Triomphe! Meyerbeer Robert le diable, review, Royal Opera House

Why was Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable an overwhelming success in its time ? The Royal Opera House production suggests why: it's a cracking good show! Extreme singing, testing the limits of vocal endurance,  and extreme drama. Robert le Diable is Faust, after all, not history, and here its spirit is captured by audacious but well-informed staging. Listen with an open mind and heart and imagine how audiences in Meyerbeer's time might have imagined the madness and magic that is Robert le diable.

Bryan Hymel is outstanding, singing the difficult, unusual part with exceptionally fluid, lyrical singing, the cruel tessitura negotiated with such strong technique that we hear the part, not the effort. He isn't simply displaying vocal skill, but infusing the part with greater psychological depth than  the text itself suggests. That is true artistry. Opera is not singing alone, it is drama with music at its heart.  The extremes Meyerbeer writes into the vocal line express Robert's tortured soul: Hymel makes them ring with emotional conviction. In the duet "Mon coeur s'élance et palpite",  he almost steals the show though Isabelle has the killer high notes. Many other exquisite moments, like the Act Four "du magique rameau". Hymel, still only 33, is a voice to cherish.

The parts of Alice and Isabella are tours de force. Alice is a maid from Normandy, as the orchestra tells us with  vaguely folk melodies. Although she carries a letter from Robert's mother she is not Micaëla whose love for Don José is tainted with possessiveness.  Meyerbeer's audiences would have no trouble identifying Alice with Joan of Arc, another girl from Normandy who fought against all odds.  Marina Poplavskaya's Alice is no bimbette, but a heroine worthy of Jeanne d'Arc herself.

Poplavskaya's voice soars clear over the orchestra in the tricky early parts of the opera. But it's in her confrontation with Bertram that she shows the intelligence she brings to the characterization.  Poplavskaya reaches the horrendously high notes with clarity. Alice is direct, she doesn't make a fuss, so this intense portrayal is psychologically true. Yet it also refects the recurrent staccato in the music, and the thrusting, stabbing passages in the orchestra. The mock medieval battle in the text is outclassed  by the cosmic battle for Robert's soul. Poplavskaya's Alice is lithe and energetic, for she's a swordsman duelling against death.

Isabella's two biggest arias, "Idole de ma vie" and "Robert, toi que je t'aime" define the word "show stopper". Done well, the audience is stunned and the action stops until applause subsides. That alone can make good theatre.  In  the Cavatina, the word "Grâce" is repeated in elaborate variations. Then the orchestra chimes in, provoking even greater feats of vocal gymnastics.  You're left gasping. Patrizia Ciofi received much applause for standing in at the last moment. She's very experienced, having first taken the role more than ten years ago.  Perhaps she'll  slip back into gear as the run continues.  She's excellent, but this is a role that needs heart shatteringly astonishing singing.

John Relyea sings Bertram's set piece arias at the end of Act Four impressively but he is no pantomime villain.  Tellingly, he sings details like the recurrent "mon fils, mon fils" with gruff tenderness. He wants Robert because Robert is his son.  Relyea's subtlety suggests why Bertram was once loved by the saintly Rosalie, Robert's mother. While Meyerbeer milked the plot for melodrama, there's room in the music for the depth Relyea brings to it.

Since many people know nothing of Meyerbeer other than Wagner's slander, our modern approach to Meyerbeer is distorted.  Wagner was such a complex person that it's nonsense to take a simplistic view of the Wagner/Meyerbeer relationship.  Alberich-like, Wagner had to attack Meyerbeer to  hide how much he owed him.  It's a classic troll tactic. No wonder Wagner understood the Niebelung mind. If Meyerbeer's use of the orchestra seems over the top to us, it's because we are thinking in Wagnerian terms. Meyerbeer extends his characterizations with motives that run through the opera like a thread - drinking songs, marches, Norman folk songs. Develop these further and call them Leitmotivs.  He also uses the orchestra sparingly - harps around Isabella's angelic singing, brooding winds and brass around Bertram.  The large orchestral flourishes are deftly done, and move the action forward, without overpowering - you want to hear those clear high notes shine.
 
If we free ourselves of Wagner snobbery, we can appreciate Robert le Diable's true place in music history. Its obvious antecedent is Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz and its direct descendant Berlioz The Damnation of Faust.  All derive form the High Romantic fascination with Gothic fantasy and the occult.  Meyerbeer may not be "modern" taste but that reflects on our awareness of period opera. Even Bach was largely forgotten until Mendelssohn championed his music.  Perhaps the shadow of Wagner is so strong that we don't let ourselves enjoy Meyerbeer because we're too worried about what others might think.

We should bear this background in mind when assessing this Royal Opera House production, directed by Laurent Pelly with designs by Chantal Thomas. This would go a long way towards a reasessment of Meyerbeer because it is very well researched and erudite. The ballet, where the ghosts of dead nuns are seem rising from their graves, is based almost exactly on the original Paris designs. The etchings we see are also based on authentic period imagery.  The huge revolving mountain that dominates the stage could come straight out of a Gothic painting or novel. To 19th century people, wild landscapes represented fear and superhuman forces. Think the Wolf's Glen in Der Freischütz.

Robert le Diable is melodrama, by no means po-faced. This staging is colourful because the music is colourful.  How Meyerbeer's audiences must have thrilled to the sight of semi-naked nuns dancing lustfully. They would have enjoyed mock medieval pgeantry without worrying too much whether it was authentic.  Our modern obssession with period-specific staging meant nothing to audiences who were used to seeing zany mixtures of period and style. Ironically, this is a much more authentic staging than many realise. In many ways, we are less open to the art of imagination now than our forebears were once. Why shouldn't we have as much fun as they did?  Pelly and Thomas are giving us a chance to see the opera in period context. We should value the chance to see this opera done in this way because chances are we won't get many opportunities since it's not at all an easy work to stage.
This ROH production is being recorded and filmed. BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting an audio version on Saturday 15th December (link here).

Longer version of this review with full cast list in Opera Today Go to Opera Today for a full download of the 1985 production and libretto

photos :  Bill Cooper, Royal Opera House, details embedded

Stravinsky Rake's Progress - London ROH

See the Rake's Progress at the Royal Opera House because it IS different. Robert Lepage the director transposes the action to Hollywood in the early 50's. This is valid enough in theory because Stravinsky loved the US and the moral story in The Rake's P is universal. So the references to "Oklahoma !" were apt enough. I liked the idea of Tom's magic machine as a TV set showing a 50's kid in cowboy suit stealing a packet of tacky Wonderbread ! Certainly this production is a colorful extravaganza - sit well back up in the rafters for best effect and avoid the flashingneon if you're epilectic. But a little can go a long way..... To use Lepage's Hollywood analogy, this was a shoot out between opera and staging and the staging won.

The problem is that this opera borders on "chamber" where the devil is in the detail (sorry Nick Shadow !). Every word of that wonderful libretto crackles with arch deviousness which Stravinsky's setting exploits deliciously. And those neo- classical baroque references are there for a purpose. This is music to listen to if you don't believe harpsichords can do wild atonal dissonance !

So the extravaganza/spectacular approach overwhelms after a while. Had the orchestra fought back maybe it might have worked but it seemed as seduced as Tom Rakewell by the glitz. What this needed was acerbic irony and savage wit, to bring out the tension sparked by Stravinsky's mix of formality and modernism. Even nice guy Haitink was whippped into lucid starkness with David Hockney's Glyndeboune production of 1975 - sharp black and white, surreal and no compromise !

Good enough singing - Sally Matthews sings with tough conviction so she's more than an airhead bimbette but John Relyea was divine ! Which is an odd thing to say about The Devil, but that's why he's so convincing. What a voice ! Once heard this is a voice you don't forget ! I first heard him 7 years ago in Enescu's Oedipe at Edinburgh when he was relatively unknown, where he "made" the opera come alive. He was outstanding ! And he's still under 40.

But again, the singers had to compete with the staging and were outdrawn. Significantly LePage seems to think of Baba the Turk as a kind of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. But Baba is quite the opposite. She's the one person in the whole opera that doesn't stay deluded long. Her role is crucial to the whole morality. She's the counterweight to Nick Shadow. He's seductive, she's ugly, he's persuasive, she's unloved. But he's the devil and she's a good soul who proves it by being kind to Ann while he's out to destroy Tom. Note, the devil loses the game of cards and goes to hell. So Baba may babble but Baba survives !

A lot goes right in this production, and audiences will love it "as" theatre. But it's carried away with the thrill of its own success. This was the Cold War after all. That cosy conformity was shaped against a background of paranoia and danger. For a moment Lepage does hint at things unseen, like when a "mushroom cloud" rises from the floor. But it turns into a movie star trailer. Stravinsky, Auden and Kallman were writing a moral fable, so without th harsh edge of moral dilemma, the opera can fall flat. They were writing against a background of McCarthy and the Hollywood Trials after all, when artists could be destroyed because they didn't buy the materialism this opera condemns. The auctioneer scene is crucial - you can't buy values any more than you can buy the nobility that comes with the Roman bust whatever the auctioneer may suggest.

More later but here's an interview with John Relyea

http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2008/Jan-Jun08/relyea.htm