Rameau - Les Indes Galantes

ONP Bastille, Monday September 30 2019

Conductor: Leonardo García Alarcón. Production: Clément Cogitore. Choreography: Bintou Dembélé. Sets: Alban Ho Van, Ariane Bromberger. Costumes: Wojciech Dziedzi. Lighting: Sylvain Verdet.
PROLOGUE
Hébé: Sabine Devieilhe. Bellone: Florian Sempey. L'amour: Jodie Devos.
ENTREE I – Le turc généreux (The Generous Turk)
Osman: Edwin Crossley-Mercer. Émilie: Julie Fuchs. Valère: Mathias Vidal.
ENTREE II – Les incas du Pérou (The Incas of Peru)
Huascar: Alexandre Duhamel. Phani: Sabine Devieilhe. Don Carlos: Stanislas de Barbeyrac.
ENTREE III – Les fleurs (The Flowers)
Tacmas: Mathias Vidal. Ali: Edwin Crossley-Mercer. Zaïre: Jodie Devos. Fatime: Julie Fuchs.
ENTREE IV – Les sauvages (The Indians)
Adario: Florian Sempey. Damon: Stanislas de Barbeyrac. Don Alvar: Alexandre Duhamel. Zima: Sabine Devieilhe.
Cappella Mediterranea. Namur Chamber Choir. Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine/Paris Opera Children’s Choir. Compagnie Rualité dancers.

This one is going to be long, I'm afraid, but as one of the reasons I keep this blog is to recall, as a substitute for my failing memory, what I witness, I want to have a full record of what, to me, with my dual interest in opera and art, was an important event (even if I should hope it will remain available in video on one support or another). It will be available in full until October 2020 here.

Clément Cogitore (b. 1983), whose work until now has included film, video, installations and photography but (so I understand) no stage directing, is not so much the enfant terrible as the enfant chéri of French contemporary art. His career has been what the French might call a parcours sans faute, i.e. it has gone without a hitch: Grand Prix of the Salon de Montrouge, for years Paris's main emerging artists' fair, Cannes Film Festival, Villa Medici, all at 27, followed by a solo show at the Palais de Tokyo, France's largest and most important contemporary art venue; exhibitions at the Pompidou Centre, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt-Berlin, the Kunsthalle-Basel, MoMA in New York; the Ricard Prize for contemporary art, best first French film in 2016, Prix Lumière, 'Cesar' award (the 'French Oscar') for the best first film, Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2018... In 2017, for the Paris Opera's 'Troisième Scène' ('Third Stage': its multimedia platform) a short video of the Entrée des Sauvages from Les Indes Galantes using 'krump' urban dance scored such a hit and created such a buzz that he was asked to direct the whole work on stage, at the Bastille, to open the 2019-2020 season. That, at any rate, is what I was told, though I've wondered, looking at the dates, if the ONP had actually asked M. Cogitore to make the video as a kind of 'teaser', having already decided he'd direct the full ballet héroïque later on.

Rameau

Accolades and awards notwithstanding, this seemed to me, for various reasons, a high-risk project. We all know from our experiences in the house that directors from the theatre or cinema may have trouble adapting to opera and its peculiar conventions, singers who are not necessarily natural actors, and action the timing of which is out of their control. There's obviously a vast difference between directing a five-minute video clip over recorded music, and directing over three hours of opera, live on stage. All the more risky for someone who has never directed a non-stop, full-length performance before. Cogitore himself has said how hard it was for him to come to accept the imperfections of live theatre - the impossibility of doing a second or third take. And Les Indes Galantes is not a gritty drama like say, Elektra or Jenufa or Lulu, but an 18th-century ballet héroique: a prologue and (in this production) four tenuously-linked tableaux with scarcely any plot. What might a young contemporary artist make of that? To cap it all, the weird decision was made to stage the production at the Bastille, not the Palais Garnier, which is already, with 1,800 seats, big for baroque. Again, Cogitore has admitted he had underestimated the challenge that represented. As Rameau is one of my favourite composers and I also take a keen interest in contemporary art, I personally was 'rooting' for success and hoping that Cogitore would turn out to be a genuine genius and carry it off. But I was aware that not only was his production much-awaited, but that there was the further risk that people would be waiting in ambush, sharpening their Schadenfreude.

In the event, this has been one of those productions the audience loves but the press is somewhat sour and sniffy about. Unusually, at the première, Clément Cogitore was (so I read: I was at the second night) greeted at the curtain with wild applause. There was even, rare in Paris, something of a standing ovation (on subsequent nights as well, whether or not the director was present). Professional critics and some online armchair ones have complained that it isn’t this or it isn’t that but I liked it for what it was. To me, this was a handsome, monumental production, surprisingly conservative, respecting the period form - a series of tableaux, as in an exhibition, with a strong dance component - of the original work and, without ideological tub-thumping, gently, subtly modernising the genre and drawing links between the enlightenment ideas of the original and a selection of current issues. Cogitore has said that he has, as director, no lessons to give and, as a spectator, none to take. Questions such as refugee crises, racism, religious extremism, religious hypocrisy, arranged marriage, forced prostitution, sexual tourism and the arrogance of the west with regard to other regions, were raised relatively quietly, even with a degree of humour not touched on in the reviews I've read (sometimes this production is funny), leaving open the many ambiguities for us to think about and work through ourselves.

Recognising that Les Indes Galantes was presented, in its day, not as 'opera' but, as I mentioned above, a ballet héroique, the production is constructed around various forms of urban dance, the names of them as exotic to me as the Indes to an 18th-century Frenchman, by Bintou Dembélé, involving not only the dancers, but also the chorus and soloists, sometimes to comic effect. Cogitore's fundamental concept was that of 'dancing on a volcano' - the tensions underlying contemporary societies, the fragility of the social contract, the potential, at any moment for eruptions of violence between citizens and the state. (Fortunately, he's too intelligent to have roped in France's gilets jaunes or Greta Thunberg.)  The minimal, dark set centres, therefore, on a large, smoking hole - the mouth of the volcano - put to various uses, and aesthetically makes interesting use of the interplay of light from a variety of sources on stage - not just the stage lights themselves, but electric torches, light boxes, frontal head-lamps, mobile phones, fire, LEDs, coloured bulbs and so on - with the smoke.

As the show has been screened and remains available over the next 12 months, many people will have seen it by now, but just for the record (if you've seen it, you can skip these bullet points)...

• When the curtain rises on the Prologue, we see only the smoking volcano and a scattering of 'naked' dancers (actually in lightly 'tattooed' body-stockings) curled up on the floor. Hébé emerges, an Anna Wintour figure in gold-brocade couture coat and dress and high heels, and summons her followers to take part, not in a festival, but in a fashion show. Racks of clothes are wheeled in, Hébé/Anna selects or rejects them and the dancers are dressed.
  I took this process as an image of primitive mankind dividing into diverse races and nationalities. Voguing begins on podia, with dancers falling backwards into attendants' arms as they are 'shot' by the flashes. Bellone arrrives in full dictatorial cape with riot police carrying spears and transparent shields; the models change into police uniforms and stumble round in them awkwardly until shunted off into the volcano. L'Amour is invoked and appears from the rear, à contre jour against a light box, swathed elaborately in yards of floating gauze, like the pièce de résistance (or should it be pièce montée?) bride that crowns every collection. She sends cupids - little children in body-stockings like the dancers' - with electric torches to enlighten the four corners of the globe. By this stage, some of the unifying partis-pris of the production have already been established: the cheerful mixing of contemporary couture or equally contemporary hoodies and trainers with 18th century fabrics, finishes (e.g. the period detail on the riot police's otherwise modern uniforms) and forms, the presence of musicians (in this case a bagpiper) on stage, the sharing of usually exclusive roles...
• The set is cleared for Le Turc Généreux by stagehands in full, hooded, flame-retardant, fluorescent orange safety suits that, in the storm, will double as sou'westers. They have frontal headlights inside their hoods - we don't see their faces. Dancers are still voguing (sometimes in this Entrée the libretto uses the verb 'voguer', to sail, so I wondered if this was a clin d'oeil) when the handsome Osman strolls in in black trousers, tee-shirt and gabardine, hands in his pockets. Emilie, wearing a short brocade dress and knee-high boots, joins in the semaphoric dancing, and one of Eros's little emissaries conjures up a storm by blowing a tin whistle. In the first of a number of impressive visual 'moments,' a giant, hydraulically-operated robot arm descends slowly into the volcano and pulls out the upturned, broken hull of a boat, and the sou'wester-clad stagehands mime hauling the castaways, in contemporary layers of tracksuits, hoodies and bomber jackets, out of the pit. Gold foil safety blankets are distributed by men in germ-proof, disposable white overalls with masks, and draped over shoulders. Emilie and Valère are reunited by the generous Turk. The blankets are used to shroud the boat, making it seaworthy again, it is righted, a chorus of Europeans advances into the house to sing 'Partez', and the child/cupid plays a tambourine over the final hornpipe. None of these references (so I assume) to the current refugee crisis and the roles played by Turkey and Europe in it was hammered home. It was more as if they were floated, with a light but deft touch, and left in the air for us, the audience, to deal with.
• In Les incas du Pérou, the 'Culte fatal' referred to in the text is taken in its modern sense: Huascar is the charismatic but hypocritical leader of a religious cult. Four riot police line up to guard the stage, with spears, in heavily-frogged uniforms. Carlos is also in full uniform. Phani wears a black leather jacket and jeans. In a true moment de grâce, she sings 'Viens, Hymène' seated alone at the front of the stage while a lone dancer, bare-chested, circles around in a sort of moon-walk, but on points in trainers. I was told by someone who actually knows about these things that this fascinating dancer was called Charles Riley Jr., known as Lil Buck, and that his dance style, from Memphis, Tennessee, is called 'jookin'. The combined aria and dance reduced the house to pin-drop silence until loud applause broke out at the end, holding up the continuo till it died down. During Huascar's magnificent 'Soleil, on a détruit tes superbes asiles', his followers circle in slow motion, zombie-like. The steely robot arm returns, this time bearing a giant LED screen draped in sheets, showing, so I concluded, once the sheets are drawn off, footage of sunspots. As he conducts his mesmerised followers through 'Clair flambeau du monde', mouthing the words to help them, they film him with their smartphones. When the earthquake starts, the screen turns red over a furious break dance with long swirling dreadlocks to rhythmic screams from the chorus, until the riot police close in with their torches. Little cupid re-appears from the light box at the rear, we see the dancer on points again in silhouette, and Huascar disappears into the mouth of the volcano.
• The slaves in the harem in Entrée III : Les Fleurs are scantily-clad girls in red-lit glass cases, a picture of boredom as they gyrate in their cages while men prowl around, hands in pockets, eyeing them up, or just sit when business is bad. 'Prince déguisé', Mathias Vidal as Tacmas isn't absolutely convincing in drag: torrents of black hair, a gash of red lipstick, floating black lace négligé, a yard or so of black-stockinged legs and stilettos. Ali, his favourite, sings his asides to the continuo players on the left of the stage. Tacmas shows Zaïre his portrait on Instagram. As the scene changes for the Fêtes persanes, the break-dancing is so furious that dancers fall flat on their backs, exhausted. An old-fashioned carousel rises out of the opening in the stage - horses, a car, a plane, a tiger... - lit with gently-changing coloured bulbs, and a chorus of parents and children in everyday clothes amble in. One of the 'safety guys' in orange turns out, on lowering his hood, to be a flautist (and a little later, a piccolo-player). Like the Pied Piper, he charms the children into a round dance ending on the carousel before piping them to sleep. In another moment of visual magic, the 'Papillon inconstant' rises high over the stage, draped in flowing gauzes, like L'Amour in the Prologue, but this time endlessly long and trailing and looking part chrysalis, part butterfly - or 'like a squid,' as my incorrigibly prosaic neighbour put it bathetically. A camp fire is lit, and parents and children sit round it until the party breaks up, barriers are erected and the fire is put out. Why, in this Entrée, parents and children all look so glum and listless, was unclear to me. Perhaps there's a message there (about paedophilia? I admit wondering, what with the Pied Piper leading them all a dance...) but if so I didn't get it.
• The central platform rises to disclose, for the opening of Les Sauvages, a circular prison with neon bars. There are riot police on podia in the corners, who sometimes break into a brief, jerky dance, and (real) trumpeters and drummers on the roof. Behind the bars, the 'sauvages' pace round while Damon and Alvar sing their duet. At 'C'est Zima que je vois', she appears as a cheerleader in gold lamé with golden pompoms and five identical colleagues all, like Sabine Devieilhe, pregnant at the time of the performance, with identical baby-bumps, miming as Zima sings. This time, our little cupid whirls a Maori-style wind instrument on a cord round his head, before the magical 'Hymène, Hymène...' once more reduces the house to breathless silence. As the prisoners regain their liberty, the prison sinks to make way for the now-famous krump or krunk battle to 'Forêts Paisibles', the singers joining in, with shouts, cries and whoops, ending with raised fists, and long, wild applause and cheering from the house. After some milling around and stamping as the people test their freedom, Anna/Hébé, backed by banks of dim spots, reappears from the volcano, in her stiff blond wig and haute couture brocade, to sing 'Reignez, plaisirs et jeux' as we watch a slow-motion riot with neither side, youths or police, actually touching. The robot arm descends once more bearing a large, warm, bright lamp - the sun as enlightenment? - to clear the stage and, during the final chaconne, Hébé (in a nod, I suspect, to musicals which, says Clément Cogitore, however bad things are, reassure us everything's alright) calls the cast on - riot police, fashionistas, shipwrecked refugees, 'safety men', the soloists having their own stab at urban dancing... for their 'curtain calls', and at the very end, L'Amour in his/her gauzes appears before the light box to bow, to a huge triumph by Paris's standards.

Sabine Devieilhe, pregnant, is tossed in the air by the dancers
(photo copyright Little Shao/ONP)

To perform the work at the Bastille (2,750 seats), Leonardo García Alarcón conducted an orchestra of nearly sixty musicians in a pit raised so high that he was visible to the waist from the stalls and, I suppose, obscuring the view for people near the front. This gave us a rich, warm, round sound, and though some critics have complained that his Rameau was unidiomatically italianate, I can only take their word for it. It sounded flawless to me, though, even from row 13, a little distant until my ears adjusted. The cast was certainly one of the best I've heard in Rameau, with Sabine Devieilhe, pregnant or not, leading the pack with some really gorgeous sounds, but the others only a nose behind, whether in bravura (or perhaps I should write 'bravoure') passages or, perhaps even better, in the gentler numbers, whether solo or in ensemble. So musically, overall, it could hardly have been better, except for the size of the house. As I said, from the parterre where I was, the sound seemed at first distant, and at least some of the singers audibly tired themselves straining to be heard, Stanislas de Barbeyrac in particular, hoarse well before the end.

In all this was a very fine new production, better, in my view, than the 'picture-postcard' one by Andrei Serban we used to have at Garnier under Christie, familiar from DVD, and it's occurred to me since that Clément Cogitore, who rose to the considerable challenge and has scored a popular hit if not a critical one, may find himself with a major new string to his bow - a career in opera directing, if he wants one. But nothing about the evening explained that weird decision to stage the work at the Bastille.