Rebecca Brite's Letters from Paris 2005

 January 

Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronaziane di Poppea at the Opéra national de Lyon: Ana Quintans as Amore watches over the sleep of Danielle de Niese as Poppea, Act II Photo: Gérard Amsellem

The masterpiece of Claudio Monteverdi’s old age, L’incoronazione di Poppea, received the second of its three French incarnations this season with a new production at the Opéra national de Lyon conducted by William Christie. After the dark and jaded Théâtre des Champs-Elysees production (see the October Letter) that kicked off this plethora of Poppeas, the sky-blue decors and fresh young singers of the Lyon version were like several breaths of fresh air.

The originally scheduled director, Peter Stein, a German who often works in France, withdrew late in the day, apparently over artistic differences. One French report said he had wanted to cut the Shakespearesque comic relief, which was part of what made the 1643 work revolutionary in its day. The production ended up in the capable hands of a veteran French stage director, Bernard Sobel. He drafted Paris-based Italian artist Lucio Fanti to do the single set, a concoction made of what looked like fiberboard painted blue and covered with white paint spatters resembling stars and planets – a sort of deconstructed sky. This combination of movable geometric shapes and shallow stairways, heavy-looking at first, would occasionally split to let light shine through in various colors.

L'incoronaziane di Poppea at Lyon: Tim Mead as Ottone confronts Danielle de Niese as Poppea in Act I, after learning that she has been unfaithful to him with the emperor Photo: Gérard Amsellem

The cast members, most still in their 20s, were drawn from the Lyon Opera’s Nouveau Studio program for rising young singers and reportedly had the luxury of nine weeks of rehearsals. Many had worked with Christie before, either in Arts Florissants programs or his Jardin des Voix academy. By and large they were more than up to the task, though several displayed such a tendency toward a kind of barking over-phrasing that one wondered if umbrellas were on hand for the 15 musicians (counting Christie) in the only slightly lowered pit.

Danielle de Niese as Poppea was the undisputed star in terms of experience, appearance and vocal and dramatic impact. Revisiting a role she sang a year ago with Chicago Opera Theater, she showed a thoroughly professional confidence, and for solidity of technique was rivaled only by Dutch soprano Judith van Wanroij as Drusilla. De Niese, Australian born (of Dutch and Sri Lankan parentage) and Los Angeles reared, is a product of the Metropolitan Opera’s Young Artist Development Program and has had small roles at the Met as well as larger parts in Santa Fe, LA and Paris. She is due to sing Morgana in Alcina at the Beaune festival this summer and the title role in Rodelinda with the Canadian Opera Company next season.

L'incoronaziane di Poppea at Lyon: Mirko Guadagnini as the emperor Nerone sings of his love in Act II, watched by Anders J Dahlin as Lucan Photo: Gérard Amsellem

Handsome Milanese tenor Mirko Guadagnini as Nerone matched her exotic beauty well, though he fell short in vocal consistency. At the extremes of the role’s tessitura he seemed to have two voices – a warm baritonal sound at the lower end and a steely true tenor above. Occasionally he managed to integrate both warmth and steel throughout, to impressive effect. He has sung Verdi and Bellini at the Théâtre du Châtelet, has recorded Sammartini and Marcello, and is due to appear as Goffredo in the Scala production of Handel’s Rinaldo in April.

New York-based tenor Marc Molomot, a Baroque specialist who in his 10-year career has been a frequent guest with the ‘Arts Flo’ and the Ensemble européen William Byrd, was by turns touching and hilarious as Arnalta. British-trained Portuguese bass João Fernandes, another Christie alum, put his low notes and acting skills to good use as Seneca, while Xavier Sabata, Andrew Tortise and Konstantin Wolff, playing multiple roles each, beautifully delivered one of the work’s loveliest ensembles as the members of Seneca’s household begging him not to end his life.

L'incoronaziane di Poppea at Lyon: Mirko Guadagnini as Nerone has crowned the Poppea of Danielle de Niese as his empress Photo: Gérard Amsellem

The current proliferation of Poppeas is something of a puzzle and has drawn more than one commentator’s attention. As we noted in October, neither 2004 nor 2005 is an anniversary year for the composer or the work. Must be one of those zeitgeist things. The French daily Le Monde, rather fancifully, thought it might have to do with a parallel between resentment in Monteverdi’s Venice against the power of papal Rome and modern-day European chafing against another power popularly thought to have imperial ambitions. At any rate, the season list is quite impressive. The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées Poppea led by René Jacobs, which will be seen in Berlin and Brussels in 2006, first moves to Strasbourg’s Opéra national du Rhin in late April under Rinaldo Alessandrini, who in turn will direct his Concerto Italiano in another production scheduled for July in Salamanca, Spain. The Frankfurt Opera revived its Rosamund Gilmore production in January and February. Also in early February, Christophe Rousset led Graham Vick’s 2002 Bologna production (originally directed by Alessandrini) at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville.

L'incoronaziane di Poppea at Lyon: Danielle de Niese and Mirko Guadagnini as the imperial couple sing triumphantly in Act III Photo: Gérard Amsellem

Later in the month there's another new production in Zurich, directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and produced by Jürgen Flimm (to mid-March), and in late May the Staatsoper Hamburg revives its 2003 Karoline Gruber production under Alessandro de Marchi’s baton. The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama’s Opera @ 10 series, marking the tenth anniversary of the academy’s opera school, also includes a production in May. Then, of course, there is France’s third Poppea of the season, more on which below; recently opened at the Palais Garnier of the Opera national de Paris and touted as a new production, it in fact originated in 1997 in Munich and returns there for another run in April.

Bernard Sobel is well known as a politically engaged director, a Brechtian who, if anyone, might have been expected to put a modern political slant on Monteverdi’s last opera. Yet his Poppea for Lyon is fairly traditional, with its colorful, toga-like costumes (by Anna Maria Heinreich) and naturalistic direction. When Nerone and Lucano compose their paean to Poppea, for instance, it is like a singing lesson, reminding us that the historical Nero fancied himself a performer and poet. But little else of that Nero, the Nero of Tacitus’s Annals - who probably murdered rather than exiled his first wife, Octavia, had his own mother, Agrippina, put to death and may have murdered Poppea herself in a fit of rage - is to be seen in Sobel’s sunny, almost innocent interpretation of a work more often taken as epitomizing cynicism.

L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Opéra Garnier: Monica Bacelli as Ottavia is comforted by Dominique Visse as her old nurse Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

American director David Alden’s production of L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Opéra Garnier (to February 22) could hardly be accused of being either traditional or innocent. The vision of depraved antiquity that he conjured up with his frequent collaborators Paul Steinberg (sets) and Buki Shiff (costumes) drew vociferous cheers and boos from audience and critics. Male soprano and sometime tenor Jacek Laszczkowski sang Nerone, reminding us that the part was written for a castrato. Anna Caterina Antonacci – who was Nerone in the TCE Poppea and earlier sang the title role in Handel’s Agrippina at the same theater - was Poppea, and thus has now played three members of this disfunctional family in Paris. Ivor Bolton conducted soloists from the Freiburger Barockorchester and the Monteverdi-Continuo-Ensemble. The production will be broadcast on France Musiques radio on February 19.

L'incoronazione di Poppea at the Opera Garnier: Robert Lloyd as Seneca, flanked by Antonio Abete and Dominique Visse as members of his entourage Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

The Châtelet and Champs-Elysées houses seem to be observing the once-common Lenten moratorium on costumed and staged opera this season: the former has nothing scheduled until April and the latter is sticking to concert versions and oratorios until June. Still, an opera-like curiosity popped up at the Théâtre du Châtelet in late January. Takemitsu: My Way of Life is a tribute to the late Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, who shortly before his death in 1996 told conductor Kent Nagano that he had hoped to write an opera. At his family’s request, Nagano and director Peter Mussbach of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden cobbled together this production, using existing works by Takemitsu and several nods to the Western influences he embraced. First shown last autumn in Berlin, it featured German soprano Karen Rettinghaus and American baritone Dwayne Croft, along with non-singing appearances by German cabaret artist Georgette Dee and German actresses Christine Osterlein and Mélanie Fouché. Nagano led the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and additional support came from Laurence Equilbey’s vocal ensemble, Accentus. Further performances are scheduled for mid-April at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, and France Musiques will broadcast the show on February 16.

Takemitsu: My Way of Life, at the Théâtre du Châtelet: Cabaret artist Georgette Dee and actress Christine Osterlein in non-singing roles Photo: M N Robert

© Rebecca Brite, 3 February 2005 

February

Die Zauberflöte at the Opéra Bastille: Stéphane Degout as Papageno is united at last with his Papagena, Claire Ormshaw Photo: Ursula Kaufmann

With only two productions to write about this month, both of them warhorses at the Opéra Bastille, where to begin? With the so-so staging but world-class singing, playing and conducting, or the so-so music in a successful and highly controversial mise-en-scène? Each, for its own reasons, was an uncommon experience.

Prima la musica, let us say: the first night of this season's new series (to March 10) of Verdi's Otello in the 2004 Andrei Serban production featured Valery Gergiev's much-anticipated debut with the Opéra national de Paris and the start of his five-year contract as one of the company's seven 'permanent conductors'. He more than rose to the occasion, and the audience and orchestra rose in turn to cheer him at the end. With his countryman Vladimir Galouzine in the title role, Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski as Desdemona and Spanish baritone Carlos Alvarez as Iago, it was a musically memorable evening.

Even Serban's staging, widely criticized on its first outing last year, had been sufficiently rethought so that only a few jarring moments remained, though the best that could be said for it, by and large, was that it was now unexceptional. It was based on a spare indoor-outdoor set by Peter Pabst that was somewhat reminiscent of the Moroccan exteriors in Orson Welles's film Othello. Sheer curtains - a dark one across the front of the stage, two lighter ones across the middle and the back – were pulled or drawn at various moments. At times this business worked effectively, for instance to give an impression of distance.

Otello at the Opéra Bastille: Carlos Alvarez as Iago torments Vladimir Galouzine in the title role in Act II Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

Audiences at the Paris Opera have long had a love-hate relationship with the Romanian-born, New York-based Serban. His 1995 Lucia di Lammermoor, set in a barracks-like insane asylum, caused howls of outrage. Three years later his Italiana in Algeri was seen by many as horribly vulgar, though it appeared increasingly tame with each subsequent outing in 2000 and 2004. His collaboration with choreographer Blanca Li on Les Indes Galantes in 1999 was generally acclaimed, however, as was his approach to Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina in 2001.

The main problem with his Otello, even as revised, was lack of subtlety. Facile foreshadowing abounded. In Act I, the drunken Cassio made a big show of playing with his handkerchief, and Desdemona's nightgown (perhaps meant to be wine-stained from the victory revels) appeared bloody at the hem. Her wedding veil absurdly turned up on a suit of armor in Act II. Iago played, Hamlet-like, with a skull during his 'Credo' and ended the aria in crucified-upside-down pose. The furniture and Desdemona's gown (the costumes, by Graciela Galán, were vaguely 19th century) were blood-red in Act III. Otello slashes apart not one but three bedroom screens in Act IV and scatters black feathers (from a bucket that Desdemona and Emilia fail to notice) around the soon-to-be-fatal bed. At the end the stage is so littered with bodies as to evoke Hamlet again: not only Desdemona and Otello but also Emilia (slain by the fleeing Iago) and Rodrigo (dragged in by Montano to die in good company).

The production was not without striking moments. The storm scene, thanks to Joël Houbeigt's effective lighting and video lightning flashes, was amazingly realistic. The bonfire for the chorus 'Fuoco di gioia' was also produced with a nice effect - a shimmering gold cloth blown upward from a trap to a height of a couple of stories, with reddish lights playing on it.

Soile Isokoski as Desdemona shrinks from the insults of Vladimir Galouzine as Otello in Act III Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

Still, it was the singers and orchestra who made the night, despite a bit of hoarseness and shouting by Galouzine. The Russian tenor seemed to have overcome the tonality problems that marked the production's launch last year, and his delivery of the Act III prayer-lament, 'Dio! mi potevi scagliar', reinforced his place among the ranks of today's top Otellos. Isokoski combined beautiful floating high notes with affecting acting; her Act IV arias had an otherworldly effect, as if she had already taken leave of life in resigning herself to death. Alvarez's dark, insinuating baritone and saturnine good looks were ideal for Iago, and in moments such as the duet with Otello that closes Act II, 'Si, pel ciel marmoreo guiro!', he and Galouzine were well matched. French bass René Schirrer made one regret the brevity of Montano's role, Canadian tenor Gordon Gietz as Cassio was pleasing of tone and figure though somewhat lacking in stamina, and the young Russian mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova, also seen as one of Mozart's three ladies in the following night's Zauberflöte, made an impact as Emilia despite direction that rendered the character something of a cipher.

In the pit, the obvious love feast between the Paris players and the maestro of the Mariinsky brought forth the best performance by the Paris Opera Orchestra that this correspondent could recall, with an interpretation at once subtle and striking, the pace brisk but never pushed, the balance consistently maintained. Unfortunately the packed house was the worst in recent memory for coughing, sniffling, nose-blowing and sneezing, thanks to a late-season flu epidemic.

Die Zauberflöte at the Opéra Bastille: Paul Groves as Tamino and Erika Miklosa as the Queen of the Night in Act I Photo: Ursula Kaufmann

The next night a generally younger and apparently much healthier crowd filled the Bastille to the brim again for the penultimate performance of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in a futuristic new production that divided French critics and spectators. A co-production with the Ruhr Triennale festival (where it was launched in 2003) and Madrid's Teatro Real (to which it moves in July), it was conceived and staged by the Catalan avant-garde troupe La Fura dels Baus under the guiding hand of Gerard Mortier. The controversy perhaps makes it worth describing in some detail.

As Marc Minkowski, in his first 'permanent conductor' gig, led one of the fastest Magic Flute overtures in history, the curtain opened on what looked like a double stack of giant translucent plastic AeroBeds in an otherwise empty space fully opened to the backstage and wings. A figure (Tamino, it later became clear) snuggled into one side, and then the head of this huge 'bed' was raised up, hospital style, the mattress manipulations being carried out manually throughout the production by a crew in white coats. A brain, the first of the evening's many striking video images, was projected on the raised mattresses. At end of the overture, white screens were lowered at the sides and back to form a large room.

A video serpent with words inscribed down its length terrorized Tamino, who was dressed in white with a bright yellow quilted safety vest. The three ladies effecting his rescue wore silver jumpsuits and Morticia Addams hair, with glowing neon breasts and pubic triangles. The mattress crew erected a pneumatic wall, and Papageno entered in a red leather suit, scarlet hair and eye shadow, and white feather cloak to sing 'Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja' in record time.

After Tamino viewed a morphing video portrait of Pamina, the Queen of the Night rolled in on a crane in a blindingly glittery silver gown, looking like a cross between Vampira and the Spider Woman. The mattresses were all very impressively and rather noisily deflated (the first of several such operations) before Tamino was given his blue neon flute and Papageno a glockenspiel that looked a little like a chainsaw.

Die Zauberflöte: Paul Groves as Tamino charms the savage beasts with his magic flute Photo: Ursula Kaufmann

For Pamina's first scene, a square black pen was set up as her prison, which was then was filled with a falling shower of lightweight black and white plastic balls to such depth that Monostatos and later Papageno could dive in and be completely covered, and 'swim' and frolic as if in a bathing pool. Pamina wore a white tunic over her white trousers and a yellow vest identical to Tamino's, and Monostatos was a biker figure in black leather. At the end of this scene the balls cascaded with a spectacular fountain effect into a net hung under the stage edge.

The three boys were accompanied everywhere by spidery female familiars with one neon breast each. The Speaker was wheeled in, encased in a molded white container rather like a large three-section refrigerator-freezer. As in a magic act, the middle segment was moved to reveal that the singer was crammed into the top segment, which surely played havoc with his breath support. For the scene of Tamino lost in the woods, the mattresses were hoisted up vertically, slightly off the ground, and it was revealed that they incorporated transparent plastic tunnels in which acrobats gyrated and climbed to represent the beasts. At last Sarastro made his climactic appearance, wearing a dinner jacket and long silvery hair.

Act II began with a chess game acted out by chorus members, the bishops obvious by their crosiers made of glowing golden beads. As two priests warned Tamino and Papageno against the slyness of women, videos of bare breasts appeared, with dotted lines indicating cosmetic surgery procedures and the mammary images accordingly changing shape and size. Before the three ladies reappeared, a row of mattresses was set up in a U shape and knocked over like dominos, seemingly just for the fun of it.

With Pamina trapped in a web of the ropes and hoists used to help manipulate the mattresses, the vengeful queen revealed herself, her glittery cloak now opened to show that she also had neon breasts, but not a neon sex. Trying to obey her mother, Pamina attacked Sarastro as he sang 'In diesen heil'gen Hallen', but to no avail because it was magic time again and Sarastro, in a coffin-like container, was unharmed no matter how often Pamina pierced the casket with swords, as stage blood oozed out and a huge pool of video blood spread across the stage.

This imagery soon reappeared in the form of a flying-coffin video as Pamina sang 'Ach, ich fühl's' to a Tamino imprisoned in a mattress that afterward exploded in video flame and deflated, releasing him. Though he came through his trial of silence successfully, dangers clearly still awaited him, represented by collapsed, crumpled mattresses with lights under them to make them resemble glowing coals. After the boys thwarted Pamina's self-destruction and she rejoined Tamino, the couple triumphantly negotiated the further trials of red-lighted fire mattresses and blue-lighted water mattresses.

As Papageno in turn threatened to do away with himself, he was surrounded by a wall of mattresses each containing a red-clad figure highlighted by an egg-shaped halo of light. These at first seemed to be embryonic Papagenas, but the 'Pa Pa Pa' duo made clear they were little Papagenos and Papagenas. At last, the forces of night duly vanquished, the last chorus rose and so did the auditorium lights, while the sets collapsed or were whisked into the flies. A prone figure in street clothes at the back of the bare stage proved to be a sleeping Tamino, whose dream the whole thing was, of course. Pamina came to wake him and they exited stage rear. Cue many minutes of deafening cheers and boos.

As far as your correspondent was concerned, this was a legitimate and largely enjoyable reinvention of a beloved but sometimes hackneyed classic – except for one glaring problem. The spoken dialog was cut, and in its place were readings of obscure and humorless verses, written for the occasion by Catalan poet Rafael Argullol and declaimed very gravely by actors Dominique Blanc and Pascal Greggory.

Why suck so much of the fun out of the work? Ah, but Mortier is on record as saying he doesn't believe in putting on opera for entertainment's sake. 'That's what the Lido [cabaret] is there for,' he told the respected cultural weekly Télérama early in the season. To him, if a work is not germane to the problems of the society in which operagoers live, they might as well be at the movies or Holiday on Ice. But Die Zauberflöte owes much of its charm precisely to its remoteness from our society. (Indeed, given the misogyny permeating the libretto and the racist treatment of Monostatos, it simplifies matters to approach it as an exotic or period piece.)

Another potential problem with denaturing this work to such an extreme is the likely impact on people coming to their very first Zauberflöte. We should perhaps remember how Mortier's predecessor at the helm of the Opéra, Hugues Gall, responded to Le Monde's constant carping about what the newspaper saw as his lack of innovation. As The New York Times tells it, Gall, noting that 80% of the audience for any Paris Opera production were discovering the work for the first time, said: 'No one can understand a mustache on the Mona Lisa unless they already know the Mona Lisa.'

In a succès de scandale, as this Zauberflöte could certainly be termed, the singing can also fall victim. American tenor Paul Groves was a sometimes rather strained-sounding Tamino, German soprano Julia Kleiter (filling in for the ailing Mireille Delunsch) was perfectly all right if unremarkable as Pamina while Hungarian soprano Erika Miklosa brought an exceedingly thin top to her role as Queen of the Night in her Paris Opera debut. Only the lively performance of French baritone Stéphane Degout as Papageno and the sonorous bass of the young Estonian Sarastro, Ain Anger (also debuting), were a cut above ordinary.

© Rebecca Brite, 27 February 2005 

March

War and Peace at the Opéra Bastille: with Moscow in flames, the last battle begins Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

What unexpected riches the Opéra national de Lyon has brought us during Serge Dorny’s second season as general director. The latest rarity to make the two-hour train ride from Paris more than worthwhile was an opéra comique by a French composer who has recently been enjoying a renaissance on both sides of the Atlantic. Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) was a civil servant who was able to devote himself to music full time only in the last 14 years of his too-short life. While his orchestral works, particularly España, never quite dropped off the program, his lyric works long suffered a less happy fate. Now, though, increasingly seen as an important bridge between Wagner and the 20th century, he is back in the opera house.

Just days after a concert version led by Leon Botstein was rapturously received in New York, Chabrier’s last completed opera, Le roi malgré lui (The King in Spite of Himself), opened at Lyon in a delightful new production staged and (as is his wont) costumed by Laurent Pelly. The libretto, taken from a 1830s farce based on a brief and inconsequential episode in French and Polish history, was pounded and massaged by a succession of writers, including Chabrier himself, without anyone ever really managing to get it into shape. As convoluted a piece of plotting as ever challenged any operagoer’s suspension of disbelief, the storyline has often been blamed for the infrequency of the work’s staging.

Emmanuel Chabrier's Le roi malgré lui at the Opéra de Lyon: Still in street clothes, flanked by stagehands, Laurent Naouri as an opera singer starting to perform the role of the Duc de Fritelli Photo: Gérard Amsellem

Henri de Valois, favorite son of Catherine de Médicis, brother to Charles IX of France and his future successor as Henri III, has, through mom’s machinations, been elected king of Poland and is in Krakow with a small entourage waiting unhappily to be crowned. He hates the people, he hates the weather and he really, really hates the food. So when he learns that a group of disaffected Polish nobles is plotting to keep him off the throne, he switches identities with his faithful friend the Comte de Nangis and pretends to be a French traitor seeking to join the conspiracy, in hopes that this will prove a fast ticket home. Simple, no? Well, except for complications like Nangis’s falling for Minka, a pretty Gypsy serf belonging to the head plotter, the paladin Laski; and Henri’s meeting up unexpectedly with Alexina, a lovely Polish woman with whom he’d dallied in Venice a few years earlier, who turns out to be the wife of Henri’s own Italian chamberlain, the Duc de Fritelli, as well as niece to Laski. You don’t even want to know how many times these people change sides and identities before Nangis wins Minka’s freedom and Henri manages to get Fritelli out of the picture before allowing himself to be crowned after all. Besides, I had a little trouble following it myself, perhaps because I was wondering how the librettists had had the nerve to turn the notoriously gay Henri into such a ladies’ man.

Never mind, the music was glorious and Pelly’s production a load of fun. He played, not for the first time, with the idea of theater, the conceit here being that of a show not quite ready yet - of sets still being painted, costumes stitched, lines memorized, blocking finalized, bits of business perfected. The curtain opened on a stagehand going about his business, apparently just before the start of a rehearsal, when suddenly the realization hit - horrors! There’s an audience out there! Who let them in?

Le roi malgré lui: Laurent Naouri, now in character as Fritelli, is confronted by his duchess, Maryline Fallot Photo: Gérard Amsellem

One by one or in groups, the stars, chorus and supers arrived for rehearsal and momentarily froze at the sight of the ‘unexpected’ audience before hurriedly doffing their 19th century costumes and donning 16th century ones. A hint in the program and certain of the props let us know we were to imagine ourselves at the Opéra Comique in 1887, a couple of days before the opening of Emmanuel Chabrier’s new opera, Le roi malgré lui (which in real life would play for just three days before the Salle Favart went up in one of the several fires that punctuated its history; the score was only barely rescued).

As with La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, La belle Hélène and other recent shows of this type by the same team, the spoken dialogue was adapted for modern audiences. Pelly’s dramaturge sidekick, Agathe Mélinand, boiled down the original lines, whipped them into froth and added several welcome helpings of plot clarification. Bernard Legoux’s simple, mostly black set impersonated an undressed stage, with painted flats occasionally carried on and off. At the rear were two doors, one high and wide leading to the ‘outside', the other appearing to give onto dressing rooms. At the left an elevated structure with stairs was no doubt meant to represent a half-built tower.

Bringing it all to life were the stagehands, three 'gods in machines' played with gusto by Bruno Andrieux, Olivier Sferlazza and Jean-Benoît Terral. Like an unholy cross of the Three Stooges with Monty Python, plus more than a hint of Marxist surrealism, they pushed and bullied clueless supers into place, moved sets and stood in for still-missing pieces of scenery, marched the chorus up the stage and marched it down again, popped out with noisemakers at appropriate moments and generally, it must be admitted, were a slightly tiresome distraction after a while from the best part of the evening, Chabrier’s music.

Le roi malgré lui: Laurent Naouri as Fritelli (right) offering dubious counsel to Nicolas Rivenq as Henri de Valois in Act II Photo: Gérard Amsellem

Many critics, then and now, have had their fun spotting the composer’s little tributes in this work to the likes of Delibe, Berlioz and Offenbach. Ultimately, however, the music of Le roi malgré lui is all of a piece, all Chabrier’s own, and more modern by far than the works to which he is tipping his hat. The ensembles are especially stunning, from the duos for Nangis and Minka, and Minka and Alexina, to the magnificent choral ‘Valse endiablée’ that opens Act II and a charming barcarolle only a little reminiscent of Les contes d'Hoffmann.

In an all-French cast studded with Pelly regulars, tenor Yann Beuron as Nangis and soprano Magali Léger as Minka took top vocal honors. Baritone Laurent Naouri mugged his Italian-accented way through the role of Fritelli but managed to keep his singing in respectable form. In the title role, Nicolas Rivenq, as always a very stylish performer, was rather indifferent vocally; both he and Maryline Fallot as Alexina suffered from more challenging vocal parts and less sympathetic roles than the rest. Evelino Pido directed with considerable delicacy and humor, and the full forces of the Lyon Opera Chorus shone in the many passages that put them in the spotlight.

Let’s hope this flourishing of Chabrier proves more lasting than the last one, which was in 1984. In that year John Eliot Gardiner recorded the 1877 opéra bouffe L’Etoile with the Lyon Opera and Charles Dutoit directed a concert version of Le roi malgré lui at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées that produced what is currently the only available recording. Rumor has it that a disc of the Pelly production is in the works. It would lend itself well to a DVD.

Le roi malgré lui: Nicolas Rivenq as Henri de Valois, Maryline Fallot as Alexina, Duchesse de Fritelli, Franck Leguérinel as her uncle, Laski, and Laurent Naouri as Fritelli Photo: Gérard Amsellem

At the Opéra Bastille, Vladimir Jurowski, yet another of the seven ‘permanent conductors’ of the Opéra national de Paris making a one-work appearance this season, led a welcome revival of Francesca Zambello’s 2000 production of Sergei Prokofiev’s War and Peace. Many members of the mostly Russian original cast were back, including soprano Olga Guryakova as Natasha, mezzo Elena Zaremba as Hélène, baritone Vassili Gerello as Napoleon and bass Vladimir Matorine as Balaga the coachman and Tikhon Cherbaty.

They were joined this time by (among many others) Danish baritone Bo Skovus as Andrei, German tenor Michael König as Pierre, British mezzo Felicity Palmer as Madame Akhrosimova, Russian mezzo Larisa Kostyuk as Sonia and bass Vladimir Ognovenko as General Kutuzov, while notable among those returning from the previous series but in bigger roles were Vsevolod Grivnov as Anatole and Leonid Zimnenko as Count Rostov. And even that long laundry list of singers fails to acknowledge all the outstanding performances in this incarnation of Prokofiev’s monumental masterpiece (nor, as will be duly noted, was everyone listed all that outstanding). But first, a word about the conducting.

War and Peace at the Opéra Bastille: As the chorus sings the epilogue to Part I, Michael König as Pierre reads the news from Vilna: the war has begun Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

Frankly I was torn. I should perhaps explain that I was tired, and of course War and Peace is a long night. But I loved this production and Prokofiev’s music when I saw and heard them in the house five years ago, and on DVD two years ago. I wanted to hear what Jurowski would do with them. He has made quite a splash in a relatively short time. Of all those Paris Opera conductors I’ve dubbed the Mortier Seven, he was the least known to me. I thought I would just stay for Part I, hear a sample of this new maestro and then head home to bed. But I found myself hanging around, exhausted and undecided, for the whole interminable intermission, telling myself there were also singers I needed to hear who only appeared in Part II. Of course I ended up getting home at nearly midnight, exhilarated by the music - and torn about the conductor.

There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between Jurowski and Gary Bertini, who conducted on the first round. As it happens, the day I heard Jurowski on the second night of the revival, Bertini died of lymphoma at age 77 in Tel Aviv. A regular at the Paris Opera during the Hugues Gall-James Conlon years, he had not been back since the new management took over, and I missed him even before knowing he would never return. His reading of War and Peace was restrained and sensitive, as was typical of this under-appreciated composer-conductor. He was never bombastic and hardly ever drowned out his singers. Under Jurowski the chorus signaling the start of the fighting at Borodino, to take just one example, was virtually inaudible despite the armies of singers on the stage. Bertini, balding and gray, had short-cropped hair; Jurowski wore, and liberally tossed, a classic conductor’s mane, to the delight of what appeared to be a young fan club sitting in my section. But the playing was undeniably thrilling. Especially during the second half I was by turns enthralled, in tears, and ready to beat up anybody’s invading army.

War and Peace: Olga Guryakova as Natasha comforts Bo Skovhus as Andrei on his deathbed Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

Yes, well, the music was meant to do that, and so was Zambello’s direction. It also helped that much of the singing was particularly fine. Special mention must be made of Grivnov as Anatole and König as Pierre. Their confrontation at the end of Part I was a real battle of the tenors, pitting the trenchant tones of Grivnov against the more mellow sound of König. The former, a somewhat more musical singer, struggled with control problems while the latter showed impressive staying power in a long, taxing part. The many good solid Slavic basses were also a joy to hear, particularly Zimnenko as Count Rostov, Maxim Mikhailov as Doloknov and, above all, Ognovenko as old General Kutuzov, who rejoices in three great moments in Part II and made the most of all of them, gaining in strength from the first exhortation to the troops before Borodino, to the stirring eulogy of his beloved and soon-to-be-sacrificed Moscow, and the final exulting ‘Russia is saved!’ Not forgetting the hulking presence and sonorous basso of Matorine, whose Tikhon Cherbaty in Part II seems a veritable symbol of the people of Old Russia.

The bright soprano of Guryakova verged at first on slightly shrill, but overall she gave a young, fresh impression. Skovus managed unwonted expressiveness in the first part but struggled with his low notes for too many of his Part II scenes. Zaremba, lovely to look at, wobbled.

© Rebecca Brite, 4 April 2005 

April

Hans Werner Henze's Pollicino at the Théatre du Châtelet: Guillaume Lillo (in striped top) as Pollicino and members of Sotto Voce as his brothers with nocturnal forest creatures Photo: M N Robert

It has been by far the biggest event of this Paris Opera season: the assembling of the ‘Tristan Trio’ of director Peter Sellars, video artist Bill Viola and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen for a new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Opéra Bastille. The importance of this project as the cornerstone of Gerard Mortier’s first season was clearly signaled in the 2004/05 program, a large-format, magazine-sized showcase for stills from 20-some years’ worth of Viola’s works.

Los Angeles audiences saw a preview called The Tristan Project in early December at Walt Disney Concert Hall, new home of the LA Philharmonic, of which Salonen is music director. In two series of three nights each, one act per night, the Finnish conductor tackled his first Tristan in chunks, leading the LA Phil in a semi-staged version starring Clifton Forbis (who returns in next season’s Paris reprise) and Christine Brewer in the title roles.

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Opéra Bastille: Ben Heppner and Waltraud Meier as the lovers, with their onscreen alter egos, as the fatal philter takes effect Photo: Ruth Walz

Paris operagoers could be excused for thinking that the version that opened here on April 12 was also semi-staged, relying as it did on a single piece of black-painted decor that observers variously described as bench, bed, dais or altar. Still, many may have found this and Sellars’s minimalist direction to be a distinct improvement over Paris’s last Tristan, in 1998, which featured junkyard sets by Lennart Mörk, a production by Stein Winge whose centerpiece was the lovers’ struggle with a giant, endlessly billowing bedsheet, and fatally flawed casting: as David Stevens of the International Herald Tribune memorably put it, ‘[No] effort is made to have Marke look like an old man, so there he is - René Pape - tall, good looking, young and with a marvelously expressive bass voice, and we are asked to believe that Isolde [Anne Evans] is turning her back on life at court with this person’ for the physically less imposing and vocally challenged Wolfgang Schmidt.

Tristan und Isolde : Yvonne Naef as Brangäne tries in vain to warn Waltraud Meier as Isolde, against a video-flame backdrop Photo: Ruth Walz

There were no such worries this time with one of today’s great Tristan-Isolde pairings in Ben Heppner and Waltraud Meier. And if the Marke of German bass Franz-Josef Selig again seemed somewhat too young and attractive by the conventional standards of the role, he was well-suited to embody Sellars’s conviction that a more than avuncular love for Tristan had been behind the king’s reluctance to take a second wife. A few critics managed to work up a bit of outrage over this interpretation even though Marke’s lines rather lend themselves to it. In any case the statement in Sellars’s so-called synopsis that Marke was Tristan’s first lover was less irritating than his view of Act II as a kind of extended psychotherapy session in which Tristan realizes that ‘the growing disparity between his public image and his always low personal sense of self-worth produced a seething self-hatred’ for which he ‘tried to compensate by plunging into military adventurism'. Puh-leeze.

Fortunately little of that seeped through into the singing or acting. On the fifth of seven performances in this run, Heppner seemed fresher than ever, the vocal problems of a couple of years ago clearly behind him. The Canadian tenor sounded at the peak of his powers, and if the same could not quite be said of Meier, her slender, girlish, passionate Isolde was affecting and entirely believable. The Bavarian mezzo - who, like Heppner, turns 50 next year but has a few years on him in career terms - often seemed to be struggling with pitch, though, and the Liebestod was somehow lacking in impact. Selig amply conveyed the anguish of a Marke betrayed by two loves. Swiss mezzo Yvonne Naef as Brangäne delivered one of the evening’s most consistently impressive performances. The Kurwenal of Finnish baritone Jukka Rasilainen, on the other hand, was rather monochromatic. English horn soloist Anne Régnier took a well-deserved bow with the rest of the cast for her work in the third act. Salonen interpreted the score with unusual transparency and deep, aching melancholy, especially in the introduction to Act III, though he failed on occasion to keep the horns from riding madly off in all directions.

Tristan und Isolde: Alexander Marco-Buhrmester as Melot, Franz-Josef Selig as König Marke, and Ben Heppner and Waltraud Meier as the two lovers Photo: Ruth Walz

Musically, then, this Tristan was mainly a treat, but it was sharing the stage with Viola’s Tristan und Isolde: The Video, starring actors Jeff Mills and Lisa Rhoden as the earthly lovers and acrobats John Hay and Sarah Steben as their ‘celestial’ alter egos. To those familiar with Viola’s work, and everyone who read the season program a year ago, the giant split screen dominating and occasionally overwhelming the action held few surprises. You had your water images and your fire images, your mirror images and your nature images, and your close-ups of faces emoting like mad. Downright distracting during Act I, when they told a competing story of a purification ceremony, the images served as largely innocuous slo-mo wallpaper the rest of the time. Also distinguishing this Tristan from a concert performance were the effective deployment of rectangles of light on stage and of soloists and chorus at the back and sides of the second balcony. Sellars put the house lights to good use, too, bringing them up before the close of Act I as the love philter duet was ending and Marke came to greet his bride, thus forcing the audience to confront, with the drugged lovers, the full implications of what had just transpired.

Hans Werner Henze's The Bassarids at the Théatre du Châtelet: June Anderson as Agave, Queen Mother of Thebes, and Kim Begley as the blind seer Tiresias Photo: M N Robert

At the Théatre du Châtelet, April was Hans Werner Henze month. The German-born, Italian-based composer, who turns 80 next year, received a real stinker of an early birthday present from the technical and administrative staff of Radio France: as they were on strike, the French premiere of Henze’s 1966 work The Bassarids, with Kazushi Ono set to direct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, almost had to be canceled because the people who ordinarily drive the instruments and scores across town had downed tools, or rather wheels. As it was, opening night was put off by two days while Ono cobbled together a reduction of the score for three pianos and a handful of other instruments. Henze, as a longtime lefty whose works include part of a collectively composed cantata called Strike at Mannesmann, may have had mixed feelings about it all but agreed to this solution, and, just as important, so did his music publisher.

The Bassarids: members of the chorus as the people of Thebes, with dancer Larrio Ekson Photo: M N Robert

The Bassarids, a one-act opera seria whose English libretto by W H Auden and Chester Kallman was inspired by the Bacchants of Euripides, tells of the struggle by Pentheus, King of Thebes, to keep his people on the straight and narrow instead of the primrose path offered by the sexy new god Dionysus. Of course he fails, big time - his own mother, Agave, joins the new cult and, in a maddened frenzy of pleasure worship, manages to separate Pentheus from his head.

The Bassarids: June Anderson as Agave and Franco Pomponi as her son Pentheus, King of Thebes (both seated), Marisol Montalvo as Autonoe, Kim Begley as Tiresias and Rainer Trost as the stranger who will be revealed as Dionysus (all standing) Photo: M N Robert

With a tiered set by the Greek-born, French-based Yannis Kokkos, who also directed and designed the multi-period costumes, The Bassarids was well-received despite the much reduced numbers in the pit. Among the mostly British and American cast, the performances of June Anderson as Agave, Franco Pomponi as Pentheus and Kim Begley as the prophet Tiresias were particularly remarked, as was the distinctly un-Dionysian choir, Apollo Voices, joining the Châtelet’s house choir and led by Stephen Betteridge, chief repetiteur of the BBC Singers.

Pollicino at the Théatre du Châtelet: Guillaume Lillo as Pollicino and members of Sotto Voce as his brothers with René Schirrer as the ogre and Doris Lamprecht as his wife Photo: M N Robert

Kokkos was also responsible, with Bassarids lighting director Patrice Trottier, for the sets and costumes of Henze’s 1980 ‘favola per musica', Pollicino, aka Tom Thumb, by French producer Guy Coutance. Like The Bassarids, it had a four-performance run (and, unlike the other work, was meant to). The conductor, Claire Gibault, who is French but has long been active in Italy as well, was also responsible for the French adaptation of Giuseppe De Leva’s libretto (from Perrault via Collodi with a tip of the hat to the Grimms). Eric Huchet and Aurélia Legay as Mr and Mrs Thumb and René Schirrer and Doris Lamprecht as Mr and Mrs Ogre were joined by members of one of France’s top children’s choirs, Sotto Voce, whose American director, Scott Alan Prouty, is increasingly sought-after for French lyric productions calling for youngsters’ voices. Still another new production of Pollicino, incidentally, played in late March and early April at Valence, in the Rhône Valley, as a joint effort of the Opéra national de Lyon and the Comédie de Valence.

Pollicino: Guillaume Lillo (in stripes) as Pollicino with members of Sotto Voce as his brothers and the seven little ogresses Photo: M N Robert

© Rebecca Brite, 4 May 2005 

May

Arabella at the Théâtre du Châtelet: Thomas Hampson as Mandryka and assorted partygoers at the Act II ball Photo: M N Robert

Klaus Michael Grüber’s 1992 Salzburg Festival staging of Leos Janacek’s last opera, the strange, somber, ultimately uplifting From the House of the Dead, is at the Opera Bastille to June 12 in the guise of a ‘new production.’ Gerard Mortier, in 1992 just beginning his term as head of Salzburg, now head of the Opéra national de Paris, continues to resurrect high points from his earlier career for the benefit of Paris audiences.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was in his mid-20s when, moved by strong opposition to Russia’s system of serfdom, he began attending meetings of the Petrashevsky group, a utopian and socialist movement with a secret revolutionary wing that the novelist also eventually joined. Some two years later these activities landed him in jail. After undergoing a mock execution, whose psychic reverberations would thenceforth be felt in all his work, he spent four years in a Siberian prison camp. Janacek was 72 when he began shaping a libretto from segments of the novel that resulted from Dostoyevsky’s experiences, Memoirs from the House of the Dead. The opera had its premier in Brno in 1930, nearly two years after the Czech composer’s death.

From the House of the Dead at the Opéra Bastille: José Van Dam as the newly arrived Alexander Petrovitch Gorianshikov and Jiri Sulzenko as the prison camp commandant Photo: Ruth Walz

Lasting barely 90 minutes and performed here without intermission, the work presents in its four short scenes a series of snapshots from the existence (it cannot be called ‘life’) of the prisoners and guards. A few of the former tell their stories, mostly involving violent death, in brilliantly crafted musical monologues. The first act, set in the prison camp enclosure, introduces Dostoyevsky’s alter ego and narrator, Alexander Petrovitch Gorianshikov, a ‘gentleman’ newly arrived as a political prisoner (rather than the wife-killer of Dostoyevsky’s work) in a camp populated mostly by peasants and workers convicted of sordid and violent crimes. The inmates find an eagle with a broken wing that has strayed into the courtyard. Gorianshikov inadvertently gets on the wrong side of the prison commandant, who orders him to be flogged.

Act II takes place a year later. The prisoners are working outdoors on the steppes. Gorianshikov befriends a young Tartar, Alieia. A holiday is declared, and some of the prisoners entertain the rest by staging a play about Don Juan and his valet Kedril, and a pantomime. An inmate starts a fight with Gorianshikov and Alieia, and injures the boy. Act III is set in the infirmary, where Gorianshikov sits at Alieia’s bedside and another inmate lies dying. The prisoner Shishkov tells how he killed his wife for having continued to love a man who had publicly dishonored her. As the other prisoner dies, Shishkov recognizes him as the rival for his wife’s affections. In Act IV, Gorianshikov is released. The eagle with the broken wing, now healed, flies away.

Grüber’s production, designed by the Spanish artist Eduardo Arroyo, was dominated by a tall, massive, leafless tree, set in a prison camp enclosure surrounded by walls jagged-topped with large shards of glass. In Act I the branches served as a sort of jungle gym for Alieia, and its roots sheltered the wounded eagle, surrealistically represented by an extra in a black bird costume. In Act IV a whole flock of black birds, crows this time, were perched on the branches. Another particularly effective set element was a black curtain, hung with skull lanterns, which descended in Act II to frame the convicts’ amateur theatricals in a maw-like opening resembling the gate of Hell in a medieval mystery play. The prison staff wore identical blue uniforms and the inmates were rather ludicrously clad in buttery yellow (presumably, with free labor to take care of the laundry, it doesn’t matter that pastel uniforms would get dirty awfully quickly). With the guards all wearing caps and the prisoners having the half-shaved heads that in the bad old days made escaped convicts easier to identify, it was often difficult to tell the characters apart, especially among the secondary roles.

From the House of the Dead: Ales Briscein as Kedril (seated, foreground) and Sergei Stilmachenko as the prisoner playing Don Juan (being hoisted by demons) Photo: Ruth Walz

Despite the bleakness of the libretto and the violence it often describes, Janacek’s score is infused with the spirit of his epigraph for the work: ‘In every creature, a divine spark.’ A multinational cast, dominated by Slavs of various origins, did the music honor. It seemed something of a waste of José Van Dam’s considerable talents to give him the role of Gorianshikov, a mostly passive observer with relatively few lines, but the veteran Belgian baritone made the most of them. American tenor Jerry Hadley, who later this month returns to the Bastille stage as Aegisth in Elektra, sounded wobbly in places, perhaps pushing too much, but overall was effective as Skuratov, whose chilling Act II monologue is another tale of murder spurred by lost love.

French soprano Gaële Le Roi’s career has often featured turns as Yniold in Pelléas et Mélisande, so she was right at home in the trouser role of Alieia (alternating it for about ten days with that of the Tsarevitch Fyodor at the end of a run of Boris Godunov, more on which below). Czech bass Jiri Sulzenko as the drunken, abusive prison commandant conveyed the angry helplessness of an official who knows he is nearly as much a prisoner as those he guards. The performance that most clearly stood out was that of Danish bass-baritone Johan Reuter, who as Shishkov displayed impressive vocal acting skills in telling the prisoner’s tormented tale. He will be worth watching out for as the High Priest in the coming Salzburg Festival concert performances of Gluck’s Alceste under Ivor Bolton, and, especially, as Wozzeck next February at Covent Garden.

The men of the Paris Opera chorus, divided between the stage and the pit, contributed lots of juicy overtones and the house orchestra was on its best behavior for the young German conductor Marc Albrecht, who first garnered attention here three years ago directing Martinu’s Julietta. Albrecht, a fixture in Dresden and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, found the black humor in the overture and continued to draw out the full palette of Janacek’s score. On this evidence he will be welcome in France when he takes over in 2006 as music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. France Musiques radio will broadcast From the House of the Dead on June 11 at 7pm Paris time.

Boris Godunov at the Opéra Bastille: Vsevolod Grivnov as the Holy Fool wth the crowd awaiting news of a new tsar Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

May was Janacek month in France, with not only this production starting in Paris but also the Lyon Opera playing host to Glyndebourne Festival Opera productions of Jenufa, Kát’a Kabanová and The Makropulos Affair, produced by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, conducted by Lothar Koenigs and featuring Anja Silja, Kathryn Harries and Amanda Roocroft. Moreover, From the House of the Dead is part of a Slavic season at the Bastille that began in March with Prokofiev’s War and Peace, resumed after a brief Tristan interruption in April with Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and ends in June with the current revival of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame.

Boris Godunov, in Francesca Zambello’s 2002 ‘Odessa Steps’ production, featured Samuel Ramey in the title role. The bass from Colby, Kansas, told a French interviewer in early May that working with a mostly Russian cast had been at once intimidating and helpful - he praised the singers’ patience as he finished relearning a part he had tackled for the first time in 1993 and had not done in several years. In the event, it was a respectable performance but generally overshadowed, particularly by tenor Vsevolod Grivnov as Boris’s foil, the Holy Fool. Tenor Roman Muravitskiy as the False Dmitri also turned in a strong showing, despite some weakness at the top. Mezzo Elena Manistina made the most of a relatively thankless part as Marina Mnizek, playing the submissive to bass Vladimir Ognovenko’s Rangoni (and, in a clever touch, wearing a gown trimmed in the same fuchsia as the sash of her Jesuit master’s vestments). The colorful but oddly flat and static production was not one of Zambello’s more successful efforts.

Boris Godunov: Samuel Ramey as Boris Godunov with Gaële Le Roi as the Tsarevitch Fyodor and Aleksandra Zamojska as Boris's daughter Xenia Photo: Eric Mahoudeau

Meanwhile, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, another 2002 production made a reappearance, one whose liveliness and innovation stood in marked contrast to the Boris. Alas, Peter Mussbach’s Châtelet-Covent Garden Arabella had a run of bad luck on this occasion. First, Christoph von Dohnányi, scheduled once again to lead his Philharmonia Orchestra, had to cancel because of illness and was replaced by the designated Paris substitute for late Strauss, Günter Neuhold (the Austrian conductor who similarly stepped in for an ailing Christian Thielemann with the Opéra Garnier Capriccio not quite a year ago). Then, on the second night of the run, Barbara Bonney was announced as suffering from laryngitis but gamely willing to try to sing the role of Zdenka. After a painful Act I in which she was audibly in severe trouble, and an intermission that stretched from the scheduled 20 minutes to nearly an hour, Acts II and III were sung by Jeni Bern, the young Scottish soprano who understudied Bonney at Covent Garden. Just off the Eurostar, Bern stood at the side of the stage while Bonney mimed the part.

Arabella at the Théâtre du Châtelet: Barbara Bonney as Zdenka and Karita Mattila as Arabella in Act I Photo: M N Robert

All three principals from the very popular 2002 version were back for the revival, Bonney being joined by Karita Mattila as Arabella and Thomas Hampson as Mandryka. The secondary roles were mostly recast, however, and some of them benefited greatly by it, notably in the case of Andrew Greenan as Graf Waldner, Rosalind Plowright as his wife, Stephan Rügamer as Matteo and, most particularly, Will Hartmann as Elemer. This young German was singing Papagenos and Arlequins with regional companies before getting in touch with his inner tenor and moving on to places like Covent Garden. There he has drawn sometimes mixed reviews, but as Arabella’s rejected suitor he shone. While Hampson still makes an exceptional Mandryka, on the night when Bonney fell ill he was hamming way too much - perhaps, to be charitable, out of stress caused by the unusual circumstances. Mattila’s Arabella seemed not just three years older but much graver and less flighty, and yet still pure delight. Bern did not appear to possess an extraordinary voice, but she acquitted herself well and was hugely cheered. A DVD of this production, from the 2002 Châtelet performances, is scheduled for release later this year.

Arabella: Thomas Hampson as Mandryka, Stephan Rügamer as Matteo, Karita Mattila as Arabella and Andrew Greenan as Graf Waldner in Act III Photo: M N Robert

© Rebecca Brite, 4 June 2005 

June

Britten's The Turn of the Screw at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées: Ravi Shah as Miles and Marlin Miller as the ghost of Peter Quint in the nursery Photo: Elisabeth Carrechio

Controversy, the box office’s friend, has been raging around the Matthias Hartmann production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra at the Opéra Bastille (to July 12). One of the very few truly new productions for the Opéra national de Paris this season, it has perhaps been second only to the Sellars-Viola Tristan und Isolde in terms of expectations and advance buzz. Hartmann, primarily a theatrical director (he takes over from Christoph Marthaler later this year at the Schauspielhaus Zürich), makes his Paris Opera debut with this, his second opera production after a 2003 Bartered Bride in Zurich.

Elektra, premiered in 1909, was the first fruit of Strauss’s long and celebrated collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose 1903 updating of Sophocles’s tragedy formed the basis of the libretto. Hofmannsthal had specified that the setting - the rear courtyard of the palace of Mycenae, by the servants’ quarters - should be claustrophobic and devoid of clichéd images of antiquity. Most of the current debate has to do with the degree to which the set by Flemish stage designer Jan Versweyveld adheres to or departs from the librettist’s wishes, though the scarily intense but often vocally tattered performance of Deborah Polaski as Elektra has also drawn its share of comment.

Elektra by Richard Strauss at the Opéra Bastille: Deborah Polaski as Elektra talks vengeance to Eva-Maria Westbroek as Chrysothemis Photo: François Fogel

The production would undoubtedly have been even more hotly debated had a sort of prologue originally proposed by Hartmann not been axed, apparently just days before the opening. It reportedly depicted in gory mime something of the ‘back story’ to Elektra. In the birthplace of Sartre’s Les mouches and Ariane Mnouchkine’s 1992 cycle from Euripides and Aeschylus, however, audiences can arguably be presumed to have some acquaintance already with the turbulent tale of the House of Atreus.

Versweyveld’s single set showed the back of a thoroughly modern-looking building in some kind of corrugated black material. A basement area, surrounded by the sort of striped tape used to mark off a crime scene or construction site, held a glass case housing the royal robe of Agamemnon, to which a shadowy male figure could be seen occasionally paying homage. Above was a wide, high opening like a vast picture window, which framed parts of the action like one of the movie screens that Hartmann uses in many of his theatrical productions.

Elektra: Felicity Palmer as Klytämnestra is confronted by Deborah Polaski as Elektra Photo: François Fogel

From this level, a walkway descended from the building entrance across the basement to stage level. Between the audience and the orchestra pit a built-out platform served as Elektra’s camp. Stage left at the same level a glassed-in laundry room marked the domain of the servants, while stage right a platform on the upper level, apparently providing temporary storage for extra chairs from a banquet room, gave on the entrance to another wing of the building.

All was dark and vaguely ugly except for the modern costumes, only some of which were dark and most of which were extremely ugly. (Unusually, the program gave no costume design credit.) Elektra wore bag-lady getup so authentic-looking, one could imagine its stink. The cut of the grime-stiffened outer garment was faintly medieval, one of many touches recalling that Hofmannstahl claimed Hamlet as his principle influence for this work. As unattractive and dispiriting as everything seemed, there was little to contradict the spirit or even the letter of the libretto, the barbarity of the story or the harrowing quality of the music.

Elektra’s opening monologue included self-mutilation and the inscribing of a bloody crown on a sheet, in which she would later wrap her mother as if in a shroud - or as if in the net that the queen had used to ensnare her husband before killing him. Orest, as the shadowy figure in the basement proved to be, carried out his vengeance on his mother and her lover in full view in the frame of the upper window, holding before him a knife and watching the guilty pair impale themselves upon it each in turn.

Elektra: Deborah Polaski as Elektra is reunited at last with Markus Brück as Orest Photo: François Fogel

Polaski’s Elektra has been renowned for years, and the years have taken their toll, especially on top, where an out-of-control vibrato exacerbated frequent pitch problems. Still, the American soprano inhabits the role like few other modern interpreters of it, and her performance was greeted on opening night with a prolonged and clamorous ovation. (Hartmann and Versweyveld, on the other hand, were roundly booed.) As Klytämnestra, Felicity Palmer, again one of the outstanding interpreters of recent years, fared better musically and delivered some wonderfully demented ‘I’m ready for my close-up’ moments. The top vocal performance, however, was unquestionably that of Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as Chrysothemis, which had been eagerly awaited after the strong impression made by her Madame Lidoine in Dialogues des Carmélites earlier this season. She is due back at the Paris Opera in 2007-08 as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and should certainly have the Kaiserin in her future somewhere as well.

German baritone Markus Brück, in suit and eyeglasses, made a geekish-looking and timid-sounding Orest. Jerry Hadley, in much more solid vocal state than in the recent House of the Dead, played Aegisth as a lounge lizard. At the podium, Christoph von Dohnanyi, whose absence from the Châtelet Arabella due to illness a few weeks earlier had disappointed the Straussians of Paris, seemed back in the bloom of health and demonstrated full control of the massive forces this work requires. A recording of the production is scheduled to be broadcast by France Musiques radio on August 13 at 8pm.

The Turn of the Screw at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées: Ravi Shah as Miles and Mireille Delunsch as the governess Photo: Elisabeth Carrechio

Earlier in the month, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées played host at long last to Luc Bondy’s Aix Festival/Wiener Festwochen production of The Turn of the Screw. Benjamin Britten’s 1954 interpretation of the Henry James novella has seldom been spookier. Since its 2001 premiere in Aix, the production has played the Vienna and Edinburgh festivals and it was seen earlier this year in at the Monnaie in Brussels. Even the DVD (Bel Air/Harmonia Mundi) reached Paris before the show itself. Better late than never.

As the orchestra tuned up, Miles and Flora sat playing at the back of Richard Peduzzi’s simple but sweeping blue and white modular set. The lights remained up for the prologue, sung not by the same tenor to be seen later as Peter Quint, as is customary, but by one representing the children’s handsome and remote guardian. This was unambiguously a ghost story, one plainly revolving around the crime of pedophilia. Moidele Bickel’s costumes - dark blue for the women, gray for the ghosts, white for the children - were the only obvious period element. By and large the atmosphere was subtly conveyed in the sweep of long white nursery draperies, the rocking of a toy horse, lights in a dollhouse - and, above all, by the lighting (and shadows) of Dominique Bruguière and the insidious way that bits of the set would slightly creep and slide in mid-scene.

Though the overall vocal quality was high, no performances really stood out. The slightly French-accented English of tenor Olivier Dumait in the prologue and soprano Mireille Delunsch as the governess was not a distraction, but Ravi Shah as Miles and Nazan Fikret as Flora (they alternated with Adam Berman and Fleur Todd) were models of enunciation. Like Dumait and Delunsch, Swiss mezzo Hannah Schaer as Mrs Grose, American tenor Marlin Miller as Quint and British soprano Marie McLaughlin as Miss Jessel were reprising their roles from Aix, and Daniel Harding once again led the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. From July 10 to 24 the production returns to Aix, with the same cast but accompanied this time by the Orchestre de chambre de la Monnaie directed by Kazushi Ono.

The Turn of the Screw: Mireille Delunsch as the governess pondering her options Photo: Elisabeth Carrechio

© Rebecca Brite, 5 July 2005 

July

La rondine at the Châtelet: Giuseppe Filianoti as Ruggero and Inva Mula as Magda in their Act III retreat on the Riviera Photo: M N Robert

If Jean-Pierre Brossmann is a religious man, he must be praying that his final season as director-general of the Théâtre du Châtelet goes better than this one. The bad omens began more than a year ago when subscribers received a letter announcing that Roberto Alagna was being replaced in the July 2005 run of Puccini’s La rondine because artist and theater had not been able to reach agreement over broadcast and DVD rights. Things augured better once the season got under way - until the Radio France strike reduced Hans Werner Henze’s The Bassarids to a chamber work, and illnesses sidelined Christoph von Dohnányi for the run of Arabella and Barbara Bonney for one performance.

Still, the return of the Théâtre du Capitole for the season-closing Festival des Régions promised to redeem all. The festival, a Brossmann innovation showcasing top productions by the best houses of the French provinces, had last welcomed the Toulouse company in 2000 for Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet and Gustave Charpentier’s Louise. This time the Toulousains were bringing not only a new staging of Luigi Cherubini’s Medea starring the très hot Anna Caterina Antonnaci, but also the production of La rondine, by the Capitole’s own Nicolas Joel, in which Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu had made a splash at Covent Garden.

Medea at the Châtelet: Giorgio Giuseppini as Creonte and Anna Caterina Antonacci as Medea Photo: M N Robert

On the other hand, half of the golden couple would be missing this time from La rondine. Furthermore, Patrizia Ciofi and Ildebrando D’Arcangelo had somehow vanished quietly from the originally announced cast list for Medea. Then, practically on the eve of the opening performance of La rondine, La Gheorghiu also went missing. (A French online opera forum immediately posted a photo of Angie and Bob brandishing champagne flutes, with the caption ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’) Another hint of disaster was the rumor that Antonnaci was extremely unhappy about the schedule for Medea, which had two performances separated by only a day. In the end, Gheorghiu never showed, Antonnaci pleaded laryngitis for one of the two reportedly disputed performances and a not terribly good time was had by practically everyone.

Medea, in the Italian translation of Franz Lachner’s entirely sung German adaptation of the French comique-style original, opened the festival. Antonnaci, to give her the benefit of the doubt (and certainly, unlike some divas we could mention, she does not have a reputation for capriciousness), was reported as apparently having some vocal trouble by the second performance. In any event, those of us who arrived two days later for the third were dismayed but not completely surprised to be handed a sheet of paper at the door announcing that Mlle Antonnaci was ill and that she would mime the action while a little-known Georgian soprano named Irene Ratiani, who had flown in just hours before, sang the role.

What was a surprise was that the Châtelet was offering to give us our money back if we wanted to skip the show. It’s hardly unknown for an ailing star to walk through complex blocking while someone else sings – Bonney and her onetime understudy Jeni Bern pulled off the trick in the same house in April, to acceptable effect, and no one offered to let us back out then. Thus, the unusual reimbursement option should perhaps have been a tip-off. But there’s always just a chance, in such cases, of getting to sit in on a 42nd Street night – you know, where the kid goes out there a nobody and ends up a star. Who could resist?

Medea: Sara Mingardo as Neris comforts Anna Caterina Antonacci as Medea Photo: M N Robert

Alas for the gutsy but ill-advised Irene Ratiani, and for us, it was not one of those nights. This young woman (some reports gave her age as 25, others a more likely 35) had indeed apparently sung Medea at some point, but one would not have known it. Despite being accompanied by a coach and glued to her score, she was simply not in sufficient command of the notes to sing the part. Possessed of a big voice with an old-fashioned vibrato, she could conceivably do Medea justice someday, but that night’s performance was excruciating. During two interminable intermissions (during which, presumably, she was boning up on the next act) many hopeful comments could be heard about the intrinsic quality of her singing. One can only wish her well.

Yannis Kokkos’s funereal decors and costumes and non-directed staging were frankly no help. True, Medea’s electric-blue gown was striking, as were the Argo set of the first act and the temple of Act III, but the color of the evening was boring black, the gold highlights looked a tad cheap and the chorus costumes and wigs were a pure rip-off of Losey’s Don Giovanni. Nor, with the outstanding exception of Sara Mingardo as Neris, did the singing save the day. Giuseppe Gipali’s generic tenor made a cipher of Giasone, Annamaria dell’Oste’s Glauce was on the shrill side and Giorgio Giuseppini had trouble keeping his woolly sounding bass in tune. Evelino Pido, directing the Capitole orchestra, got off to a good start with the lovely overture, but the stress of trying to follow the increasingly uncertain Ratiani and keep the violins playing together and in key proved too much for practically everyone in the pit, by the sound of it.

Aside from Mingardo’s superb singing, virtually the only highlight of the evening was Brossmann’s pre-curtain comment. After thanking Ratiani for flying in from her home in Italy, he noted that there had been many complaints about the continued absence of the other show’s star attraction. That, he said, was not his fault and anyone who was upset should take it up with Mme Gheorghiu directly, a remark greeted with bitter laughter and ironic applause.

La rondine at the Châtelet: Inva Mula as Magda de Civry, waxing nostalgic in Act I Photo: M N Robert

He made a similar but rather milder crack on the opening night of La rondine after praising the professionalism of Albanian soprano Inva Mula, who starred in Toulouse as Magda de Civry in March and who interrupted her rehearsals for Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Chorégies d’Orange to save the day in Paris. The harsher tone of his comment at Medea was undoubtedly occasioned by the Romanian diva’s continued absence. Mula and American soprano Katie Van Kooten, who covered the role at Covent Garden, ended up doing the whole four-performance run. On opening night, Mula seemed both tired and nervous, and was not at her best vocally, but her return for the last performance was very warmly received.

Much hyped as the announced replacement for Alagna as Ruggero Lastouc, the young Italian tenor Giuseppe Filianoti was an attractive actor and impressive singer, but unfortunately (for him, if not for us) was rather outshone by Romanian tenor Marius Brenciu as Prunier. Brenciu was partnered with Annamaria dell’Oste, clearly more at ease in the soubrette role of Lisette than in the Cherubini, and they came close to stealing the show, though they had some competition from Ezio Frigerio’s massively pretty 1920s sets. Marco Armiliato and the Capitole orchestra acquitted themselves well even if the score does often tend to sound like a Puccini parody.

La rondine: Inva Mula as Magda bids a tearful farewell to Giuseppe Filianoti as Ruggero Photo: M N Robert

© Rebecca Brite, 14 August 2005 

Rebecca Brite moved to Paris in 1980 as a copy editor for the International Herald Tribune. A native of the American Midwest, she attended her first operas as a teenager in Omaha, Nebraska. Since 1990 she has worked as a freelance editor, writer and occasional tour guide in Paris. Her professional and personal interests include environmental and energy issues, travel and tourism, American traditional music, opera, cinema, and the history of Paris. She divides her affections between an Englishman and two Russian Blue cats.

See other letters in the Archives.