Missy Mazzoli - Breaking the Waves

Opéra Comique, Paris, Sunday May 28 2023

Conductor: Mathieu Romano. Production: Tom Morris. Sets and Costumes: Soutra Gilmour. Lighting: Richard Howell. Video: Will Duke. Bess McNeill: Sydney Mancasola. Jan Nyman: Jarrett Ott. Dodo McNeill: Wallis Giunta. Mother: Susan Bullock. Dr Richardson: Elgan Llŷr Thomas. Terry: Mathieu Dubroca. Councilman: Andrew Nolen. Sadistic Sailor: Pascal Gourgand. Young Sailor: Fabrice Foison. Ensemble Aedes. Orchestre de Chambre de Paris.

Photo: James Glossop

 

The first post on this blog is about a performance of Jenufa in Braunschweig's production, with Karita Mattila, at the Châtelet on May 24 2003, so in a way We left at the interval is celebrating its 20th anniversary (the article dates back 20 years, but the blog itself only dates from 2007). I'm now about to mark the occasion with a lame story...

At the last minute, urged by a virtuoso friend intimately involved in contemporary music, I bought some cheap tickets to attend the opening Sunday matinée of Missy Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves at the Opéra Comique. It's always interesting to see a new opera and I'm glad I did. I haven't seen Lars von Trier's film myself, but many people will already be familiar with the grim story. Tom Morris and Soutra Gilmour create a dark, cramped, oppressive space around a revolving, granitic core that, with the help of lighting effects and projections, forms a church, a living, room, the rig, and so one. The atmosphere is ominous and gloomy from the outset,and the costumes, many of them black, contribute to the darkness, drabness and sense of doom.

Missy Mazzoli's score is anything but challenging, which may help explain its relatively wide acceptance. It has obvious echoes, from the very opening bars, of Britten - Grimes of course, and his chamber operas, Screw in particular: 'A kind of feminist Peter Grimes,' joked the virtuoso friend, with distinct hints of Adams and Glass, but of course also its own contemporary personality, albeit perhaps not very marked. It's been hailed, at any rate, as (further) proof that opera isn't yet dead, though I saw one blunt, grumpy reply from someone who admitted they hadn't stayed to the end, to the effect that it could have been composed eighty years ago. It's true that when you hear contemporary works of this kind, you might wonder whether Boulez and IRCAM ever really happened. Whatever: to me it seemed a viable, if by no means cheerful, addition to the repertoire.

Sydney Mancasola must by now have the leading role in her veins, and Jarrett Ott was particularly commanding as Jan, but perhaps because this opening was a matinee peformance on a warm day, the acting seemed to me, all round, to lack just a notch of dramatic urgency, and the orchestral playing didn't quite sound pin sharp.

The problem - here comes the really lame part of the story - was that, after a poor, grey, chilly spring, this Sunday was the first truly glorious, warm, sunny day we've had in Paris this year. The cheap seats I'd bought were in a side box with only a 'letterbox' view of the action, impeded vertically by a pillar. So, whatever the undeniable merits of the opera, which I'd gladly return to one winter evening, no problem, we couldn't face any more of the story's stifling gloom, viewed obscurely from our stuffy baignoire, and caved in to the call of the sun outside. Sneaking past the composer herself - chatting with her librettist and sparkling, on the little square in front of the Salle Favart, in a magnificent, multi-hued sequinned bolero - I'm ashamed to say, we left at the interval.

This trailer is from the Scottish Opera, in the same production, also with Sydney Mansacola, but not Jarrett Ott: