Szűcs/BPO/Altinoglu - Ravel, Bartók, Debussy, and Roussel, 21 September 2017

Philharmonie

 

Ravel: Rapsodie espagnole

Bartók: Viola Concerto, op.post. Sz 120 (first European performance of new completion by Csaba Erdélyi)
Debussy, arr. Alain Altinoglu: Pelléas et Mélisande: Suite (world premiere)
Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane, op.43: Orchestral Suite no.2


Máté Szűcs (viola)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Alain Altinoglu (conductor)

 

The Berlin Philharmonic’s prowess in French, or indeed in any other, music should not remotely surprise us. They have a long history together: Rattle, Abbado, Karaja, not to mention guest conductors, foremost amongst whom must surely be Boulez… Even Furtwängler conducted Ravel with them, although, as one of his greatest admirers, even I should have to admit that his recorded performance of the Rapsodie espagnole would perhaps never be a first choice. (Listen to it, though: you will hear things you have never heard before. I have just done so, and found myself liking it far more than I ever had done before.) Alain Altinoglu, in his highly successful debut with the orchestra, proved far closer to what we conventionally expect from Ravel, without that indicating anything remotely routine. Excellent preparation and technique liberate the imagination – and so it was here. What struck me immediately, however unsurprisingly, was the exquisite character to the Berlin sound and then, soon after, the seemingly infinite number of gradations to it, whether in dynamic contrasts or timbre. Balances were throughout perfectly judged, as were woodwind solos, Andreas Ottensamer’s clarinet alluringly slinky. Altoinoglu proved himself quite the master in building suspense, not least in always giving the impression of something being held in check, La Valse just around the corner. There was languor, yes, splendidly so in the closing ‘Feria’, but even then it was controlled, just like Ravel’s abandon, if one may call it that. A magnificent performance.

 

Máté Szűcs joined the orchestra for Bartók’s Viola Concerto, neither in the familiar reconstruction by Tibor Serly, nor in the subsequent edition from Peter Bartók and Paul Neubauer, but in a new version from violist Csaba Erdélyi (2004, revised 2016), here receiving its European premiere. I am not sure that I could tell you much about the differences; it is a long time since I have listened to earlier versions, for it is not, alas, my favourite Bartók work. I had a sense that there was, perhaps, more of an overt effort, really quite successful, to bring the orchestration into line with that of other late Bartók works, above all the Third Piano Concerto. What I can say, although I was still not entirely won over by the work ‘itself’, is that Szűcs, first principal viola in the orchestra, gave an impeccable performance, leaving me want to hear him again soon. (Interestingly, I shall shortly hear Amihai Grosz, also first principal first viola, in the Walton Concerto, under Simon Rattle.) His tone and projection were such as to cut through the orchestral writing – that is partly a matter of the scoring, of course, but only partly – at whatever dynamic level he chose. Clarity and security of line were never sacrificed to ‘atmosphere’; they were sides of the same coin. The passage in harmonics had almost to be heard to be believed. Twilight sections, be they solo, orchestral, or both, made their full impact. And there was a fine impression of the rhapsodic, in the best sense (just as in Ravel). Bach’s D minor Sarabande made for a splendid encore, and an intriguing comparison with Christian Tetzlaff on violin in the same hall a few nights previously.

 

Altinoglu conducted the new production of Pelléas et Mélisande inVienna earlier this year. He now offered the first performance of his own single-movement orchestral suite. Previous attempts I have heard to forge something coherent out of the score in purely orchestral terms have never quite seemed to come off; this, I am delighted to say, did. There was, perhaps, one transition that sounded slightly awkward, but even then only slightly. This offered, needless to say, a very different form of, or approach to, ‘rhapsodising’ from Ravel or Debussy. Altinoglu, however, showed himself equally adept at the art of dark anticipation here, not least as we moved towards that fateful well (quite early on). The influence of Parsifal, sometimes bordering on rather more than mere influence, spoke for itself. Indeed, one especially welcome feature of the performance was the way that deep string tone ‘spoke’ without words: post-Wagner, of course, but also, perhaps, with a nod to earlier accompagnato writing. Altinoglu’s selections were intelligent, having one convinced that one passage had ‘naturally’ led to another, even when it must actually have required a great deal of thought to contrive that impression. Off-stage bells at the close were both musically and dramatically apt. (I was interested to note, by the way, that the Berlin Philharmonic’s first performance of the work had been with Rattle, in Salzburg, in 2006. It seems that Karajan, although he recorded it with the orchestra, never performed it in concert with them. In the course of a little research, I discovered, however, that, in addition to performances in Vienna in 1962, Karajan also conducted the work with the RAI Orchestra in 1954, with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Ernst Haefliger.)

 

Finally, we heard Roussel’s second suite, again in a single movement, from his opera, Bacchus et Ariane. The opening viola solo (Naoko Shimizu: what strength the orchestra has here!) perhaps offered a connection with Bartók, but difference was more striking. One might, I suppose, have placed Roussel somewhere between Debussy and Ravel, but that would have raised more questions than it answered; this was music, rightly, relished in itself. Again, the way it ‘spoke’ without words was remarkable. Altinoglu handled transformations of metre and mood with great skill. The orchestra performed with an idiomatic command and security worthy of a ‘repertoire’ piece. There was no doubting the thrill experienced by much of the audience at the suite’s bacchanalic close

 

Pelléas et Mélisande, Vienna State Opera, 18 June 2017

Vienna State Opera

Images: Wiener Staatsoper  / Michael Pöhn
Golaud (Simon Keenlyside)

Arkel – Franz-Josef Selig

Geneviève – Bernarda Fink

Pelléas – Adrian Eröd

Golaud – Simon Keenlyside

Mélisande – Olga Bezsmertna

Yniold – Maria Nazarova

Doctor – Marcus Pelz

Pelléas’s father – Andreas Bettinger

Marco Arturo Marelli (director, set designs, lighting)
Dagmar Niefind (costumes)

Silke Bauer (assistant set designer)

Anna-Sophie Lienbacher (assistant costume designer)

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Schebesta)

Vienna State Opera Orchestra

Alain Altinoglu (conductor)

Debussy is like Gluck. No, of course he is not; he would have been mortally offended had you told him so. Indeed, Debussy regarded Gluck as having been responsible for killing off Ramellian opera, delivering a lethal injection of Teutonic poison to a flourishing genre. What does not kill you makes you stronger, of course, as Debussy himself would, on a good day, have attested concerning Wagner at least – and certainly in Pelléas et Mélisande. But to return to Debussy and Gluck, their operas do, it seems to me, have something very important in common, or at least their reception does. Pelléas and Gluck’s reform operas are esteemed by all those who take opera seriously as drama, and disdained or simply ignored by many for whom opera means something else. Their admittedly very different aesthetics are quite clear, moreover, that playing to the gallery is the last thing in which musical drama should be engaging. True, there are occasional hangovers in Gluck, although they should not be exaggerated, but there is not a single case, not one single case, in Debussy’s sole completed opera.

Golaud and Yniold 

Moreover, what Debussy said, in his article, ‘Pourquoi j’ai écrit Pelléas,’ could be taken, with a little adjustment, for what Gluck in his great reforming works was trying to do (even if, yes, we know the Preface to Alceste was written by his librettist, Calzabigi). Debussy explicitly praised the symbolism of Maeterlinck’s play, which might seem to be – and indeed is – a very different thing, but, ‘despite its dream-like atmosphere’, he was drawn to it because it ‘contains far more humanity than those so-called “real-life documents”. Like Wagner, a mediating influence between the two in certain ways, myth was the thing. And somewhat like Wagner, if not so much like Gluck, Debussy thrived on ‘an evocative language whose sensitivity could be extended into music and into the décor orchestral’. Those of us who love it shake our heads in bafflement at its neglect. Perhaps, though, just perhaps, there is something to be said for every performance remaining a special event – just as with, say, Iphigénie en Tauride. If an opera made it on to the list of works Boulez conducted it is, after all, an unquestionable sign of quality.

 

Mélisande (Olga Bezsmertna) and Pelléas (Adrian Eröd)

Is, then, this new production from the Vienna State Opera able to live up to such expectations? (I shall pass over less quickly than I probably should a tired and emotional British tourist I overheard during the interval, boasting of having fallen asleep in such a ‘boring’ opera. ‘Can’t they just get it on?’) Musically, yes, and the production did not do too badly either; I have certainly seen much worse. (I shudder to recall the most recent, which is not to say very recent at all, production Covent Garden brought in.) Marco Arturo Marelli’s staging makes an effort, is clearly the result of consideration concerning the drama and what is going on, or what we might think is going on. If I am not entirely convinced that everything coheres, if I think that perhaps a stronger single, even if partial, line might have worked better, there is enough to make one think – and, yes, feel.

Arkel (Franz-Josef Selig)
and Geneviève (Bernarda Fink)

In what seems to me a relatively bold move, more unusual than you might think, there is a general sense of Ibsen, of bourgeois drama: not just the costumes, but the internalised, familial – and extra-familial – claustrophobia. It is not, perhaps, how one initially thinks of, or feels, the work, but it is an interesting standpoint that certainly has things to tell us. Pelléas’s father is seen on stage, initially in bed, but actually becoming more of a real dramatic character when his illness lifts. When Arkel has Mélisande kiss him, the other old man joins them, and there is something discomfitingly paedophiliac to the whole, strange episode. Whether it quite fits with the rest of what we see and hear is another matter; the attribution of darker desires to Arkel, at least in that particular case, is becoming a little clichéd by now. An important, indeed the important, focal point to much of the action is a boat. Not only do Pelléas and Mélisande go sailing in it, Mélisande lies in it when she sings her extraordinary song; it becomes the ladder Yniold climbs; Golaud hurls it away in jealous anger; and, in the strange ending, Mélisande sails away in it with womenfolk seemingly transformed from servants into spirits. Again, the almost Lohengrin­-like (although not in gender!) conclusion intrigues, and offers an important contrast with the important stage roles played earlier by Golaud’s henchmen, who clearly threaten Pelléas during their walk. But the bright skied conclusion sits a bit oddly, again, with the rest. Is it just death? If so, would it not, especially in this context, be better just to leave it as death? Marelli’s staging is at least having one ask such questions, although I found the 2015 Munich production from Christiane Pohle – universally and, to my mind, quite bafflingly condemned – a stronger, more coherent treatment, hauntingly provocative in its Beckettian inheritance.

Perhaps, however, I am wrong, for, in an interesting programme interview, conductor Alain Antinoglu, having acknowledged – and how could one not? – the darkness in the piece, describes the story as a ‘path from darkness to light’. Perhaps. I suppose there is something to be said for that musically, and Altinoglu certainly imparted a Lohengrin-without-the-tragedy sense to the conclusion. More importantly, he judged the ebb and flow, the colours and the shadows, very well indeed. Those raw Wagnerian moments made their Tristanesque and Parsifalian points, not only musically, but the phrases, the paragraphs, and indeed the nature of the musical language quite rightly developed differently too. The playing drawn from the Vienna State Opera Orchestra (the Vienna Philharmonic in all but name) was quite outstanding, colours shifting as imperceptibly as the ebb, the non-ebb, the flow and the non-flow, of the drama – and non-drama.

 

Arkel, Geneviève, Golaud, and Pelléas's father
(Andreas Bettinger)

With no disrespect intended to the rest of the cast, a particular cause of interest here lay in Simon Keenlyside’s transition from Pelléas to Golaud. He managed it as expertly as you might imagine – if anything more so. The jealousy, the vulnerability, the flawed masculinity, and the way with both the French language and the specific quality of Debussy’s lines: all were there, as if he had been performing the role all his life. Keenlyside is not one, of course, only to concentrate on his own part, so in a sense one might argue that earlier performances had helped prepare him, but this was a splendid achievement by any standards. Adrian Eröd made for a well-contrasted Pelléas: again, clearly flawed, but more mysteriously so. As with all of the cast, the style of vocal delivery was spot on: doubtless testament both to individual artistry and to Altinoglu’s overall control. As Mélisande, Olga Bezsmertna judged the fine balance between wide-eyed ingénue and the merely annoying with great skill, the competing demands of character development and character stasis equally well balanced. I am not sure that I had heard Franz-Josef Selig in French repertoire before; his wise humanity shone through just as clearly, if, appropriately, with a different touch of ambiguity, as if he had been singing Gurnemanz or Sarastro. I often tend to forget how small the role of Geneviève actually is, so important is she to the drama. Bernarda Fink nevertheless shone, in the most un-showy of ways. My preference for a treble Yniold is not ideological, and in practice, it can go horribly wrong. Nevertheless, I find, on stage, a woman impersonating a child like this a bit odd (especially when I have known it done otherwise). Yniold here had a considerably greater, more peculiar role than usual: hyperactive, damaged, and very interestingly, consoling Golaud at the close and preventing him from taking his life. Maria Nazarova did an excellent job at all of that. This is no criticism of her performance as such, but I wish I had not been made to think of Janette Krankie.

Deutsche Oper Strauss-Wochen (1) – Salome, 6 April 2016

Images: Monika Rittershaus
(The Salome pictured is Catherine Naglestad)

 

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Herodes – Thomas Blondelle

Herodias – Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet
Salome – Allison Oakes
Jochanaan – Michael Volle
Narraboth – Attilio Glaser
Page – Annika Schlicht
First Jew – James Kryshak
Second Jew, Slave – Gideon Poppe
Third Jew – Andrew Dickinson
Fourth Jew – Clemens Bieber
Fifth Jew – Andrew Harris
First Nazarene – Dong-Hwan Lee
Second Nazarene – Thomas Lehman
First Soldier – Alexei Botnarciuc
Second Soldier – Tobias Kehrer
Cappadocian – Michael Adams
Salome as child – Alix Heyblom, Elisabeth Johanssen, Laura Meyer, Leonie Schöning, Maria Schulz, Katharina von Stackelberg
Dancers/Dummies – Uri Burger, Floris Dahlgrün, Alexander Fend, Nikos Fragkou, Oren Lazovski

Claus Guth (director)

William Robertson (revival director)
Muriel Gerstner (designs)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Sommer Ulrickson (choreography)
Yvonne Gebauer, Curt A Roester (dramaturgy)

Statisterie and Male Dancers from the Deutsche Oper

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Alain Altonoglu (conductor)

 

Five consecutive nights of Richard Strauss: how could anyone resist? Plenty of opera-goers would have little hesitation, and not just those for whom Donizetti and Verdi are the height of musical sophistication. Strauss, as I have discussed in one of the chapters of my book, After Wagner, remains an object of distrust for many. Their problems often seem to be moral, or at least to be couched in moral terms; perhaps Strauss has turned out to be the Nietzschean Anti-Christ after all. (Had Strauss called his Alpine Symphony, as was his early intention, The Antichrist, it and we might have been saved a great deal of spectacularly uninformed sniping.) We shall see; perhaps more to the point, we shall also hear. Will this prove too much of a good, a bad, or even an evil thing? I doubt it, but perhaps I am already a lost cause. At any rate, the Deutsche Oper’s Strauss festival offers an extraordinary opportunity, for which I nobly put myself forward as moral-æsthetic guinea pig.

Schoenberg accused – at least he had good reason to feel personally affronted – that Strauss’s was the art of a Marzipanmeister: ‘Problems arise for him and are solved by him in the same way: he misunderstands them. But it cannot be disputed that he has dealt with them: he has hidden them under a coating of sugar icing ... This is not the way of thinking of a man whom God has given a mission.’ One can well imagine Strauss’s materialist response to that. Stravinsky was, if anything, more hostile still: ‘I would like to admit all Strauss’s operas to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant vulgarity. Their musical substance is cheap and poor; it cannot interest a musician today. That now so ascendant Ariadne … makes me want to scream.’ Well, scream away, Igor – although perhaps not this week, in which Ariadne auf Naxos, which surely stole from your neo-Classical future, will not appear. However, Salome, Elektra, Die ägyptische Helena, Die Liebe der Danae, and Der Rosenkavalier will.



Artists include: Thomas Lehman, Tobias Kehrer, Noel Bouley, Jörg Schörner

 

Claus Guth’s Salome, first seen here in January, sets the bar high for what is to follow. It offered a splendid follow-up, perhaps less profound (but is not the work itself?) but even more chilling than Dmitri Tcherniakov’s outstanding Parsifal for the Staatsoper. Childhood horrors loom large, obscuring, perhaps even obliterating, the boundaries between ‘then’ and ‘now’; memory and above all trauma are like that. Can we ever recover? Do we even really want to? And what are our coping strategies? Do some of us, perhaps as self-proclaimed æstheticists or, worse, protectors of the artwork (c.f. the Donald Trump-like ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’, or its provisional wing, ‘Gegen Regietheater in der Oper’), try to take refuge in the very thing that should be challenging us, waking us up, and leading us to confrontation, even catharsis?

 

If opera is, to you, ‘about’ pretty frocks, then you might be out of luck here; but salvation of sorts it at hand, for there are some handsome suits and sportcoats instead; indeed, clothes rails are full of them. Indeed, dressing up – attempting, like AMOP to avoid the questions, or to misunderstand, to smother them, as Schoenberg accused Strauss of doing – is thrust to the forefront of Guth’s staging, once the lights have been switched on, Olaf Freese’s lighting very much at the heart of the drama and its (would-be) turning-points. However, we must first travel the road to the superior (deceptively so?) gentleman’s outfitter – wonderful designs by Muriel Gerstner! – in which  stylish ‘solutions’ will be no problem, though likewise no solution.

Jochanaan (Michael Volle) and Salome

 

For the first scene has been dark, grim, at times in a weirdly twilit state of suspended animation; it has been far from clear who the actors in this drama even are, or might be held to be. Salome tours the set – her mind, or something more? – in agitation but, at times, in the pleasure that might, uncomfortably for all of us, especially as audience-voyeurs, accompany such agitation. The table at which she has sat – will sit? still sits? should sit? wishes to sit? – with her parents is at the centre. Does she wish to relive or to pre-empt what will happen there later? It is unclear, as our recollections often are. Shop dummies haunt her. Or are they ‘real’ people, acting as dummies? Who is operating them? How can they be stopped? Should they be stopped? We only really begin to make sense of this – we cannot, just as the opera says we should not, see Jochanaan for quite some time – once the lights have been switched on; or do we just delude ourselves that we make sense of it? For much of what happened there happens again, albeit in a shrine to fashionable consumption, Herodias making the most of the readily available alcohol. Might you not too, in such circumstances?

The child versions Salome has seen of herself earlier come into play most starkly for the Dance of the Seven Veils. There are six of them, seven including her, and they are the playthings, the instantiations of trauma. There is no need for titillating nudity (although not in the sense that our ‘conservative’ friends would understand); whatever has happened and is continuing to happen is genuinely shocking. Should Werktreue fanatics complain that they have been denied the opportunity to play Herod? Over to them. Salome tears the head off Jochanaan herself. But he had somehow become a dummy in the meantime. Was he always? What was it she really wanted from him. An answer is perhaps suggested by the similarities, physical as well as dramatic, between our prophet and the Tetrarch, productively rather than negligently at odds with the differences in soundworld. (Strauss simply could not ‘do’ religion, which, given his materialist credo, does him a certain degree of credit. Or does it?)

 

The return to darkness is most traumatic of all. Like many a victim, we feel, indeed we are, disoriented. Yet we have the additional guilt of that aforementioned voyeurism. Is Strauss’s sensationalism being given especially disconcerting musico-dramatic form? Julius Korngold wrote of the composer: ‘The Germans want a priest, someone who will champion an art with deep intentions. Strauss is driven by the ego sensibility of the modern artist, who wants above all to serve himself and his sensations.’ Is he right? If so, is that a problem? Herod orders Salome dead, but nothing happens; or does it. Her child form begins again; or does she? Have we returned to childhood, or never left it? We do not seem to have ‘moved on’.

Such a reaction certainly seemed to be suggested by those dreadful closing chords. For whilst I had sometimes been a little unsure about aspects of Alain Altinoglu’s conducting, I was not here. The deadness, the modern(ist) materialism, at least as shocking as that of the conclusion to Elektra, registered as powerfully and yet as dully (in a positive sense) as I have heard. It was at such moments of modernist crisis, quite in keeping with the staging, that not only Altinoglu’s fastidiousness but also his ear for marriage between timbre and harmony registered with great musico-dramatic import. I have heard performances of Salome which have danced more freely, and to start with I found that more of a problem. As time went on, I began to suspect that I was relying too much upon my own memories, false or otherwise; a performance today of Salome, in this particular production, need not, perhaps even should not, sound like the Salome of Böhm or Karajan. There was certainly no gainsaying the quality of the performance from the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, whose colours phantasmagorically shifted as the harmonies ground – and ground us down. (Or should that have been vice versa?)



Herodias (Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet) and Salome

 

Catherine Naglestad had been due to sing the title role. Her replacement, Allison Oakes, proved an outstanding replacement. I had not come across her previously, but certainly hope that I shall do so again. Hers was a tireless, unceasingly rewarding performance, vocally and ‘dramatically’, insofar as the two may be distinguished. Her lyricism called into question her trauma and yet justified it; in this case, there is no doubt as to the necessity of the vice versa. Herodes is a larger role than I tend to remember. (What was that about faulty remembrance?) Thomas Blondelle offered a detailed, disturbing portrayal: far better sung than one often hears, yet just as heedful of dramatic requirements. Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet was a splendid grande dame Herodias; elements of caricature are surely justified, indeed written in. She was a monster and proud of it. Michael Volle's Jochanaan, suave, brutal, thoughtful, by turns and sometimes simultaneously, was just the thing for this production. Attilio Glaser’s sweetly sung, sincere, hopelessly lovelorn Narraboth left one wanting more. But more, of course, was not his fate on this night.

Above all, though, this felt like a strong company achievement; those singing smaller roles, those engaging as dancers and as ‘extras’, as much part of the dreadful events as the rest of us, whether on stage or in the audience. With trepidation, I should like to see this again, to try once again to make sense of what I might see, hear, and remember.

 

Iolanta/The Nutcracker, Opéra National de Paris, 11 March 2016

 

Images: © Agathe Poupeney / OnP

 

Palais Garnier

 

King René – Alexander Tsambalyuk

Iolanta – Sonya Yoncheva
Vaudémont – Arnold Rutkowski
Robert – Andrei Jilikovschi
Ibn-Hakia – Vito Priante
Alméric – Roman Shulakov
Bertrand – Gennady Bezzubenkov
Martha – Elena Zaremba
Brigitta – Anna Patalong
Laura – Paola Gardina

Marie – Marion Barbeau

Vaudémont – Stéphane Bullion
Drosselmeyer – Nicolas Paul
Father – Aurélien Houette
Mother – Alice Renavand
Robert – Takeru Coste
Sister – Caroline Bance

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, set designs)

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Edouard Lock, Arthur Pita (choreography)
Elena Zaitseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Andrey Zelenin (video)

Chorus and Children's Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris (chorus master: Alessandro Di Stefano)

Dancers of the Opéra National de Paris

Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine

Alain Altinoglu (conductor)

 

The spirit of Gerard Mortier seems truly renewed at the Paris Opéra under Stéphane Lissner: not restored, for, times having changed, such an attempt would be meaningless, but renewed. Mortier’s intendancy was not perfect, of course; far from it. Any artistic endeavour that takes the risks necessary for success will experience failures too, something grim bureaucrats seem incapable of understanding. Nor, I am sure, will Lissner’s be; again, how could it be? However, even on the basis of the two evenings I have experienced so far, this and the great opening declaration of intent, Moses und Aron, the wilderness years of Nicolas Joël now, thank goodness, seem another, almost forgotten era.

If Romeo Castellucci’s Moses, somewhat belying his previous operatic reputation, proved remarkably faithful, in an almost traditional sense, to the work, then Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Tchaikovsky double-bill fuses fidelity and infidelity in what was arguably more daring fashion. The dialectic between the two comes often to the fore. First, one might point to the historical fidelity of pairing the two works. Iolanta was performed before the 1892 premiere of the Nutcracker. Here Tcherniakov combines the works in ways both expected and unexpected; indeed, toying with our expectations, confounding them and yet remaining faithful in some senses to them, might, according to taste, be seen as another principal theme of the evening or, perhaps better, as a manifestation of that previously mentioned. It would not, for instance, take a great deal of thought, save for the hosts of opera-goers unaccustomed to or even hostile to thought, to guess that a girl’s or young woman’s sexual awakening might be at the heart of what we see. And, indeed it is. Iolanta is an opera put on for Clara or, rather, as I learned afterwards upon seeing the programme, ‘Marie’. (Nothing I read in the synopsis went against what I had seen and understood; it confirmed the directness and the complexity of the storytelling and analysis, but was not necessary.) Yet it is not Christmas, as we should have expected and as we seem to have been led to expect. The set remains the same initially, the show having taken place chez Marie, but one thing that disappears is the one thing that has surely pointed to a connection, the Christmas Tree (and indeed, the thing we perhaps most strongly associate with a ‘traditional’ Nutcracker). It is, instead, Marie’s birthday, as a cake with candles makes clear. A birthday is, of course, a rite of passage if ever there were one – and, for many of us, a time to recall past horrors, even to experience new ones, at least as much as to ‘enjoy’ the festivities.

 

 

Iolanta itself takes place relatively ‘traditionally’. We see no sign of mediæval Provence. (Do self-styled ‘protectors of the work’ really know anything about mediæval Provence?) However, we see what, for much of the history of opera, has been something approaching the norm: an opera set in a period and with assumptions comprehensible to its (initial) audience. What has now become one of the most obvious settings for an opera, the time and place, more or less, of composition was long the default before historicism – always a word and idea to cover a multitude of sins – took root, in the nineteenth century. The phrases that perhaps jar – where is the ‘cave’ in this well-to-do drawing room? – seem intended to jar, although who knows? For the most part, we are settled, perhaps a little too settled, in the comfort of a Victorian-age family Christmas. The fun and games at the start, the blind girl led by her nursemaid, Martha, and friends, Brigitta and Laura, provide an image of a life that might seem perfect, unless one looks. Then one sees and hears a room full of love and, as times goes on, a room full of despair, claustrophobia the handmaiden to the well-meaning yet disastrous conspiracy that has denied Iolanta knowledge of her condition. Knowledge, at least since Eden, is necessary, whether we like it or no; and knowledge, together with romantic, indeed sexual love, will be necessary to rescue her. Such is the task of Vaudémont. He knows not who she is; she knows not who he is. His anguish at her plight is real, even shocking. Even when one ‘knows’ the opera, one feels that his reaction to her blindness might lead him to forsake her. He does not, of course, but Tcherniakov’s typically strong, even overwhelming, Personenregie has one believe one is experiencing the story for the first time, as in some sense one is. One cannot step twice into the same stream twice, however ‘traditional’ that stream might look.

The first act ends at the crucial point of lyrical exaltation, self-exaltation and yet discovery in each other: Iolanta and Vaudémont in love, before her cure. It was with this scene that Tchaikovsky actually began work on the opera, underlining its centrality. In a sense, Tcherniakov underlines its centrality by shifting the framework. (It is not in any case, central in terms of placing within the opera; there is not so very long to go in the opera following this climax.) Its resemblance to an Anton Rubinstein song, ‘Longing’ greatly annoyed Rimsky-Korsakov; allusion, though, is surely the thing, given the subject matter. This, at any rate, is the beginning of the breakthrough; regaining her sight is not inevitable at this stage, but it is this which makes that possible. All then happens ‘as it should’.

The Nutcracker then begins part-way through this second act of the evening. Identities shift, dancers replacing lookalike – or dress-alike – singers, or occasionally not. Marie, who has been physically engaging with the characters has begun her awakening too. The love between her and Iolanta, or the actress/singer playing her, seems real, genuine. So, in sexual form, it soon becomes clear, is that between her and her own Vaudémont, the ginger hair so noticeable before the ‘break’ the strongest clue of identity. But the party has its own course to take, some games nastier than others, some reproductions more faithful than others. Tcherniakov’s use of the LP to usher in some ‘hit’ numbers reminds us necessarily of Walter Benjamin’s celebrated – too celebrated? – essay. The guests go away, but they do not. Just when Marie and her lover might finally be together, they return; who is spoiling the fun of whom?

 

 

Then, catastrophe. If sight, the visual beauty of creation, had been won by Vaudémont for Iolanta, we seem now to move backwards. Not to Marie being blind, of course; we do not have that sort of banal symmetry, which would make no sense in this context. But the moment of shock is replicated; and what is more explosive than what must come next? The festivities disappear – just as they would have done in The Nutcracker ‘itself’ – but we find ourselves in a more desolate landscape. Nuclear winter? Figuratively, at least. Snow falls, yes, but there seems little hope, at least until Marie finds her way in this new world. (Remember Brünnhilde’s trauma at loss of her divinity? Remember her fear at the prospect of losing her virginity, let alone the consequences in Götterdämmerung?) Multiple Maries, multiple Vaudémonts, multiple other characters, familiar or not from ‘before’, have their choreographed couplings, some briefer than other, learning (perhaps) as they go on. Monstrous toys – think of how we, as ‘adults’, often consider ‘toys’ – play their part, just as they did in ‘the original’; yet all is new, strange. When Marie returns ‘home’ – it has been a dream, a fantasy, or something like that, yet which is which? – she knows she will never be the same again. So do we. Tcherniakov’s whirlwind, literal as well as metaphorical, has changed her and, in many of our cases, changed us.

 

I have never seen ballet treated so seriously, so convincingly, as a dramatic art form, and again, what could be more faithful to Tchaikovsky, adamant that the genre was anything but a mere divertissement? The land of Lully, Rameau, and Gluck (well, sort of the land of Lully and Gluck!), the land of Béjart, the lands of the Ballet Russes do both genres proud and create something both old and new (but enough of Die Meistersinger until my next review). Choreography, from Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Edouard Lock, Arthur Pita does not stand out as a ‘thing in itself’, as so often in opera-ballet collaborations (when we have them at all). Nor does dance itself. The excellent dancers contribute as much as the excellent singers; I shall forego detailed consideration only on account of my lack of expertise. Suffice it to say, I was at least as captivated by Marion Barbeau and Stéphane Bullion, and not only in their pas de deux but throughout, as by Sonya Yoncheva and Arnold Rutkowski. Indeed, given the placing in the dramatic hierarchy of the two works, I was perhaps still more so, without that denoting a judgement upon performances as such. Yoncheva’s Iolanta was heartfelt, and made us, or at least me, feel with her. This was a lovable character, one felt, and a good deal of the drama, so carefully directed by Tcherniakov, flowed from that. The sincerity of Rutkowski was equally palpable. There was no weak singing, even where Tchaikovsky’s score sags in inspiration (as it surely does from time to time). Everyone played his or her part and played it well.

 

If there were times during the opera when I wondered whether Alain Altinoglu’s conducting, always sure of purpose, were just a little too refined, that was, on reflection, a foolish criticism. What is one supposed to do? Unconvincingly imitate the rough-and-readiness of a (doubtless ill-remembered) old Bolshoi recording? What we saw and heard disabused us of such notions. There was in any case no gainsaying the excellence of the orchestral playing in every section; this is surely one of the world’s greatest opera house orchestras and deserves its praises to be sung as such. Moreover, Altinoglu’s long-term strategy, just like Tcherniakov’s truly came into its own in the second work; Tchaikovsky is, almost of all composers, not one to be too comfortably enjoyed, lest what really matters about his music, what it can say to us now, recede from our view and our hearing. One can perhaps exaggerate the score’s proto-modernism, just as one can exaggerate Stravinsky’s closeness to Tchaikovsky. (Was there ever a slyer composer when it came to influences, to throwing one off the track, perhaps even to throwing himself off the track?) But there are, I think, undeniable neo-Classical elements and tendencies, especially in a particular sort of performance. There were times, actually, when I thought more of Busoni’s ‘Young Classicism’, of his Arlecchino and Turandot, as well as Strauss’s Ariadne – and certainly not just on account of its metatheatricality. That may speak more of my own concerns than those of the staging or musical performance ‘as such’ but again, that speaks of the welcome openness of both. The slipperiness of the work-concept served, visually and aurally, to reinforce our admiration for the works we heard.

 

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (4) - Orphée aux enfers, 9 July 2009

(Images copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Eurydice – Pauline Courtin
Orphée – Julien Behr
Aristée/Pluton – Mathias Vidal
Jupiter – Francis Bouyer
L’Opinion Publique – Marie Gautrot
John Styx – Jérôme Billy
Mercure – Paul Cremazy
Cupidon – Emmanuelle de Negri
Diane – Soula Parassidis
Vénus – Marie Kalinine
Minerve – Estelle Kaique
Junon – Sabine Revault d’Allonnes

Yves Beaunesne (director)
Damien Caille-Perret (designs)
Patrice Cauchetier (costumes)
Joël Hourbeigt (lighting)

Chœur du Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (chorus master: Nicolas Krüger)
Camerata Salzburg
Alain Altinoglu (conductor)

Götterdämmerung would have been a struggle to put on in the courtyard of Aix’s archepiscopal palace. Torchlight procession echoes of the Eumenides notwithstanding, it was doubtless wise to reserve Wagner’s drama for the splendid new Grand Théâtre de Provence. The Théâtre de l’Archevêché remains, however, the traditional heart of the festival, and it was here, as dusk fell, that I saw and heard my final performance, a satyr play almost, from this year’s programme. Orphée aux enfers does not have much in common with Götterdämmerung, although both came under the umbrella of the festival heading, opera and myth. This was really too general a heading to be of value – the Orpheus myth itself might have been more manageable, whilst still offering a plethora of choices – but no matter. Offenbach’s opéra bouffe provided an enjoyable contrast.

The production, for the Aix Festival and the Académie européene de musique, subsequently transferring to co-production partners in Toulon and Dijon, had its problems. Yves Beaunesne seemed unable to decide what he was trying to accomplish. According to an interview in the programme booklet, he sees Offenbach as having had two targets in mind for his satire: political and social matters on the one hand and myth on the other. Beaunesne then makes the questionable assertion that, ‘in order to find once again the original radicalism’ of the work, one should invert the proportions of the original targets, concentrating on political and social satire, since ‘mythology no longer belongs to our [frame of] references’. Perhaps not to his, though he might be wiser only to speak for himself in that respect. More importantly, this claim, whether accurate or otherwise, does not seem to be carried through into what we witness on stage. In the first scene, which, like the rest of the production, seems to be set vaguely in the 1920s, mythology seems barely present. Orpheus and Eurydice are just a musician and his wife, though, given the downplaying of the satire on myth, there does not seem to be anything amusing about this. Thereafter, however, we seem to be vaguely in the world of myth, albeit in vaguely 1920s guise. None of this is of supreme importance, but I cannot understand what is gained. Had the proposition been that updating to the present was necessary, it might have been incomprehensible, but an interwar setting does not seem especially more relevant to the early twenty-first century than a production set at the time of composition, or indeed at almost any other time. A case, of course, might have been made, but I am not sure that it was.

What we had, instead, were some intermittently pretty sets and some splendid costumes (Patrice Cauchetier) and a few puzzling interpolations, such as Pluto, in his initial guise as Aristaeus, arriving upon stage on roller-skates – handled with great aplomb, I might add. Insofar as I could trace an idea, it seemed to be that Eurydice was a social climber, seduced by a picture of a film star (?), who whisked her off; she became bored and ended up being whisked off by someone (Jupiter) more influential. The problem was less the idea than that it was weakly presented. The gods’ banquet in the second scene – this was the original, two-act version, with some additions from 1874 – seemed just a bit old-fashioned, redolent yet not emphatically so of the Second Empire, whereas I had imagined we might have had a real taste of Hollywood. Public Opinion, after all, seemed to be a busybody reporter, forever taking photographs. Enjoyable – yes; coherent – no.

Alain Altinoglu, however, provided a fizzing account of the score, for which much praise should also be given to the Camerata Salzburg. Hardly their core repertoire, one would have thought, but Altinoglu’s direction provided drive and tenderness, though never deathly sentimentality, and a welcome opportunity to hear the ample soloistic opportunities Offenbach grants various instruments. Chief of these, of course, is Orpheus’s violin, in the hands of the excellent leader, Roman Simovic, but there are many more, all of which were well taken here.

The young cast, drawn from the ranks of the Académie européene de musique, generally made the most of its opportunities too. Chief amongst them must surely be ranked Mathias Vidal’s Pluto, sweet of tone in a classically French manner, and a good actor too. Francis Bouyer attracted a somewhat lukewarm reception as Jupiter, but I thought him rather good too, with a fine swagger, both vocal and visual, though he seemed to tire a little during the second act. Julien Behr’s Orpheus was sweetly sung and convincingly portrayed. Pauline Courtin generally handled well the demands of her part as Eurydice, albeit not without a certain tendency for her voice to harden during vocal display. I was enchanted by Emmanuelle de Negri’s splendidly boyish Cupid, whilst Jérôme Billy did an excellent job as John Styx, though he was not at all assisted by the production, which, under the guise of amusement, really made the character outstay his welcome. The smaller parts were also generally well taken, not least in terms of stage presence. I do not doubt that we shall be hearing from some of these singers again.