Marc-Antoine Charpentier - Médée at the Paris Opera (Garnier)

ONP Garnier, Monday April 15 2024

Conductor: William Christie. Production: David McVicar. Sets and Costumes: Bunny Christie. Lighting: Paule Constable. Choreography: Lynne Page, revived by Gemma Payne. Médée: Lea Desandre. Jason: Reinoud Van Mechelen. Créon: Laurent Naouri. Créuse, Premier Fantôme : Ana Vieira Leite. Oronte: Gordon Bintner. Nérine: Emmanuelle De Negri. Cléone: Elodie Fonnard. Arcas: Lisandro Abadie. L'Amour, Première captive: Julie Roset. L'italienne, Deuxième captive: Mariasole Mainini. Choeur à trois voix: Maud Gnidzaz, Alice Gregorio, Bastien Rimondi. Une captive: Juliette Perret. Second fantôme: Virginie Thomas. Une captive: Julia Wischniewski. Deuxième corinthien, Un argien, Un captif, Démon: Clément Debieuvre. Premier corinthien, Un argien, Jalousie: Bastien Rimondi. Un argien, Vengeance: Matthieu Walendzik. Les Arts Florissants.

Photos: Elisa Haberer - ONP

 

'Premiere of Charpentier’s Médée last night at the Garnier in a 2013 McVicar ENO production. We’re in a Baroque chateau that has been commandeered by the army during World War II. With the possible exception of a hot pink airplane and zombies that the sorceress summons out of the floor it could be a day in any old chateau. Lea Desandre seems to be William Christie’s preferred singer these days. I’ve previously only seen her in concert with lutenist Thomas Dunford (who, here, was in the pit). She’s attractive, natural and limber, and made writhing around the stage in a slip look easy. She has a slender light mezzo voice and has been singing Cherubino and Stephano. She lacks the hauteur and regal bearing of Véronique Gens, or the commanding presence of LHL who performed the title role the only other time I saw this opera thirty years ago. Some might find her a bit slight of vocal stature, but that’s a matter of taste. And Gens’s slip-wearing and stage-writhing days, if they ever occurred, are surely a thing of the past. The work of the chorus and orchestra was… well, in this rep it just doesn’t get better. Christie is a revered cultural icon in France and his every appearance here evokes cheers. And much of the score is truly sublime. Time stands still during Medée’s third act air.'

 

Reproduced with the kind permission of the author, who posted his report on parterre.com shortly after the opening.

Sometimes, as I'm sure we've all seen, other people's accounts seem so far from our own experience that we wonder if we were at the same performance and feel gaslighted into doubting our own judgment, not to say sanity. So I put this second opinion here to offer a kind of moral support. Full marks, absolutely, to Lea Desandre for her energy, commitment, sincerity and effort. And certainly, Ana Vieira Leite sings beautifully, with a pretty, silvery sound. But (I repeat myself I know) Garnier is a big house, built for grand opera and once described by a friend as a 'cemetery' for baroque works. In my view, the women's voices were, all round, a couple of sizes too small, and I'm not sure I'd call it simply a matter of taste. Despite her evident, absolute engagement, Lea Desandre's Médée did indeed lack the hauteur, the regal bearing, the imperiousness and impact that (right or wrong) I would expect in Médée, and that I imagine Sarah Connolly in London and, later, Ana Caterina Antonacci in Geneva, in the same McVicar production, had. This is only hinted at with the utmost discretion, or more often not mentioned at all in reviews I've read. For all the magnificence of the orchestral playing and chorus, I sat there feeling underwhelmed and disappointed. My neighbour fled at the first interval.

 

The men were more obviously audible, but to my ear (and to my fleeing neighbour's), while note-perfect in the perilous haute-contre range, Reinoud Van Mechelen's timbre was hard and ungratifying, and Gordon Bintner's singing here seemed to me uneven, unruly and wayward. Vocally (i.e. apart from Christie, who has by now, nearing 80, nurtured his ensemble to a peak of perfection) the star of the show was, therefore, Laurent Naouri, whose Créon was dramatically perfectly judged, and vocally thoroughly convincing, his experience more than making up for any understandable wear and tear.

David McVicar's production is handsome and very professionally executed. The single set is a corner of a lofty, quite austere neoclassical saloon, with high french doors (sometimes transparent, sometimes not) and panelling highlighted with discreet gold trim. The setting is clearly England in the second world war that's still such a presence in UK culture, with the tensions in the plot recast as rivalry between the army, navy and Oronte's swaggering US air force. The uniforms and neatly-tailored costumes, in particular, conjure the period up perfectly. Like the doors, the furniture changes to suit the plot: old-fashioned office equipment and maps spread on tables; a cabaret with the spangled, hot pink plane mentioned in the quotation from Parterre trundled in through the giant doors; Créon's elaborately gilded desk with matching chairs, and so on. The lighting makes strikingly skillful use of the glossy floor.

Many people, I know, loved McVicar's Glyndebourne production of Giulio Cesare. I bought the DVD myself, though I found I loved it a little less. My feeling was that he overdid the comic elements - which I don't deny are potentially present in Händel's work and that English audiences enjoy - and in so doing undermined the drama. With Médée, a French tragédie lyrique, this approach, to my mind, doesn't work. The balance, the contrast between the naval officers' jaunty ballets (recalling the Air France stewards in Pelly's La Belle Hélène), followed by the cabaret-cum-musical with the pink plane, and the opera's crushingly tragic ending, is too juddering. As, too, is having the mad Créon staggering about comically in his boxers, with his trousers round his ankles, as the frightful dénouement approaches. A handsome production, brilliantly executed but, to my mind, mistakenly conceived for a work of this kind.

My apologies for the delay in publishing this: just after Médée, I left for a ten-day road trip in the UK.

Here is the media gallery.

And here's an excerpt: