Pelléas et Mélisande Aix - dream but not a dream

Pelléas et Mélisande at Aix en Provence : orchestrally stunning and vocally top notch. But something was missing.  Debussy understood Maeterlinck's use of symbols : images deliberately created to unsettle and disorient, to deflect attention away from the surface to things unseen, lurking in the depths. Hence the references to towers and dizzying heights above the ground, and to silent ponds and open oceans, to caves and underground passages, to death and to constant danger.  Pelléas et Mélisande fascinates because it's elusive. This production will appeal to many because it's lovely to look at but it's not Pelléas et Mélisande, but Mélisande The Opera.

But who is  Mélisande, and why is she in Allemonde ?  Barbara Hannigan is such a celebrity these days that the whole production seems designed around her, which is fair enough. She has remarkable strengths, and it would be a waste not to make the most of them.  Hannigan's Mélisande is feisty, physical and extremely strong,  a manifestation of female sexuality, which is indeed, a part of the role : those towers and caves are there for a purpose !  Hannigan's looks also play a part, and she gets to disrobe and romp about in nude coloured undies an awful lot : hers is a body that works out a lot in the gym, and is almost androgynous, like Diana, the goddess of the hunt and of the moon, another of the many symbols in Maeterlinck's original play.  Mélisande as hunter and killer: the dramaturge, Martin Crimp is onto something more complex than Mélisande wan and wraithlike as a child of the moon.  Nearly ten years ago. at the Royal Opera House,  Angelika Kirchschlager portayed Mélisande in much the same way and was the saving grace of an unevenly focused production from Salzburg that was never revived.  But there's a lot more to Mélisande than this production suggests. I loved Martin Crimp's Into the Little Hill and Written on Skin for George Benjamin (more HERE and HERE), so I have a lot of respect for his insight into this opera. But this time the balance between poetic fantasy and literal narrative goes awry.

Pelléas et Mélisande isn't an opera in the usual sense. It's deliberately non-naturalistic, and the narrative non-literal.  Katie Mitchell directs the opera as if it were a dream sequence in which Mélisande acts out sexual fantasies. Hence the wedding gown in which she appears in the first scene.   But those who do know the opera would focus more on the greenery that surrounds the bedroom.  Golaud is out hunting, when he spots Mélisande  alone, in the middle of the forest, by a pool.  Anyone up to speed with mythology would recognize she's a variation of the eternal Loreley. And Loreleys don't wreak havoc. It's not personal.  Perhaps Mélisande loves Pelléas, but the libretto  fairly explicitly suggests that their relationship is more  a pact between innocents.  Stéphane Degout is probably the best Pelléas around these days, so wonderful in this role that it is a shame that he, too, is reduced to a prop in order to emphasize the role of Mélisande and her dreams.  There's a charge between them but it isn't necessarily sexual. The libretto suggests that Pelléas needs to get well away from Allemonde if he wants any sort of future, and Mélisande represents the world beyond, and the unknown.

Golaud gets jealous because he doesn't have the wit to understand that not all relationships are self gratification; things might not be the way he assumes.  Laurent Naouri has done Golaud so often that he's brilliant, authoritative yet also sympathetic, much too complex a personality to be a mere figment of Mélisande's imagination.  When Golaud and Pelléas descend into the suffocating caves beneath the castle, they are undergoing psychological trauma.  We know from the script that the sea lies beyond, but in this production Degout and Naouri are trapped in the bowels of the castle.  The staircase, nonetheless is a good visual image, for it's twisted, rickety and possibly unsafe, so the set makes the point quite effectively. For Pelléas, there is no escape.


Allemonde is not so much a castle as a state of mind: It's cut off from its hinterland, the peasants are starving and roaming about in revolt, Yniold is terrified when he ventures out to play. None of which we see in this production, though  Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra are brilliant at creating non-visual imagery, for those in the audience who pay attention to music.  Under Salonen, the orchestra has developed way beyond the usual parameters of a symphony orchestra. The challenge of opera serves them well. This was a performance so vivid and impassioned that I was glad to listen, since the playing spoke much more expressively than the staging.  Degout and Naouri have the parts so fully characterized that they acted properly, their bodies extensions of their voices.  Mitchell directed Hannigan to move in trance-like  stylization, valid enough in theory, but deadening in practice. The silly eyeliner Hannigan had to wear didn't help, either, suggesting slut rather than half-human vixen.

Franz Josef Selig sang an excellent, virile Arkel,  and Sylvie Brunet-Gruppuso sang a nicely down to earth Geneviève, both of them common sense counterfoils that emphasised the bizarre nature of this Mélisande's dream world.  Altogether a very good Pelléas et Mélisande despite the one-dimensional interpretation and over-emphasis on Hannigan's thing for nudity which is wearing thin these days. She can sing, so she really doesn't need to make an exhibition.  The dream concept might be valid but it doesn't do the opera, and other singers, justice.  Less sex, please, but more mystery.

See also the review in Opera Today by Michael Milenski.

Il turco in Italia - Aix Festival

Rossini Le turc en Italie, Il Turco in Italia at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. a delicious approach to an opera that predicates on mistaken identities, fancy dress and good humour. The opera may have been written 200 years ago but its charm shines ever brighter in this lively staging directed  by Christopher Alden. Rossini's Prologue is very long but illustrates the themes to come: lively, upbeat frolics give way to a horn solo, at turns sensual and melancholy, interrupted by staccato outbursts from the rest of the opera. Rarely is abstract music translated so perceptively into visuals. The joyous, extravagant tutti in the orchestra suggests exuberance: we see a stage covered in minute abstract patterns, bathed in ever changing colours. But, like the horn, the central character is alone.

Prosdocimo (Pietro Spagnoli) is so fixated on writing something that  he doesn't notice the glories around him. His friend Don Geronio (Alessandro Corbelli) is frustrated too, by affairs of the heart. Luckily the gypsies arrive. Gypsies are outsiders.  They don't have to be garbed like escapees from a bad staging of Carmen. They represent people who don't conform to the rigidities of convention. So Zaida (Cecelia Hall) says she's an escapee from a Turkish harem. Selim the Turk (Adrian Sâmpetrean) turns up, but he's attracted to Geronio's glamorous wife Fiorilla (Olga Peretyatko) who fancies him, ignoring her husband nearby. As for Narciso (Lawrence Brownlee) he's living in dreams. So much for literalism. Il turco in Italie is art, not history. Prosdocimo is a poet, not a bean counter. The characters flirt: the art of illusion. Prosdicimo can magic up chairs.  Alden's lighting (Adam Silverman) magics up colours. Rossini's music magics up a wonderfully vivid storm. Conductor Marc Minkowski whips up the tempi, and the singers and chorus sing heady, windswept staccato.

Wonderfully punchy performance, electrified by sprightly, punching rhythms, lucidly enunciated. In the inn scne, Corbelli and  Sâmpetrean joust with rapier-swift passage work. The strings add exclamation points. Lovely detail: the inn is as colourful and kitschy as a pseudo-Turkish tea room, complete with plastic-coated tablecloths, which serve a purpose. As Selim and Geronio scrap, they push bottles back and forth, the bottles sliding in time with the music. Everything predicates on confusion. Stunning dialogue between Sâmpetrean and Peretyatko. Until now, Rossini doesnt give Narciso all that much to sing, but when Brownlee  explodes into Tu seconda il mio disegno, he reveals the intensity Narciso has kept hidden for so long. Earth shattering high C's.  Corbelli 's Geronio is a tour de force, sparkling with fire and agility. At last, even Albazar (Juan Sancho) gets to sing his heart out.

Magical  ensemble in the Masquerade scene, when the ship's mast is lit with golden lights, and Corbelli ascents its dizzy heights, expressing Geronio's pent-up rage.  This scene is crucial. When Fiorilla realizes what divorce might mean, Peretyatko's singing becomes impassioned, for she knows what Geronio is made of. If there had been good singing before, Peretyatko now brought down the house. Superb. And so the Poet Prosdocimo gets his inspiration. Poetry, and opera, is about human emotion.

Crazier than Jason, Cavalli Elena

Franscesco Cavalli's Jason (Giasone 1649) is making the circuit with the English Touring Opera this season. Cavalli is hardly unknown : The Royal Opera House did his La Calisto (1651) as recently as  2008 and William Christie did La Didone (1641) at the Champs Elysées in 2012. Cavalli used the conventions of Classical Antiquity but reinvented them with audacious exuberance, in keeping with the sophistication of his era. Baroque tastes were irrepressible, not at all "Victorian values". erhaps now we're ready for Cavalli again.

Cavalli's Elena (Il rapimento d'Helena, the Abduction of Helena 1659) was performed this July at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Exceptionally wonderful performance : watch it while it's still available on arte.tv. There are  13 principal parts, many en travesti, some appearing in dual roles, but don't get bogged down in the convoluted plot. Enjoy the sheer earthy energy of the music.Belly laughs are built into this score, inventive flourishes underpinned by gutsy orchestration. Leonardo García Alarcón and Cappella Mediterannea prove that period instruments can pack a powerful punch.

A spectacular prologue sets the mood. Three graces in costumes referring to the baroque's fascination with the exotic surround Iro, the jester. Outstanding performance by Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, whose range is so high he can sing countertenor with ease, dropping his voice to the gutsiest depths to emphasize the more salacious aspects of the part. But watch his acting - part ingenue, part knowing roué. He's  unique. I'll be following his career. When Neptune (Scott Conner) appears, Iro and the graces become "waves", in his wake : beautifully languid lines to sing and play. Neptune reminds us that, disguised as a swan, the God raped Elena's mother. The maiden who will eventually become Helen of troy has lust and deception in her genes. It's no surprise then that Menelao Valer Barna-Sabadus dresses as a girl, he's so convincing that men want to seduce him. He's a wonderful singer. When he and  Emöke Barath (Elena) duet, the interplay between their voices is utterly exquisite  There's frisson of innuendo, but the vocal qualities are so pure that you focus on the beauty of the music.

All round excellence in the singing, shoiwing what a good ear Cavalli had for blending different types of voices in similar fachs. Fernando Guimaeres's Teseo was rich and dark, and Solenn Lavanant Linke's Ippolye/.Pallade was womanly, but demented. This meeting between Theseus and Hippolyte is deliciously mad, though the voices balance perfectly.  There are several mezzo trouser roles, some also in duet, which display the range to great effect. Big guys have fun too. Brendan Touhy  sings Diomede and Creonte, he gets to cross dress and prance semi naked but its the poise of his singing you remember - a real character tenor a rarer type than you'd expect, who can act with a voice steady throughout the range. Elena and Menelao in dresses, Teseo and Ippolyte in pants, declare their love, watched by Castor and Pollux, sing a beautiful quartet, garlanded by sweet toned woodwinds. But do they live happily ever after ? Elena (Helen) ends up in Troy, but that's another story.

This Cavalli Elena is a delight, especially for those who enjoy what high, clear voices can express. These singers are so confident that they can play around with technique when it enhances humour. Utterly brilliant.  Don't miss the battle scene (around the 2 hour mark), which is hilarious ! As the Financial Times critic said, Cavalli's Elena was the "Some Like in Hot" of its time.

Christie Charpentier David et Jonathas Aix

Marc-Antoine Charpentier's David et Jonathas live from Aix-en-Provence is now available streamed outside France on arte.tv This is one of the big highlights of the baroque year. It's major profile because William Christie conducts, and anything he and Les Arts Florissantes dedicate themselves to is a milestone. The production travels to the Opéra comique in Paris, to Caen, Madrid and concerrft stagings in Edinburgh and elsewhere. Christie excels - watch the elegance of his conducting (very well picked up on film),

Musically this is divine, the intricate correspondances  done with exquiste clarity and delicacy. In David et Jonathas, this freedom of spirit is very much part of what the opera is about. David is a hero, who has killed Goliath, but the times he lives in are turbulent. War, intrigue, bluff and counter-bluff, the sordid stuff of politics. Although David is loyal to King Saul, he's forced to flee to the Philistines who welcome him. Despite negotiations for peace, war breaks out again, Briefly David and Jonathas are reunited, but Jonathas is killed. Saul dies, heartbroken. David becomes King.

We know the plot from the Old Testament, but Charpentier fleshes it out with wonderful music. The parts for David and Jonathas are beautiful: theirs is a love story as much as a symbol of purity against a background of sordid violence. Christie chooses his singers well. Pascal Charbonneau, who sings David, frequently reaches countertenor territory. The part was written for alto, to contrast with the very low baritone of Saul, (Neal Davis)  and the bass of Achis (Frédéric Caton). Ana Quintans sings Jonathas. It's a trouser part because a high. bright voice shows how young and beautiful Jonathas was, beloved by all.

The interplay between voices and orchestra  is superb, the formal patterns of baroque art expressed in music. Brightness and depth, constant weaving of textures - political intrigue woven into the very fabric of the form.  Christie's precision keeps the layers bright : no room for approximation in this score.

 Thus Andreas Hoimoki's staging worked extremely well with the clarity of Christie's approach, and with Charpentier's idiom. The set (Paul Zoller) is as simple, throwing focus on the singers, yet a pine panelling background lit as luminously as this evokes the golden glow of baroque paintings and indeed the instruments in the orchestra.

Intelligent use of space and boxed space to create the flow of exterior and crowd scenes, and interior, private intensity. The long non-vocal passages might once have been filled with formal masques. Here, they're used to hint at background. Jonathas, as a young boy, stands before the bier of his dead mother. The young David enters and comforts him, but Saul's disturbed to see them embrace. He in turn embraces the portrait of his late wife which mesmerized hius son. Costumes are timeless, sufficiently middle eastern to remind us of Biblical times.

The Israelites and Philistines are distinguished by their music rather than by costume (some of the Philistines wear a red fez), but again this is true to plot. For thouands of years before 1948, there was conflict in these lands. Charpentier and his audiences weren't in the least bothered about historical accuracy, so neither should we be. Indeed, seeing Jonathas clothed in short pants (not robe) is a subtle reminder that David and Jonathan relationships have happened throughout history. Homoki doesn't over-emphasize, but Charpentier and his audiences weren't naive. Chorus scenes are well blocked, almost like choreography: I kept thinking of 17th century paintings, utterly approrpriate to Charpentier's period.
(photo : Pascal Victor)

Charpentier David et Jonathas LIVE

Broadcast of Marc-Antoine Charpentier David et Jonathas on arte tv on Friday 13th HERE. Les Arts Florissants conducted by William Christie, which makes it a major event. Pascal Charbonneau, Ana Quintans head the cast. It's a completely new production directed by Andreas Homoki who's taking over at Opern Zurich later this year (so you need to know). This is the baroque event of the year (so you should not miss).

It clashes with the First Night of the Proms, but is by far the classier event. Indeed, it's the main draw at this year's Edinburgh Festival, which features an ambitious baroque programme. I was sorely tempted to splash out and travel, but decided to reduce carbon emissions when I heard that Arte was sponsoring Aix.

What is the future of classical music? Is the way ahead dumbing down, even to the extent of dumbing down music itself? Maybe. But David et Jonathas is fairly rare and hardly hoi polloi. Instead of dumbing down, Aix and Arte raise the bar, in the faith that audiences will rise to the challenge. Another reason to thank the gods for a good education system and public funded arts management. This David et Jonathas is likley to beome the benchmark and recoup its costs on DVD over the years.