Médée, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 16 July 2023

Médée – Sonya Yoncheva
Jason – Charles Castronovo
Créon – Peter Schöne
Dircé – Slavá Zámečníková
Néris – Marina Prudenskaya
Dircé’s Handmaidens – Regina Koncz, Maria Hegele
Children of Jason and Médée – Fritz Bachmann, Nathan Kamsu

Andrea Breth (director)
Martin Zehetgruber (set designs)
Carla Teti (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

Images: Bernd Uhlig

Cherubini’s best-known and surely greatest opera, Médée, continues to hover on the edge of the repertory. It had a high-profile outing in Salzburg in 2019, about which production if not performance the less said the better. The previous year, Andrea Breth’s staging came to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. I missed it then, but caught (just) its first revival in February 2020, shortly before theatres closed for longer than any of us ever imagined. Now it receives its second revival and will feature next season too. I caught it just in time, making not only the final performance of this run but of the Staatsoper’s season. It made for an excellent finish, quite the way to go out, and acclaimed as such by an enthusiastic audience. 

Médée continues, in various ways, to seem a strange work, though it may be our categories and reference points that are at fault there rather than the opera itself. Some of its arias seem long for their role, as if transplanted from a pre-Mozartian seria world that yet cannot evade the Salzburger’s influence (and why should anyone wish to?) At the same time, the influence of reformist Gluck – and, I think, Niccolò Jommelli – is felt strongly, accompagnati and increasingly dramatic orchestral writing included. If one can tell, or at least speculate, why Cherubini and Beethoven would have held such mutual respect, it is Berlioz who, perhaps surprisingly, comes to seem closer as the work proceeds. Breth and Sergio Morabito have drastically shortened the dialogue. One can understand why, especially with a non-Francophone cast – Charles Castronovo fared notably better in spoken French than the rest – but, as with Fidelio, to which in some respects it stands quite close, that has mixed implications for its proportions and dramatic flow. At least it is treated (more or less) properly as an opéra-comique – which does not in any sense imply comedy! – rather than receiving the Italian treatment popularised by Maria Callas.

Médée (Sonya Yoncheva)

The production, very much a collaborative effort, designs and lighting making powerful contributions, presents a closed or at least inaccessible world, with more than a little of the underground to it, perhaps even a bunkered existence for Créon’s regime. Médée, clearly not of that world and thereby assuming powers against as well as enmity from it, gains access and must be banished. The people are largely external to these quarters, though they are shown what Créon wishes them to see—and prevented from seeing what he does not wish them to see. I do not want to go on again about the decision to adopt ‘exotic’ skin colouring for Médée. It seems to me at best unnecessary; there are – and were – other ways to connote ‘otherness’. But if one can live with it, the production largely permits the work to play out and introduce us to its particular qualities. There is a fine Götterdämmerung-in-miniature quality to its final act.

In the wake of Callas, the opera has often been treated as a ‘vehicle’. Again, one can understand why, but it is far more than that, and deserves better. That is not to say that Sonya Yoncheva’s performance lacked star quality, quite the contrary: it was sensational. But it was dramatically grounded, just as it might be in, say, Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (which, now I think about it, would be just the piece for her). Yoncheva sang, but also she spat; she wept, but also she exulted. I find it difficult to believe the role can ever have been more mesmerizingly played. Drama arose from the score, out of the extraordinary range of colours and modes of delivery she conjured, whilst she maintained tight yet generous focus on trajectory. In that, she perfectly complemented Oksana Lyniv’s conducting, which I admired in 2020 but which now seemed to acquire greater tragic depth and breadth as the evening progressed, without the slightest loss to precision and clarity, for which of course the Staatskapelle Berlin must share credit.

Médée, Jason (Charles Castronovo)

Castronovo, who sang at the premiere but not at the first revival, was equally impressive—or would have been, had the role permitted. In what may be the finest performance I have seen and heard from him, he fully inhabited Jason’s slithery character and world, treading a tightrope between undeniable allure and the contempt we should feel. In a microcosm, we experienced this on his first appearance: having struck a bargain with Créon, he managed also to have his desultory way with one of Dircé handmaidens, witnessed by Dircé herself (as was his first confrontation with Medée). Slavá Zámečníková thus evoked our sympathy as Dircé, cleanness of line in her first aria approaching a metaphor for an innocence shared by none around her. Wherever fault may lie, it is not with her. Marina Prudenskaya gave a typically excellent performance, alert and considered, as Médée’s slave, Néris. Peter Schöne was properly unsympathetic as Créon, here notably in Médée’s thrall too. The chorus was also on fine form indeed, a crucial contributor to as well as observer of the unfurling tragedy.

There will be other opportunities over the coming years to experience Cherubini’s opera, though perhaps not many. This, when it returns in the autumn, demands and will reward anyone’s attention.

Médée, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 21 February 2020

Images: Bernd Uhlig

Médée – Sonya Yoncheva

Jason – Francesco Demuro

Créon – Iain Paterson

Dircé – Slávka Zámečníková

Néris – Marina Prudenskaya

Médée’s handmaidens – Serena Sáenz, Aytak Shikhalizada

Médée’s children – Malik Bah, Toyi Kramer

Andrea Breth (director)

Martin Zehetgruber (set designs)

Carla Teti (costumes)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

Since enduring Simon Stone’s extravagant travesty of Cherubini’s Médée in Salzburg last summer, I have been keen to see an alternative staging. That opportunity came sooner than I had dared hope, with a revival of Andrea Breth’s 2018 production for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. One major concern notwithstanding, Breth’s production is in another league, an intelligent attempt, in many respects well realised, to respond both to the specificity of the work and to some of its broader ideological concerns.

Set designs (Martin Zehetgruber) are more or less what one would expect from a Breth production. More concerned, at least unless I were missing something, with establishing a stage aesthetic than with specific meaning of their own, they would not have looked entirely out of place in her Wozzeck or Lulu for this same house. I have no problem with that: different directors work in different ways; the point here is to focus on what does matter dramatically to Breth and her collaborators, a mission finely accomplished. Balance is well judged between provision of a space – not just a scenic space, but certainly that too – for the drama, renewed in much of its horror, strangeness, and yet credibility and familiarity, to unfold, and a critical stance upon Médée’s status as an outsider. With respect to the former, Breth clearly knows how to bring out the best from her cast as actors; there is little or no sense of anything extraneous, rather of a musical drama unfolding, gathering pace, enveloping characters and audience – when it can be bothered to remain silent – alike.

This is not a reductive attempt, as with Stone, to make Médée ‘relatable’; in reality, all it did was banish her story and much of her agency. This Médée knows her strengths, is unafraid to use them, and exacts her revenge – just as we should expect. Yet, alongside that, Breth takes care to suggest why this might be so. Créon’s Corinth is not and could never be a friendly place to her, however magnanimously her rival Dirce’s father might have offered ‘sanctuary’ to Médée’s sons. Therein, alas, lies my major concern too. It is an excellent idea, with strong roots in the ‘original’ myth as well as in the opera itself, to stress Médée’s unacceptable otherness to the polis. Carla Teti’s costumes, Olaf Freese’s lighting, and various other aspects of the production, contribute to this admirably, as does Sonya Yoncheva’s performance. The discredited practice of ‘brownface’, however, does little more than distract, at best, as unnecessary as it is offensive. Had there been some element of deconstruction, in a very different, less direct sort of production, perhaps showing a ‘behind the scenes’ transformation or at any rate problematising the practice, perhaps there would have been an argument. Here, I am afraid it steals the show in quite the wrong way: a great pity.

For Yoncheva’s performance was of a stature that it would have moved and explained all simply – or not so simply – through her voice, let alone her stage presence. Clean and focused of tone – no ‘dramatic’ imprecision here – yet at the same all-encompassing in its mystery and magic, hers was a contribution that gripped from beginning to end. Slávka Zámečníková’s Dircé, spirited and alluring, yet a fatally insecure rival, proved equally impressive, as did Marina Prudenskaya’s typically thoughtful, beautifully sung account of Néris, Médées faithful slave. As Jason, Francesco Demuro acted well, taking care not to court our sympathy, yet vocally, this was often an unduly Italianate, extroverted performance, out of kilter not only with the production but with a greater appreciation of French style shown elsewhere. A dry-toned Iain Paterson was strangely out of sorts in his first-act aria, ‘C’est à vous de trembler,’ yet rallied later on. Choral singing was excellent throughout.

If there were times when I wished for something a little larger-scale, more ‘Romantic’ – I could not help but wonder what Daniel Barenboim made of Cherubini’s score in 2018 – Oksana Lyniv’s conducting had its own logic and merits, well placed to win over any scepticism founded in mere taste. I admired her technical control over the Staatskapelle Berlin last autumn in the concert hall. Similarly admirable control and what came across as fine rapport with the orchestra were harnessed to proper understanding of the dramatic implications of Cherubini’s musical structures. In the theatre, structure became form, most strikingly of all in the third act, yet without question throughout. Neo-Gluckian style was harnessed to idea, rather than vice versa.

The ‘version’ of spoken dialogue used, credited to Breth and Sergio Morabito, worked well, an inordinate improvement on the interminable voicemail messages – I kid you not – served up by Stone in Salzburg. Even Médée’s breathy, amplified, final-act interventions stayed the right side of menace and ‘madness’. That strange, sad miscalculation concerning make-up notwithstanding, then, there was more than enough to confirm the stature of Cherubini’s opera and have one experience its musico-dramatic immediacy. This was a serious confrontation with a serious drama.

Salzburg Festival (7) - Médée, 19 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

  

Images: Salzburger Festspiele / Thomas Aurin
Médée (Elena Stikhina)

Médée – Elena Stikhina

Jason – Pavel Černoch

Créon – Vitalij Kowaljow

Dircé – Rosa Feola

Néris – Alisa Kolosova

Two handmaidens of Dircé – Tamara Bounazou, Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur

Médée’s voicemail – Amira Casar

Simon Stone (director)

Bob Cousins (set designs)

Mel Page (costumes)

Nick Schlieper (lighting)

Stefan Gregory (sound design)

Christian Arseni (dramaturgy)

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Thomas Hengelbrock (conductor)

What a sad waste of an evidently considerable budget. A rare opportunity, my first, to see an important opera staged; a fine cast, both in vocal and acting terms; equally fine orchestral playing and far from negligible conductor; all undone, alas, by one of the most uncomprehending, unmusical, wasteful, inept stagings of an opera I have had the misfortune to see in quite some time. To render the story of Medea, in any of its versions, so mind-numbingly banal would have been achievement in itself; to rob that rendition of any internal, let alone other, coherence, would have been one of equal magnitude; to exhibit such a deaf ear to Cherubini’s score for Médée, whilst arrogantly, ignorantly disdaining the claims of its genre…

Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur (Second Handmaiden), Dircé (Rosa Feola), Tamara Bounazou (First Handmaiden)

Underlying director, Simon Stone’s premise, if we may call it that, is the patronising claim that, to be ‘relatable’, Médée must be brought down to size. That would appear to entail robbing her of all particularity, of anything that makes her remarkable, debasing her character into at least two more-or-less-incompatible clichés: not at all misogynistic, then. We start, ominously in all the wrong ways, with a film accompanying – actually, intentionally or otherwise, distracting from – the Overture. Médée and Jason are shown in this film to be a couple of unsympathetic, narcissistic rich people, with typically pretty accessory-children. (At least I think that was the claim.) Living somewhere in the Alpine region outside Salzburg - various film scenes take place round and about the festival city, though nothing, so far as I could tell, onstage itself – they enjoy a sickening ‘family’ breakfast and go to a concert. (If only I were making this up.) Jason cannot make it, so Médée and the children go without him, only to realise that they have forgotten something – if only I had – and turn back. Médée finds Jason in bed with Dircé, and they conclude a ‘high-net-worth divorce’. Just what Cherubini is suggesting in the score – and, for most of us, far less relatable than Euripides, Cherubini, or anyone in between.

Médée, Jason (Pavel Černoch), children

And so it ineptly staggers on. The next time we see her, the formerly well-to-do Austrian (or at least Austrian-domiciled) Médée has been expelled to Georgia. Her settlement had run out, we learn via voicemail (!) She communicates via an Internet café with Créon and Jason: more, it seems, to incorporate two expensive sets onstage at the same time than out of any dramatic imperative. For some reason, she does not use Skype, although refers to it, moving away from the computer terminal to a payphone at the café. Créon and Jason, meanwhile, are at a lapdancing club, replete with acts more tiresome than erotic. The ‘girls’ seem also to be at the same venue, a rare and puzzling concession to cost, though they have some male strippers on hand.

Immigration control looms large, though hardly relevant. Yes, all of us to the left of ‘conservative’ directors such as Alvis Hermanis – he might even have made a better job of directing this – revile what is being done in our name to migrants. But to attempt to disarm criticism by portraying Médée in this way is at best bizarre. There are other ways to dispense with magic, if you wish. Créon, who seems to be some sort of interior minister, appears at the airport – we learn, for some reason or seemingly none, again via voicemail, that Médée has flown in via Istanbul – personally to prevent Médée from entering. Quite why she had not been forbidden entry beforehand, having assaulted at least one immigration officer, is unclear in what purports to be a realistic, contemporary setting. Both participants conduct their struggle live on television, which is streamed to an expensive international hotel in which the wedding guests and wedding couple, somewhat bafflingly, are all staying. An economics programme, with stock exchange updates, provides light relief. Again, I wish I were making this up.

Stone dispenses with the dialogue. Fair enough, I suppose, though really I cannot see the need. (A common tendency may be seen in many tedious butcherings of Fidelio.) Instead, we hear absurdly ‘dramatic’ – ‘operatic’, almost in the pejorative sense – of the aforementioned voicemail messages from Médée to Jason, which often make nonsense of the acts seen onstage, let alone the acts we might have seen. References to Skype and so forth – the programme she seems unable actually to use – are both edifying and instructive. The creators of Gossip Girl would have done a much better job – in every conceivable respect.

As for the third act’s dread deeds of vengeance, Stone manages to make a nonsense both of what the work is telling us and of his replacement, let alone the score. An equivalent to the poisoned robe and other gifts is set up, in expensive-looking shopping bags, but instead Médée decides to drug a waiter, dress up as him, and poison Dircé’s champagne. Even that does not seem to be the agent of her death, though, for then Médée, presumably because Stone thought the banal drama he had created needed a touch of melodrama, stabs Dircé and Créon, blood spilled all over. We revert to film, for riveting footage of Médée leaving the building, finding a car, and driving along a motorway, until we reach our modern-day temple: a motorway service station. There, after a lengthy period of time in which all the high state security surrounding her could simply have incapacitated her and saved the children, not then dead but just seated in the car, she kills them and herself with exhaust fumes. The chorus could be seen waiting in the wings from where I was seated, apparently before it should. Even the lighting was not coordinated. And quite how Médée was supposed to have heard an offstage Jason, I have no idea. Any old police drama would have accomplished this with greater efficacy. At any rate: The End.

Poor Cherubini, then. Admired by Brahms and Wagner – a dual endorsement that is far from the easiest to have pulled off – not to mention minor luminaries such as Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and even the elderly Haydn, Médée is too often underrated, neglected, or just ignored. Its legacy to later opéra comique is clear, but so too is what that genre failed to take up, and may well have benefited from doing so; perhaps one might even say the same for much grand opéra. However much Berlioz may, amusingly, have fumed against Cherubini, he clearly learned a great deal, just as Cherubini, still more so, had from Gluck. (It is surely no coincidence that Riccardo Muti has shown himself such an unfashionable enthusiast for both.) The construction of scenes is often fascinating: a veritable missing chapter in so many accounts, more assumed than actual, of nineteenth-century musical history.

Créon (Vitalij Kowaljow)

Thomas Hengelbrock seemed more at home with that than with how the scenes might actually fit together, deplorably pausing to encourage, rather than at least to discourage, applause between them. But at least he brought that medium-term formal understanding to the table, along with a far from negligible ear for detail, in which the excellent players of the Vienna Philharmonic, on something approaching top form, truly shone. The chorus likewise sang with unfailing commitment: everything in Gluckian and other musical terms the production was not. Elena Stikhina gave a memorable, even moving, insofar as she was permitted, performance in the treacherous title role. Her coloratura proved searingly dramatic, a reinstatement Gluck himself would surely have understood and appreciated; her range of vocal colours was equally impressive. Dircé, in Stone’s world just another ‘real woman’, albeit less spirited, was fortunate to encounter such fine singing from Rosa Feola, who did whatever she could in these most trying circumstances. If Pavel Černoch sometimes sounded strained at the top of his vocal range, he proved tireless in communicating his difficult mix of allure and cowardice: unfailingly well-acted. Jason is just the thankless role you would expect it to be. Vitalij Kowaljow’s stentorian Créon and Alisa Kolosova’s rich-toned Néris likewise deserved better.

For Stone could not have shown less of an ear for music if he had tried. Perhaps he did. At any rate, his alternative irrelevancies distracted in the very worst way, even from themselves. By all means, comment on, question, even, if you are really sure about it, hold to account the work, of which the score is a crucial part. A production need not be its obedient servant. But to work so uncomprehendingly against it, by default rather than design: that was never likely to end well.