" ... la ligne neuve ouverte par Mortier. Celle de renouveler l’Opéra, de le rendre contemporain et nécessaire, plus ouvert sur le monde d’aujourd’hui et à toutes les couches de la population sans perdre l’exigence de qualité..."
La Libre Belgique
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9 Mar 2014
Gerard Mortier 1943-2014
" ... la ligne neuve ouverte par Mortier. Celle de renouveler l’Opéra, de le rendre contemporain et nécessaire, plus ouvert sur le monde d’aujourd’hui et à toutes les couches de la population sans perdre l’exigence de qualité..."
La Libre Belgique
23 Feb 2014
Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande
Opéra Comique, Paris, Wednesday February 19 2014
Conductor: Louis Langrée. Production and sets: Stéphane Braunschweig. Costumes: Thibault Vancraenenbroeck. Lighting: Marion Hewlett. Pelléas: Phillip Addis. Mélisande: Karen Vourc'h. Golaud: Laurent Alvaro. Arkel: Jérôme Varnier. Geneviève: Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo. Yniold: Dima Bawab. Un médecin, Le berger, Luc Bertin-Hugault. Accentus chorus. Orchestre des Champs-Élysées.
This is a revival of the Opéra Comique's 2010 production of Pelléas, which I wrote up at the time. I don't, therefore, need to describe the production again. It was after that evening that, at a friend's suggestion, I adopted the present name of my blog. But, like every time - which is why nobody should take any of these reports to heart - this time it was different. Very different, as unusally, I was on the front row, three feet from the pit with an ear, nose and throat specialist's view of the singers' tonsils.
Though many or most people seem to find Debussy's music beautiful, I usually find it, overall, pasty, pastel, rambling and formless - yet sinister: gloomy and grim and dismal and depressing as a month of drizzly Sundays. This is my loss, I don't doubt (and there's no need to click on "Comment" to call me a stupid, arrogant, bitter cunt: you've already told me that, several times). In this case, thrust practically into the midst of the musicians, while (paraphrasing Beecham) I admittedly don't "get" Debussy, I absolutely loved the noise he made on the Champs Elysées' "HIP" instruments: richly timbred and colourful, yet not, even at close range, overpowering. And being thrust, as well, practically among the singers, I found it easy to be convinced - as far as anyone can be convinced by this whacky story of an Addams family without a sense of humour - by the detailed, committed, convincing acting. The lighthouses and child's play that I wasn't keen on before were still there; but being so close up, the lack of action I complained of in 2010 was made up for by the fascination of individual acting skills - not that I or (I checked) those with me care one bit for the characters or what happens to them.
Though the Golaud wasn't the same singer, once again it became Golaud's show. Laurent Alvaro seems to have found the role of his life, playing a particularly tortured (yet charismatic) prince and singing with great subtlety. At any rate, I found his use of a very smoky pianissimo extremely effective, while his outbursts were not, as I seem to remember they might have been in the past, overbearing.
Pelléas and Mélisande were the same, but have matured from teenagers into adults. Addis still has the smiling charm that makes him the only reasonably likeable, near-normal character in the otherwise exasperating, unsympathetic bunch; Vourc'h is now a woman and could no longer be taken for a mere girl. Their vocal performances have simply matured with them. I don't think anyone could fault them.
The part of Geneviève suits Sylvie Brunet to a tee. For the first time, her distinctive timbre reminded me - very gratifyingly - of Dame Janet Baker. They were all so fluent that even Jérôme Varnier seemed a touch stiff in comparison, but perhaps the role and the way it was played in this production were reasons for that. And Dima Bawab manages somehow to make Le Petit Ignoble's "petit" this and "petit" that nearly tolerable, for once.
So this was probably my best Pelléas yet, and I should think Pelléas-lovers loved it. We stayed after the interval.
Conductor: Louis Langrée. Production and sets: Stéphane Braunschweig. Costumes: Thibault Vancraenenbroeck. Lighting: Marion Hewlett. Pelléas: Phillip Addis. Mélisande: Karen Vourc'h. Golaud: Laurent Alvaro. Arkel: Jérôme Varnier. Geneviève: Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo. Yniold: Dima Bawab. Un médecin, Le berger, Luc Bertin-Hugault. Accentus chorus. Orchestre des Champs-Élysées.
 |
| Debussy |
Though many or most people seem to find Debussy's music beautiful, I usually find it, overall, pasty, pastel, rambling and formless - yet sinister: gloomy and grim and dismal and depressing as a month of drizzly Sundays. This is my loss, I don't doubt (and there's no need to click on "Comment" to call me a stupid, arrogant, bitter cunt: you've already told me that, several times). In this case, thrust practically into the midst of the musicians, while (paraphrasing Beecham) I admittedly don't "get" Debussy, I absolutely loved the noise he made on the Champs Elysées' "HIP" instruments: richly timbred and colourful, yet not, even at close range, overpowering. And being thrust, as well, practically among the singers, I found it easy to be convinced - as far as anyone can be convinced by this whacky story of an Addams family without a sense of humour - by the detailed, committed, convincing acting. The lighthouses and child's play that I wasn't keen on before were still there; but being so close up, the lack of action I complained of in 2010 was made up for by the fascination of individual acting skills - not that I or (I checked) those with me care one bit for the characters or what happens to them.
Though the Golaud wasn't the same singer, once again it became Golaud's show. Laurent Alvaro seems to have found the role of his life, playing a particularly tortured (yet charismatic) prince and singing with great subtlety. At any rate, I found his use of a very smoky pianissimo extremely effective, while his outbursts were not, as I seem to remember they might have been in the past, overbearing.
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| Getting the ring back |
The part of Geneviève suits Sylvie Brunet to a tee. For the first time, her distinctive timbre reminded me - very gratifyingly - of Dame Janet Baker. They were all so fluent that even Jérôme Varnier seemed a touch stiff in comparison, but perhaps the role and the way it was played in this production were reasons for that. And Dima Bawab manages somehow to make Le Petit Ignoble's "petit" this and "petit" that nearly tolerable, for once.
So this was probably my best Pelléas yet, and I should think Pelléas-lovers loved it. We stayed after the interval.
8 Feb 2014
Puccini - La Fanciulla del West
ONP Bastille, Friday February 7 2014
Conductor: Carlo Rizzi. Production: Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Sets: Raimund Bauer. Costumes: Andrea Schmidt-Futterer. Lighting: Duane Schuler. Video: Jonas Gerberding. Minnie: Nina Stemme. Jack Rance: Claudio Sgura. Dick Johnson: Rafael Rojas. Nick: Roman Sadnik. Ashby: Andrea Mastroni. Sonora: André Heyboer. Trin: Emanuele Giannino. Sid: Roberto Accurso. Bello: Igor Gnidii. Harry: Eric Huchet. Joe: Rodolphe Briand. Happy: Enrico Marabelli. Larkens: Wenwei Zhang. Billy Jackrabbit: Ugo Rabec. Wowkle: Anna Pennisi. Jake Wallace: Alexandre Duhamel. José Castro: Matteo Peirone. Un Postiglione: Olivier Berg. Un baritono: Daejin Bang. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.
La Fanciulla, with its weak plot, weird heroine and quaint libretto, which assumes Americans all shout "Hello" when they enter a bar, must be a difficult work to stage credibly (supposing, that is, we may expect opera, exotic and irrational as it is, to be credible). Nikolaus Lehnhoff makes no attempt, preferring to send it up, on a grand and presumably costly scale.
After a brief, black-and-white film of agitated traders, he sets act one in a high-tech bunker, tunnel or perhaps sewer under New York (Wall Street?), with ribbed walls, round entrances and a gaping, rough-edged, rectangular hole through which we see projections of skyscrapers, a church steeple or, when feeling nostalgic, the countryside. If the Polka is a bikers' bar or a gay one is a moot point. At any rate everyone is in black leather from head to (long-pointed) toe and many are unshaven, bald or long-haired, and tattooed, in sunglasses, stetsons, chaps and/or floor-length leather greatcoats, brandishing pistols. They play cards or the slot machines, laugh or brawl with oddly effective, jerky movements. Whether bikers or leather queens, it seems unlikely they'd pine for their mothers and cottages - not the country kind, by a stream, at any rate - sing waltzes or gather round Minnie to hear readings from the bible she keeps in the safe. Only the minstrel is in white - leather of course, with long fringes and a guitar, against the country backdrop. Minnie is in red - leather of course - against a reddened sky.
The costumes throughout are unmistakeably not French: ugly and ill-fitting.
In act two, we find Minnie living in a large, streamlined Barbie caravan in the mountains, flanked, in a blanket of snow, by giant plastic Bambis whose eyes glow red at times of passion. A flagpole flies the stars and stripes in the garden. The caravan is open, revealing an all-pink, quilted vinyl (leather perhaps) interior with a bed on the left and a kitchen, with a pink-haloed madonna, on the right. The posse looking for Ramerrez never thinks of looking behind the little (pink) screen beside the bed. To hide Dick, once wounded, in the "loft", Minnie grabs a long, hooked pole, opens a (pink, quilted) trapdoor in her ceiling and yanks down a pantographic aluminium ladder, sending him up on the roof (in the snow, mind you) before struggling (moment of suspense for the audience) to push back the recalcitrant ladder and close the hatch with her pole.
Act three opens on a magnificently constructed heap of wrecked American cars, some with working lights, from which the bikers, once called upon, eventually emerge. In the background, a mountain landscape and sweeping clouds. A block and tackle swing to the left, convenient for lynching. But of course, there is no lynching. The heaped cars part, revealing a staircase in lights; the MGM logo, lion and all, rises to the sky; and Minnie appears at the top of the stairs in a dazzlingly ugly Hollywood ballgown (think Jessica Rabbit). As the singing soars, the lion roars; and as the work ends, Minnie and Dick - by now in black tie - ascend the stairs towards the White House in a shower of dollar bills.
Some of the audience were not happy about this. There may have been a "message" in there about American clichés, but by now messages about American clichés are surely clichéd.
Marco Berti was off sick, so yesterday evening we had Rafael Rojas singing from the side of the stage while a lanky production assistant played a singularly ungainly, unattractive Dick, more homeless or hobo than hero. Rojas was excellent, but the house was too big so it's unlikely people up in the Bastille's stratospheric regions heard much of him. It would be interesting to hear him again in better circumstances. As the production wasn't designed to have a tenor on the apron, his last note was spoiled when he was beaned by a descending gauze.
Nina Stemme is a great singer, with all the resources needed for Minnie, though not a glamorous one. After a rather stiff, hard start, she warmed into the part and sang it magnificently. Claudio Sgura, tall and charismatic, was a better match, as Jack Rance, than the less amply-voiced Johnson.
The rest of the cast and chorus were all on fine form, as was the orchestra, at its most sumptuous in the sumptuous score under Rizzi. Musically, therefore, this was a good evening. Visually it was, despite the impressive scale and skill of the staging, more comical than convincing: an expensive joke.
Conductor: Carlo Rizzi. Production: Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Sets: Raimund Bauer. Costumes: Andrea Schmidt-Futterer. Lighting: Duane Schuler. Video: Jonas Gerberding. Minnie: Nina Stemme. Jack Rance: Claudio Sgura. Dick Johnson: Rafael Rojas. Nick: Roman Sadnik. Ashby: Andrea Mastroni. Sonora: André Heyboer. Trin: Emanuele Giannino. Sid: Roberto Accurso. Bello: Igor Gnidii. Harry: Eric Huchet. Joe: Rodolphe Briand. Happy: Enrico Marabelli. Larkens: Wenwei Zhang. Billy Jackrabbit: Ugo Rabec. Wowkle: Anna Pennisi. Jake Wallace: Alexandre Duhamel. José Castro: Matteo Peirone. Un Postiglione: Olivier Berg. Un baritono: Daejin Bang. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.
La Fanciulla, with its weak plot, weird heroine and quaint libretto, which assumes Americans all shout "Hello" when they enter a bar, must be a difficult work to stage credibly (supposing, that is, we may expect opera, exotic and irrational as it is, to be credible). Nikolaus Lehnhoff makes no attempt, preferring to send it up, on a grand and presumably costly scale.
 |
| Puccini |
The costumes throughout are unmistakeably not French: ugly and ill-fitting.
In act two, we find Minnie living in a large, streamlined Barbie caravan in the mountains, flanked, in a blanket of snow, by giant plastic Bambis whose eyes glow red at times of passion. A flagpole flies the stars and stripes in the garden. The caravan is open, revealing an all-pink, quilted vinyl (leather perhaps) interior with a bed on the left and a kitchen, with a pink-haloed madonna, on the right. The posse looking for Ramerrez never thinks of looking behind the little (pink) screen beside the bed. To hide Dick, once wounded, in the "loft", Minnie grabs a long, hooked pole, opens a (pink, quilted) trapdoor in her ceiling and yanks down a pantographic aluminium ladder, sending him up on the roof (in the snow, mind you) before struggling (moment of suspense for the audience) to push back the recalcitrant ladder and close the hatch with her pole.
 |
| Recent Met Production |
Some of the audience were not happy about this. There may have been a "message" in there about American clichés, but by now messages about American clichés are surely clichéd.
Marco Berti was off sick, so yesterday evening we had Rafael Rojas singing from the side of the stage while a lanky production assistant played a singularly ungainly, unattractive Dick, more homeless or hobo than hero. Rojas was excellent, but the house was too big so it's unlikely people up in the Bastille's stratospheric regions heard much of him. It would be interesting to hear him again in better circumstances. As the production wasn't designed to have a tenor on the apron, his last note was spoiled when he was beaned by a descending gauze.
Nina Stemme is a great singer, with all the resources needed for Minnie, though not a glamorous one. After a rather stiff, hard start, she warmed into the part and sang it magnificently. Claudio Sgura, tall and charismatic, was a better match, as Jack Rance, than the less amply-voiced Johnson.
The rest of the cast and chorus were all on fine form, as was the orchestra, at its most sumptuous in the sumptuous score under Rizzi. Musically, therefore, this was a good evening. Visually it was, despite the impressive scale and skill of the staging, more comical than convincing: an expensive joke.
Janáček - Jenůfa
La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday February 2 2014
Conductor: Ludovic Morlot. Production and sets: Alvis Hermanis. Costumes: Anna Watkins. Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky. Video: Ineta Sipunova. Jenůfa: Andrea Danková. Laca Klemeň: Charles Workman. Števa Buryja: Nicky Spence. Kostelnička Buryjovka: Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet. Stařenka Buryjovka: Carole Wilson. Stárek: Ivan Ludlow. Rychtář: Alexander Vassiliev. Rychtářka: Mireille Capelle. Karolka: Hendrickje Van Kerckhove. Pastuchnyňa: Beata Morawska. Jano: Chloé Briot. Barena: Nathalie Van de Voorde. Tetka: Marta Beretta. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie.
Let me see...
Behind a Mucha-style curtain, the stage was strictly partitioned, with a strip of apron in front of a second proscenium divided into four main spaces: tall vertical panels to either side and, in the middle space, a large screen above a lower "letter-box" opening. The screens were used for projections and the large upper one could rise to reveal a bright, stepped space for the chorus.
The parti pris was to stage the outer acts as a "poetic" (so the programme notes had it; "scrapbook", I might have said) encounter between Moravian folk art and the more sophisticated aesthetic currents prevailing in Prague at the time of the opera. The action was played out puppet-style, with stylized, Kabuki-inspired gestures, in sumptuously embroidered traditional costumes: the women with lampshade skirts and puffed sleeves the size of footballs; the men with elaborately flowered and feathered headgear. La Monnaie's workshops are said to have worked on these clothes for a year. Art nouveau motifs and images, some rotating, were projected, biscuit-tin style, on the screens, while a fascinating, Rite-of-Spring ballet was danced in the letter-box space by girls in plain cream.
In absolute contrast, the middle act was set, in the letter-box, in a grimy, contemporary kitchen, with a gas stove and fridge-freezer to the right, a rusty iron bedstead to the left, snow falling heavily behind icy windows, bare bulbs, pious images, and everyday modern clothes.
The trouble with this approach, apart from the fact that the "hieratic" acting was only half-heartedly done - as is often the case when a director decides to do it - was that the outer acts were stripped of any dramatic impact and reduced to a mere visual feast. The crux of the drama - deep-freezing the baby - may be in act two, but Jenufa is disfigured for life in act one and the baby does, after all, thaw out in the middle of her wedding in act three...
And though Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet is a great actress, the grim and grimy reality of act two was not especially convincingly directed, and stuffing the baby's clothes into the freezing compartment in an act of madness before collapsing at the end was simply odd.
Vocally, Andrea Danková was an excellent Jenufa. Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet has no top left and has to resort to screams instead of singing, but as I just said she's still a great actress with striking presence and this "cheating" is therefore done to great effect. They made a very fine pair. Nicky Spence has, I was told, a "big sound" but it didn't make it too well up to where I was sitting. Many people were impressed by Charles Workman's Steva; I bow to them. I'm not keen, as I've often remarked, on his "stiff" sound that, to me, never seems to open up. He's a good actor, but in this production had little chance to show it, being bound up in the stylization.
I read in the press that Ludovic Morlot was at least better in Janacek than in Mozart. To me, this Jenufa sounded more like a reading than a performance, lacking in variety and subtlety.
Jenufa should be electrifying. This lavish but conspicuously self-conscious production has been described as "magical". To me it was just a disappointment.
Conductor: Ludovic Morlot. Production and sets: Alvis Hermanis. Costumes: Anna Watkins. Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky. Video: Ineta Sipunova. Jenůfa: Andrea Danková. Laca Klemeň: Charles Workman. Števa Buryja: Nicky Spence. Kostelnička Buryjovka: Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet. Stařenka Buryjovka: Carole Wilson. Stárek: Ivan Ludlow. Rychtář: Alexander Vassiliev. Rychtářka: Mireille Capelle. Karolka: Hendrickje Van Kerckhove. Pastuchnyňa: Beata Morawska. Jano: Chloé Briot. Barena: Nathalie Van de Voorde. Tetka: Marta Beretta. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie.
Let me see...
- Janacek was Moravian. So was Mucha.
- Jenufa is set in a Moravian village.
- Moravian folk costume is unexpectedly lavish.
- Kabuki uses lavish costumes and is highly stylised.
- Mucha and art nouveau were all the rage in Prague at the time.
- The ballets russes were all the rage elsewhere. Shame they didn't tour to Prague.
- In Jenufa, the crux of the drama - deep-freezing the baby - is in act two. That takes place à huis clos; acts one and three are more public, less intense.
 |
| Janacek |
The parti pris was to stage the outer acts as a "poetic" (so the programme notes had it; "scrapbook", I might have said) encounter between Moravian folk art and the more sophisticated aesthetic currents prevailing in Prague at the time of the opera. The action was played out puppet-style, with stylized, Kabuki-inspired gestures, in sumptuously embroidered traditional costumes: the women with lampshade skirts and puffed sleeves the size of footballs; the men with elaborately flowered and feathered headgear. La Monnaie's workshops are said to have worked on these clothes for a year. Art nouveau motifs and images, some rotating, were projected, biscuit-tin style, on the screens, while a fascinating, Rite-of-Spring ballet was danced in the letter-box space by girls in plain cream.
In absolute contrast, the middle act was set, in the letter-box, in a grimy, contemporary kitchen, with a gas stove and fridge-freezer to the right, a rusty iron bedstead to the left, snow falling heavily behind icy windows, bare bulbs, pious images, and everyday modern clothes.
And though Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet is a great actress, the grim and grimy reality of act two was not especially convincingly directed, and stuffing the baby's clothes into the freezing compartment in an act of madness before collapsing at the end was simply odd.
Vocally, Andrea Danková was an excellent Jenufa. Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet has no top left and has to resort to screams instead of singing, but as I just said she's still a great actress with striking presence and this "cheating" is therefore done to great effect. They made a very fine pair. Nicky Spence has, I was told, a "big sound" but it didn't make it too well up to where I was sitting. Many people were impressed by Charles Workman's Steva; I bow to them. I'm not keen, as I've often remarked, on his "stiff" sound that, to me, never seems to open up. He's a good actor, but in this production had little chance to show it, being bound up in the stylization.
I read in the press that Ludovic Morlot was at least better in Janacek than in Mozart. To me, this Jenufa sounded more like a reading than a performance, lacking in variety and subtlety.
Jenufa should be electrifying. This lavish but conspicuously self-conscious production has been described as "magical". To me it was just a disappointment.
19 Jan 2014
Poulenc/Britten - Les Mamelles de Tirésias
La Monnaie - Salle Malibran, Brussels, Sunday January 19 2014
Conductor: Roger Vignoles. Production: Ted Huffman. Sets and costumes: Samal Blak. Lighting: Marcus Doshi. Thérèse: Aoife Miskelly. Le mari: Timothy McDevitt. La marchande de journaux: Sarah Laulan. La grosse dame: Marie Cubaynes. Lacouf: Romain Pascal. Presto: Ronan Debois. La dame élégante: Julie Mossay. Le gendarme: Guillaume Paire. Le fils: Benjamin Alunni. Le journaliste: Samy Camps. Soprano du choeur: Caroline Jestaedt. Le directeur du théâtre: Mathieu Gardon. Piano: Roger Vignoles, Philippe Riga.
The tickets issued by La Monnaie were for January 18, not January 19 as stated, for "Matinee 2" subscriptions in the subscriptions brochure and, even today, on the website. I had duly bought train tickets for January 19, so I missed Les Mamelles and went to the Magritte Museum instead.
That was a revelation. He's even worse than I thought, which is saying something.
Conductor: Roger Vignoles. Production: Ted Huffman. Sets and costumes: Samal Blak. Lighting: Marcus Doshi. Thérèse: Aoife Miskelly. Le mari: Timothy McDevitt. La marchande de journaux: Sarah Laulan. La grosse dame: Marie Cubaynes. Lacouf: Romain Pascal. Presto: Ronan Debois. La dame élégante: Julie Mossay. Le gendarme: Guillaume Paire. Le fils: Benjamin Alunni. Le journaliste: Samy Camps. Soprano du choeur: Caroline Jestaedt. Le directeur du théâtre: Mathieu Gardon. Piano: Roger Vignoles, Philippe Riga.
The tickets issued by La Monnaie were for January 18, not January 19 as stated, for "Matinee 2" subscriptions in the subscriptions brochure and, even today, on the website. I had duly bought train tickets for January 19, so I missed Les Mamelles and went to the Magritte Museum instead.
That was a revelation. He's even worse than I thought, which is saying something.
18 Jan 2014
Delibes - Lakmé
Opéra Comique, Paris, Tuesday January 14 2014
Conductor: François-Xavier Roth. Production: Lilo Baur. Sets: Caroline Ginet. Costumes: Hanna Sjödin. Lighting: Gilles Gentner. Choreography: Olia Lydaki. Lakmé: Sabine Devieilhe. Gérald: Frédéric Antoun. Mallika: Élodie Méchain. Nilakantha: Paul Gay. Frédéric: Jean-Sébastien Bou. Ellen: Marion Tassou. Rose, Roxane Chalard. Mistress Bentson: Hanna Schaer. Hadji: Antoine Normand. Un Domben: Laurent Deleuil. Un marchand chinois: David Lefort. Le Kouravar: Jean-Christophe Jacques. Dancers: Mai Ishiwata, Olia Lydaki, Anna Dimitratou. Accentus chorus. Les Siècles orchestra.
As for Einstein on the Beach last week, the black market ticket touts were busy outside the Salle Favart before Lakmé, this time presumably because people were eager to hear Sabine Devieilhe in the "British Airways" flower duet and the bell song.
I said not so long ago on Facebook, writing about her Rameau disc, that we'd better all soon learn to spell her name: "Naissance d'une étoile" - a star is born, was the headline of at least one review, and all of them focus on her performance. Her singing is sweet but not saccharine. Every note, however high, is beautiful, every phrase is carefully shaped and she has more vocal body in the medium than you might expect from so slight a figure: her voice is smallish but by no means tiny. Small but perfectly formed, Private Eye might say. Any weakness is in the lower range, which needs some work. One question, as with the Rameau disc, is whether with time and stage experience she will go beyond beautiful singing to develop a more distinctive personality. This remained a question, as the feeble production made no attempt to help her answer it. Another is whether she will be allowed to develop gradually and make sensible choices. Already this coming spring she'll be Queen of the Night at the Bastille, of all places*.
The rest of the cast was near perfect for this piece in this house, though, like Sabine Devieilhe, given no help by the piffling stage direction. "The best of the bunch was Frédéric Antoun. I’ve been told he’s good in Rameau; I wonder if he can handle Rossini’s Lindoro? There was something of the Florez in his timbre last night and he has looks and swashbuckling presence". That was me writing about Grétry's L'Amant Jaloux in 2010. With more support from a better director he would have looked less ill-at-ease and been excellent all round. Paul Gay at his best brought Van Dam to mind but, especially as the evening wore on, was inclined to bark at the top. Bou was Bou - nothing to add to that and nothing in particular to say about the others other than that they were better than you might have expected on seeing the awful production. The "period" orchestra, under Roth, was note-perfect and vibrato-free, but rode roughshod through the score rather than seeking refinement.
In all the hoo-hah about President Hollande's love affairs this week, one "media personality" on live TV, thinking the microphone was off, described him with a cackle as "moche et minable" - ugly and pathetic (the French sounds better of course): a perfect description for this staging of Lakmé. The first set was a long mound of soil with basins of coloured powders and petals, and a black string curtain at the rear. The second, a marketplace, was dominated by a temple with pagoda-like towers made of piles of gleaming pots and pans. The last was a canopy of lianas with a few fairy lights for stars.
The chorus's buff-coloured costumes were a kind of all-purpose-oriental, hinting at any place you care to think of from Morocco to Shanghai, and the two lads were in weird, ill-fitting hotel-doorman or Belgian police uniforms (light grey jackets over dark trousers with a braid stripe) like nothing the British army has ever issued. I did wonder, fleetingly, if there was a "universal relevance" message here, but in such a trivial production it seemed unlikely. A few fairisle jumpers told us we were closer to independence than the date of the work. Mistress Bentson and the girls were dressed as a pantomime dame and the ugly sisters. Positioning and acting were amateurishly conventional and I found myself thinking: if you can have comic opera, then perhaps you can have tragic operetta, as amateur operetta with an unhappy end was what this looked like.
*E.g. "Certes, on craint pour le sort de cette porcelaine légère à la teinte claire dans la « Boutique » éléphantesque de Bastille, pour sa prochaine Reine de la Nuit". Diapason.
Conductor: François-Xavier Roth. Production: Lilo Baur. Sets: Caroline Ginet. Costumes: Hanna Sjödin. Lighting: Gilles Gentner. Choreography: Olia Lydaki. Lakmé: Sabine Devieilhe. Gérald: Frédéric Antoun. Mallika: Élodie Méchain. Nilakantha: Paul Gay. Frédéric: Jean-Sébastien Bou. Ellen: Marion Tassou. Rose, Roxane Chalard. Mistress Bentson: Hanna Schaer. Hadji: Antoine Normand. Un Domben: Laurent Deleuil. Un marchand chinois: David Lefort. Le Kouravar: Jean-Christophe Jacques. Dancers: Mai Ishiwata, Olia Lydaki, Anna Dimitratou. Accentus chorus. Les Siècles orchestra.
 |
| Delibes |
I said not so long ago on Facebook, writing about her Rameau disc, that we'd better all soon learn to spell her name: "Naissance d'une étoile" - a star is born, was the headline of at least one review, and all of them focus on her performance. Her singing is sweet but not saccharine. Every note, however high, is beautiful, every phrase is carefully shaped and she has more vocal body in the medium than you might expect from so slight a figure: her voice is smallish but by no means tiny. Small but perfectly formed, Private Eye might say. Any weakness is in the lower range, which needs some work. One question, as with the Rameau disc, is whether with time and stage experience she will go beyond beautiful singing to develop a more distinctive personality. This remained a question, as the feeble production made no attempt to help her answer it. Another is whether she will be allowed to develop gradually and make sensible choices. Already this coming spring she'll be Queen of the Night at the Bastille, of all places*.
The rest of the cast was near perfect for this piece in this house, though, like Sabine Devieilhe, given no help by the piffling stage direction. "The best of the bunch was Frédéric Antoun. I’ve been told he’s good in Rameau; I wonder if he can handle Rossini’s Lindoro? There was something of the Florez in his timbre last night and he has looks and swashbuckling presence". That was me writing about Grétry's L'Amant Jaloux in 2010. With more support from a better director he would have looked less ill-at-ease and been excellent all round. Paul Gay at his best brought Van Dam to mind but, especially as the evening wore on, was inclined to bark at the top. Bou was Bou - nothing to add to that and nothing in particular to say about the others other than that they were better than you might have expected on seeing the awful production. The "period" orchestra, under Roth, was note-perfect and vibrato-free, but rode roughshod through the score rather than seeking refinement.
In all the hoo-hah about President Hollande's love affairs this week, one "media personality" on live TV, thinking the microphone was off, described him with a cackle as "moche et minable" - ugly and pathetic (the French sounds better of course): a perfect description for this staging of Lakmé. The first set was a long mound of soil with basins of coloured powders and petals, and a black string curtain at the rear. The second, a marketplace, was dominated by a temple with pagoda-like towers made of piles of gleaming pots and pans. The last was a canopy of lianas with a few fairy lights for stars.The chorus's buff-coloured costumes were a kind of all-purpose-oriental, hinting at any place you care to think of from Morocco to Shanghai, and the two lads were in weird, ill-fitting hotel-doorman or Belgian police uniforms (light grey jackets over dark trousers with a braid stripe) like nothing the British army has ever issued. I did wonder, fleetingly, if there was a "universal relevance" message here, but in such a trivial production it seemed unlikely. A few fairisle jumpers told us we were closer to independence than the date of the work. Mistress Bentson and the girls were dressed as a pantomime dame and the ugly sisters. Positioning and acting were amateurishly conventional and I found myself thinking: if you can have comic opera, then perhaps you can have tragic operetta, as amateur operetta with an unhappy end was what this looked like.
*E.g. "Certes, on craint pour le sort de cette porcelaine légère à la teinte claire dans la « Boutique » éléphantesque de Bastille, pour sa prochaine Reine de la Nuit". Diapason.
13 Jan 2014
They left at the interval
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| Béraud - La Sortie de Théâtre |
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