Dubois/Raës - Massenet, Fauré, Dubois, Godard, and Saint-Saëns, 28 October 2024

Wigmore Hall

Massenet: Elégie; Nuit d’Espagne; Sonnet
Fauré: Aubade, op.6 no.1; Chant d’automne, op.5 no.1; Dans les ruines d’une Abbaye, op.2 no.1; Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre; L’Absent, op.5 no.3; Tristesse d’Olympio
Théodore Dubois: Musiques sur l’eau
Benjamin Godard: Fleur d’exil, op.19 no.5
Camille Saint-Saëns: Mélodies persanes, op.26

Cyrille Dubois (tenor)

Tristan Raës (piano)

Tenor Cyrille Dubois and pianist Tristan Raës are to make Wigmore Hall history in a five-year series of the complete songs of Gabriel Fauré. Dubois will be the first artist to perform all of them at the hall; I presume, though do not know for certain, that Raës will be with him throughout. In this, the first concert which dovetailed neatly with 2024’s commemoration of the centenary of Fauré’s death, Dubois and Raës gave voice to ‘Young Fauré and his masters’, six of Fauré’s early songs heard with mélodies by Jules Massenet, Théodore Dubois, Benjamin Godard, and Camille Saint-Saëns. If there were a few, mostly by Dubois, I could happily live without hearing again, there were discoveries aplenty; it is hard and indeed would be foolish to begrudge outings for songs many of us will not have heard before, certainly in concert and quite likely at all. 

For me, the opening Massenet songs were quite a discovery. I have never been much of a fan, but that has been founded on the operas. These three songs from around 1870 offered a spur to reassessment. Whereas much of the operatic talk of Wagnerism has left me a little bemused, it was certainly present in the opening Elégie, from the harmonies of Raës’s striking piano introduction onwards. Their pairing, on Dubois’s entry, with Gallic elegance of vocal line made for a striking, even passionate mode of expression. ‘Nuit d’Espagne’ offered winning contrast and obstinate determination to prove the old saw, however fallacious, of the best ‘Spanish music’ having been written by Frenchmen. Affinity with Carmen was noteworthy; so too was the song’s composition having preceded that of Bizet’s opera. Enchantment of various kinds, eroticism without the Nietzschean decadence one might have expected, characterised Sonnet, which shared with its predecessor a frankly operatic climax chez Dubois. 

The Fauré songs initially inhabited stiller waters, yet already at the beginning of his œuvre, the closer one listened, the more varied the palette and the emotions, both within and between songs. Chant d’automne emerged as a splendidly Romantic response to Baudelaire, Dans les ruines d’une abbaye and, still more so, Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre (as early as 1862) acting in not dissimilar fashion to Hugo. The passionate climax of another Hugo setting, L’Absent, was finely judged by singer and pianist alike, whilst the turbulence of the last in the set (also Hugo), Tristesse d’Olympio grew ‘naturally’, art concealing art, from the preceding verse and music. Few will need reminding of the difficulties attendant to French word endings in song; no one would have guessed so from Dubois’s seemingly effortless command of idiom. 

The tenor’s namesake – no relation – Théodore Dubois close the first half. I cannot say I really ‘got’ his (considerably later: 1904-10) cycle, Musiques sur l’eau, the musical material coming across as rather characterless. Despite committed performances, (Cyrille) Dubois here suffered from a persistent catch in his throat. If it were to happen anywhere, it was probably better here, and he soon recovered, maintaining line and style. Raës’s performances were at least the equal of his partner’s. I was a little confused regarding one song, ‘Promenade à l’étang’, whose text differed from that printed in the programme; checking afterwards, it would certainly seem to have been included correctly, so perhaps the wrong text was inadvertently included. No matter. 

There was no doubting the sincerity of responses, nor to Benjamin Godard’s songs, which followed the interval. One would hardly call them adventurous, but they seemed more comfortable in their skin than Dubois’s, and were again given with a fine command of idiom and, where appropriate, as in Fleur d’exil, delectable vocal hush. The turbulence of Amour fatal, piano scalic passages and all, built to tumultuous climax, Je respire où tu palpates falling somewhere in between. I shall admit to wishing at one point that I might hear Dubois’s Don José or Samson instead, but full marks for his keenness to explore little-known corners of the repertoire. 

Finally, we heard Saint-Saëns’s outrageously Orientalist Mélodies persanes from 1870. Problematic nature aside, they offered a welcome change not only in mood but in compositional ambition and, for the most part, achievement. A vigorous yet subtle account of ‘La Brise’ showed the way for what was to come, patient attention to detail paying off handsomely in painting a larger picture. Ringing top notes (‘La Solitaire’) and Orientalist melismata (‘Sabre en main’) rested firmly on the foundations of rock-solid piano rhythm. A haunted visit ‘Au cimetière’ prepared us, in contrast as much as complement, for the étude-like piano blizzard of ‘Tournoiement’. 

By way of a calling-card for what is to come, the musicians gave Fauré’s op.1 no.1 as an encore. Le Papillon et La Fleur received a performance both buoyant and seductive. A smallish yet enthusiastic audience certainly appreciated the endeavour as a whole and seemed keen to hear more. Dubois and Raës merit following in this journey. Watch, or rather listen, out for the new year’s next instalment, devoted to the theme of Fauré and Nature.

Gens/Manoff - Gounod, Polignac, Massent, Duparc, Hahn, and Offenbach, 2 July 2018

Wigmore Hall

Gounod: Où voulez-vous aller?; Le Soir; O ma belle rebelle; Sérénade; Mignon; Viens, les gazons sont verts

Edmond de Polignac: Lamento

Massenet: Chant provençal; Elégie; Nuit d’Espagne

Duparc: Chanson triste; La Vie antérieure; Extase; Lamento

Reynaldo Hahn: Le Rossignol des lilas; Mai; Les Cygnes; Infidélité; Rêverie

Offenbach: Six Fables de La Fontaine: ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’, ‘Le Corbeau et le renard’

Véronique Gens (soprano)

Susan Manoff (piano)

It came as quite a surprise throughout much of the first half of this recital of French song, that it was the piano-playing of Susan Manoff that made the greater impression upon me than the singing of Véronique Gens. With the best will in the world, it could hardly be claimed that the songs of Gounod and Massenet are possessed of remarkably piano parts. And yet, from the prelude to the opening Où voulez-vous aller, it was often the piano that proved more communicative, that grabbed and retained my interest. Indeed, Manoff’s evident love for the music and for music-making in general proved so infections that I found more in the songs, especially Gounod’s, than I might ever have imagined possible. Whether it were her teasing, effortlessly ‘natural’ rubato in the Lamartine setting, Le Soir, the immediate establishment of a cradle rhythm, and her play therewith, in the Hugo Sérénade, or the unerring sense of line and shaping the song as a whole in Mignon, (sort of) after Goethe, it would have been more or less impossible not to warm to these performance. I certainly did not try. Likewise in the rhythms of Massenet’s  Nuit d’Espagne. ‘Generative’ might be thought too Teutonic a way of considering the music in a song like that; it was nevertheless the word that came to mind to this incorrigible Teutonophile.

Gens sometimes sounded reticent by comparison, rather as if she were holding something back for the second half. Perhaps she was. Not that there was nothing to admire. Above all, there was her ready way with the texts and her cleanness of line. A touch more vibrato might on occasion, though, have been welcome – at least to me. The tasteful sadness of Massenet’s Elégie prove eminently satisfying, though. In Edmond de Polignac’s Lamento, simple and well-formed, far more than a mere curiosity, both artists left one wanting more. The piano’s harmonic inflections nevertheless proved the key, or so it seemed.

If I found Gens at times a little ‘white’ of voice in Duparc’s songs – Vie antérieure in particular – that is more a matter of taste than anything else.  It remained, however, the piano parts in which I found, again to my surprise, the greater interest, at least until the Théophile Gautier setting, Lamento. Contemplation of the white tomb, as opposed to entombment itself, was very much the thing – until the high drama (relatively speaking) of the third and final stanza. ‘Ah! jamais plus près de la tombe je n’irai…’

Try as I might, I cannot summon up the enthusiasm shared by so many for the songs of Reynaldo Hahn, whether in the second half proper, or as encores. Nevertheless, I found myself well able to appreciate the darker undercurrents of a song such as Mai in performance. Likewise that ineffably Gallic regret – a cliché, I know, but what of it? – in Infidélité, another Gautier setting. Moreover, the way Manoff set up musical expectations through rhythm in the Hugo Rêverie reminded me very much of the opening Gounod set.

Offenbach’s cynical humour is probably just more appealing to me. I do not think I had ever heard his songs before. The two pieces from his Six Fables de La Fontaine, pretty much operettic scenas in their own right, made me keen to hear more. Gens now seemed far more at ease, more readily communicative. ‘She played humorously with the closing phrase of ‘Le Corbeau et le renard’ – ‘qu’on ne l’y prendrait plus’ – with no need to underline. The preceding ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’ closed with a true invitation to the dance. This was by now a true partnership, whether between soprano and pianist or grasshopper and ant.

Thaïs, Metropolitan Opera, 2 January 2009

Metropolitan Opera, New York

Cenobite monks – Daniel Clark Smith, Roger Andrews, Kurt Phinney, Richard Pearson, Craig Montgomery
Palémon – Alain Vernhes
Athanaël – Thomas Hampson
Guard – Trevor Scheunemann
Crobyle – Alyson Cambridge
Myrtale – Ginger Costa-Jackson
Nicias – Michael Schade
Thaïs – Renée Fleming
La Charmeuse – Leah Partridge
Albine – Maria Zifchak
Solo dancer – Zahra Hashemian
Violin solo – David Chan

John Cox (producer)
Christian Lacroix (costumes for Renée Fleming)
Duane Schuler (lighting)
Sara Jo Slate (choreographer)

Metropolitan Opera Chorus (chorus master: Donald Palumbo)
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Jesús López-Cobos (conductor)

This was unlike any operatic performance I have previously attended: not only the work itself – I can hardly claim to be a Massenet habitué and Thaïs is distinctly odd – but also the production and general experience. First, let us consider Thäis. It has tended to be revived and was arguably created as a ‘vehicle’ for a star soprano. We certainly had that in Renée Fleming and I assume that it was her allure that drew in the crowds to the Metropolitan Opera. It is difficult to imagine that this could justly be attributed to a sizable Massenet constituency in New York – or indeed, one that might have flown in for the occasion. For Thaïs, I am afraid to say, contrives to be both bizarre and for the most part dull. Part of the problem would seem to be the work of the librettist, Louis Gallet, who appears to have extracted the ironic anti-clericalism from Anatole France’s novel – which sounds rather interesting: I should be keen to read it – and left us with a story in which a fanatical fourth-century monk, Athanaël attempts and succeeds to win over to his ascetic faith the courtesan, Thaïs, only to succumb to his suppressed lusts and attempt to win her back for the dark side. However, she dies and in her already-declared sainthood is not far off assumed into heaven, as she experiences a vision of angels. (As the late Anna Russell used to say, 'I’m not making this up, you know!') Thaïs’s conversion is so incredibly abrupt that the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’ seems risibly inadequate for what one must do to one’s dramatic faculties. Moreover, there is no longer any attack upon clerical hypocrisy, for Athanaël fights temptation rather than dissembles. If anything, Athanaël is more the central character, yet that principal reason we might have for him being so has vanished. There might remain interesting contemporary resonances in his fundamentalism but they would need to be dealt with more forcefully than in this production. What in the world of television used to be called ‘continuity’, and perhaps still is, did not seem to have been closely attended to, for the libretto – yes, this was no quirk of the production – had Athanaël threatened with a rifle as he entered Nicias’s Alexandrian palace. (I am well aware of the clock in Julius Caesar, but that is no excuse.)

Before coming to the production, it is worth commenting upon the score itself. It has odd moments, such as the offstage music at the beginning of the second scene of Act II – very well performed. There is also some slightly more interesting music by the oasis in the third act, although it is hardly ‘superbly effective’, to quote the wildly enthusiastic programme note by Thomas May. For the most part, however, it is insipid, with the odd very watered-down Wagnerism. Pelléas this is not, in any sense. Sometimes, such music can sound better than it is. I imagine that Sir Thomas Beecham might have worked some magic upon it. Jesús López-Cobos did not, seeming content to let it flow, or sometimes drag. The playing of the Met orchestra sounded routine; it is easy to sympathise. More worryingly still, so in thrall did the conductor seem to Fleming that he often appeared to be following her rather than vice versa. And what we might charitably term her tempo fluctuations were more than a little on the arbitrary side.

If ever a work cried out for Regietheater it was this: a new twist just might have granted some dramatic credibility to what is at best kitsch, but more often plain uninteresting. As the reader may have guessed, such was not to be in this production shipped in from the Lyric Opera of Chicago. John Cox had us veer between poster-paint scenes of the Egyptian desert and an Alexandria that more or less resembled modern Las Vegas. The cast seemed more or less left to fend for themselves, for the real point of the production seemed to be to showcase the dress designs of Christian Lacroix. They might have worked wonders for a fundraising operatic gala but they had little connection with anything else that was going on. Fleming’s countless changes of wardrobe – they probably were not that many, yet their focal nature made it seem as if they were – resembled the behaviour of a television hostess for an awards ceremony. The last one was almost – but not quite – surreally inappropriate for someone who had entered a convent and was on her deathbed. All too lengthy scene changes, not only between but even within acts, dissipated what little dramatic tension there might have been. And certain members of the audience seemed unable even to listen, applauding before numbers had finished, perhaps most bizarrely during the celebrated violin Méditation. What happened once the Méditation had oame to an end verged upon the incredible. Not only was there applause, but López-Cobos joined in and summoned the soloist to his feet in the pit. Was this a post-modern take upon performance, reception, and so on? It would have been irritating or worse if it had been, but it just appeared to be part of the same ‘gala experience’. If the performers and production team do not even try to take the work seriously, it is a little much to ask others to do so.

What of the singing? That was better, though hardly outstanding. Fleming at her best sounded at her best but her diction was variable and she exhibited some surprisingly ropy intonation. Thomas Hampson was more dramatically credible as Athanaël. During the first act, his performance sometimes tended towards crudity, but it might be argued that this was not inappropriate for the character. Later on, he became more mellifluous, although his French did not always sound idiomatic. Michael Schade was better in that respect as Nicias, even though he sometimes sounded a little out of vocal sorts. (I am not sure that I can blame him; he would surely have preferred to be singing Tamino.) It was quite a relief to hear the French style – both verbal and musical – of Alain Vernhes’s Palémon. I was not surprised when consulting the programme afterwards to discover that the role had been assumed by a Frenchman. Maria Zifchak’s small contribution as Albine was therefore all the more to be cherished, since she had no such native advantage.

What I cannot understand, though, is why one would choose this work if one were Renée Fleming. It seems difficult to believe that there was any other reason for its revival. And yet, surely there are so many other, more gratifying roles in which she could have excelled. Much as I may deplore it, I can understand the cult of the singer, but it is an odd cult indeed if the music and the drama are so uninvolving. Thaïs or the Marschallin? I should have thought that decision would be, as many Americans like to say, a ‘no-brainer’.