Cavalleria rusticana/Sancta Susanna, Opéra national de Paris, 3 December 2016

Opéra Bastille

Images: Julien Benhamou /OnP

Santuzza – Elina Garanča

Turiddu – Yonghoon Lee
Lucia – Elena Zaremba
Alfio – Vitaliy Bilyy
Lola – Antoinette Dennefeld

Susanna – Anna Caterina Antonacci

Klementia – Renée Morloc
Old Nun – Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo
Maid – Katharina Crespo
Knight – Jeff Esperanza

Mario Martone (director)

Sergio Tramonti (set designs)
Ursula Patzak (costumes)
Pasquale Mari (lighting)
Daniela Schiavone (assistant director, Cavalleria rusticana)
Raffaella Giordana (choreography, Sancta Susanna)


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

Carlo Rizzi (conductor)

Two operas: one rather better known to the operatic public, but neither to me personally. I tried (perhaps that was the problem?) with Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, yet felt rather nonplussed. There was nothing especially to ‘mind’, but the work left little impression beyond its strange pacing (dragging almost interminably, then abruptly concluding, or at least finishing). Somehow, it came across both as crude and bland. I heard dashes of undigested Wagner, devoid of context, washed up amongst mildly Verdian debris. Every so often, Mascagni seemed to aspire towards Puccini, yet barely left the starting block, falling time and time again on mere cliché, and failing to achieve anything of interest melodically, harmonically, orchestrally. Characterisation seemed minimal, the drama, such as it was, situational. As for the story, such as it was, would it not have embarrassed a 1980s television mini-series? I had been curious to discover what the fuss was all about; in a sense, I am all the more curious now, since I really did not ‘get it’. ‘Some of my best friends’, but not, alas, me…

 

If Mascagni’s opera would have seemed more suited to a ten or fifteen minutes scena, Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna left me wanting more: always a good sign. The final part of his Expressionist triptych (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen, and Das Nusch-Nuschi come first), it is much more my sort of thing, I suppose. Musically, it comes perhaps as close to ‘atonal’ Schoenberg as Hindemith would ever do: more than once, I was put in mind of Die glückliche Hand, even Bluebeard’s Castle, especially in terms of orchestral colour, but perhaps harmonically too. Subject matter – a convent riven by sexual frenzy and demonic possession – has certain points of contact with Erwartung, perhaps, and more generally with other contemporaneous musical explorations (mostly, of course by men) of female sexuality, but more obviously with Prokofiev’s later Fiery Angel. Hindemith certainly has no aspirations to the so-called athematicism of Erwartung, though, quasi-autonomous musical form already gesturing, from within its Expressionist cloak, to the Neue Sachlichkeit future.

 

What do the two works have in common? Very little, I think, although I suppose one might make some generic ‘religious’ claim. Mario Montane, perhaps mistakenly, made little or no effort to link them. An awkward five minutes or so (following curtain calls!) in between, house lights still off, did not help, audience members not unreasonably uncertain what to do (apart, that is, from some Hindemith foes who made a dash for it). It was not entirely clear to me whether the Cross seen in his Sicilian Church was supposed to be in some sense the same as that witnessed so strikingly in Sergio Tramonti’s design for the crypt or other underworld beneath the convent. At first, Montane’s Cavalleria rusticana seems highly conventional, but there is a greater degree of abstraction than one might first guess, much done with comparatively little, rescuing the work somewhat from its vulgar realism. A definite emphasis upon the menacing power of the village crowd, seated in judgement, is welcome too. (I thought of Peter Grimes.) The fun is really had to be had, though, in Sancta Susanna. The action initially takes place in a ‘window’, securely embedded, or so it seems, within a larger structure, which begins to fall to pieces – as, well, Susanna’s defences do. Nightmarish giant crucifixes, a huge insect (made up of a highly skilled movement team, well choreographed by Raffaella Giordana), and the past and present of nuns writhing on the Cross, tread with delicious ambiguity the line between sympathy and Gothic horror.



The orchestra of the Paris Opéra sounded sumptuous, with a splendid sheen but plenty of depth in the Hindemith too. Carlo Rizzi seemed perhaps more at home in Mascagni; I should not have minded a little more formal delineation in the Hindemith. Nevertheless, his exploration of orchestral colour there was greatly to be welcomed, and the climactic moments were viscerally exciting. Choral singing and blocking were well handled throughout.

 

Elina Garanča sang beautifully as Santuzza in the Mascagni, line impeccable, although there was a certain coldness to her performance that perhaps militated against the possibility of much emotional involvement. Yonghoon Lee’s excellent Turiddu was quite the peacock, also quite the mummy’s boy: just, I presume, as he should have been. Dramatic toing and froing between Anna Caterina Antonacci, every inch the queen of her stage, and Renée Morloc was gripping, reminding us that there is much to be pieced together from Hindemith’s vocal lines, not nearly so fragmentary as they might initially seem. Controlled frenzy was the order of the day, but never too controlled. All other parts were well taken. If only, though, Sancta Susanna had been presented with a more appropriate companion piece or pieces, though, whether Hindemith’s own or something more tellingly related or contrasted. Next time…

 

La Bohème, Welsh National Opera, 1 June 2012

Millennium Centre, Cardiff

Mimi – Anita Hartig

Musetta – Kate Valentine

Rodolfo – Alex Vicens

Marcello – David Kempster

Schaunard – Gary Griffiths

Colline – David Soar

Annabel Arden (director)

Stephen Brimson Lewis (designs)

Tim Mitchell (lighting)

Nina Dunn (projections)

Philippe Giraudeau (choreography)

Chorus of the Welsh National Opera

Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera

Carlo Rizzi (conductor)

Puccini, I think it is fair to say, will never be my favourite composer, but I have always admired his craftsmanship, and find much of interest in his harmony and his orchestration. Even if I dislike the obvious emotional manipulation, I used to feel not entirely dissimilarly with respect to Strauss, and long ago shed most, if not all, my qualms about that. I remain irked by the obviousness of some of the writing, the lack at times of anything much beneath the surface, and that seems to me a particular problem with some, though not all, of La Bohème. Nevertheless, there is not a single work I have heard by Puccini that I have not found more interesting than anything by Verdi, let alone Donizetti.

When it came to the Welsh National Opera’s staging, I confess that I had failed to do my homework beforehand. Upon seeing Annabel Arden’s offering, I therefore initially assumed it to be a venerable old production, very much on its last legs and was astonished to discover that this was in fact the first night of a new production. It was allegedly updated to Paris just before the outbreak of the Great War, but frankly, I doubt that anyone would have noticed had it not been pointed out. Apparently, the different hats – I am not making this up – gave away the slight updating. Quite what the point was eluded me, especially if one required an advanced diploma in millinery studies to appreciate it. For really, this resembled on stage the most overtly ‘traditional’ production one could imagine. The size of the garret was frankly ludicrous: surely any director and designer would wish to go beyond Zeffirelli; it is not, after all, difficult to advance beyond the utterly mindless. And when one appears not to have the resources to put anything in the space, one ends up with Zeffirelli-lite.

More seriously, it was difficult to discern even the slightest glimmer of an idea in Arden’s approach. WNO might as well have stuck with what it had before. O for the directorial ingenuity integrity of a Peter Konwitschny to make itself felt in such repertoire… (Stefan Herheim has mounted a highly-regarded Bohème in Oslo.) It would have the added benefit of annoying, probably even scandalising, all those people who attend ‘the opera’ for all the wrong reasons. Doubtless they were appeased on this occasion. I suspect, however, that they would have been as mystified as I was as to why, in an otherwise hyper-‘traditional’ production, a man dressed as a monkey appeared at the Café Momus. As for the projections between scenes, they at best resembled a computer screen saver: a waste of time, effort, and doubtless money.

 Carlo Rizzi, a former Music Director, conducted ably enough, but this was not a memorable orchestral account. A considerable amount of first two acts sounded a little on the ‘light’ side, more akin to a certain school of Mendelssohn performance. That was doubtless partly a matter of the orchestra, which at times simply did not have the necessary reserves of string sound on which to fall back, though on other occasions, it acquitted itself rather well, the woodwind in particular. However, it was difficult not to long for the Vienna Philharmonic, and/or for Karajan. Rizzi’s pacing was fine for the most part, although the fourth act dragged, even if that is partly a matter of the score.

The ladies for the most part fared better than the gentlemen. (I am afraid I cannot offer a full cast list, since I did not buy a programme and WNO’s website only identifies the principals.) Anita Hartig was for the most part a touching Mimi. She certainly has a beautiful voice, though her tuning sometimes went a little awry. Kate Valentine’s Musetta was perhaps the most captivating portrayal, a slight edge, especially during the second act, differentiating her nicely from Mimi. Indeed, the lilt, expertly judged, to Valentine’s rendition of ‘Quando me’n vo’ imparted character and sheer enjoyment in equal measure. Increased warmth of tone during the fourth act was apt and telling. Alex Vicens’s Rodolfo was not bad, though at times it veered dangerously close to a not very successful, indeed considerably underpowered, parody of Pavarotti, the sobs irritating beyond measure. If Puccini’s music is to be taken seriously, then that sort of bad tradition really ought to be stamped upon. David Kempster’s Marcello was sung well enough, but it was difficult to overlook his relative maturity, appearing more like a kindly great-uncle than a young artist.

The principal disappointment, however, remained Arden’s staging, a missed opportunity indeed. I remain hopeful that my next Bohème, in Salzburg this summer, will offer more, or at least some, food for thought. Perhaps it will persuade me that there is more dramatic continuity than I have been able to discern so far; at any rate, it will have the Vienna Philharmonic, Daniele Gatti, Anna Netrebko, and a director whose words at least give the impression of having considered what relevance this dangerously sentimental opera might yet retain.