Grand Théâtre de Provence
Renata – Aušrine Stundytė
Ruprecht – Scott HendricksSorceress, Mother Superior – Agnieszka Rehlis
Mephistopheles, Agrippa of Nettesheim – Andreï Popov
Faust, Heinrich, Inquisitor – Krzysztof Bączyk
Jakob Glock, Doctor – Pavlo Tolstoy
Mathias Wissmann, Host, Porter – Łukasz Goliński
Hostess – Bernadetta Grabas
First Young Woman – Bożena Bujnicka
Second Young Woman – Maria Stasiak
Mariusz Treliński (director)
Boris Kudlička (set designs)Kaspar Glarner (costumes)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Bartek Macias (video)
Tomasz Jan Wygoda (movement)
Małgorƶata Sikorska-Misƶcƶuk (dramaturgy)
Dancers
Chorus of the Polish National Opera (chorus master: Miroslaw Janowski)
Orchestre de Paris
Kazushi Ono (conductor)
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| Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2018 © Pascal Victor / artcompress |
The footballing World Cup final
made it unusually challenging to walk between the Théâtre
du Jeu de Paume and the Grand Théâtre de Provence in time for my last Aix
performance this year. Various thoroughfares were blocked as crowds gathered to
watch the proceedings on screens across the city. Still, tired, overheated, and
at times deafened by the noise of car horns, my friend and I made it, the
journey definitely worth the struggle for this Fiery Angel. Mariusz Treliński did what he seems to do best: a
‘modernised’ yet essentially straightforward production, Boris Kudlička’s often
spectacular set designs, Kaspar Glarner’s costumes, and Felice Ross’s lighting
very much an integral part of that. Generally excellent vocal and stage
performances offered much to enjoy and to provoke too.
Probably Prokofiev’s greatest
opera, The Fiery Angel is, almost
incredibly, based on a true story, that of Nina Petrovskaya, as told in Valery
Bryusov’s Symbolist roman à clef. And
yet, on the other hand, one might say it would have to be, for who on earth
could invent so bizarre and seemingly incoherent a tale of demonic possession?
Bryusov, again, one might say, for the tale is also invention, purporting to be
a translation of a sixteenth-century manuscript, glorying in the excessive
title, The
Fiery Angel; or, a True Story in which is related of the Devil, not once but
often appearing in the Image of a Spirit of Light to a Maiden and seducing her
to Various and Many Sinful Deeds, of Ungodly Practices of Magic, Alchemy,
Astrology, the Cabalistical Sciences and Necromancy, of the Trial of the Said
Maiden under the Presidency of His Eminence the Archbishop of Trier, as well as
of Encounters and Discourses with the Knight and thrice Doctor Agrippa of
Nettesheim, and with Doctor Faustus, composed by an Eyewitness (translation, Richard Taruskin). Treliński
captures that dichotomy well in some ways, less well in others. Perhaps,
however, that will be the fate of any attempt to manage this unmanageable work,
all the more so when it assumes operatic form.
His method is very much to emphasise
realism until he can do no other, and to explain away or, perhaps better,
account for some of the most surreal aspects, again until he can really do no
other. Renata, then, is a very sad case already: a product of disadvantage of
abuse, whose hallucinations, like those of many in the society around here,
seem very much to be the product of narcotic substances. The charlatanry of the
incomprehensible – to me, anyway – figure of Agrippa of Nettesheim is clear; or
is it? How much are his multiple appearances, both to Renata and to the
well-meaning if lustful Ruprecht, entirely the doing of a trip induced by their
dealer, Jakob Glock? That we cannot entirely make sense of what is going on
seems to me all to the good. Hallucinatory (we think) appearances of characters
on all three levels of the set are far too much for any of us to take in at one
setting: they are frighteningly real and yet at the same time clearly not at
all real. Or some of them are, and some of them are not; we never really know. Yet
is this perhaps not what might have been going on all along in the ‘original
manuscript’? There is an oddly prevalent modern belief that drugs, their use
and abuse, are somehow something new. Extreme, erotic ‘religious’ experiences
and such causes, are anything but new, however. One only has to think of the
visions of saints – who so very often had also been the basest of sinners. And
so, the updating to a tawdry, flashy modern world of design hotels, sex shops,
and gurus, is both true and untrue to the work – which, I think, is probably
how it should be. One may make something of the knock-down Vegas walk-on parts
or not, just as one might or might not in ‘real’ or ‘hallucinogenic’ life (or
death).
Doublings are put, as if in Lulu, to excellent dramatic and not
merely practical use. (If one wants ‘practical’, one might be better off opting
for another opera.) Jakob Glock is also the Doctor; we think, perhaps, they are
narcotic accomplices. Perhaps indeed they are, for are we quite sure that one
is not an ‘actor’ – whatever that might mean in this context – and one is not?
Mephistopheles and Agrippa of Nettesheim are one and the same – perhaps. Quite
what we are to make of the scene in which Mephistopheles and Faust appear is in
any case anyone’s guess. Perhaps most
tellingly, Heinrich, the object of Renata’s fixation is also not only Faust but
the final act’s Inquisitor. There is something not only of the charlatan but,
chillingly, the blind Jimmy Savile (!) to him too. Not for nothing do further visions
– Renata’s, presumably, but who knows? – hark back to childhood, to gymnastic
exercises, to an army of little Renatas in preparation for – well, preparation
presumably for this. The notorious concluding convent orgy both does and does
not happen. Is it all in her imagination, and is she now in hospital? Those
expecting the acrobatic experiences of David Freeman’s celebrated Mariinsky
production will be disappointed, which seems in part to be the point, but
perhaps also intrigued, even moved to reflect. We do not always see and
experience what we want to, however potent the drug, the magic, the God.
Prokofiev places Renata very
much at the centre of the work: too much, some have said. Taruskin refers to ‘one of the reasons for the opera’s
continued neglect’ beingf its unusual fixation on a single very difficult – and
dramatically static – role,’ a state of affairs Prokofiev may well have
rectified had he proceeded with his intended 1930 revision. I am less convinced
that it is a problem, although lessening – I should not go so far as to say
removal – of the novel’s autobiographical focus on Ruprecht certainly has its
consequences. Whatever one thinks about the undoubted domination of the opera
by the soprano in the abstract, it was surely vindicated in performance by the
magnificent Aušrine Stundytė: obsessive, hysterical, and alarming, yes,
but also vulnerable, human, and above all capable of expending an extraordinary
range of colour, emotion, and dynamic contrast. Scott Hendricks’s Ruprecht had
its moments, but he seemed less comfortable in the role. (Not that comfort is
really the thing, here, I suppose.) ‘Weak’ roles are a difficult thing, of
course; ask any Don Ottavio. However, I could not help think that he might have
projected his own dilemma more strongly in musical terms. His Russian also
seemed to me – this was confirmed by a friend who actually knew! – often quite
indistinct. Otherwise, the host of bizarre characters came and went, starring
as and when they could, almost all of them making strong impressions in their
weird and wonderful ways. Andreï Popov, Pavlo Tolstoy, and Bernadetta Grabas,
were perhaps first among equals here, but in such an ensemble piece, in such an
ensemble performance, the whole proved considerably greater than the sum of its
parts.
The other slight disappointment
lay in Kazushi Ono’s direction of the Orchestre de Paris, especially earlier
on. This was a fluent enough reading, which achievement deserves praise in
itself, but a lack of bite in the first two acts in particular was often
noticeable. Perhaps it was a reluctance to overpower the singers: surely a
misguided reluctance in an opera such as this, in which so much is a manic
struggle that may or may not ultimately make sense. The Polish National Opera
Chorus sang splendidly, however, full of heft and far from without subtlety –
except, of course, where subtlety is the last thing one wants to see or hear.
Which, in this work…
