The Rake's Progress, Opéra national de Paris, 30 November 2024

Palais Garnier

Tom Rakewell – Ben Bliss
Nick Shadow – Iain Paterson
Trulove – Clive Bayley
Anne Trulove – Golda Schultz
Mother Goose – Justina Gringytė
Baba the Turk – Jamie Barton
Sellem – Rupert Charlesworth
Keeper of the Madhouse – Vartan Gabrielian
Voices from the Crowd – Ayumi Ikehata, Frédéric Guieu
Solo Voice – Laurent Laberdesque

Director, lighting – Olivier Py
Revival director – Joséphine Kirch
Designs – Pierre-André Weitz
Lighting collaboration – Bertrand Killy

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus director: Ching-Lien Wu) 

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Susanna Mälkki (conductor)

Images: Guergana Damaniova / OnP

The Rake’s Progress seems, as Stravinsky admitted, almost ‘to have been to have been created for journalistic debates concerning: a) the historical validity of the approach; and, b) the question whether I am guilty of imitation and pastiche.’ Or so, once, it did—to me, at least, and I think to many others too. I no longer bother about such questions; I am not sure anyone else does either. That does not mean it has ceased to pose us questions. Far from it. Their nature, though, has changed and they tend to focus, quite rightly, on the musical drama rather than ‘legitimacy’ or even timeliness. If in some yet far from all ways, it marked the end of a line, or at least a high watermark, for the neoclassical Stravinsky, with distance, it seems far from the end of a musical line. More to the point, in its very artificiality and neither entirely like nor unlike Così fan tutte – their orchestras, as Stravinsky noted, similar in size – it seems increasingly to move audiences and indeed performers in ways all too readily missed by earlier generations. 

Entirely by coincidence, I had spoken a little about The Rake’s Progress in a session of my undergraduate class on Mozart’s operas earlier in the week, taking it and Der Rosenkavalier as two highly contrasted twentieth-century operas consciously written in Mozart’s wake. It was probably that that had lodged a further Stravinskian utterance in my mind: ‘If the Rake contains imitations, however – of Mozart, as has been said,’ Stravinsky owned, ‘I will gladly allow the charge (given the breadth of the Aristotelian word), if I may thereby release people from the argument and bring them to the music.’ That ‘if’, however is the point; it is actually rarely Mozart who comes to my mind, the coincidences being too obvious, whether in Stravinsky or in Auden (Da Ponte too, of course). If anything, that was even less so here, in a performance led by Susanna Mälkki which felt more remote both from such ‘debates’ and indeed from any performing tradition than another I can recall. There were things I missed:, the polemical Stravinsky, the ultra-referential Stravinsky, much of the archness and the bite, to which somewhat soft-centred playing from the Paris Opéra orchestra contributed (presumably at the conductor’s request). 

Other correspondences nonetheless arose: that of the balletic Stravinsky, not so much the ‘great’ scores of the early century as some closer in time to the Rake: the Scènes de ballet in particular, but also, at a somewhat greater distance, Jeu de cartes and even the Tchaikovskian Fairy’s Kiss. Such neoclassicism makes sense, of course, though it also draws into question the usefulness of the term, since it refers to and indeed means such very different things in different contexts and at different times, all the more so when unmistakeable ostinato kinship with Oedipus Rex (beyond that, also to Poulenc) reared its head. These may well have been as much my thoughts as anything intended; it is difficult to say. But what I did sense, quite strongly, was a more overt sense of sadness – partly tempi, which often felt slow – and even tragedy. It was as if the work, consciously or otherwise, were being assimilated into a more ‘operatic’, even Italianate, tradition such as Stravinsky himself spoke of, that of Verdi, but also at times that of Berg, the latter perhaps ironically, given the contrast Stravinsky himself drew with that tradition, eschewing ‘forms symbolically expressive of the dramatic content (as in the Daedalian examples of Alban Berg)’ in favour of number opera. But then should we ever take Stravinsky at his word, or at least at face value? 

That musical trajectory seemed to proceed broadly in tandem with Olivier Py’s production, here on the first night of its revival. Haunted by death, in the ‘person’ of Tom’s uncle’s skeleton, and also, at the front of the stage, by the memento mori of a skull and hourglass, it too seemed to say or accept that this was less an opera about opera than it was simply an opera. Anne bore Tom’s child, who had advanced a few years by the final scene. Again, there was loss, at least for me, not least in any sense of London, a major character not only in Hogarth but surely at least in Auden too. Perhaps, though, I feel that more keenly as a Londoner, and one should not be restrictive about such things. There was not so much either, though, of city life, even more generically. The production felt not so much abstracted as moving psychology to the foreground, almost to the exclusion of anything else. On its own terms, all was stylishly presented, Pierre-André Weitz’s designs showing a keen eye for colour schemes and correspondences. Dance, both in character and more abstract-interpretative, played a role, heightening that sense of kinship with the composer’s ballets. 

The cast was strong throughout, with a lovely central pair in Ben Bliss’s Tom and Golda Schultz’s Anne. Bliss’s performance engaged one’s sympathies through honeyed tone and acting alike. Schultz presented a stronger, more ‘present’ character than is often the case, and was all the better for it. Iain Paterson’s Nick Shadow was quite without caricature, a more rounded character in the conventional sense, in keeping with broader parameters of performance and production. Love her or hate her, you cannot ignore Baba the Turk, and that was very much the knowing showbiz strategy of Jamie Barton’s assumption of the role. I especially enjoyed Rupert Charlesworth’s auctioneer Sellem, perhaps the most vocally acted of all performances, manner and mannerism conveying so much with relatively little: highly Stravinskian, one might say. Other roles were all well taken, with a keen sense of theatre, chorus members and dancers included. If there were times when I felt the chorus, like the orchestra, lacked Stravinskian bite, that was doubtless in part a consequence of Mälkki’s interpretative stance than performance as such.   

Where, then, does that leave us? Going round in further circles? To an extent, yes; does it not always with this work? Yet the repertoire assimilationism did bring something new, surely to be welcomed, whatever my personal likes or dislikes. Once again, I was led to reflect on how much we, or at least I, might be steered by Stravinsky’s CBS recording, technically flawed yet in possession of qualities it is difficult not to think near-definitive. It is surely a sign of maturity that, however much that may be imprinted on some of our memories, the work and our reactions to it have multiple lives beyond any of its creators. I never sympathised with, say, Boulez’s condemnation to Cage: ‘Have you heard Rake’s Progress? What ugliness!’ though I understood why he might have thought so and perhaps in part wanted to agree. Right now, though, I am grateful to have gone beyond that, as surely we all should have, seventy years on. Debates change yet persist.

Munich Opera Festival (3) - Pelléas et Mélisande, 22 July 2024

Prinzregententheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Pelléas – Ben Bliss
Mélisande – Sabine Devieilhe
Golaud – Christian Gerhaher
Arkel – Franz-Josef Selig
Geneviève – Sophie Koch
Yniold – Felix Hofbauer
Doctor – Martin Snell
Shepherd – Pawel Horodyski

Director – Jetske Mijnssen
Set design – Ben Baur
Lighting – Bernd Purkrabek
Choreography – Dustin Klein
Dramaturgy – Ariane Bliss

Projektchor der Bayerischen Staatsoper (director: Franz Obermair)
Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Hannu Lintu (conductor)

Nine years ago, in this same theatre at this same festival, I saw Munich’s previous Pelléas et Mélisande: a staging by Christiane Pohle which I greatly admired, but  everyone else seemed to loathe. I am tempted to say ‘failed to understand’, but let us move on—to its successor, directed by Jetske Mijnssen. Perhaps it was not the best time to see this, only a fortnight after encountering Katie Mitchell’s feminist rethinking of the work in Aix, in its first revival. For me, there is nothing especially wrong with Mijnssen’s staging. It does pretty much what one would expect of a Pelléas, save perhaps for presenting a greater realism in place of its Symbolism.

In that lay my doubts. Not that there is anything wrong with that in principle; far from it. Yet without a change of perspective, or some other such idea, the point remained elusive: not in the sense that Pelléas can, must remain elusive, but rather suggesting an extended bourgeois parody of Tristan und Isolde, with which it of course has much in common. That would be a point of view, though not necessarily one I should be inclined to pursue (imagining nonetheless with a wry smile what Nietzsche, in Case of Wagner mode, would have made of Pelléas). What I think Mijnssen is getting at, suggested by her final act – in which the castle, whose rooms whether in the forest, by the stagnant pool, or elsewhere have provided the setting for all that has gone before, is stripped to its foundations – is a psychological claim that we are all ultimately like Mélisande, not least in our inability to know one another. Presumably the wooden boards relate also to the forest we never really see.

Following a realistic if sparing portrayal of early-twentieth-century costumes, furniture, and so on, Arkel’s words ‘C’est un pauvre petit être mystérieux comme tout le monde’ offer the backdrop for the entirety of this act. Having moved from a (beautifully danced) ball for the first scene, to this hospital bed for the close, often viewing Pelléas’s sick father in his bed, the tragedy encompasses all of us in a metaphysical sense far from untrue to the work. The observation – and execution – of Golaud’s chess game with his son Yniold, and Yniold’s resort to playing with his toys, perhaps as a way of trying to understanding what is happening, including a similar sweeping of the board and pieces, are suggestive and accomplished. Golaud’s striking of Yniold likewise offers a powerful moment.

Much else, especially with water – seen as rainfall as we enter the theatre, yet otherwise relegated until the close to a long, thin ‘pool’ at the front of the stage – seems to sit a little awkwardly between two stools. That the pools are more evident in the final scene, presumably closing in on the very foundations – in more than one sense – of castle and family is another good idea. But Pelléas’s reappearance – a ghost, a dream, or an actual reappearance? – to show Mélisande her child seems to come less from an alternative dimension than from an alternative production or concept. Perhaps I am missing something, given what seems in many ways an intelligent attempt to construct a whole from what is viewed, curtain falling after every scene, as a quasi-filmic succession of dramatic fragments.

An effort to construct a greater whole in theatrical time from quasi-modernist fragments, as opposed to starting with a whole and carving detail from it, seemed also to characterise Hannu Lintu’s way with Debussy’s score. At its best, Lintu’s direction conjured a wonderful translucency from the Munich orchestra; it did not want for dark malevolence when called for, either. My principal reservation related to what seemed – I am unsure whether it actually was – for scenes, perhaps acts too, to slow during their course. No one wants to rush through Pelléas, of course, quite the contrary; yet there were occasions when I felt momentum was in danger of being lost. This may, however, have been as much a matter of pauses between scenes on account of scene rearrangement, especially before the fifth and final act. By the same token, losing oneself in the forest is surely part of the musical experience, perhaps all the more so when we never really see it.

There are doubtless many ways to sing Mélisande, yet during her performance, Sabine Devieilhe had me convinced hers was, if not quite the only one, then the best. Her ease of communication, not only in the French language but in Debussy’s musical style, was effortlessly communicated for all to hear; it was simply as if she were speaking, and as clear as if that were the case too. Moreover, Devieilhe’s delivery of the text seemed indivisible from dramatic situation and imperative. French is a notoriously difficult language to sing; it would be difficult, unsurprisingly, to claim that all in the cast managed with such ease. Sophie Koch’s excellent Geneviève was of course an exception, leaving us to long for more.

That said, no one made a bad job of it either, and an age of ‘international casts’ brings advantages and disadvantages. Christian Gerhaher’s Golaud was unquestionably a fine, brutal character study. Some will doubtless have taken more to his hectoring way (at times), but it was rooted in his conception of Golaud’s sadism. Gerhaher showed the courage not to try to endear his character to anyone, without in any sense rendering him one-dimensional. To that, Ben Bliss’s boyish, mellifluous Pelléas proved an excellent foil, vocal and scenic communication offering ample justification for Mélisande’s preference. The dark ambiguity of Franz-Josef Selig’s Arkel cast due shadow over all. Last but far from least, Felix Hofbauer gave an outstanding performance as Yniold: not ‘for a boy’, but for anyone. As impressively acted as it was sung, this treble’s performance offered yet another feather in the cap for the ever-lauded Tölz Boys’ Choir. So in many respects, the fragments did add up to more.

Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Glyndebourne Tour, 15 October 2015

Glyndebourne Opera House

Belmonte – Ben Bliss

Osmin – Clive Bayley
Pedrillo – James Kryshak
Pasha Selim – Franck Saurel
Konstanze – Ana Maria Labin
Blonde – Rebecca Nelsen

Sir David McVicar (director)

Ian Rutherford (revival director)
Vicki Mortimer (designs)
Andrew George, Colm Seery (choreography)
Paule Constable, David Mannion (lighting)

The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)

Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra

Christoph Altstaedt (conductor)

 

Strong musical values were in evidence at Glyndebourne’s ready-to-tour Entführung aus dem Serail. A generally young cast sang – and acted – well, giving rise to the not unfamiliar thought from this company that these are names we shall see and hear again. I found Ben Bliss’s Belmonte a little stiff to start with, but he seemed more in his stage element as time went on, revealing a lyric tenor of considerable beauty and sensitivity, both verbal and musical (a false opposition, I know). His third-act duet with Ana Maria Labin’s Konstanze was quite ravishing of tone. Labin’s performance was excellent throughout, Mozart’s coloratura holding no fears for her, but just as important, put to musical and dramatic use. Cleanness and keenness of delivery were as one.

 

The same could be said of their servants, Pedrillo and Blonde. Blondes rarely disappoint; that, however, is no reason not to acknowledge the spirited performance of Rebecca Nelsen, both in vocal and stage terms. I certainly should not wish to get on the wrong side of her. James Kryshak offered a splendidly eager, puppyish performance as Pedrillo. Again, vocal beauty and dramatic purpose were not to be rent asunder. The pair showed excellent chemistry too.

 

Clive Bayley trod Osmin’s line between comedy and a touch of pathos with consummate skill, although the production (more on which soon) did not necessarily help in that respect. Franck Saurel seemed a good actor to me, especially during the rare moments at which he toned things down; however, this Bassa Selim spent far too much of his time shouting and screaming tones of near-hysteria. He may have been following orders, since there was sensitivity to be seen and heard, especially at the end. A pity, though.

 

The Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra under Christoph Altstaedt offered warm, stylish playing: far rarer nowadays than it should be in Mozart. There were no ‘period’ grotesqueries, although a few more strings would not have gone amiss. (Karl Böhm’s Staatskapelle Dresden will surely always remain the model here.) Still, Altstaedt’s tempi and balances were well considered – well considered enough for one barely to notice them. Mozart’s all-encompassing Shakespearean dramatic sympathies were much in evidence, then, to the ears.

 

If you sensed a ‘but’ coming, you were, I am afraid, right to do so. David McVicar’s production, here revived by Ian Rutherford, proves a considerable disappointment. Rarely does it get in the way of the musical performance – to be fair, something not necessarily to be taken for granted – yet, by the same token, it seems to have little or nothing to say. I should be tempted to say McVicar was still languishing in his Zeffirelli period, save for the fact that it now seems too long to be a mere period. Whatever has happened to him is a great pity, since he used to be capable of interesting, theatrically alert productions, his ENO Turn of the Screw a case in point. Now it is ‘light entertainment’, at least for some, to the near-exclusion of anything else, the Royal Opera Trojans a particular low point. Here there is a vague updating to the time of composition, perhaps to underline the Pasha’s status as an Enlightened Despot, but ultimately to precious little effect. One has the distinct impression that it might just have been because the director liked eighteenth-century costumes better than those from a somewhat earlier period.

 

At any rate, we seem to be firmly in the realm of ‘costume drama’, as opposed to putting the history to dramatic work. Orientalism, as in that Trojans production, is reproduced, even heightened, rather than interrogated. If this is not a gift of a work in which to do just that, then I really do not know what is. What should we think of the ruler’s self-revelation as better than his Western charges? And how is it compromised by the fact that he is, by origin, a Christian himself, a ‘renegade’? What of the Janissary music; is it merely ‘pretty’, local colour? If so, does that not in itself raise questions? And what of all those darkly erotic, sado-masochistic suggestions arising from torture and the eagerness with which it is suggested?

 

Nothing, so far as I could discern, on any of those questions or many others. I could only long for what I imagine Calixto Bieito must have made of the work in Berlin. Instead, we have an extravagant barrage of extra actors, children included, and some jarring ‘low humour’. The Mozart family’s correspondence had a celebrated scatological element, but I am not sure that that translates into Osmin belching and farting. One need not go so far as, and would clearly be unwise to imitate, Stefan Herheim’s brilliant Salzburg production – the most recent I had seen, as long ago as 2006, prior to this – in completely reimagining the work as a profound meditation on sexual politics. If the Orientalism is going to remain, though, something needs saying about it – and to it.