Bellini - Beatrice di Tenda (Paris, 2024)

Vincenzo Bellini - Beatrice di Tenda

Opéra National de Paris, 2024

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

Paris Opera Play - 15th February 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos : © Franck Ferville/OnP

Weber - Euryanthe (Vienna, 2018)

Carl Maria von Weber - Euryanthe

Theater an der Wien, 2018

Constantin Trinks, Christof Loy, Jacquelyn Wagner, Norman Reinhardt, Theresa Kronthaler, Andrew Foster-Williams, Stefan Cerny, Eva-Maria Neubauer

Naxos - Blu-ray

There are often good reasons why some works remain neglected and rarely performed, but it's at least nice to be able to have the opportunity to hear them and judge for yourself, even if in most cases you have to admit that few are really lost masterpieces. Carl Maria Von Weber's 1823 opera Euryanthe however may genuinely be considered a neglected masterpiece.

Euryanthe is one of those works whose reputation is better known than the work itself, that reputation being that it has some lovely music but is let down by a poor libretto. Considering Weber's importance in the world of German music and his huge influence on Richard Wagner, it's surely a shame that other than Der Freischütz, the composer's operas haven't been given due attention in performance. Christof Loy's production of Euryanthe for the Theater an der Wien however suggests that this is a great work worthy of re-evaluation.

In terms of plot Euryanthe does indeed just appear to adopt another variation on a classic Romantic theme based around challenges against the virtue of innocent women. It's there in Schumann's only opera Genoveva, but the subject can also be seen in Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucretia and Cymbeline. Mozart also took an apparently more light-hearted comic angle on the subject in Così fan tutte, but as several recent productions have demonstrated (Teatro Real 2013, Aix 2016), Mozart and Da Ponte's approach is far more subtle, balanced, darker and nuanced than it might seem. Despite the reputation of its libretto and plot, and the relentless darkness of the treatment, Christof Loy successfully shows that there is similar nuance and sophistication worth exploring in Euryanthe.

Like The Rape of Lucretia there's an underlying context of war having a dehumanising impact on men and influencing how they behave towards women in Euryanthe. At the beginning of the opera Count Adolar is returning from war, disillusioned but revived at the thought of returning to his wife Euryanthe. Having only seen the worst of what man is capable, the one thing that can restore his faith in humanity is the assurance of his wife's purity and fidelity. Count Lysiart however is rather more cynical and bets Adolar that he could seduce Euryanthe. Adolar is outraged and ready to duel Lysiart for this insult to his wife's honour, but has such faith in Euryanthe that, with King Ludwig's intervention, he is prepared to accept the bet to prove the point beyond dispute.

So far there's nothing unusual in a subject like that, it's a stirring situation that gives rise to conflicts of passions and moral dilemmas. There is however a complicating factor here in Eglantine, the daughter of a disgraced noble that Adolar has taken into their home, and her being in love with Adolar adds more than just another level of dramatic conflict. The introduction of a kind of ghost story around the untimely death of Adolar's sister Emma, who killed herself after her betrothed Udo died in battle, is another factor that comes into play, a shameful secret that Eglantine plans to use against Euryanthe in collaboration with Lysiart, but it also relates to Emma and Udo both being victims of war as a destructive force.

All this can seem like the plot has a few too many high-flown Romantic sentiments - the opera is subtitled 'A Great Heroic Romantic Opera' - but Christof Loy's approach to this melodrama is as usual to find the real human feeling in the work. Not unexpectedly that can be found with considerable depth in the music of Carl Maria Von Weber. It might fall back now and again on conventional elements of dramatic villainy, ghostly apparitions and wistful musing of innocents, but only in the same way that Mozart also made use of a similar wide range of means to plunge ever deeper into the darkness of Don Giovanni's soul. Weber's music, conducted her by Constantin Trinks, is beautifully aligned to the mood and the drama of Euryanthe and it's not difficult to see how Wagner would develop on this to an epic scale, particularly evident in a similar confrontation between innocence impugned and villainy given credence in Lohengrin.

Loy seizes on the power of such situations and music applies it to characterisation that can be seen to be much more three-dimensional than its reputation would have you believe. The director never lets the characters emote alone or soliloquise to the audience in an indulgent manner, but rather shows them tapping into the deepest human feelings of love, jealousy, lust and betrayal. And if that means having the object of one's affections present when their spirit - and other parts - are being bared, then so be it. Rather like the spirit of Emma, it makes these emotions present and tangible, generating a highly charged atmosphere.

The stage design is appropriate for the context and, rather than relying on typical Der Freischütz-like Romantic locations of woods, glens and dramatic landscapes, Loy keeps the drama confined to an elegant mansion. The cool minimalism of the rooms only serves to heighten and contrast the surface manners of high society with the barely contained lusts and prejudices simmering beneath. It's not so far away from Loy's more recent take on Schreker's similarly heated drama Die ferne Klang, or indeed his stripping of those emotional charges literally stark naked as with his production of Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane. Andrew Foster Williams is the unfortunate who has to bear all this time, his "wild impulses of glowing desire" out there for the viewer to see, but spared anything too close up. It certainly makes the idea of intended rape more viscerally real and the subsequent teaming up of Lysiart with Eglantine after this is deliriously demented and utterly convincing.

It's the singing too of course that makes this convincing and the principal cast, as well as the chorus, are simply superb. Jacquelyn Wagner has a perfect clean soaring timbre that is perfect for the part of Euryanthe. She's more than just an innocent victim, but the vocal line tells us more than the words alone about her firmness of purpose and her pureness of heart, and Wagner brings out the real human feeling that is scored into the role. Norman Reinhardt shows how Adolar is a prototype Heldentenor, an idealist conflicted between the purity of vision and his response to the baseness of the world.

Theresa Kronthaler and Andrew Foster-Williams bring a chilling edge of menace in roles that are even more villainous and - in this production at least - even more deranged and cruel than Ortrud and Telramund. Looking at the opera this way pointing towards towards Lohengrin, King Ludwig IV is very much a Heinrich der Vogler type of role and it's one that bass Stefan Cerny is not only capable of performing to a Wagnerian level but he also brings some character and personality to make it count within the dramatic development of the plot. Rather than being a forgotten minor work by a respected but neglected composer, Euryanthe turns out to be essential listening for any Wagnerian, a wondrous rediscovery, and Loy's treatment of the work at Theater an der Wien will not disappoint.

The production looks good on the High Definition Blu-ray release from Naxos, although there are some minor niggles. The strong contrasts make whites look a little blown-out, and the image is a little bit shimmery and blurring in movement. Whether that's an authoring issue with the transfer bit-rate I don't know, but it's not too distracting. It doesn't appear that radio mics are used so there's a wider open acoustic theatrical sound here, which means that it also picks up a bit of ambient noise, including creaking floorboards, but the LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mixes still capture the power and the detail of the performance. The BD is all-region compatible, with German, English, French, Japanese and Korean subtitles. The booklet contains a synopsis and an interview with Christof Loy.

Links: Theater an der Wien