Munich Opera Festival (2) - Pénélope, 21 July 2025

Prinzregententheater

Images: Bernd Uhlig
Pénélope (Victoria Karkacheva)

 

Pénélope – Victoria Karkacheva
Ulysse – Brandon Jovanovich
Euryclée – Rinat Shaham
Eumée – Thomas Mole
Cléone – Valeria Eickhoff
Mélantho – Seonwoo Lee
Alkandre – Martina Myskohild
Phylo – Ena Pongrac
Lydie – Eirin Rognerud
Eurynome – Elene Gvritishvili
Antinoüs – Loïc Félix
Eurymaque – Leigh Melrose
Léodés – Joel Williams
Ctésippe – Zachary Rioux
Pisandre – Dafydd Jones
Shepherd – Nicolas Bader
Ulysse double – Stefan Lorch
Pénélope double – Teresa Sperling
Archer – Daniela Maier

Director – Andrea Breth
Designs – Raimund Orfeo Voigt
Costumes – Ursula Renzenbrink
Lighting – Alexander Koppelmann
Dramaturgy – Lukas Leipfinger, Klaus Bertisch

Vocalensemble ‘LauschWerk’ (chorus director: Sonja Lachenmayr)
Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Susanna Mälkki (conductor)

 

Pénélope, Ulysse (Brandon Jovanovich and Stefan Lorch)

Fauré’s only opera Pénélope was premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in March 1913, moving to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées only two months later. It has fared incommensurably less well with posterity than the Stravinsky ballet that had its premiere there later that month. The opera is no Rite of Spring, of course, yet what is? In an excellent new production for Munich directed by Andrea Breth and conducted by Susanna Mälkki, Pénélope emerged as an opera quite undeserving of its neglect, intrinsically and by comparison with more than a few ‘repertoire works’, especially from the previous century. What we heard should also have confounded some lazy preconceptions about the composer. 

Breth’s production is a typically serious piece of theatre, which grapples with the highly untheatrical nature of the work and, to my mind, largely succeeds. A fellow musicologist friend I met at the performance pointed to its place in a specifically French conception of drama dating back at least as far as Corneille and Racine, in which little happens onstage in terms of stage action, almost all unfolding through words, I am sure he is right. The classical unities are also certainly observed. I thought also, inevitably, of Pelléas et Mélisande, though the relationship between Fauré and Debussy was not an easy one. They certainly shared contexts and influences and neither cared for operatic display, to put it mildly, but ultimately this was probably more correspondence than anything else. 

In any case, Breth’s mixture of realism and ritual, the latter founded in doubles for characters, but also ways of acting (in more than one sense), proved compelling and fitting, removing any doubts that this might be an oratorio or something else masquerading in operatic guise. Characters processed, imitated, took their time, and just occasionally acted hurriedly—in keeping with the work yet not bound by it. Opening action during the Prélude presented an elderly man guiding a woman in wheelchair to view museum exhibits, stark yet broken. This Pénélope and Ulysse framed the action and in some sense presaged it, three suitors, ready for action, later removing their shirts and adopting the poses of those statues. There was, then, a circularity that came into conflict with yet also helped form the drama literary and staged. What we saw and heard played with time and involved characters and audience in reception of myth and opera alike. 

When revenge came, economic presentation unmistakeably evoking the rural hinterland of Ithaca, before closing in once again on the palace, it lacked nothing in brutality, suitors treated as replacement pieces of meat for those they would have served at the banquet. It was clear and direct, like the work itself, meaningfully adding to rather than merely doubling or indeed contradicting it. If the conclusion struggled to convince – two people in front of me talking through the closing bars did not help – then that is more a problem with the work. A hymn to Zeus is one way of rounding things off, I suppose, but something a little more ambiguous or indeed human might have worked better. That is not what we have, of course. One might sense Breth undercutting things with the frozen, tableau dimension to what we see at the close, or one might not. Perhaps that was the point. 

Susanna Mälkki’s direction of excellent orchestra, chorus, and cast was similarly sympathetic and comprehending, with work and staging alike. One sensed, rightly or wrongly, that musical and stage interpretation had developed in tandem. Where there was a light sense of Götterdämmerung’s Gibichung decay onstage, perhaps even a stylised Gallic return for Salome/Salomé, so was there in the music, Mälkki knowing what was and was not Wagnerian in Fauré’s method and soundworld, the latter more than one might expect, though far from all. Likewise with Debussy. Orchestral lines developed differently, of course, at times not unlike Fauré’s chamber music; vocal lines emerged woven like Pénelope’s shroud, again showing consciousness that, whilst there were unsurprisingly aspects in common with the composer’s songs, this was not a song cycle writ large but an opera.    

Victoria Karkacheva and Brandon Jovanovich made for a compelling central pair, musically and dramatically conceived in utmost sympathy with work and staging. There was a deep connection between the two expressed in words, music, and gesture, that did not shy away from darker aspects of fate and revenge, without being merely consumed by them. Rinat Shaham’s nurse Euryclée offered an exquisite, chalumeau-like voice of wisdom and recognition. The similarly faithful shepherd Eumée received compelling characterisation from Thomas Mole. A duly nasty yet individual set of suitors received what it deserved yet offered much vocal pleasure in the meantime. Loïc Félix’s ringing Antinoüs, Leigh Melrose’s typically compelling Eurymaque, and Joel Williams’s subtle Léodés especially noteworthy (to me). But there was no weak link in the cast. The evening’s success relied throughout on collaboration—acted as well as sung, for which Stefan Lorch and Teresa Sperling as doubles for Pénélope and Ulysse and Daniela Maier gymnastically stringing the latter’s bow must also be credited. 

Comparisons with Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria are near inevitable for the opera-goer, yet are not especially helpful. What would not pale slightly at least in its shadow? If only we lived in a world in which comparisons with Dallapiccola’s Ulisse were meaningful. Perhaps one day. In the meantime, this excellent staging and these equally excellent performances can well stand for themselves. They may just prove a milestone in this opera’s unlucky reception history.

Salzburg Festival (3) – VPO/Barenboim: Saint-Saëns and Wagner, 22 August 2022

Grosses Festspielhaus

Saint-Saëns: Samson et Dalila, op.47: Act II
Wagner: Parsifal: Act II

Elina Garanča (soprano)

Brandon Jovanovich (tenor)

Michael Volle (baritone)

Members of the Young Singers Project

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Jörn Hinnerk Andresen)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

This was, alas, very much a concert of two halves, disturbingly so. For reasons that I hope will be obvious, I shall concentrate on what was best; there is neither critical nor broader human need to hammer home the shortcomings.

Programming was unusual, yet revealing: an excellent case of using a cast to think what might conceptually as well as musically be possible. Consider what these two acts, premiered within five years of one another, have in common or in meaningful contrast, and the answer is quite a lot. Samson et Dalila is not, I think, a theological work; formal affinities to oratorio notwithstanding, it treats with religion, as do many nineteenth-century operas, as an engine of drama and colour. Parsifal most certainly is a theological work; we should probably not get too hung up on whether to call it an opera at all, but its dissociation from common operatic practice is undeniable, even extreme. Both acts, however, deal with seduction of a quasi-consecrated hero with a religious (and political) mission, by an exotic temptress with whom, at least in part, it is difficult not to feel some degree of sympathy. Indeed, as John Snelson remarks in his programme note, hearing these two acts divorced from their predecessors (however much we may still bear them in mind) enables us to observe the action more ‘from the perspective of the women’, even arguably intensifying ‘the hypnotic force they exert as they propel the dramas to contrasting climaxes’. Saint-Saëns’s ambiguous musical debt to Wagner was certainly in evidence here too, perhaps unsurprisingly given the conductor was Daniel Barenboim.

What was surprising was that Saint-Saëns fared so much better overall than Wagner. The initial orchestral sound we heard from the Vienna Philharmonic was, to my ears, perfect in balance, colour, and harmonic grounding, its darkness seemingly transposed from Siegfried’s forest. It was inviting, intensely so, with promise—not least of danger. On entry, Elina Garanča could likewise hardly have been improved upon: flawless in delivery, dignified and rich of tone, her (Dalila’s) made mind up, her lines despatched with duly operatic grandeur, even hauteur. The orchestra spoke and commented upon the action, much as in Wagner, though rightly also with reference to a long French history of orchestral recitative dating back at least to Rameau. There was certainly more than a little Berlioz to be heard; I soon found myself wishing for a Troyens from these forces, whilst knowing in my heart of hearts that it was already too late. Barenboim’s ear for motivic unity extended over sections of the score, but also across the entire act, imparting a unity necessary yet sadly all too rare in this repertoire. Michael Volle made for a commanding High Priest of Dagon, his typical sensitivity to words and music married to extraordinary dynamic and colouristic range. Brandon Jovanovich, our Siegmund-on-Seine, was as ardent a Samson as one could have imagined, playing nonetheless on a fine ambiguity between hero unmediated and a character compelled (or choosing) to play that role. The climactic duet between Samson and Dalila was, quite simply, a privilege to see (such acting too!) and hear, all the while knowing Dalila ultimately was in control.

The Parsifal Prelude was more deliberate, at its best evincing the spirit of a Klemperer, certainly oozing Tristan-esque malevolence. I listened for as long as I could in that vein and, to be fair, there was much in the orchestral cauldron still to admire, at least in the first scene or two. The first, orchestral intimation of Klingsor’s magic garden, for instance, appeared before our ears’ eyes with all the freshness of continually renewed experience. Whether that were the VPO’s or Barenboim’s, however, soon became a moot point. Samson et Dalila certainly does not play itself; the talk I heard from some about the conductor’s disengagement at this stage was just that, talk. It was, sadly, shown all the more to be so by much of what we heard of Parsifal, in which a disaffected orchestra at times seemed more or less to have given up, kept together (just about) only by the extraordinary commitment of three outstanding soloists. One made what one could of it; at least I did. Concentrating on the poem, I heard all the more in this context just how much of Wagner’s language is steeped in Lutheran theology. So many of the words could have stepped straight out of Bach; in a sense, they had. The luminosity of the orchestral grail, here with a distinctly Viennese tinge, beguiled as ever. Ultimately, though, this was difficult to listen to, as well as to watch.

Barenboim does not need critics, even those who are long-term admirers, to tell him what to do. I hope, though, that those close to him will counsel caution, for his recovery is clearly far from complete. If, for now, that entails fewer, shorter concerts, then for his sake I hope he will consider that path.

 

Lohengrin, Royal Opera, 24 April 2022

Royal Opera House

Henry the Fowler – Gábor Bretz
Lohengrin – Brandon Jovanovich
Elsa – Jennifer Davis
Friedrich von Telramund – Craig Colclough
Ortrud – Anna Smirnova
King’s Herald – Derek Welton
Brabantian Nobles (‘Four Followers of Telramund’) – Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Thando Mjandana, Matthew Durkan, Thomas D. Hopkinson
Pages (‘Four Women at the Wedding’) – Katy Batho, Deborah Peake-Jones, Renata Skarelyte, Louise Armit
Gottfried – Alfie Davis

David Alden (director)
Peter Relton (revival director)
Paul Steinberg (set designs)
Gideon Davey (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Tal Rosner (video)
Maxine Braham (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

Considering the first night of David Alden’s (then) new production of Lohengrin in 2018, I found ‘a conceptual weakness at ... [its] heart. I suspect it can be remedied: if a shell, it is a fine shell. It will not, however, remedy itself.’ Rather to my surprise, I found this first revival, notably under a new director, Peter Relton, much stronger. It is not always easy to be sure what has actually changed, and what one is viewing differently for oneself. I shall not try; the earlier review remains for anyone who wishes to read it. In at least partial recantation, then, I am happy to say this made for a far more satisfying evening, dramatically and musically, than that experienced four years ago. Moreover, for Wagner to have returned so emphatically to one of the city’s main houses marked a step-change in London’s operatic recovery. However much one wished it to succeed, ENO’s autumn Walküre proved a bitter disappointment. If Lohengrin did not quite match the success of Covent Garden’s astonishing recent Peter Grimes, it stood closer to that than to November’s dispiriting evening at the Coliseum. 

An interwar fascist regime, on the verge at least of further war, is the setting (albeit with certain irritating Alden anachronisms of the sort that conceive postmodernism as style rather than philosophy). The aftermath of war, presumably the Great War, that haunts the first act in particular, every character seemingly damaged, mentally and often physically too. The charge of war and of preparations for another has obvious resonances to spring 2022; they could hardly fail to speak. If King Henry cowers like a question mark—in his throne, with crown, he seems an all-too-obvious rip off from Hans Neuenfels at Bayreuth—and the Herald wears his injuries anything but lightly, others struggle to stand too. Telramund and Elsa act and react in caricatured expressionist style. Even Lohengrin adopts a foetal position of comfort with Elsa, presumably seeking a mother figure lacking in the Grail brotherhood. (As Nietzsche did not say, let us not go there.) 

Only Ortrud, doubtless significantly, operates as normal. Perhaps it is her ‘magic’, or perhaps that magic is a metaphor for something broader; that is really up to us. A fine touch, at the close of the second act, is her apparition in a box, toasting (cursing) with champagne the unhappy couple. Hemmed in by Paul Steinberg’s sets, their crossings and their disjunctures a striking visualisation of catastrophe, the action is never likely to end happily. This, after all, is a tragedy, probably the purest in Wagner; a signal strength here is that we do not forget that. That is not, of course, to say that it always need be played exclusively as such, but there is an ultimate trajectory here less in evidence than last time, which certainly strengthens the drama in this context. 

So too did Jakub Hrůša’s conducting of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House—and the golden orchestral playing itself. Hrůša is not afraid to take his time, the first act feeling especially broad, though never merely slow. Careful attention to detail and to its place in the whole had Wagner’s score veritably glow with inner life. The old operatic forms on which much of Wagner’s conception is ultimately based were clear. In Mein Leben, Wagner recalls Schumann’s puzzlement at a Dresden reading of the poem; he ‘liked it, yet couldn’t figure out the musical form I had in mind for it, as he couldn’t find any passages suitable for traditional musical numbers. I then had some fun reading him different parts of my poem just as if they were in aria and cavatina form, so that in the end he smilingly conceded the point.’ Full performance can heighten that sense further—yet also more dialectically. For equally clear were the development of those forms and the forces energising that development: harmony (especially that of Ortrud), of course, but also an energised conception of Gluckian accompagnato arising from Wagner’s work as conductor, editor, and director. 

At any rate, not only did Hrůša show a fine Wagnerian’s ability to hear vast structures—acts, at least—in a single breath, but he inspired the finest playing from all sections of the orchestra throughout. Each act had its own way of unfolding; no one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a patient, powerful strategic ear and mind. Moreover, he often favoured—unfashionably—long, quasi-vocal orchestral lines: not so much Straussian as with kinship to the Wagner of a conductor such as Karajan. The vertical was not ignored, but experience suggested ultimately a more horizontal conception of Wagner’s—‘endless melody’, perhaps—and convincingly so. 

Brandon Jovanovich offered a finely judged portrayal of Lohengrin, as acute in verbal as musical terms, its clarion heroism shielding—and sometimes not—a vulnerable and decidedly ambiguous inner core. Craig Colclough’s Telramund, tragically in thrall to Anna Smirnova’s sensational Ortrud, presented similar ambiguities, those similarities engaging sympathy and our appreciation of dramatic complexity. If there was something winningly ‘old-school’ to Smirnova’s vocal delivery and sheer star presence, that was not at the cost of more ‘modern’ engagement with directorial concept, far from it. Jennifer Davis’s movingly human Elsa grew in stature throughout a committed performance. Gábor Bretz vividly captured the King’s instability. Derek Welton made for an uncommonly vivid Herald, hinting intriguingly at psychological complications from a wartime past. 

Last but far from least, William Spaulding’s Royal Opera Chorus sounded on as fine form as I can recall for some time. How welcome, moreover, it was to have a large chorus seemingly unrestricted—reality may have been different—by pandemic restrictions in what it could do and, above all, how it could sing. Ultimately, then, it was that crucial, yet often elusive, sense of a dramatic whole that served to distinguish revival from first incarnation.

Samson et Dalila, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 27 November 2019

Images: Matthias Baus

Dalila – Elina Garanča

Samson – Brandon Jovanovich

High Priest of Dagon – Michael Volle

Abimelech – Kwangchul Youn

Old Hebrew – Wolfgang Schöne

First Philistine – Andrés Moreno Garcia

Second Philistine – Jaka Mihelač

Philistine Messenger – Javier Bernando

Samson Double (Dancer) – Nikos Fragkou

Dalila Double (Dancer) - Lisa Schramm

Damián Szifron (director)

Étienne Pluss (set designs)

Gesine Völlm (costumes)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Tomasz Kajdański (choreography)

Romain Gilbert, Heide Stock (assistant directors)

Jana Beckmann (dramaturgy)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Hand on heart, I have never seen anything quite like this. From curtain rise to reveal a dog running across stage—accompanied by palpable audience bewilderment and highly audible laughter—to a bizarrely offensive final act seemingly co-directed by David McVicar and ‘Mad’ Melanie Phillips, film director Damián Szifron’s first foray into opera afforded the very definition of a car-crash. Much as one may have wished to avert one’s eyes, such was alas never an option. There was, to be fair, unwitting entertainment along the way. Yet seeing—and hearing—outstanding artists such as Elina Garanča, Brandon Jovanovich, and Michael Volle wading and occasionally, Dagon help us, dancing through the non-ironic polystyrene debris of a scenic cross between Cecil B De Mille, Franco Zeffirelli, mid-budget 70s science fiction, and the day’s n^th Spectator columnist endorsement of Boris Johnson, was ultimately the stuff of nightmares—or at least of end-of-term revues.

Let us start with the good, musical news. All three of those soloists were on fine musical form. I have never heard anything other than an excellent performance from Jovanovich; this was to be no exception. Tireless, committed to words and music, heroism and humanity, in equal measure, his Samson could hardly be bettered. That neither he nor Garanča could be visually recognised beneath their extraordinary costumes was doubtless no bad thing for either. Garanča brought all the virtues one might have expected to her Dalila: similar precision and professionalism, with a mezzo as rich as it was even of tone. Volle, to whom my heart especially went out when in a ‘religious’ bathrobe, proved vocally intelligent and inviting as ever. Save for unfortunate appearances from Kwangchul Youn and Wolfgang Schöne, the rest of the cast, chorus included also impressed. The latter’s slightly rocky start did not preclude performances of welcome heft and dramatic direction.

At least as impressive as the central trio were Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. The promise held out by their all-Saint Saëns subscription concert a couple of weeks earlier was fulfilled in a performance suggesting, however great the illusion, this to be music they played almost as regularly as Wagner. (To be fair, Barenboim has a recording of the opera to his name, but even so.) As ever with Barenboim’s performances, it was founded upon harmony, making fine sense of Saint-Saëns’s medium- and longer-term tonal plans, yet without sacrifice to detail. Not for the first time, his handling of neo-Bachian elements had one long for him to conduct more of the real thing one day. If the opera’s conclusion remains strangely perfunctory and the preceding Bacchanale problematic in its orientalism, there is little that can be done about that. An array of gorgeous orchestral playing, transparent and weighty as required—not infrequently, both—offered more than ample compensation for shortcomings in the score. At least, it would have done, had it not been for the unfolding catastrophe on stage.

Dear reader, it is to the tale—or tail—initiated by that mysterious, never-to-be-seen live stage hound, lodged indelibly in the visual memory, that we must return. Poor Rover, we knew him all too little, yet he deserved our gratitude for running across the stage—not unlike the equally mysterious ENO nude lady of yore, presumably awarded a block booking—and thus briefly distracting us from Étienne Pluss’s still more risible ‘Biblical’ landscape. It matched, I suppose, Gesine Völlm’s ‘Biblical’ costumeswere one in the market for a Life of Brian sequel without the (intentional) jokes. And it provided a space—someone had to—for breathtakingly amateurish blocking and choreography. Such was leavened-or, according to that rarest of commodities here, taste, further depressed—by hapless acts such as having Samson appear on stage dragging, with mixed success, a slaughtered bull, from which he would extract a horn to gorge a few passing Philistines.

A ballet scene, in which Samson and Dalila doubles danced their inexplicable desires, Dalila at one point wandering offstage to emerge with child—cue, yes, much rubbing of her ovular miracle—was bewilderingly accompanied by a sun/moon that moved ever so fitfully in various directions. A technical hitch, perhaps? More likely trying to escape this cosmos from embarrassment. And so it went on, not so much as an idea, let alone a Konzept, in sight. Dalilla’s cave, seemingly located on a stage simplification of a set for a spin-off from Peter Davison-era Dr Who, offered a location for what, in this ‘aesthetic’, we should probably call ‘lovemaking’. That was certainly, in the pejorative sense, what it looked like; thank goodness it was cut short; one could sympathise with Philistine desire to arrest at least one of its participant.

Following a visit to Samson’s Gaza dungeon, its abattoir ‘look’ weirdly out of kilter with what we had seen previously, we moved to a Temple of Dagon in whose representation Szifron appeared to be trying to outdo Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s execrable Bayreuth Parsifal for Offensively Orientalist Staging of the Year (bonus points for implied Islamophobia). I say ‘appeared’ because I suspect much of it was not even intended and instead the product—as with so much that had preceded of it—of having enlisted a director without knowledge or experience of opera, or even a cursory interest in the genre. Toe-curlingly un-erotic orgies are in keeping with actually existing opera’s history on stage: not for nothing did Schoenberg touchingly prescribe the events around his Golden Calf as an explicitly ‘erotic’ orgy. However, youthful executioners’ bewilderment at ongoing proceedings, as witnessed by their vacantly staring at female breasts, came across as anything but knowing. Bloodsoaked assassins – Assassins with a capital ‘a’, I fear—did what ‘exotic’, ‘Eastern’ people would. Could not Barenboim have introduced Szifron to the work of Edward Said? All the while, Volle as High Priest wandered around quizzically in bath robe and staff topped with not un-crescent-like 'symbol'. If Jehovah were unwilling to draw such proceedings to a close, He would have been a crueller, more vengeful God than even Voltaire would have charged. As it was, the Great Director in the Sky took His time: understandable on musical grounds, yet otherwise…

Munich Opera Festival (1) - La fanciulla del West, 26 July 2019

Nationaltheater

Images: Wilfried Hösl

Minnie – Anja Kampe

Dick Johnson – Brandon Jovanovich

Jack Rance – John Lundgren

Nick – Kevin Conners

Ashby – Bálint Szabó

Sonora – Tim Kuypers

Tim – Manuel Günther

Sid – Alexander Milev

Bello – Justin Austin

Harry – Galeano Salas

Joe – Freddie De Tomasso

Happy – Christian Rieger

Jim Larkens – Norman Garrett

Billy Jackrabbit – Oleg Davydov

Wowkle – Noa Beinart

Jake Wallace – Sean Michael Plumb

José Castro – Oğucan Yilmaz

Pony Express Rider – Ulrich Reß

Andreas Dresen (director)

Mathias Fischer-Dieskau (set designs)

Sabine Greunig (costumes)

Michael Bauer (lighting)

Rainer Karlitschek, Lukas Leipfinger (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra

James Gaffigan (conductor)

Many Puccini cognoscenti will speak of La fanciulla del West as Puccini’s finest opera – or at least his most musically interesting. In the latter case, I think I can hear what they mean, even if I do not agree. I continue to struggle, with the former claim, although this performance at the Munich Opera Festival made the most convincing case I have yet heard for the work. Its virtues were predominantly musical, in keeping with the work’s general valuation.

Whether in the pit or on stage, we were in hands far better, far more musical, than ‘safe’. One would have to travel far and wide to hear superior orchestral playing in Puccini, or indeed anything else, than from the Bavarian State Orchestra – and even then, one might well fail. Its lengthy experience in Wagner truly paid off, the composer’s renewed – not that it ever really vanishes – fascination with Tristan und Isolde there for all to hear: not just as superficial similarity, but as something more generative. For that and much else, the incisive, comprehending conducting of James Gaffigan deserves high praise indeed. Equally apparent here, especially in darker passages, was the related yet distinct haunting of Pelléas et Mélisande and, more broadly, Debussy’s music. It was Allemonde above all, though, that seemed to inspire the (apparent) workings of fate. Gaffigan captured to a tee the ‘American’, almost Gershwin-like character of the opening bars, proving himself – and the orchestra – distinguished guides to all of the score’s twists, turns, and transformations in between.

The principal trio of singers proved equally distinguished, unquestionably Wagnerian guides to the work’s course. Anja Kampe was, thank goodness, no goodie-two-shoes Minnie. In a more flesh-and-blood portrayal than I recall, this was a conflicted woman with, yes, much good in her, but also a beating heart that could take her to places unsafe, unwise, maybe even unwarranted. More than once, I was put in mind of her Kundry (with Daniel Barenboim, in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s magnificent production). I seem endlessly to repeat myself when it comes to performances from Brandon Jovanovich. I am certainly not prepared, however, to vary just for the sake of variation. His performance as Dick Johnson was everything we have come to expect from this intelligent, committed artist, as dramatically powerful as it was verbally acute, as sweet-toned as it was virile. John Lundgren’s Jack Rance was just as impressive: dark, malign, but also comprehensible, no cardboard-cut-out villain. From a fine supporting cast, I should single out Tim Kuypers’s Sonora. I do not think it is just the human agency of the role that has me do so; Kuypers made one feel there was considerably more to it than that.

Andreas Dresen’s production of La fanciulla del West premiered in March this year. (The opera’s first Munich outing, intriguingly, came in 1934, the city by then well and truly the Hauptstadt der Bewegung.) It does not do anything especially interesting with the work, but nor is it unthinkingly ‘traditional’, for want of a better word. A darker setting – literally, as well as metaphorically – is provided for the action, perhaps most notably for the first act at the Polka Bar. Mathias Fischer-Dieskau’s set designs, Sabine Greuning’s costumes, and Michael Bauer’s lighting are very much part of this. There were times when I wished for something more probing, more critical, but at least Dresen steers well clear of the folkloric. For my reservations remain concerning the work itself, more precisely its dramaturgy, and I cannot help but wonder whether a director might fruitfully contribute something more here. 

Some are doubtless more important than others. One can get worked up about the racism. It is well-nigh impossible for a thinking person in 2019 not at least to cringe. But I am not sure that it especially helps, unless one childishly rejects all art of the past on the grounds that it is not of the present. Perhaps, though, something more might be done to address the issue. It certainly is not here – but then, alas, Puccini tends more than any other opera composer of stature to suffer from a lack of critical stagings. The somewhat sprawling nature of the first act perhaps invites greater intervention than we found here.

It is the close, however, that seems most urgently to invite a more critical stance. If I find the happy ending unconvincing – Puccini is surely better dealing with tragedy, and that includes the hollowest of victories in Turandot – then that must, at least in part, pay tribute to the expectations the composer has set up and indeed to his playing with them. I wish Dresen had donea little more with the possibility of undermining that ending. Jack’s fumbling reach for his gun is at best half-hearted; then the curtain comes down, separating Minnie and Dick from the rest. Nor do I think the score escapes charges of sentimentality here. No matter: it is what it is, and perhaps one day I shall come to appreciate it as many others clearly do. For now, the magnificently vile sadism of Turandot will continue to work its magic. Puccini’s wish for a ‘second Bohème, only stronger, bolder, and more spacious,’ seems to me unrealised. Fanciulla is perhaps bolder, if only in aspiration; it is certainly more spacious, if not to its benefit; it is hardly stronger. There was no doubting, however, the strength of these musical performances; in many respects, that was enough for now.

Les Troyens, Opéra national de Paris, 28 January 2019

Opéra Bastille

Énée (Brandon Jovanovich)
Images: Vincent Pontet / Opéra national de Paris

Cassandre – Stéphanie d’Oustrac

Ascagne – Michèle Losier

Hécube – Véronique Gens

Énée – Brandon Jovanovich

Chorèbe – Stéphane Degout

Panthée – Christian Helmer

Hector’s Ghost – Thomas Dear

Priam – Paata Burchuladze

Greek Captain – Jean-Luc Ballestra

Soldier – Jean-François Marras

Polyxène – Sophie Clasisse

Didon – Ekaterina Semenchuk

Anna – Aude Extrémo

Iopas – Cyrille Dubois

Hylas – Bror Magnus Tødenes

Narbal – Christian von Horn

Mercure, Priest of Pluto – Bernard Arrieta

Créuse – Natasha Mashkevich

Andromaque – Mathilde Kopytto

Astyanax – Emile Gouasdoué

Polyxène – Francesca Lo Bue

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, set designs)

Elena Zaytseva (costumes)

Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)

Tieni Burkhalter (video)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: José Luis Basso)

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

Home now to the greater number of the Paris Opéra’s opera productions, the Opéra Bastille opened, unfinished, with a gala performance on 13 July 1989, the bicentennial eve of the storming of the celebrated prison that had once stood on its site. The amphitheatre then had to wait until March of the following year for its first opera production: Les Troyens by Pier Luigi Pizzi. The appalling goings on, even by Parisian operatic standards, that had led to the dismissal of Daniel Barenboim from the Opéra’s music directorship before he had even begun have, touch wood, long been put behind the institution. At any rate, there could be few more fitting works to celebrate the 350^th anniversary of the Opéra than the crowning masterpiece of the French master the philistine Pierre Bergés of their day spurned as injuriously as they would Barenboim. If it were a pity that Barenboim were not granted the opportunity to set the record straight – imagine! – then it was a nice twist of history that the conductor would be his sometime assistant, now the Opéra’s Music Director, Philippe Jordan.


More importantly, Barenboim’s longstanding artistic collaborator, director Dmitri Tcherniakov, grasped the opportunity to stage and to rethink Berlioz’s opera in a fashion that will surely prove a turning-point in its chequered fortunes. A comparison with Carmen might seem bizarre. However unsuccessful that opera’s premiere, it can hardly be said thereafter to have lacked performances. Few productions, however, can be said to have done anything terribly interesting with Bizet’s opera: Calixto Bieito’s, yes, but also, still more importantly, Tcherniakov’s 2017 staging for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. I shall come a little to what they conceptually have in common; for now, I shall suggest that this most recent staging will prove as important a milestone for Les Troyens as his Carmen is now widely considered to have done for that opera.

Ascagne (Michèle Losier), Énée, Créuse (Natasha Mashkevich), Hécube (Véronique Gens), Priam (Paata Burchuladze), Chorèbe (Stéphane Degout), Polyxène (Francesca Lo Bue)

The division of Les Troyens into two parts, historical, structural, thematic – which is not, of course, to say that it has no other divisions, nor that the two parts do not possess greater unity – is uncommonly clear in Tcherniakov’s production, just as it was, whatever else one might have thought of it, in Philippe Jordan’s conducting. The latter emphasised in the first part, ‘La Prise de Troie’, Berlioz’s debt to and inspiration in Gluck; if only that had been sharper, rather than a somewhat inhibited, woolly-round-the-edges ‘classicism’, then musico-dramatic unity and self-reinforcement might have been achieved. As it was, we had to rely largely on Tcherniakov, who plunges us immediately into a modern, yet still monarchical warzone, very much the concern of a Trojan royal family that yet breeds dissent from within. Rolling news headlines inform and doubtless deform the populace, in a manner we are used to: fact mixed with propaganda, so we are never quite sure what is what, or whether indeed the distinction still pertains. Just as the opening ‘information’, that the siege of Troy has finally been lifted sets the scene for what ensues, so too do Elena Zaytseva’s costumes: sharp and stylish in dress-uniform and trophy-bride fashion. Is there a reality behind the news, behind the clothes? Yes and no. It depends where one looks, what one seeks. I was put a mind a little not only of Tcherniakov’s Tristan but also of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Iphigénie en Tauride, surely one of the most important Paris productions of the Mortier years. Royal families are a curious thing, especially now; being curious, however, does not mean they wield no power, nor does their pretence that they do not.

 

Créuse, Ascagne, Helenus (Jean-François Marras) Hécube,Polyxène, Priam Chorèbe, Andromaque (Mathilde Kopytto), Cassandre (Stéphanie d'Oustrac)

However, politics of a broader, still baser kind gnaws at the monarchy’s foundation. Just as the war ranging offstage – with occasional threatening forays onstage – is both dynastic and, in a sense not so different from the nineteenth century’s or our own, national, so our alleged hero looks both ways. Énée appears to be compromised by relations with the Greeks. We know from his thoughts – relayed on film – that he fears Priam’s foolish pride in not negotiating with them will lead to everyone’s downfall. We see Énée (apparently) welcome them once they are in the city and it is perhaps too late, yet also then take up the fight once against them. We also see his wife, Créuse, in a silent role, take her life in shame at what they have done, her suicide note relayed to us – who are ‘we/us’? – on screen. Are we being lied to, though? Who is dispensing this ‘news’, both on stage and on film?

Cassandre

Cassandre’s truthfulness speaks for itself, though. Just as none will listen to her onstage, no one in the audience will doubt her. That is partly to be attributed to a performance truly powerful in its verbal and musical integrity from Stéphanie d'Oustrac, but also to Tcherniakov’s direction. He places the prophetess cursed by incredulity around her in a position of alienation. She distances herself and is distanced, even despised – most clearly of all by Priam, whose casual violence during Laocoön’s obsequies once again renders the personal political, and vice versa. (The atrocity itself, only reported, had nevertheless, in modern war-media style, proved both hyper-real and hyper-unreal.) When Cassandre ventures outside the glitzy and austere throne room – venue of military high command and Hello photo-shoot alike – so as to speak, to sing to the cameramen outside, she captures the attention of all spectators at once. She speaks to camera, she distinguishes with effortless style between recitative and aria, relating them too. It is a feminist moment, but in d'Oustrac’s hands, it was equally a masterclass in lineage from Gluck and Mozart. Film speaks of her unconscious, her childhood memories, her words and notes show alignment with them rather than the deception, the display, the death elsewhere. Where Laooön’s final rituals are a state event, the bravery of Cassandre and her virgins is the real thing – as, again with seeming uniqueness, had been her love for Stéphane Degout’s Chorèbe and his for hers. Indeed, the latter’s truthfulness and romantic ardour could not have contrasted more strongly with the tortured machinations of Brandon Jovanovich’s complex, quite outstanding Énée. Ghost, fire, parafin, immolation: all seem real rather than hyper-real. But who, ultimately, knows…?

For when we move to Carthage, things are both very different and yet ultimately the same. Tcherniakov’s Carmen took us to an expensive game of psychotherapy for Don José; his Troyens now moves to a war victims’ centre for ‘rehabilitation’, whatever that might (or might not) be, role play a common element. Is that not, after all, what singers, what opera, what drama do every day – generally whilst playing with the idea that they are not? Where are the boundaries, beyond the walls of the psychotrauma units on- and offstage? Again, as in Carmen, games of identity play themselves out, again not ever quite as one expects. Didon is lauded as Queen of Carthage. We and Énée initially see her acclaimed, an agent of his therapy, dressed in the very same yellow as Créuse. We may even occasionally wonder whether the latter’s suicide were real; is this therapy for a couple traumatised by betrayal on personal and political stages alike? Probably not, ultimately, although the possibility tantalises. The staging, despite or indeed on account of its specificity of direction in the moment, remains open: adaptable to our standpoints, as well as the characters’, the director’s. As Jordan at last summoned greater Romantic fire from the orchestra – still rather less than some of us might have liked – the work opened up in a fascinating way, at least to those open for it to do so. The path shown by therapists Anna and Narbal – elegant of line as of gesture in fine, collegiate performances from Aude Extrémo and Christian van Horn – infuriated onstage and off. Parts of an audience whose behaviour was often, even by opera house standards, truly appalling, erupted prior to the fifth act, booing only obliterated by one fascist’s interminable hurling of verbal abuse. Cries of ‘Silence!’ only served to encourage, so it seemed, until Jordan momentarily defused matters by holding up a white cloth from his baton in the pit.

Narbal (Christian van Horn), Didon (Ekaterina Semenchuk), Énée, Iopas (Cyrille Dubois), Anna (Aude Extrémo)

Transformation of identities in set-pieces such as the Royal Hunt – is that not precisely what the music portrays, indeed incites? – has led inexorably to moments of violence onstage too: for instance, at the close of the fourth act, Didon’s throwing the table across the stage in anger. Whilst we have mostly been following Énée’s story – Berlioz and Jovanovich alike ensuring that – we suddenly become aware of another. And if we are human, we feel the guilt that, to be fair, this Énée displays too, whatever his decision. By bringing plot mechanics, emotions, trauma into the open – not unlike, say, the framework of the Centre Pompidou – Tcherniakov and his cast highlight their manipulation, both passive (by other forces, be they of Fate or something more human) and active (of the therapy group, of the audience). Worlds collide; lies and truths alike multiply, courtesy not least of dedicated performances from Jovanovich and Ekaterina Semenchuk. Elegant simplicity of response from Cyrille Dubois (Iopas) and Bror Magnus Tødenes (Hylas) in their big moments served also to highlight the dramatic contrast of complexity elsewhere. We might sometimes wish to hear beautiful airs, beautifully sung – who does not? – but we know, or should know, that there is far more to musical drama than that. Didon ultimately loses out in more ways than convention might ever have imagined. Does she reprise Créuse's final sacrifice in a formal and dramatic recapitulation? Has she not been preparing that role all along? Jovanovich’s portrayal of trauma and caprice may endure longer in the memory, but is that not in itself testimony to our ‘values’, our exaltation of ‘heroism’?

What of that most elevated – or enervated – of truths, Werktreue? Cuts in the theatre are hardly the end of the world. Whilst I should happily see the opera complete, I can live, as here, without much of the fourth-act ballet music (which, if memory serves me correctly, was included complete at Covent Garden in 2012, with less than convincing choreographic results). There are more fidelities, greater fidelities than are dreamt of in dull literalists’ philosophy. Such fidelities will more often than not be unleashed by infidelities, be they in love, in war, or in art. That is very much the story of Les Troyens and of Tcherniakov’s engagement with it; it should also be the tale of our engagement with both. What form that takes, or does not, is up to us. The greatest sadness, however, would be if, playing the role of heirs to Bergé and his patronising anti-modernism, we did not so much as try.