Le nozze di Figaro, Opéra national de Paris, 15 November 2025

Palais Garnier

Images: Franck Ferville - OnP
Figaro (Gordon Bintner), Susanna (Sabine Devieilhe), Count Almaviva (Christian Gerhaher)

Figaro – Gordon Bintner
Susanna – Sabine Devieilhe
Count Almaviva – Christian Gerhaher
Countess Almaviva – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Cherubino – Lea Desandre
Marcellina – Monica Bacelli
Dr Bartolo – James Creswell
Don Basilio – Leonardo Cortelazzi
Don Curzio – Nicholas Jones
Barbarina – Ilanah Lobel-Torres
Antonio – Franck Leguérinel
Two Bridesmaids – Sima Ouahaman, Daria Akulova

Director, designs, video – Netia Jones
Lighting – Lucy Carter
Choreography – Sophie Laplane
Dramaturgy – Solène Souriau

  
Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Alessandro Di Stefano)  

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Antonello Manacorda (conductor)

Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro took a while to come to the stage. Completed in more or less the form we know it by 1778, it was accepted, little more than a stone’s throw away from the Palais Garnier for performance by the Comédie-Française in 1781, but its reading before the French court had Louis XVI personally intervene to prevent it. Following revisions, including the action’s transposition from France to Spain, Louis was persuaded by the Queen and his brother the Comte d’Artois (the future, notoriously reactionary Charles X) to permit a private performance in 1783 at Gennevilliers including members of the French royal family. Overruling the censor, Louis thereafter permitted its Paris public premiere the following year at the Théâtre Français on the opposite side of the river. Royal prevarication could be seen as symbolic of Louis’s reign as a whole, encapsulating in its way one of many themes in the history that led only five years later to the outbreak of the Revolution. (So too, of course, did the play itself, Napoleon’s celebrated description – ‘C’est dejà la Révolution en action!’ – serving even today to frame many a review, whether of Beaumarchais or Da Ponte and Mozart. Box-office receipts were the highest France had yet seen; the controversy ultimately did it no harm, quite the contrary. Given the place it holds in French history – not only French literary and dramatic history – the play continues to hold the stage in Paris and France more generally, though Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera has largely, if not entirely, eclipsed it elsewhere. It somehow therefore seemed a little strange – alternatively, a glimpse into reception and transformation – to hear it in Italian rather than French, for what I realised must be my first Nozze di Figaro in France, its billing as Les Noces di Figaro (rather than Beaumarchais’s Mariage) both clue and complication. The Paris Opéra would give it in French between 1793, in Beaumarchais’s own re-adaptation, and 1973, when Giorgio Strehler’s new staging, conducted by Georg Solti, would be the first to employ Da Ponte’s original Italian. 

Dr Bartolo (James Creswell), Marcellina (Monica Bacelli)

Netia Jones’s production takes its leave from that history; from a decision in some, though not all, ways to eschew it; and from the MeToo movement, less distant in 2022 than it now seems during the Trump Restoration. (Come back Charles X, all is forgiven?) The setting is backstage at the Palais Garnier, playing with the idea that opera houses in general and this one in particular come close to an eighteenth-century estate. Not having been backstage there, I learned only from Jones’s programme note that set designs, including ‘the celebrated armchair’, were reproductions of their counterparts there, dressing rooms the focus of the action—as they will in houses prove the focus and locus of dressing (and undressing). Indeed, at the close, we see a glimpse, back of ‘backstage’, and thus theatrically in front of it, of the auditorium itself. I do not think it especially matters; the framing’s the play’s the thing, and this clearly has more general reference. Staircase and all, this house has after all particular resonance in the popular imagination as an archetype, the institution itself having a longer ‘representative’ history we can take back almost as far as we like, even beyond the age of Meyerbeer, Scribe, et al. (and Wagner). Not for nothing do descriptions of changing operatic tastes more often than not use the building’s survey of celebrated lyric composers (and others) as an illustrative case in point. 

House hierarchies can, like their landed ancien régime counterparts, prove ‘challenging’, as contemporary HR-speak would have it. Indeed, outside politics and big business – I recall a splendid Guildhall School production transposing the action to a US election campaign – there may be few better equivalents. This can be portrayed lovingly, as in Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos, although there is no reason why that should not be challenged a little more, love the work though many of us may. (We love Figaro too, after all.) But that has never been the point of either opera or play, the former here sometimes supplemented by projections of Beaumarchais, for whom the cliché tends to be that his play is more ‘political’ than Mozart-Da Ponte. (It is not always so simple as that, but such is the way with generalisations. That does not make them entirely without worth.) We can reasonably be sure, though, that reports we have of abusive behaviour are only the tip of the iceberg and casting, let alone treatment, of singers has long offered an unusually egregious instance. Artistic collaboration rests even more than many other forms on personal, often highly unequal relationships: not quite a society of orders, but with several points in common. There has clearly been a ‘scandal’ at the house we see, in which the characters prepare for a performance of the opera they are previously creating; at least, the costumes they occasionally don suggest that it may be. Cherubino’s costume being several sizes too big for him, the Count’s too small – it would doubtless once have fit – offer straws in the wind for the future as well as the present. Play and opera have always done that too. 

Cherubino (Lea Desandre), Count Almaviva

But to return to the implied preceding scandal, it is clear that, as in the Count’s reassurance to all that he has foregone his feudal right, sexual harassment and worse will not be tolerated; or rather, it is clear that that is the line, shown in red to us all as Figaro cannily papers – aided by Jones’s rapid video multiplication – the walls during the Act I chorus with posters unambiguously saying ‘NO’ to such behaviour. That, however, is the easy part. Actual behaviour generally lags behind, and certainly does here, from the Overture onwards, the Count patting a ballerina on the bottom before closing the dressing room door. During the opening scene, we can also see him, next door (of course) to Figaro and Susanna, being interviewed, doubtless dispensing the public, enlightened house line, just as our Enlightenment honnête homme would have done as governor of Andalusia.

Countess Almaviva (Hanna-Elisabeth Müller), Susanna,
Figaro, Antonio (Franck Leguérinel), Count Almaviva

Presented as a more rounded character than is often the case, Don Basilio is here very much in on the act: a self-regarding and entitled music-master whose conducting of the chorus is full of exaggerated gesture and absent of musical substance, in sharp contrast to Figaro when he leads them in. The latter’s presence clearly irks his alleged musical (and social) superior who, in a nice touch, carries with him a score of Così fan tutte, ready for ‘that’ line. He later emerges from the bathroom in nothing more than a towel to harass an auditioning singer. So much for things having changed, as the Count will show at greater length. 

That Figaro’s role is as a hairdresser offers a welcome reminder of the barber of Seville’s origins, though his skills are clearly multifarious. Susanna (like Barbarina) steps forward from the corps de ballet to remind us not only of the sexism and objectification dancers face, but of their particular role in French lyric theatre. The particular treatment of female dancers by historical patrons (the Jockey Club, for instance) comes to mind, but what of the present? And not only there: who, in Britain, could forget the Johnson government’s notorious invention of ‘Fatima’, a ballerina whose ‘next job could be in cyber (she just doesn’t know it yet). Rethink. Reskill. Reboot’? An opera house requires diversity in every sense, or it simply cannot function. 

Don Basilio (Leonardo Cortelazzi), Susanna 

The treatment of Marcellina is also interesting, not least given the particular brand of misogyny levelled at ‘older’ women. (No one refers to the Count as an ‘older’ man.) Beaumarchais’s Marceline, inveighing against male exploitation of women, is partly restored via projection, and in a wonderful closing touch she dispenses with the Count’s services (that is the Count playing the Count, as it were). Rather than a woman, he has, in that unlovely phrase, been traded in for a younger model. Will the house see a new regime, under Marcellina? It is a nice thought, though we probably no more believe it any more than we believe the Count will never stray or abuse his social standing again. It was a pity, then, that we lost her aria—as so often we do. Might not restitution have begun there? 

On the other hand, if Revolution, or at least revolution, is just around the corner, who knows? In an alternative history of the Opéra, the 1960s proposals of Jean Vilar and Pierre Boulez might have been accepted, a ‘new’ Opéra would have opened in a series including the latter conducting the French premiere of Moses und Aron, a new work by Berio, and the Monteverdi Vespers—and the Solti/Strehler Figaro: who knows? We cannot change the past, but we can strain to change the future. Characterisation, including a reassessment of characters that draws upon their authorial past as well as their reception, can have consequences. Even Don Curzio, whom often one hardly notices, was given a helping hand by an additional, second-act appearance, collecting signatures for the trial to come. This was repaid that with a freshly sung performance one did note, not least in the recognition sextet, from Nicholas Jones. 

Count Almaviva

The production, then, was fortunate to have a fine cast of singing actors to bring this to life. Susannas, notoriously, have much to do—and are not necessarily the highest credited for doing so: a point with gendered as well as other social implications. Sabine Devieilhe certainly did a fine job both in her own right and as source of so many dramatic connections, her portrayal as finely sung as it was acted. Gordon Bintner’s performance as Figaro at times suggested a few first-night nerves: nothing grievous, but a sense that all would come together very soon. There was no doubting the broader brush of his portrayal, though, nor its contribution to the greater whole. Christian Gerhaher presented a moving descent into something approaching age and infirmity, his plea for forgiveness showing a man quite broken. He had been figuratively wounded earlier, at least as early as his audibly hurt ‘ma far burla simile / è poi crudeltà’ in the second act: not a hint of exaggeration, but a seasoned use of language. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller’s Countess offered a dignified yet spirited, beautifully sung Countess, equally at home in the serenity of her arias as in busy ensembles. Lea Desandre’s livewire Cherubino and Monica Bacelli’s impressive, take-no-prisoners Marcellina, and Ilanah Lobel-Torres’s unusually ‘present’ Barbarina, proved proper foils, at least on this folle journée, for the likes of Leonardo Cortelazzi’s similarly present Basilio and James Creswell’s sharply drawn, predatory Dr Bartolo. 

If Antonello Manacorda’s conducting did not plumb the depths, nor did it maintain an initially hard driven approach that might have tended unduly down either Rossinian or ‘period’ paths. To my ears, it would have done better to pay greater attention to harmony, but then who amongst our conductors really understands or at least conveys its role in Mozart, and Beethoven, now that Daniel Barenboim is semi-retired? There were no ‘period’ mannerisms, for which one must nowadays be grateful, but it ventured beyond the pleasant less often than one would have liked—and Mozart demands. Taken purely as orchestral playing, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris shone as so often it does in this repertoire. Few, if any, opera performances are perfect; how can they be when they stem from a society so imperfect? If the opera shows ‘la Révolution en action’, it is a revolution whose coming we, like so many before us, still await.

Arabella, Vienna State Opera, 22 April 2025

Images © Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Zdenka (Sabine Deveilhe), Arabella (Camilla Nylund)

Count Waldner – Wolfgang Bankl
Adelaide – Margaret Plummer
Arabella – Camilla Nylund
Zdenka – Sabine Deveilhe
Mandryka – Michael Volle
Matteo – Michael Laurenz
Count Elemer – Norbert Ernst
Count Dominik – Martin Hässler
Count Lamoral – Clemens Unterreiner
Fiakermilli – Ilia Staple
Fortune Teller – Juliette Mars
Welko – Michael Wilder
Djura – Jin Hun Lee
Jankel – Thomas Köber
Room Waiter – Wolfram Igor Derntl
Gamblers – Oleg Savran, Aljandro Pizarro-Enríquez, Jens Musger

Director – Sven-Eric Bechtolf
Set designs – Rolf Glittenberg
Costumes – Marianne Glittenberg

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Martin Schebesta)

Vienna State Opera Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Matteo (Michael Laurenz)

Arabella is a difficult work to bring off. It requires performances and a staging of such quality that it can only really work at a certain level of house or festival. With Mozart, there is of course similarly nowhere to hide, yet his operas can work very well – often better – with young performers in smaller houses. This, if not more difficult, is at least differently difficult, perhaps akin to Mozart heard not only via Wagner but also via the golden age of Viennese operetta, less musically than verbally and dramatically—and with the particular sophistication not only of Strauss but of Hofmannsthal to reckon with too. All of that is whisked together in a confection that must retain its lightness of touch, not at the expense of depth yet so as to reveal it, and with the unavoidable knowledge and difficulty that Hofmannsthal’s work was incomplete, incompletable here, if only because Strauss, that most demanding of dramaturges (as director Sven-Erik Bechtolf observes in an interesting programme interview), would not, from respect for his deceased colleague, permit otherwise. It is not, thank God, a ‘vehicle’ in the sense of a work of few intrinsic merits, which gets trotted out to appease the vanity of a certain star singer and her – almost always her – fans. It can sometimes feel, even be treated, as though it were, though—not least since it seems to be a work in which there is little for the director to ‘say’ other than to let it play. Letting that happen is no easy thing, of course, but it rarely seems to call for, or indeed benefit from, overt interventionism or deconstruction. Tobias Kratzer, in what is probably the most illuminating staging I have seen, for Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, did permit himself a telling, timely twist, but his is probably the exception that proves the rule. 

Bechtolf has only one major intervention, one so commonplace now that it barely registers as such, save when one reflects why it might have been done and what it might have accomplished. That is, he and his designers Rolf and Marianne Glittenberg update the action to the time of composition, around 1930. I may have been sceptical about this beforehand—and to an extent still am: not because I object in principle, but rather because the work’s particular literary and dramaturgical fragility seems to militate against it, not entirely unlike updating, say, Nestroy, a Hofmannsthal play, or, for that matter, Sheridan. There are losses, I think, for such a comedy of manners. Seeing it as a companion piece, say, to Dostoevsky’s – or even Prokofiev’s – Gambler would doubtless offer illumination. What one gains, though, is first not being lost in nostalgia for a ‘beautiful nineteenth century’. Whatever nostalgia one might feel – do we not all? – for the time of updating, finely accomplished, it is already necessarily tempered by consciousness of that updating, of complication and even disjuncture. We all enjoy looking at ‘Weimar culture’, broadly understood, anyway, do we not? That permits some light-worn allusions to a gender fluidity crucial to the opera, as well as to opera more generally, without making them the point. Goodness knows, we need humanity in that respect right now, and perhaps they tell more clearly or at least differently than was ‘originally’ the intention, whether of Strauss, Hofmannsthal, or Bechtolf. 

Fiakermilli (Ilia Staple) and friends

Second and perhaps more important, one senses, inevitably with a hindsight that can seem written in, a foreboding, a fear of the future that distinguishes it from, say, operetta or indeed Der Rosenkavalier. Whether one entirely buys the argument or not does not really matter. It forms the basis for a largely convincing home, doing what Bechtolf sets out to do: perform rather than deconstruct the work, drawing out characters in whom he evidently believes. If it occasionally feels a touch tired around the edges, a little too reliant on the performers to bring it to life, then that is only to be expected of a production first seen in 2006. It is indeed the lot of any repertory system, one that has permitted this to be the fifty-sixth performance of this staging to date, as indeed has the staging itself. (Imagine that for Arabella in an Anglophone house!) Not every night can or should be a premiere. That provokes its own confrontation with memory, nostalgia even. The world was far from perfect then, yet compared to 2025, one can be forgiven a slightly fond backward glance, all the more to remind one of the present. Q.E.D., one might say. 

It never gets in the way of ‘the music’ either; indeed, it seems to permit it largely to speak as anyone with genuine interest in the work would probably wish. Christian Thielemann has lived with it some time, as of course has the Vienna State Opera. I was about to say that it showed, and it arguably did, but not in the sense of Mahlerian Schlamperei, of routine, but rather in a similar respect that freed rather than constricted. Rarely if ever with Thielemann does one sense resting on laurels. Occasionally, if more in Wagner than in Strauss, I have wondered whether he might actually have benefited from making less of an attempt to do things differently, though the urge to rethink and recreate can only be lauded. Here, however, there was approach neither to Scylla nor to Charybdis. The legendary golden warmth of the Vienna strings was to be enjoyed, not narcissistically but for its musicodramatic import, yet there was also a heightened sense, perhaps especially from the woodwind, that this was a work ‘of its time’, partaking in its own way of a neoclassicism that after all Strauss had presaged in Ariadne auf Naxos, arguably in Rosenkavlier too. Line was beyond reproach, again not in a marmoreal sense, but as part of a living performance that engaged with the past without being consumed by it. Meistersinger-ish counterpoint in lighter, Viennese hue created and played with memory before our ears. 

Arabella, Mandryka (Michael Volle)

Much the same should be said of a fine cast. Camilla Nylund offered every virtue, musically and dramatically, in a performance of the title role rooted in a a complexity not always present in even the most finely sung performances. That is not to say it was a reassessment as such, but rather one, as with the performances around her, that acknowledged the instability of Arabella’s upbringing, rendering the ultimate, rich beauty of her response all the more moving. If Michael Volle has given a mediocre performance, I have not been present; it was certainly not to be witnessed on this occasion. Mandryka’s pride, even vanity, as well as his more admirable qualities were the hallmark of what was again an uncommonly rounded portrayal. Sabine Deveilhe presented a Zdenka both likeable and troubled, completed by and also completing (at least for now) Michael Laurenz’s excellent Matteo, sung in a ringing tenor unfazed by Strauss’s demands. Wolfgang Bankl and Margaret Plummer conveyed, in tandem with the production, a couple who want the best, not only for themselves, yet seem incapable of acting to achieve that—at least without external guidance. Hofmannsthal’s text was used to the full here, as it was by all. Ilia Staple’s Fiakermilli was faultless vocally and as cabaret. The smaller parts were all vividly characterised, Juliette Mars’s Fortune Teller included. She did, after all, foretell what came to pass, a lightly fatalistic point made by her reappearance at the close, descending the staircase which Arabella and Mandryka had just ascended. Once more, Q.E.D.

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

Prinzregententheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salzburg Festival (4) - Le nozze di Figaro, 20 August 2023

Grosses Festspielhaus

Images: © SF/Matthias Horn

Count Almaviva - Andrè Schuen

Countess Almaviva - Adriana González

Susanna - Sabine Devieilhe

Figaro - Krzysztof Bączyk

Cherubino - Lea Desandre

Marcellina - Kristina Hammarström

Bartolo - Peter Kálmán

Basilio - Manuel Günther

Don Curzio - Andrew Morstein

Barbarina - Serafina Starke

Antonio - Rafał Pawnuk

Director - Martin Kušej

Set designs - Raimund Orfeo Voigt

Costumes - Alan Hranitelj

Dramaturgy - Olaf A. Schmitt

Lighting - Friedrich Rom

Sound design - Max Pappenheim

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

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Raphaël Pichon (conductor)

Susanna (Sabine Devieilhe), Count Almaviva (Andrè Schuen)

Martin Kušej’s new Figaro is my third in Salzburg, after Luc Bondy (my very first visit and my very first Figaro in the theatre) and Claus Guth. (I did not see Sven-Erik Bechtolf.) My hopes were high. Kušej is, of course, an eminent director, a key figure in Austrian theatre, with an estimable track record in opera in general and Mozart in particular. His Don Giovanni and Clemenza di Tito for Salzburg I only know from DVD, but both make got compelling and, in the best sense, provocative dramas; his Idomeneo for Covent Garden was predictably misunderstood by most, yet also proved a thoughtful, urgent piece of theatre. 

Were hopes, even expectations, then fulfilled? In part; or, if you prefer, with reservations. The first two acts seemed to me stronger than the latter two. During the Overture, we briefly meet the characters for the act-to-come, many preparing with a narcotic of choice. Notably, the Count – or plain Almaviva, as surtitles suggest we should know him in this contemporary setting – has no need of them, a drug perhaps to himself and others, at least the leader of a pack one would not be entirely surprised to discover dispensing as well as consuming. In a welcome change from the tiresome camp-fest to which we have latterly become accustomed, without textual warrant, for Basilio, here the singing-teacher is a sinister priest, or at least dog-collared figure; on harder stuff than most; thoroughly in control; and with a gun, one of many in this production, concealed in his guitar-case. Dr Bartolo is a distinctly sinister figure too, cigar ever in hand, gun often so, filming what he can with Marcellina. This gangland crew may be met properly in and around Don Curzio’s bar (also a third-act venue), passing through, never at home, in need of something they rarely if ever get and which is certainly not the usual.

The lack of evident distinction of rank and social order, so crucial to Da Ponte and to Mozart, offers certain dramatic opportunity. Characters need to be drawn, indeed somewhat redrawn, all the more sharply, something Kušej largely accomplishes. There is, though, as ever loss—and I hope I do not say this as an operatic reactionary. Quite apart from the compromise to intricate delights, meaning, and trajectory, there remain loose ends or at least puzzling aspects. We should probably not make too much of the obvious question – if he is plain Almaviva, why is she not simply Rosina? – but Figaro’s role, as well as the Countess’s, is diminished. We can fill in some things for ourselves; he would doubtless challenge the Count more openly if he could, but the latter’s charismatic advantage is a different matter from manorial justice. And the reunion of Figaro with his parents neither rings true nor has anything much in the way of meaning. I am sure one could, moreover, argue that the Countess is liberated by being shown to be just as bad as the rest of them; perhaps she is. It does not feel like it, though, whatever the erotic suggestion of a potential three-way between her, Cherubino, and Susanna. Her forgiveness is unconvincing and, again, divested of much of its meaning and indeed purpose. Figaro is far from impossible to reinvent; ask Claus Guth, whose Strindbergian reading remains a turning-point. This has many good points, not least the anomie of Kušej’s places of transition; it is a serious piece of theatre, such as one would (sadly) be unlikely to encounter in this work in Britain. But it has problems (for me) too. The odd pampas-grass setting for the fourth act raises questions a touch carelessly rather than fruitfully.

Countess Almaviva (Adriana González), Cherubino (Lea Desandre), Susanna

In my experience, one often – this is just a tendency, not a rule – encounters either an outstanding pair of baritones or sopranos. (Figaro was first sung by a bass, but that is rarely the case today.) This was different, perhaps in part a reflection of Kušej’s priorities, yet clearly a matter of strength of performance too. The electricity between Andrè Schuen’s Count and Sabine Devieilhe’s Susanna is palpable throughout. The latter wins, of course, partly because she recognises the purely transactional nature of the ‘real’, non-feudal master. He can pay a woman for services rendered, including dressing him – haughtily, contemptuously impassive – afterwards, but there are limits, not only ontological and social, but also of his personal making. Schuen’s third-act aria as staged by Kušej proved a masterclass in more than one sense. But so did Susanna’s quickness of mind, as transmuted into words, music, and gesture throughout. By their side, Krzysztof Bączyk’s Figaro, admirable in many ways, seemed a little too bluff. Adriana González sang ‘Dove sono’ beautifully, but ‘Porgi amor’ was at times unfortunate, González incapable of sustaining the opening line. Lea Desandre made, once more, for a characterful, animated Cherubino. Especially worthy of mention otherwise were Serafina Starke’s finely sung (and acted) Barbarina and Manuel Günther’s newly interesting Basilio. 

Behind, or rather below, them were Raphaël Pichon and a Vienna Philharmonic on very good form. It must be a little nerve-wracking to even the most confident of conductors to approach this work with this orchestra, but the chemistry seemed genuine, and Pichon, thank God, made no apparent effort to make the Viennese sound other than they will. (It would never work, so why try?) Pichon is clearly attentive to words as well as music, and has evidently encouraged his cast in that respect too. Tempi were mostly well chosen, with none of the fashionable hectic quality that mistakes Mozart for Rossini. There were some post-Harnoncourt allargandi, yet with better dramatic justification and greater flexibility. This was a highly creditable main-stage debut. 

The fashion for hyperactive continuo playing continues apace. Pedro Beriso was no exception, but unusually, his playing often fulfilled a role more dramatically important than shouting ‘look at me’. Given the particular requirements of Kušej’s production, Beriso was often called on to provide connecting music, Mozart’s or Mozartian, not unlike an organist during a service. Use of Mozart’s extraordinary, almost dodecaphonic G-major Gigue, KV 574, as a dividing piece between scenes was a lovely surprise. In its toying mix of the familiar and unfamiliar, as well as thought-through if, in some quarters, controversial liberty with Mozart and Da Ponte’s text, it offered a sample of as well as a metaphor for the whole. 

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (2), Ariadne auf Naxos, 14 July 2018

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2018 © Pascal Victor / artcompress

 

Music Master – Josef Wagner

Major-Domo – Maik Solbach

Lackey – Sava Vemić

Officer – Petter Moen

Composer – Angela Brower

Tenor, Bacchus – Eric Cutler

Wig-Maker – Jean-Gabriel Saint Martin

Zerbinetta – Sabine Devieilhe

Prima Donna, Ariadne – Lise Davidsen

Dancing Master – Rupert Charlesworth

Naiad – Beate Mordal

Dryad – Andrea Hill

Echo – Elena Galistkaya

Harlequin – Huw Montague Rendall

Truffaldino – David Shipley

Scaramuccio – Emilio Pons

Brighella – Jonathan Abernethy

The Richest Man in Vienna – Paul Herwig

His Wife – Julia Wieninger

 

Katie Mitchell (director)

Chloe Lamford (set designs)

Sarah Blenkinsop (costumes)
James Farncombe (lighting)

Martin Crimp (dramaturgy, including additional dialogue, translated by Ulrike Syha)

Joseph W Alford (movement)

Orchestre de Paris

Marc Albrecht (conductor)

Ariadne auf Naxos is in many ways the ultimate opera about opera. (Or should that be Moses und Aron?) Many, perhaps most, operas would seem to be ‘about’ Orpheus and his art in some way or another. (In a shameless plug, I should add that such is the subject, or at least the starting-point, for a chapter on operatic culture I have written for the soon-to-be-published – i.e., proofs already checked – Routledge Research Companion to Musical Modernism, edited by Björn Heile and Charles Wilson.) It would be far from absurd to claim that an artwork can fail to be ‘about’ its art form, its genre, itself in one sense or another; or would it? Always we seem to be brought back to those oppositions, those dialectics, that haunt, arguably determine Western history and culture, whether we like it or not. Yet Ariadne seems to take it all in, the ‘business’ as and the ‘art’, the artists and the characters, the metanarrative and the narrative, ultimately also the transformation that may or may not transcend – Hofmannsthal and/or Strauss? – as well as the manifold absurdities and frustrations at which one can only laugh, except that is, when one can only cry.

 

Productions can approach such a work – in practice, with the possible exception of Elektra, almost any work! – in any number of ways. There is nothing wrong with emphasising one strand, one particular reading: single-mindedness has its place, just as much for, say, a Hans Neuenfels as for a Furtwängler or a Klemperer. (The idea of a Klemperer Ariadne in particular intrigues, not least on the basis of his Pulcinella Suite, but I digress – and I have no Music Master to restrain me or indeed to inflict cuts, justified or otherwise.) Ranking is a game for politicians and accountants – although donors perhaps have their place in this world too – but I am not sure that I have seen a production that has kept so many balls in the air at the same time, investigated their nature, and added a few of its own, as Katie Mitchell’s for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

The Prologue comes across as relatively conventional: not in the sense of wanting ‘pretty’ frocks and so on, but it sets the scene, as perhaps it should, ready for the transformations to come. It is full of life, full of character; there is probably, as doubles would be the case in watching any ‘making of’ documentary, more than one can take in in a single viewing, yet by the same token there is no sense of overload. It is not ‘busy’ for the sake of it, as often seems to be a temptation – perhaps a valid one – here. One enjoys the splendidly camp yet undeniably successful and talented Dancing Master of Rupert Charlesworth: watch him rehearse his dancers and you will see that he knows his stuff as well as owning the room. One sees that room transformed into a stage and an audience – with, rightly, a flexible curtain of a barrier in between. Lights taken down and replaced suggest something afoot: a distinction being made between reception room and desert island. We are not yet sure, however.

 

Perhaps most important of all, we see and feel – this is a musical thing too, of course, but also in Mitchell’s staging – the emergence of Zerbinetta as a real person, as a human being, to an extent uncommon, perhaps even unparalleled, in my experience. The tenderness of Sabine Devieilhe’s performance is something; she can do the coloratura fireworks too, as we shall learn. So too, however, is the direction: her placing with (and not with) other characters at particular times, her reactions to them, leading up to a moment quite justified and yet also shocking: the furious slap she gives the Composer after his/her (self-)righteous words at the close. Has (s)he not listened to a word Zerbinetta has said? Most likely not; for even in a world such as Mitchell’s, in which gender is fluid, indeed performed, there is no doubting that masculinity rules the roost. Molière after all wrote Le bourgeois gentilhomme, after all, thus in a sense initiating or at least provoking this particular drama. In connection with that, it is perhaps worth noting that Marc Albrecht seemed particular attuned to the connections – and implicitly the contrasts – with Strauss’s incidental music too. His, overall, was a wise and splendid reading, never seeking attention for itself, yet fully aware of when the orchestra should soar – above all at the close. If an orchestra is unlikely ever to sound at its best outdoors, the Orchestre de Paris, a few scrappy string moments aside, offered warmth, clarity, and chamber-music responsiveness throughout. Albrecht’s gentle yet authoritative guidance nevertheless remained an absolute necessity.

 

Back, however, to the stage. (How difficult it is even to write about keeping all those balls in the air!) Already, in that Prologue, Mitchell and her team have slightly prised open the work (and its ‘work-concept’). The dialogue has not been quite as one remembered it, perhaps, although we all know how memories can play tricks. In ‘reality’, Martin Crimp has added some lines to fit what we see, some others have gone, and the surtitles seem to offer a further level of commentary and critique: never too much, but enough to have one wonder. Without returning to the 1912 version, with or without Molière – what a missed opportunity that was in Salzburg in 2012! – elements return or rather are rethought and transformed. The Richest Man in Vienna is there, in a dress, as his wife, who literally wears the trousers. They not only offer interjections, new yet rooted in memories of 1912, at least to begin with; they are offered opportunity to learn, to be transformed. Indeed, they interact with the ‘cast’ almost at will. It is, alas, not clear what, if anything, they have learned; audiences and patrons can be like that. Perhaps, though, it is too soon to tell, for which of us has not on occasion learned more from a performance than might initially have seemed to be the case? The final words, appropriately enough, are given to M. Jourdain’s successor: the experiment has been interesting, but it is unlikely to show the way to the future of opera. That, we may retort, and probably do, is at least as much up to us as up to you, however much you may throw your cash around.

 

Such is the metatheatricality. Perhaps the real truths of Mitchell’s, Hofmannsthal’s, and Strauss’s opera(s), however, lie in what is too often overlooked: what this Ariadne, partly the Composer’s, partly all manner of others’, does as an opera. Angela Brower’s Composer, beautifully, intelligently sung, has not left the stage; (s)he conducts, at times, although it is unclear whether anyone knows or cares. The Opera concerns, above all, Ariadne on Naxos. Lise Davidsen’s Ariadne proved one of the finest I have heard, possessed of an almost infinite dynamic range, subtly inflected, and endless reserves of breath for the longest of Straussian lines. I do not think I have seen – and this was surely Mitchell’s doing too – her suffer so greatly. The sheer misery of her condition shone through, long before it was revealed that she had been left with child, to be delivered and claimed by a rather nasty – should he not be just that? – Bacchus (Eric Cutler, who again can certainly sing the role). The taunts of Zerbinetta’s troupe – perhaps not intentional, yet no less hurtful for that – sting particularly in such a setting. Indeed, their erotic table-dancing, preening, and squabbling, stage realising words and music in properly post-Wagnerian fashion, seems rightly both beside the point and absolutely of it. When Bacchus offers Ariadne the choice of life or death, we have no idea what she will choose, nor for whom. Right up until the end, we fear she might use the revolver that is one of his ‘gifts’. Will she shoot herself, her child, him, someone else, the entire assembled company? In the end, she does not. A child has been born; so too has an opera. Perhaps, whatever our host may think and demand, the future or a future of opera has been too. We shall see and/or hear – or not.

 

Die Zauberflöte, Opéra national de Paris, 25 March 2014

Opéra Bastille

Tamino – Pavol Breslik

First Lady – Eleonore Marguerre
Second Lady – Louise Callinan
Third Lady – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Papageno – Daniel Schmutzhard
Papagena – Regula Mühlemann
Sarastro – Franz-Josef Selig
Monostatos – François Piolino
Pamina – Julia Kleiter
Queen of the Night – Sabine Devieilhe
Speaker – Terje Stensvold
First Priest – Michael Havlicek
Second Priest – Dietmar Kerschbaum
First Armoured Man – Eric Huchet
Second Armoured Man – Wenwei Zhang
Three Boys – Soloists from the Aurelius Sängerknaben Calw

Robert Carsen (director)

Michael Devine (set designs)
Petra Reinhardt (costumes)
Martin Eidenberger (video)
Peter van Praet and Robert Carsen (lighting)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Patrick Marie Aubert)

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

This, the 408^th performance of The Magic Flute (or La Flûte enchantée) at the Opéra national de Paris, had a good number of virtues, the greatest of which was the quality of the soloists. Pavol Breslik was an ardent, honey-toned Pamino, as impressively ‘natural’ – however that much may be a case of art concealing art – an actor as a singer. He sounded and looked every inch a prince, however keen Sarastro may have been to remind us that he is more than that, ‘ein Mensch’. Julia Kleiter seemed made for him as a Pamina. She did not put a foot wrong, again as convincing dramatically as musically. And the acid test: ‘Ach ich fühl’s’ moved as it should, Mozart’s ambiguous, ambivalent chromaticism both agonising and reconciliatory. (How Beethoven and Wagner must have wished they could accomplish that, yet of course their greatness lay in good part in dealing with their coming too late to be able to do so.) There is surely no better Sarastro treading the world’s stages today than Franz-Josef Selig. It is tempting to take for granted the ‘fit’ of his voice, his way with words, his command of musical line, and most crucially, his alchemical blend of words and music, yet one should not. All were on fine display on this occasion, though ‘display’ is quite the wrong word really, given a performance of winning humility, goodness even. Sabine Devieilhe impressed as the Queen of the Night. There is often something that trips up performers of this role; here there was a phrase toward the end of her first aria, in which intonation suffered. It is a well-nigh impossible role, though, and elsewhere Devieilhe acquitted herself very well, the brightness as well as the accuracy of the principal notes in her second aria especially noteworthy. Daniel Schmutzhard’s Papageno had no need to fear comparisons with the most accomplished portrayals. His was a touching assumption, in which once again a great deal of solid musicianship lightly underpinned dramatic conviction. Moreover, his delivery of the dialogue – in this performance, a major strength across the board – may have been the strongest I have heard, an aspect which can sometimes let down the very greatest of singers. Regula Mühlemann made for a spirited Papagena, François Piolino a quicksilver, unusually un-caricatured Monostatos, and Terje Stensvold a winningly sincere Speaker. The Three Ladies and Three Boys were all excellent too, the latter being called upon, prior to singing, to display what seemed to me to be creditable footballing as well as vocal skills. What a joy it was, though, to have so secure a reading from boy trebles.

 

Philippe Jordan’s conducting certainly had its moments, though the hard-driven yet sleek Overture was not one of them. (It sounded a bit like second-rate Karajan, albeit with too small an orchestra.) Tempi in general had clearly been well considered, though some seemed a little too studied in their ‘difference’; likewise the welcome flexibility afforded some numbers. ‘Bei Männern’ was taken daringly slowly, yet worked, a true feeling of wonder engendered. There were other occasions, however, when there was more than an impression of listlessness, the music floating away into the ether rather than being founded upon its bass line. Jordan’s evident desire for intimacy may or may not have been misplaced – there is a great deal of Beethoven here, as great conductors such as Böhm and Klemperer knew – but it certainly sounded misplaced in the vast Bastille theatre, where larger forces and a less precious approach would have assisted. Arguably, some of the voices, however, well sung, were on the small side too; it was difficult to resist the conclusion that this was a work, or at least an approach, better suited to the Palais Garnier. Orchestral playing considered on its own terms was generally of a high standard. Choral singing was decent rather than inspired, but there was nothing to complain about in that respect.

 

What of Robert Carsen’s production, first seen last year at Baden-Baden? I wish I could speak with greater enthusiasm, but cannot help but wonder whether this is now a case of a director who is doing too much. Too often a general ‘stylishness’ pervades the stage, and whatever this work, with its array of social, religious, ethical reference, may be, it has nothing to do with mere fashion. Video accomplishes little beyond its mere presence. Indeed, the forest scene, with occasional waving of branches in the wind, proves alienating in a non-productive way; what is wrong with an old-fashioned backdrop? The only occasion on which it adds something was in the huge projection of Pamina’s face, constantly changing, as Pamino sings the Portrait Aria, but even then, one is tempted to ask: so what? Fire and water are far more convincing, some of the most convincing – and indeed straightly portrayed – I have seen, likewise the lighting in general. There is a degree of messing around with the dialogue, and indeed the ordering, but nothing too grievous, and there are sections – for instance, that pertaining to Monostatos’s blackness, here certainly not a matter of skin colour – to be heard that nowadays one generally finds cut.

 

Then there is Carsen’s big idea, of which I had initially given up hope. The Queen of the Night and Sarastro are on the same side; indeed, the members of Sarastro’s order turn out already to be nicely paired up with women. Initially, I thought the idea merely silly, and was certainly irritated by the two ‘leaders’ kissing each other at the beginning of the second act. But it has some mileage, not least in dealing with the alleged ‘problem’ – actually it is no such thing, if one understands the narrative as progressing according to Tamino’s, and our, consciousness – of the changing portrayal of the ‘dark side’. Here there is none, and everyone – even Monostatos, somewhat wearisomely comforted and converted by Pamina in the final chorus – joins in the final rejoicing in the light. A more critical approach, though, to the implications of such unity would have been welcome. Is it not, perhaps, a dangerously totalitarian prospect? Alas, politics and, more broadly, ethical considerations are more or less entirely absent. Rather than take the easy road of redressing alleged misogyny – for the most part, it is a matter of mistaking the views of characters for those of creators – why not look critically at the work’s heteronormativity, here actually bolstered? A desire for inclusion, in itself neither objectionable nor incomprehensible, remains generalised and disturbingly free of context: liberalism in a nutshell. Ultimately, chez Carsen, style occludes rather than instantiates idea.