background is a Robert Wilson-like wall of gradiated light that is partially eclipsed at various points in each of the three acts by one or two large black squares. You can take these as representations of Tristan and Isolde, or view them in the abstract as black hole of all-consuming desire, but its bold symbolism is in accordance with the nature of the work and its themes. The more nuanced levels of the work and the contradictory clashes between life and death in Wagner's Romantic application of the Schopenhauer-influenced meditations are however also played out in more subtle lighting effects.

Mostly however, its the music that carries the weight of all these themes and whether it's Gatti's conducting, the playing of the orchestra or the acoustics of the venue (having encountered none of them together live in this theatre before), but the richness of sound in this performance was incredible. All the detail in the score was brought out with delicacy and precision, and with Wagner and this opera in particular there's a wealth of detail that can be coaxed out if it isn't allowed to be smothered in heavy orchestration. Gatti's pace was perfectly measured to draw every ounce of emotion out of the score, having a lightness of touch, but swelling up into great surges of pure overwhelming desire.

As important as this aspect is it needs to work with everything else around it, and there was a feeling that director, conductor and singers - not to mention lighting that was as important to the overall mood as anything else - were all working to a common purpose. The production, the singing, the measured delivery of the music all remained within that all-important space in Tristan und Isolde between emotionally-charged and overbearing. If one element threatened to take things too far, another would balance it out.

In particular the casting for the singing seemed well-judged for the size of the theatre as well as for the mood and tone that was being pitched. Torsten Kerl's heroic tenor is a little more hard-edged than the usual Romantic Tristan, his voice not a particularly large one either in Act I, but that's understandable at this stage as that voice has a long way to go yet. By Act II and Act III however, I found that I didn't even notice that it was Torsten Kerl, but just that it was Tristan in the throes of unbearable longing. Replacing the originally scheduled Emily Magee, Rachel Nicholls' wasn't a typical Isolde either, her voice softer and more lyrical, her passions more gently expressed, going more with the flow of the production rather than fighting to rise above it. In this case, that approach worked very well, and you can imagine how gorgeous their Nachtgesang was.

Steven Humes was similarly a more restrained King Marke than you more commonly find, his voice well suited to his more forgiving nature here. Less transported by their desires (although desire exists in some form in all of the characters) or perhaps struggling with them more since their master's have abandoned themselves to their sentiments, Michelle Breedt's Brangäne and Brett Polegato's Kurwenal were rather more emotionally driven, both singers making a great impression, balancing out the range of expression. At the conclusion Nicholls' Isolde delivered a Liebestod that accordingly felt like less of a mountain for the soprano to climb than a gentle submission and surrender to the extraordinary forces that had been generated, the music then gently dissipating and evaporating in pure sublimation into the aether.

Links: Théâtre des Champs-Elysées

Mozart - La Clemenza di Tito (Paris, 2014 - Webcast)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - La Clemenza di Tito 

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, 2014

Jérémie Rhorer, Denis Podalydès, Kurt Steit, Karina Gauvin, Julie Fuchs, Kate Lindsey, Julie Boulianne, Robert Gleadow

ARTE Concert - 18 December 2014

There are a few unusual features introduced by actor and director Denis Podalydès into this production of La Clemenza di Tito at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris. One is that you actually get to see and hear Berenice, the Queen rejected by Titus at the start of the opera. The second feature used by Podalydès is the setting of the work in France in the late 1930s-1940s during the time of the Occupation. It would seem doubtful that either of these elements have anything to add to Mozart's final opera or even whether Mozart's opera can help illuminate a significant period in modern French history, but there is unquestionably a vibrancy and an edge to this production that we rarely see in Mozart's late opera seria.

The inclusion of Berenice, the opening scene featuring an actress performing a scene from Racine's drama, is a bit of an actorly theatrical indulgence, but it's not entirely without merit. Berenice has an important part to play in what unfolds during the reign of Titus during this period as it is detailed in Metastasio's libretto, so it does serve some purpose to put a face to the name. The setting during the Occupation is never made explicit, but the period costumes and setting in the presidential suites of a large hotel do suggest that the rule of Titus is being compared to the running of the Vichy government during the war, otherwise why set it there at all?

I'm not sure that's a valid or helpful analogy to establish the nature of Titus' predicaments in La Clemenza di Tito - though it does provide some amusing ideas imagining Sextus as a Resistance fighter operating from within the regime. What it undoubtedly brings to the work however is a very distinct character, style and setting that has some concrete reality, and not the generic antiquity designs or the abstract symbols of power that usually characterise productions of this work. It looks stunning, but more than that, it enlivens and gives character to a difficult opera seria work where most of the action takes place off-stage, with the protagonists usually agonising over developments in long da capo arias.

In this Théâtre des Champs Elysées production, Podalydès rarely lets a character stand alone on the stage and sing these arias out to the audience. He fills the rooms of this elegant, wood-panelled apartment suite with government officials and administrators. All of them are smartly dressed in 1940s' suits designed by Christian Lacroix (the female characters perhaps not quite so elegantly fitted). There's always the bustle of people coming and going, giving a sense of real political activity going on, of events spiralling out of control behind the scenes. More than the inclusion of Berenice or the Occupation setting, what Podalydès really brings to La Clemenza di Tito is a sense of drama.

For a usually static opera seria, that's a useful attribute to have, and in the end it's the conviction of the acting and singing performances that really carry the inner drive of the work. The opening monologue prepares you for a completely theatrical experience (or, as it is filmed for the live broadcast - in widescreen - a near-cinematic experience) that simmers with tension and aching passions. La Clemenza di Tito rarely feels as dramatic as this, but it's through no fault of the work itself. It's all there in the music if the director is willing and imaginative enough to interpret it, and Podalydès does it very well indeed in collaboration with Jérémie Rhorer.

That suits Kurt Streit, who in a radio interview for the France Musique radio broadcast of this production, refers to himself as an actor first and a singer after that. In a production like this he is in his element, but he also has the right kind of voice for Titus. He's not as strong this time, but that light lyrical timbre is gorgeous. The right voices are also there in Julie Fuchs' sweet, delicate Servilia, Julie Boulianne's firm of purpose Annius and Robert Gleadow's grave Publius. Mostly however, it's Karina Gauvin who takes the acting credits as Vitellia, and she's powerful in the singing stakes as well. There's no caricature or stock opera seria characterisation here, Gauvin's Vitellia coming across genuinely like a woman scorned and vengeful, completely dominating the stage whenever she's on it.

Equally impressive is Kate Lindsey's Sextus, making this one formidable power couple! It's a committed and a nuanced performance, carrying real emotion and feeling. Combining impeccable technique and a flowing legato with real character insight, Lindsey transforms 'Deh per questo istante solo' into something truly remarkable, running through all the conflict of Sesto's position, and an almost ecstatic acceptance or controlled abandonment to the unenviable hand that fate has dealt him, a traitor at the mercy of a powerful ruler.

This ruler, Titus however is not like other rulers, he has 'un altro cor'. This production also has another heart, and it's that of Mozart, the qualities of each of the characters embodied in the music he has written for them. The musical performance of the work is not as showy as it can be, Jérémie Rhorer's conducting of the reduced period instrumentation of Le Cercle de l’Harmonie ensemble, restrained, simple and elegant, but it suits the nature of the opera seria, it supports the dramatic situation and it allows the singers the freedom to express the nature of the characters themselves. Whether the curiosities of the staging helped this or not, Denis Podalydès' production for the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris got to the the heart of La Clemenza di Tito.

Links: ARTE Concert, Théâtre des Champs Elysées

Poulenc - Dialogues des Carmélites

Francis Poulenc - Dialogues des Carmélites

Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris 2013

Jérémie Rhorer, Olivier Py, Sophie Koch, Patricia Petibon, Véronique Gens, Sandrine Piau, Rosalind Plowright, Topi Lehtipuu, Philippe Rouillon, Annie Vavrille, Sophie Pondjiclis, François Piolino, Jérémy Duffau, Yuri Kissin, Matthieu Lécroart

France TV Culturebox, ARTE Live Web Internet Streaming - 21 December 2013

Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites seems to be a work almost made for Olivier Py. The French actor and director's profile is high at the moment, featuring prominently at the Paris Opéra this season and most recently having directed Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet for La Monnaie as part of a series of productions of the major French works of the 19th century - a project that is now on hold while he takes up the running of the Avignon Festival. Based on a drama by Georges Bernanos relating the martyrdom of 16 nuns executed during the French revolution, Poulenc's 20th century masterpiece would however seem to fit more closely with Py's very public profile in France as a Catholic and as something of a controversial figure or revolutionary in the opera world.

The two elements of course don't fit all that well together, but they do provide much of the conflict of opposing ideals that lie at the heart of the work and provide fertile ground for this particular director to work with. Common to both however is the idea of 'Liberté' and it's the manner in which this freedom is explored and eventually found by Blanche de la Force that is central to the work.  The idea of 'Liberté' consequently features prominently in the production, the word scrawled on a wall by one of the revolutionaries (one of the servants of the De la Force house) who are becoming more present on the streets, and it is transformed into 'Liberté en Dieu' (Freedom in God) by the time of Poulenc's incredible musical 'Salve Regina' setting of the execution of the nuns. There is some distance that has to be covered between those two points, but Py's direction and the superb casting for the production cover those well.

One of the main motivating factors that drive Blanche to this revelation, a subject that is at the heart of many of the dialogues in the opera, is fear. Blanche is a timid creature, not made for the real world, suffering from an almost pathological fear of death. Yet death and fear seems to surround her, first through the death of her mother as a young girl, and with the upsurge of revolutionary violence on the streets of Paris that waylays her carriage at the start of the opera on her way home to her brother and father. The outside world holds too many horrors for the young woman, so Blanche decides to withdraw from it and enter a Carmelite convent. She envisages some kind of "heroic life" as a Carmelite nun, but her ideas are soon dispelled by the Mother Superior, even more so when the old woman dies an agonising, blaspheming death soon afterwards.

Olivier Py's direction of this important scene is characteristic of the simplicity suggested by the setting, but also the underlying force of the highly-charged crises of faith and personal weaknesses that each of the women overcome over the course of events that lead to their eventual martyrdom. Madame de Croissy is pinned vertically high on the wall in her bed, beyond the reach of Blanche and the nuns in attendance on her, the harsh lighting from below the stage casting long terrifying shadows mark her bitterness at the nature of her painful, agonising death. Elsewhere the stage is similarly plainly adorned, the lighting depicting a world of stark black and white, with separating walls reflecting the reality of the convent's walls, as well as being symbolic of Blanche's retreat from the world.

Significantly, the walls open, separate and rise and at one stage to create the form of a cross, and it's in such moments - and in the little tableaux scenes - that Olivier Py makes his mark in his consideration of the work's religious significance. One doesn't need to be a Christian believer to recognise that Dialogues des Carmélites deals with more fundamental issues beyond those of questions of religious faith.  The director's own personal faith does at least encourage him to follow through the essential questions of freedom, equality and brotherhood (or sisterhood in this case) that relate to the Revolutionary setting and in how they pertain to religious belief - freedom from fear, freedom of expression, freedom to practise one's faith, freedom from the tyranny of death in the promise of an afterlife.

Where one stands on such questions no doubt determines the staging of the all-important finale, as can be seen from Nikolaus Lehnhoff's starkly final extinguishing of the light in Hamburg marked by each fall of the guillotine, or indeed in Dmitri Tcherniakov's complete subversion of the message in the hugely controversial Paris production where all the nuns incredibly remain alive at the conclusion. Olivier Py's creation of the final scene for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées is as plain and simply dressed as it the production is elsewhere, with no additional dramatic effects. At the fall of the guillotine, each Carmelite nun, dressed in a plain white robe, simply drops her head and walks towards the light of the stars at the back of the stage. This more clearly responds to the religious message of the work, and - as one of the greatest coups de théâtre in all of opera - Py's staging of it is unquestionably just as effective as the scene ought to be.

Poulenc's score for the opera is also filled with the same kind of religious fervour and conductor Jérémie Rhorer consequently takes the orchestra through a robust musical performance of the work. In contrast to Kent Nagano's interpretation, there's less of the shimmering Debussy here and more of the muscular Mussorgsky that form part of the work's musical influences. There's almost a strident romanticism about the performance here, one that also hints at film-music type composition with dramatic underscoring, but Poulenc's score isn't so easy to pin down and Rhorer also manages to bring out moments of beauty in its expressionistic touches.

More than anything however, the score to Dialogues des Carmélites is attuned to the voices, to the dialogues, to conveying the words and their underlying sentiments with maximum expression. The outstanding cast assembled here are certainly capable of achieving that. It's not so much the variety of voices - although they combine and interrelate wonderfully across the whole female range - but it's particularly fine when it's sung by such a distinguished cast of distinctive singers like Patricia Petibon (Blanche), Sophie Koch (Mère Marie), Véronique Gens (Madame Lidoine), Sandrine Piau (Sister Constance) and Rosalind Plowright (Madame de Croissy). It's a rare treat to have such singers all together in one production and they each bring considerable personality to the work. The male singers also have an important role to play and those are capably performed by Topi Lehtipuu (Chevalier de La Force), Philippe Rouillon (the Marquis) and François Piolino (the Convent Priest).

This production of Dialogues des Carmélites can be viewed on-line from the Culturebox website or on ARTE Live Web.  Subtitles on both sites are in French only.

Spontini - La Vestale

Gaspare Spontini - La Vestale

Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, 2013

Jérémie Rhorer, Eric Lacascade, Ermonela Jaho, Andrew Richards, Béatrice Uria-Monzon, Jean-François Borras, Konstantin Gorny

Medici.tv, France TV - Culturebox  Internet streaming
23 October 2013

Written in 1807 and highly acclaimed at the time - admired even by the Emperor Napoleon - Gaspare Spontini's La Vestale has all but disappeared from the opera repertoire over the last century. Judging from the terrific performance of this rare opera at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, broadcast live on French television and available via internet streaming, its fall from grace has little to do with the quality of the work itself. Perhaps, like much of Meyerbeer, Spontini's formal and classical approach now feels a little old-fashioned and it would seem to require singers of a particular style and distinction that there are few enough capable of meeting its demands. All the more impressive then that the efforts of director Eric Lascade and conductor Jérémie Rhorer to revitalise the theatrical and musical aspects of the work benefit from a fine performance of Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho in the key role of Julia.

Certainly La Vestale is very much classical work of grand formality that verges on being rather stuffy and academic by today's standards. Set in Roman antiquity in 269 BC, there's not a great deal to the plot, which revolves around the now very familiar operatic situation of a doomed love affair and a struggle between that great love and one's duty. Essentially, the romantic melodrama occurs when the commander Licinius returns in triumph from the campaigns in Gaul to find that his beloved Julia has been inducted into the cult of Vesta. Licinius however sneaks into the temple of Vesta with a plan to take her away, but they are discovered when Julia lets the sacred flame burn out. The temple and her purity having been so desecrated, Julia is condemned to be buried alive, only to be reprieved at the last minute when the flame miraculously sparks back into life during an attack by Licinius's men.

Much of the anguish of the situations in La Vestale is inevitably brought out through singing that is in the solemn declamatory mode, even if there is great beauty and flourishes of colour in Spontini's musical palette. The classical structure of the plot that involves a simple love story caught up in the exigencies of the political and religious establishment is moreover rounded out by all the conventional arrangements for marches, ceremonies, ballets, prayers and choruses in a way that points towards the excesses of Grand Opéra. Like Aida, which shares many elements of La Vestale's structure and plot, the human love story achieves a grander dimension if you have a composer capable of raising it to those necessary heights and singers capable of meeting them.

It's significant then that the last time this opera was popular, and the main reason why it is even known at all today, is because of Maria Callas. La Vestale requires a soprano of considerable personality and ability to hold it together centrally and bring it fully to life. Ermonela Jaho (who will be familiar from the Royal Opera House's award-winning production of Il Trittico singing Puccini's Suor Angelica) has quite a challenge on her hands and she not only proves to be more than capable, but also engaging and in possession of a strong expressive voice. There's a difference between grandstanding and dominating the role of Julia and Jaho gets the character perfectly, realising that she is a young innocent girl, who is proud, defiant and self-sacrificing. The character and the opera come to life through this performance.

Julia however also needs to be capable of standing up to the High Priestess, La Grande Vestale, which is quite a challenge when it's played with a singer of force and character as Béatrice Uria-Monzon. Both women come out of their encounters well, and prove to be the driving force and rationale behind the work. More so in this production, as it seems the High Priestess, despite her position and her protestations of love being a "barbarous monster", seems to take pity on Julia's predicament and, rather than a bolt of lightning striking Julia's veil, it seems that the High Priestess has a sympathetic hand in the "divine intervention" of the sacred flame being reignited. The masculine roles are less challenging, but Andrew Richards is a fine lyrical Licinius who is never declamatory, even in the récit. He's well supported by Jean-François Borras as Cinna, while Konstantin Gorny makes the most of the unyielding Pontifex Maximus.

The setting of the production at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées is relatively simple, sketching in the location and period without going overboard on details. We're not quite at Grand Opéra stage yet, and there's still a Gluck-like elegance and simplicity in the music in the dramatic drive of the work and the production adheres to that arrangement with plain wooden tables, platforms and columns. There's quite enough passionate outpourings of emotion in the vocal exchanges and when you've got a cast capable of delivering it, you don't need all the accoutrements  The stage direction also caters for this, never letting the performance get bogged down in static declamation, allowing the singers to pace the stage and throw those furious emotions up at the Gods, which is literally who they are often directed towards.

Jérémie Rhorer keeps a similarly tight rein on the musical side of things, excising the Act I ballet section, trimming back the sung recitative where possible and focussing on the dramatic content that is so wonderfully scored by Spontini. Who would have thought that there'd be so much vitality in such an unfashionable and rarely performed work? In every respect the production does great service to La Vestale, truly highlighting the qualities of the work and even finding humour in the musical brightness of the obligatory happy ending, with everyone running Benny Hill-style to catch-up with the happy couple and join them in their heavenly-ordained celebrations. As La Grande Vestale demonstrates however, a bit of helpful and sympathetic intervention can be invaluable.

Broadcast on the 23rd October 2013, Spontini's La Vestale at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées can be viewed for free via Internet Streaming from the Medici.tv and the France TV Culturebox web sites. The opera is in French without subtitles.

Lully - Armide

Jean-Baptiste Lully - Armide

Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, 2008

Les Arts Florissants, William Christie, Robert Carsen, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Paul Agnew, Laurent Naouri, Claire Debono, Isabelle Druet, Nathan Berg, Marc Mauillon, Marc Callahan, Andrew Torise, Anders J. Dahlin

FRA Musica

It’s difficult to know what balance to strike when putting on a production of a Baroque opera since, in many cases, the works in question are incredibly old and so rarely performed that they are indeed often being introduced for the first time in centuries to a new modern audience. You can’t go too far wrong with a straightforward staging using traditional painted backdrops and period costumes (which I’ve seen on DVD, for example, in productions of Cavalli’s La Calisto, Rameau’s Zoroastre or Landi’s Il Sant’ Alesio). While they would certainly cater to a specialist audience, it’s hard to imagine those kinds of productions reaching a larger audience or even being revived too often. I find however that William Christie, with whatever director he is working with, strikes a much better balance between fidelity to the spirit of the original Baroque opera – using period instruments of course – and making use of modern theatrical techniques that don’t so much revise the work as put it into a context that makes it more accessible to a wider audience. That’s certainly the case when working with the opera director Robert Carsen (Les Boréades), who also manages – whatever period of opera composition he is working in – to align the opera to a unique and workable concept that gets to the essence of the piece and its themes, while also managing to be a remarkable spectacle.

The bridging of the gap between the past and the present is taken quite literally in this 2008 production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Armide (1686), the prologue traditionally added to French opera of this time to praise and glorify King Louis XIV set out as if it were a tourist excursion to Versailles, where guides describe the history of the subject. Carsen, with film director François Roussillon, even go as far as filming the entire prologue sequence on location at Versailles, with ballet sequences much like the ones traditionally seen in the intervals of the televised New Year’s Day Concerts from Vienna. It’s a device that certainly uses modern technology to extend the scope of the theatre stage and the historical context – which simply has to be taken into account in any modern representation – setting the scene and location more effectively than any painted backdrop will do. And such techniques help bring the work more to life and set it into context for a modern audience, without altering the intent of the original, then why not?

There on the bed of the King of France then, Paul Agnew falls asleep and, like in a dream, goes back to a stylised past where the story of Armide unfolds. Thereafter, there is less cleverness and a more straightforward operatic staging, but like Carsen and Christie’s work on Rameau’s Les Boréades, it’s a highly stylised, fictional period setting, with elegant courtly uniformity of design and colour schemes to suggest location and mood. It’s utterly beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, making striking use of light and colour, but working also in coordination with the tone, mood and rhythm of the music score. Christie, an American, is a recognised national treasure in France for the work he has done breathing life into the dusty, stuffy academicism of old-fashioned French Baroque opera, works his usual wonders here with Lully. Although it follows the usual conventions of the five-act Baroque opera form, with recitative, aria and ballet sequences, there’s a wonderful flow to the piece, which doesn’t have the usual stop/start rhythms, but a musical coherence and gentleness that is closer to Monteverdi than the later heavier dance rhythms of Rameau.

The content of the opera itself – a mythological story of a noble knight who resists the lure of bewitchment from a dangerous siren (Ulysees, Parsifal) – is nothing special and not particularly dramatic, but it’s given a remarkably beautiful and sensitive treatment by Lully and librettist Philippe Quinault in their consideration of the characters and the emotional journey they undergo. The followers of the sorceress Armide are celebrating her latest victory over her rivals, but she herself is not happy, as she has failed to seduce the knight Renaud, who has remained immune to her charms. Over the course of the five acts, Armide eventually succeeds in her enchantment of Renaud, but falls in love with him – even the all-powerful are subject to sentiments that may render them powerless – and this causes her great emotional distress, torn between hatred and love, between glory and wisdom. These are of course personified in characters (Laurent Naouri is a red dress-wearing Hatred), but the production also attempts to implicate the actual audience themselves into the staging, which is a little gimmicky, but effective nonetheless in achieving its intentions.

As tastefully and as pitch-perfectly as Carsen, Christie and Les Arts Florissants present the work, in complete accord with each other and within the themes, tone and tenor of the original work, the singing brings out the wonderful, beautiful human touch and emotional heart of Lully’s opera work. Stephanie d’Oustrac takes Armide through a deeply emotional journey that culminates in her famous aria at the end of Act III (“Enfin, il est en ma puissance”), but she also harmonises beautifully with Paul Agnew’s wonderful Renaud in their Act V duet (“Armide, vous m’aller quitter”). Anders J. Dahlin also has the lovely aria of the fortunate lover in Act V, who advises all to take advantage of the fleeting years of youth and happiness before they are gone forever (again reminiscent of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo). It may seem like little more than a ‘divertissement’, glorifying noble sentiments that have the power to enchant (banishing Hatred and inspiring Love), but the proof of these powers is in the enchantment of Lully’s music itself.

There are no complaints with the presentation of the opera on Blu-ray. The image is clear throughout, conveying the stunning colour schemes perfectly, with bold reds standing out against the subdued uniformity of the silver/grey and gold tones. The soundtrack in the usual PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mixes gives a wonderful, warm stage to the music and the singing. There’s a fine half-hour extra feature ‘Armide at Versailles’, which has Christie and Carson talking about their approach to the production, but also has a superbly informative contribution from Benôit Dratwicki on the fascinating history of the piece, its relevance to its time and its place in the tradition of the French tragédie-lyrique.