Lully - Atys

Opéra Royal, Versailles, Tuesday March 22 2022

Conductor: Leonardo García Alarcón. Production and choreography: Angelin Preljocaj. Sets: Prune Nourry. Costumes: Jeanne Vicérial. Lighting: Eric Soyer. Zéphyr, Le Sommeil: Nicholas Scott. Atys: Matthew Newlin. La Déesse Cybele: Giuseppina Bridelli. Sangaride: Ana Quintans. Celaenus, Le Temps: Andreas Wolf. Iris, Doris, Divinité fontaine, La Déesse Flore: Gwendoline Blondeel. Idas, Phobetor, Un songe funeste: Michael Mofidian. Morphée, Dieu de fleuve: Valerio Contaldo. Phantase: José Pazos. Le Fleuve Sangar: Luigi De Donato. Melisse, Divinité fontaine: Lore Binon. Cappella Mediterranea. Chorus and Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

Photos: Gregory Batardon

First, a selection of quotations from online reviews of the Geneva performances of this production, before it moved to Versailles - apart from Forum Opéra, at the time of writing I haven't yet seen any covering the Versailles performances:

• Opera-online.com: The miracle of Atys is renewed at Geneva’s Grand-Théâtre
• Bachtrack.com: This is choreographer Angelin Preljocaj's first opera production, and it is an absolute master stroke (...) a total spectacle of great visual, sonic and emotional impact.
• Crescendo-magazine.be: At Geneva’s Grand-Théâtre, a sublime Atys (...) if every exhumation of a baroque work had such theatrical impact, we would become unconditional adepts!
• ConcertoNet.com: Eleven years later (than the last performance of Villégier’s famous production) Atys has just made a sensational debut at the Grand-Théâtre de Genève, in a production that is sure to become a benchmark.
• Webtheatre.fr: Leonardo García Alarcón and Angelin Preljocaj have risen to the challenge. They have successfully staged the baroque opera 'Atys' by Lully and Quinault (...) A top-class production.
• Resmusica.com: It took audacity to ask a choreographer to be the new director. And talent to spare to revisit this work of the past with such spirit and taste, and the know-how to build such a successful show. Modern without vulgarity. Respectful without affectation. High art!
• Forumopera.com: The new gold standard for Atys. A perfect evening, of a kind that’s rare at the opera.
• NMZ.de: With this production, the Grand-Théâtre de Genève has succeeded in creating a complete work of art à la française, unanimously acclaimed by the first-night audience.
• Lemonde.fr: For more than three hours, dance and music are lovingly combined in a breathtaking act of seduction.

There are times - such as all of us, I think, have experienced - when on reading press reviews you wonder if you live in a parallel world, on another planet. I've been called, in comments on this very blog, a 'stupid, bitter c**t.' After seeing Atys at the Royal Opera house the other night, I'm beginning to think I must be.

Of course I know nothing about modern dance and it does nothing for me, so when a choreographer's in charge there's bound to be more than a risk I won't 'get' it. As my neighbour put it: 'Il vient de la danse, il a fait de la danse' - he comes from ballet, so he made a ballet of it. This is a brand-new production and I at least expected something contemporary, but no, this was, to be positive, not to say charitable, aesthetically 'timeless', as a number of professional critics have put it. In my mind, however, the word was 'ringard', a useful French term that's hard to translate, but hovers somewhere between corny, naff, old hat, has-been, fogeyish and déjà vu. Loie Fuller or Isadora Duncan, even Busby Berkeley or Esther Williams or would have been in home in the aesthetic of it (girls in white, one-piece swimsuits actually did what looked like 'artistic swimming' movements on the floor while Atys suffered: see the photo below or the trailer on YouTube); Wieland Wagner, Giacometti or Soulages wouldn't have felt out of place; and if I thought I'd never see Noh-inspired costumes (all black, white and grey, of course), dancers doubling singers or rope dances on stage again, I had another thought coming.

Also, making the singers dance and gesticulate, as they gamely did, bless them, had the same effect here, though in a different aesthetic, as in candlelit Baroque 'reconstitutions'. This is what I wrote in my rambling article about Ivan Alexandre's 'period' production of Hippolyte et Aricie:

'The main problem, as usual with these reconstitutions, is that the heavy make-up, elaborate costumes and stiff poses are passion-killers. It’s all very well, in the prologue, for the ladies of the chorus to look like china dolls; but once the drama gets going – and in Rameau it does: there’s genuine lyric tragedy between the superb divertissements – it’s no help at all having your heroes look like 18th century automata. It ends up being a waste of talent: however good the singers are, feelings don’t pierce through.'

Wanderersite.com, a rare demurring voice in the chorus of praise, agrees (as I've started quoting others, I may as well go on, as they put things better than I can):

'It is very seductive, very beautiful to see sometimes, with pretty gestures that prolong the singing (...) but never really moving, as if the abundant presence of bodies hid the flesh from us. In a sense, in keeping with modern life, where form predominates. Few moments really touch, even if we remain fascinated by certain episodes.'

In other words, instead of adding to the impact of the drama, it subtracts.

I certainly agree with everyone regarding the consistency and visible commitment of the young cast, starting with Matthew Newlin himself, who had the most dancing to deal with. Some youthful hesitancy and unsteadiness in the opening scenes, including unsteady intonation, disappeared as the evening went on, though both he and the dramatically forceful, sometimes hard-voiced Giuseppina Bridelli overdid, to my personal taste, 'baroque' vocal effects: over-aspirating the 'h' in 'hélas', 'yelping' at the end of exclamations (the HIP equivalent of verismo tenor sobs) and in Bridelli's case, forcing vibrato-less notes almost out of tune for effect, then giving way, to my ear too artificially, to vibrato, rather like American singers belting out musicals. Ana Quintans sang more conventionally - nicely coloured and phrased. Andreas Wolf didn't have a good evening, producing at times some really ugly sounds; he didn't linger for applause during curtain calls so I guess he wasn't happy himself. Michael Mofidian, on the other hand, was strikingly musical and elegant, with a warm, delicate sound reminiscent of 40s and 50s recordings of French basses and baritones. Not a big voice, but one it would be very nice to hear again.

Like 'Wanderer' and Resmusica.com, I was a bit disappointed with Alarcon's conducting:

'A very slight disappointment comes surprisingly from the pit where the Cappella Mediterranea under the direction of Leonardo García Alarcón, though experienced in this stylistic exercise, seemed dull, without great colour and noticeably lacking dynamism.'

There were some beautiful moments. But I found the dark, string-heavy sound of the large orchestra relatively monochrome. The flutes (recorders) were, as one reviewer put it, 'delicate', i.e. faint. I was not alone, I also saw, in finding the overall effect more reminiscent of Monteverdi and Cavalli than what we're used to hearing in Lully, rightly or not. And, though several reviews I read noted there were cuts (no overture or prologue, for example, apart from a few bars), none, to my surprise, actually complained. I'm not so sure, myself, conductors and directors are right to collude in chopping works up to suit their concepts, unless the result is outstandingly brilliant as a work of art in its own right.

Not the case, I thought, in Versailles on Tuesday night, when, as we left to drive back to Paris, my neighbour groaned 'Putain, y a eu des moments où j'ai souffert...' - F**cking hell, there were times when I suffered.' There were cameras in the house, apparently for Mezzo and Culture Box, possibly also for a Versailles-Spectacles DVD, so anyone reading this stupid, bitter report will have ample opportunity, in the coming weeks, to see how wrong in our judgment we were.