Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Thursday March 28 2019

Conductor: Jérémie Rhorer. Production: Katie Mitchell, staged by Heather Fairbairn. Sets: Chloe Lamford. Costumes: Sarah Blenkinsop. Lighting: James Farncombe. Ariadne: Camilla Nylund. Bacchus: Roberto Saccà. Composer: Kate Lindsey. Zerbinetta: Olga Pudova. Harlequin: Huw Montague-Rendall. Brighella: Jonathan Abernethy. Scaramuccio: Emilio Pons. Truffaldino: David Shipley. Naiad: Beate Mordal. Dryad: Lucie Roche. Echo: Elena Galitskaya. Music master: Jean-Sébastien Bou. Dance master: Marcel Beekman. Officer: Petter Moen. Wigmaker: Jean-Christophe Lanièce. Major-Domo: Maik Solbach. Lackey: Guilhem Worms. Actors: Rainer Sievert, Anna Daria Fontane. Orchestre de chambre de Paris.

I started my recent article about Les Boréades in Dijon by writing “Rameau hasn’t been getting his due lately in Paris.” The same could, sadly, be said of Strauss, so I was glad to find Ariadne on the TCE’s schedule, ignored my misgivings at seeing who was conducting, and booked it. There were some fine moments, but I left for dinner last night not quite able to make my mind up about the evening overall. 

This may have been because in some cases the casting was not what we’re used to - perhaps wrongly. Presumably because it’s a breeches role, the composer has tended to become a mezzo one, though Strauss labelled it “soprano”. Kate Lindsey’s voice was lighter and brighter and I loved her interesting timbre throughout. I didn’t find her under-powered, as I’ve seen critics claim (or dramatically disengaged, as I’ve also read) and I doubt they were less well-placed to hear than I was on row E. Nor did I find her, as my neighbour did, strident at the top. I think I can state that for me, the biggest thrills of the evening came from her. The casting of Camilla Nylund as Ariadne was more puzzling. She sang beautifully, musically, thoughtfully... but rather as if singing Lieder in a drawing room. It sounded controlled and careful. Only when "pitted" against Bacchus towards the end did her voice really soar into the auditorium and I admit I wondered, at other times, when she sang as if musing to herself, what people at the back and upstairs could hear. It was certainly a far cry from Amber Wagner in the same theatre three years ago. My neighbour felt cheated and claimed she was mincing around the music: "Elle a dû se dire, comme je ne peux pas chanter la partition je vais l'interpréter..." ("She must have told herself, if I can't sing the score, I'll interpret it"). That was unkind.

I don't know why Olga Pudova's initial reviews were so poor. Last night she was actually very good and it was nice to hear a fairly richly-timbred voice in the part, not just a slender nightingale. It's true that she was relatively faint at first, and is evidently not a natural or assured actress, so perhaps she's a nervous performer who has warmed up and gained confidence since the opening night. Praise of Roberto Saccà has been grudging as well, but I found him elegant, eloquent and accurate. That he was a more "classic" Bacchus than Nylund an Ariadne led to risks of imbalance,  seemingly forcing the latter at last to sing out.

Strauss

Jean-Sébastien Bou's dark, stentorian music master was almost too loud for the others. Marcel Beekman was an excellent singing actor as the dance master. The nymphs had some tuning problems (or at any rate, the high soprano did), but the male quartet was excellent and I'd like to single out Huw Montague-Rendall for a special mention: I'll look out for him in future. In the pit, Jérémie Rhorer went for a very chamber-like effect with individual instruments often audible - at times unfortunately, as a few of the notes were wrong. His conducting was sometimes exciting, sometimes flaccid and foot-dragging, lacking drive.

Katie Mitchell had evidently put a lot of thought and effort into her phenomenally detailed production, tackling at once several issues the unusual, potentially lop-sided Ariadne might raise.

The single set showed two adjoining rooms in longitudinal section, with drab grey walls, corinthian pilasters and boxy Wiener Werkstätte ceiling lights, more like neglected function rooms in a run-down hotel (the rats it was apparently infested with would become a running gag) than the saloons of a rich man's palace. These were soon a hive of activity, with tradespeople in brown aprons removing pictures, furniture and light fittings while the various cast-members arrived to rehearse. LED lights formed a square for the acting to take place in and sand was poured into mounds to prepare the desert island. All costumes were contemporary. The music master wore a suit, the composer trousers and a blouse. The commedia dell'arte guys sauntered in in jeans and trainers and changed into flamenco-style outfits with narrow ties and cummerbunds. Zerbinetta had a tangerine dress with petticoats and a pink-orange wig. Cummerbunds and tangerine skirt turned out, during rehearsals and during the opera, to be equipped with hidden strips of LEDs.

In some productions the prologue and subsequent opera can seem disjointed, unconnected, and we may forget (just as it sometimes seems even Strauss himself forgot) that we're seeing an opera within an opera. Katie Mitchell knitted together the two parts of the work by keeping all the cast (and more than usual: see below) on stage during the opera. The dance master smoked and strolled around, telephoned or peered into the music master's score. The music master cued the singers and directed the acting while the composer conducted the work at a music stand. Other characters sat on assorted chairs and watched - on the front row, apparently the rich patron and his wife. On the left a technician sat at his desk, presumably working the lights. On the right, in the corner, a young man managed costume and wig changes. Along the far wall, the performers sat waiting for their cues.

This was all very busy but plausible. But Mitchell also, I think, wanted to work through some of the sex-political and gender issues potentially raised by opera plots in general and Ariadne in particular, and this is where things became more confusing - perhaps intentionally. The composer was a woman, so her interaction with Zerbinetta implied lesbian attraction. The dance master was kind-of-trans, in a pink cardigan, an elaborate shawl, capri pants and high heels or, later, a pink suit. The richest man in Vienna, grey-haired and bearded, wore his own black shoes but his wife's red evening dress; she wore her own red stilettos but his dinner suit. At times they interjected their own dialogue. In the opera, Ariadne (not the primadonna during the prologue), doubled by the nymphs in grey dresses and long dark hair identical to hers as they fed her a meal, was pregnant - by Theseus, I guess, who may have abandoned her for that reason. Her cries at the start of the second part were thus those of a woman about to give birth on the dining table: Ein Knabe! En Gott! was a baby - at the arrival of which the Major-Domo, who'd been watching with interest, dashed off to be sick.

But the adult Bacchus was of course also there, bearing a series of illuminated caskets that seemed to contain various means of suicide - a potion, a drug, a gun - proffered to Ariadne, who very nearly shot herself at the end until stopped by Zerbinetta. The commedia troupe's antics with party hats, red noses, balloons and streamers had had no success with Ariadne or us, the audience: they remained unfunny. But the production ended with a neat surprise: after roman candles had been set off on the table, at the very last note, a rat ran through the room again and all the cast jumped on to chairs before lights out. That sent a ripple of laughter though the house before the applause, which was relatively tepid, though nobody booed.

I'd found the production too busy, too distracting (sometimes I had to look down to focus on the music) and, in the end, too puzzling, and left for dinner, as I said above, though impressed by the stagecraft, only partially satisfied and wondering what to make of it. I don't doubt Katie Mitchell's ideas made sense to her and it might be interesting, sometimes, to read a director's statement of intent, but I don't think it should actually be a necessity.

Here, Maestro Wenarto gives us a brief excerpt.