Charpentier - La descente d’Orphée aux enfers (Buxton, 2025)

Marc-Antoine Charpentier - La descente d’Orphée aux enfers

Vache Baroque, 2025

Jonathan Darbourne, Jeanne Pansard-Besson, Gwilym Bowen, James Geidt, Betty Makharinsky, Naho Koizumi, Katie-Louise Dobson, Frances Gregory, Francis Gush, Lars Fischer, Michael Roche, Fi Silverthorn, Kenji Matsunaga

Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 24th July 2025

Buxton often invite a specialist early opera company as an addition to the main programme at the Buxton International Festival, and this music always seems to be a good fit for the Pavilion Arts Centre in the town. Not equipped with an orchestra pit, it isn't always the best way to see reduced productions of full scale operas (Ethel Smyth's The Boatswain's Mate suffered from this last year) and the stage does need to be rearranged to accommodate a chamber orchestra as well as a stage performance for a baroque opera, but with some creativity - like the Liberata Collective's production of Handel's Orlando done with Baroque Gesture in the theatre in 2023 - it seems to work spectacularly well. This year Vache Baroque brought a thrilling and very rare work to this year's festival, Charpentier’s chamber opera La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, and it was one of the highlights of the festival.

The opera was composed between 1686-87 while Charpentier was commissioned to write works for Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, a wealthy cousin of Louis XIV who became his patron. Charpentier, with a small company of musicians and singers, of which he was one himself, composed a number of pastoral and allegorical works for the Duchess at her urban palace in the Marais district of Paris. La descente d’Orphée aux enfers (The Descent of Orpheus into the Underworld) however remained unfinished at the time of the death of the Duchess in 1688. Intended to run to three acts, only the first two acts were set to music, the music for the third act lost or never completed, although it still exists in libretto form.

Charpentier has been going through a revival lately with a great deal of work being done on that front by William Christie. Having rescued and almost exhausted works by Rameau and Lully that have remained unheard for centuries, he and his Les Arts Florissantes company have turned their attention to this composer and will actually be performing a version of this same work in Valencia later this year (still without a third act sadly - although if ever there was a case for putting AI to good use, an attempt at recreation of the final act would be worth hearing). I'm sure that production will be marvellous, Christie always successfully dusting off ancient works like this and making them feel fresh and invigorating, but even if it is only half as good as this production by Vache Baroque at the Buxton International Festival, it will be marvellous.

The work itself is simply a marvel. Of course, the Orpheus myth has been the drama behind some of the greatest and indeed earliest opera works ever composed, but the story of a singer/musician, half-human/half-divine who charms demons and the god of the Underworld with his song, is an inspirational one for any composer. Charpentier follows the story we are familiar with, perhaps not jumping straight into the mournful grieving of Orpheus for the already expired Eurydice before plunging straight into hell as in C.W. Gluck's pared back Orphée et Eurydice, but allowing the work to have more life and colour, from the wedding celebration of the couple in Act I to the proposed depiction of the death of Orpheus torn apart by the furious Maenads in Act III.

Even without the missing third Act, Charpentier's La descente d’Orphée aux enfers is revealed here truly as a thing of great beauty. The strength of the composition is in how the Charpentier expresses the depth and dynamic range of human sentiments that the myth offers and elevates it with otherworldly music that is persuasive enough to provide an instructive moral on the nature of being human and yet through all those challenges aspire to follow our better nature. It has the purity of sentiment matched with artistry that Gluck was aspiring to bring back to opera in the reformist agenda of his own version of this story, in the process revealing himself to be a kind of Orpheus in this regard, reclaiming the power and the purity of the lyric drama.

With two extant magnificent acts to work with, Vache Baroque in this production directed by Jeanne Pansard-Besson, find beautiful contrasts in the settings and the music for each act. The wedding of Orpheus and Euridice in Act I is all beautiful pastel colours in the wedding costumes, highlighting the colour of the occasion and the music before it all turns to horror when Euridice is bitten by a snake and dies. The lively performance was of course stylised but felt natural and celebratory, not just of the wedding but of the music composed for it. The second Act was just as engaging and stylised for the journey into Hades, the condemned souls Orpheus encounters there wearing black and white costumes like Gothic clowns somehow feeling strangely appropriate. The movement choreography also played an important role - all credit to Simeon Qsyea - with two dancers included in the team, mirroring the flow of the haunting music in Act II but also the journey from ceremony to chaos in the first Act.

The singing voices also fully matched the intent of the composition and its meaning, playing their part in the remarkable dynamic of the drama. The fervency of Gwilym Bowen's Orpheus was matched by the unyielding authority of James Geidt's Pluton. The sheer strength of will that is needed to overcome such an impossible endeavour could be felt in such contrasts. In between there was some wonderful ensemble singing and performing, but I also noted wonderful lyricism in Frances Gregory’s Persephone, the bell-like clarity of Naho Koizumi's Daphné and the beautifully blended bass of Martin Roache’s dual role of Apollo and the Promethean Tityé. All were only enhanced by the complementary harmonies of the other voices.

The musical performance under the guidance of musical director Jonathan Darbourne was exquisite. It's always a pleasure to hear period instruments playing such beautiful music, but it's just as thrilling to hear it blend so well with the beautiful writing for voices. Sitting in the front row of the Pavilion Arts Centre takes you as close as you'll ever come to being on an opera stage, to being actually in the opera - another charm of this venue - and from there the separation of voices, the beauty of each and the harmonising of voice types just hits you and brings the whole depth of emotion of the tragedy of the story of Euridice and the boundless ambition of Orpheus to the forefront. It really is a tragedy that the third Act of the opera is lost, but this absorbing work and performance nonetheless felt wonderfully complete.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Charpentier - Médée (Paris, 2024)

Marc-Antoine Charpentier - Médée

Opéra National de Paris, 2024

William Christie, David McVicar, Lea Desandre, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Laurent Naouri, Ana Vieira Leite, Gordon Bintner, Emmanuelle de Negri, Élodie Fonnard, Lisandro Abadie, Julie Roset, Mariasole Mainini, Maud Gnidzaz, Juliette Perret, Virginie Thomas, Julia Wischniewski, Alice Gregorio, Bastien Rimondi, Clément Debieuvre, Matthieu Walendzik

ARTE Concert - 3rd and 7th May 2024

Euripides' ancient Greek tragedy of Medea is a sensational tale of sex and violence of love and betrayal that has long inspired theatre and the arts and of course countless opera versions over the centuries, from Francesco Cavalli's Il Giasone in 1649 to Aribert Riemann's Medea in 2010. The most famous opera version, its status defined by Maria Callas, is Luigi Cherubini’s Médée, and that's the version you are most likely to still see performed. With the works of Marc-Antoine Charpentier having their turn in the early opera spotlight, William Christie again being at the forefront of reviving great forgotten works of the early period of classic French 17th century opera, you aren't going to get a better opportunity to experience the quality of his version of Médée than this production on the Paris stage at the Palais Garnier.

With a libretto by French dramatist Thomas Corneille, who composed libretti for Lully's operas, and it being an opera composed during the reign of Louis XIV, you might have some expectations as to how this will play out. If you are thinking rather dry 17th century drama with some longeurs, noble sentiments and classical formality that require some patience and familiarity with the style to appreciate, you'd be partly right, but with Charpentier and French music of this period, you can also expect the flavour of wonderful dance music, choruses and spectacle all fulfilling the dramatic punch of the story. You definitely get that in this opera and it's brought out effectively in a manner that ensures accessibility in Christie's musical direction and in this production directed by David McVicar.

But there is a little scene setting required first of all to establish the situation that is going to lead to Jason's betrayal of his wife Medea and fire such fury in her that she is going to do the unthinkable. The context is their exile from Thessaly driven by the people's fear of Medea's magical powers, and Jason's seeking an alliance that will give them safe haven with King Creon in Corinth. He is prepared to lead a joint Corinthian and Argive army against Thessaly and extend the power of the rule of Creon. Although his daughter Creusa has been promised to Oronte, the Prince of Argos, Creon thinks Jason would make a better husband for the Princess. Jason sees that as an opportunity to secure and elevate his own position, but how will Medea take the news?

Well, I think we all know how that goes, and although the phrase "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" wasn't around at the time (it being coined just 4 years after Charpentier's opera in 1697 by William Congreve), there is no surer description for what takes place in the final act here. There is however other shades and colours of dramatic action and sentiment that Corneille and Charpentier have to work with before Act V of Médée. Act I starts slowly with Medea expressing misgivings about Jason's mission, Jason himself confessing love for Creusa to his confidant Arcus, but it soon picks up with the armies assembling for the attack against the Thessalonians.

The Paris Opera production sets this version in a more recent and familiar wartime setting, Creon a de Gaulle like figure, Oronte a brash American fighter pilot, Jason of course a naval officer. It works fine, removing it from the Greek classicism and giving it an attractive freshness and colour on the Palais Garnier stage. Dance routines from a small troupe of six male and six female dancers enliven the stage choreography and choral arrangements considerably; they are not overly elaborate, more formation dancing that suits the militaristic look and feel of the setting. The real battle here however is more the one between Jason and Oronte for the favour of Creusa than a concerted fight against the foreign enemy.

That more or less establishes the template for what follows in subsequent acts of Médée; a little bit of accompanied recitative exposition followed by some invigorating music, singing and dancing as the emotional temperature rises. The stage production rises to those moments as well with - it being a David McVicar production - a few surprising twists. A glittering US fighter plane is wheeled on at the end of Act II for a nightclub scene with L’Amour/Cupid appearing as a cabaret act, the whole scene bathed in purple and pink light. Yes, it's a little bit camp, in a McVicar way, but not excessively so. It's a good way to treat the mythological characters that appear in the opera and it seems to fit musically.

The latter is essential really, since musically this production has the complete William Christie attention to detail and above all rhythm. The use of period instruments is invigorating in those dance and choral pieces, with soft flute and plucked theorbo or lute accompanying the expressions of troubled emotions. Authenticity is a matter for the musical director of course and I'm in no position to dispute or approve the choices Christie makes, but he always makes early music that could otherwise sound alien to a modern classical audience feel accessible and beautiful as well as expressive of emotional and dramatic content.

There's a sweetness to the music that is reflected in the singing voices. Yes, that even goes for Lea Desandre as Medea, but the softness of her voice has an underlying steeliness that leaves you in no doubt as to the depths of feeling love and betrayal inspired in her, nor the horrors she is capable of inflicting because of them. Corneille provides adequate motivation, character definition and some poetic beauty in the libretto for Medea. Vowing vengeance in collaboration with Oronte in Act III, she instinctively softens in the face of Jason and believes she can persuade him away from the fatal course he is on. (Jason is also well sung in this scene by Reinoud Van Mechelen, but perhaps lacks the same depth of character). This leads to a beautiful lament "Quel prix de mon amour, quel fruit de mes forfaits" where Desandre shines, pouring out the complexity and depth of Medea's love for Jason. It's a pivotal scene that the outcome depends on and everything about this is convincing for what follows.

What follows is of course all the horrors of hell, and there Desandre is also wonderfully convincing. The early dance rhythms of the period music might not seem best designed for that kind of darkness, but the fury within is there in Desandre and in McVicar's direction of the subsequent acts and scenes with dancers and demons adding emphasis and impact to the intent. It's not a particularly thrilling or insightful production, more typical 'neoclassical' McVicar, but the way it is modernised is enough really to be able to appreciate the true qualities of the work. Under William Christie the work's beauty, its charm, its seductiveness, as well as its edge of menace are all there in a wonderful combination of soft flutes and flurries of plucked and hammered strings.

External links: Opéra National de Paris, ARTE Concert

Charpentier - Médée (Basel, 2015 - Webcast)

Marc-Antoine Charpentier - Médée

Theater Basel, 2015

Andrea Marcon, Nicolas Brieger, Magdalena Kožená, Anders J. Dahlin, Luca Tittoto, Meike Hartmann, Robin Adams, Silke Gäng, Yukie Sato, Jenny Högström, Regina Dahlen, Tiago Pinheiro de Olivieira, Daniel Issa, Ismael Arróniz Gónzales, Santiago Garzon

Culturebox - 21 January 2015
 
Compared to some other versions of the Medea story, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's musical arrangements and Thomas Corneille's libretto for Médée can seem somewhat dry and formal. Musically it's a little austere, the baroque instrumentation of plucked strings and theorbo not quite as expressive as you might find elsewhere in other versions of the work. Medea however relies on the shock of the climax, and if it takes a little time getting there, Charpentier's conclusion is up there with the best of them.

A lot of course depends on the staging, not that there have been many productions of this work since it was first performed in 1693, and just as much rests on the singer playing the part of Medea. Theater Basel's 2015 production may be updated to a more modern setting, but it retains the simplicity of line of Charpentier's score, and it relies heavily on the casting of Magdalena Kožená to supply all the fire that is needed to bring out the underlying darkness that the score itself barely hints at. And, largely, it succeeds.

The modern setting of Creon's Corinth here has something of the look of a Soviet dictatorship, albeit one that revels in the luxury of its own success and power. Assurance of that power is however, as we discover later, a fatal mistake where Medea is concerned. Creon however believes that an alliance between his daughter Creusa and Jason will consolidate his position, Jason having recently fled Thessaly looking for asylum. Jason is a warrior Creon can use, but it would not be in his interests to have a woman like his wife Medea in Corinth. She's the reason for their taking flight, the people of Thessaly troubled by her sorcery. Medea is therefore "asked to leave" by Creon, and, as we know, she takes terrible revenge for this, and for Jason's betrayal in leaving her and staying behind to marry Creusa.

The mechanics of laying out the history and the relationships between each of the figures isn't the most invigorating, Charpentier placing additional emphasis here on Medea forming an alliance with Oronte, who has been displaced from Creusa's affections by the arrival of Jason in the court of Corinth. There are certainly a few dramatic touches to add some colour, often coming at the end of each of the acts. Director Nicholas Brieger tries to integrate some of these more baroque elements in a different way. Act II, for example, ends with an kind of cabaret show where the Italian singer wears a red wig, seemingly parodying the red-haired Medea, but it doesn't really follow the idea through.

Act III of Médée also ought to end with Medea enacting the familiar scene of her performing her sorcery over a cauldron, preparing the poison for the dress that she will present to Creusa. Charpentier and Corneille's version takes an even more colourful approach to this scene than usual, the stage directions specifying that the robe is "brought by flying demons", with Medea's state of mind given corporeal form in the shape of La Jealousie and La Vengeance, through them forging a direct link to Hell. The demons are there all right in the Basel staging, as are Jealousy and Vengeance, and the force of Medea's passions are all there in Kožená's singing, but it still doesn't quite reach the level of intensity found in Euripides or even Cherubini's opera version of this scene.

Sorcery plays its part most openly in Act IV, where Medea evades Creon's guards and drives him to madness when she turns them into beguiling women, but the implication that comes though most strongly in Corneille's libretto is that Medea's power is not her sorcery or her temperament. It's herself as a woman, and the underestimation of a woman's power by Creon. You're mistaken, she tells Creon in this scene, if you think your laws apply to me - "Souviens-toi, je suis Médée". Charpentier's woman scorned doesn't just condemn Creusa to a painful death in a poisoned robe, and doesn't just destroy Jason and her own children (as horrifying as this is alone), she destroys Creon, leaves his court in flames and pretty much leaves an obliterated Corinth in her wake. Now, that's one heck of a Medea.

If the baroque music isn't quite expressive or discordant enough to get this across in modern terms - though Andrea Marcon and the Basel orchestra certainly find plenty of colour and dynamic in the score - it's abundantly clear in the writing for the mezzo-soprano voice and in the delivery of it by Magdalena Kožená. I haven't heard a lot of Kožená over the last decade, but she demonstrates here that her voice is as powerful as it ever was. It's such a full and richly toned voice, strong and controlled right across the range, and utterly dramatic when it comes to those moments of Medea expressing the full extend of her fury. Anders J. Dahlin's haute-contre doesn't stand a chance against such a force, but his Jason is no wimp either, steely rather, capable of fine expression. There is a fine performance too from Meike Hartmann's Creusa (her death scene almost devastating) and a solid baritone Creon in Luca Tittoto.

Links: Culturebox

Charpentier - David et Jonathas

Marc-Antoine Charpentier - David et Jonathas

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, 2012

William Christie, Les Arts Florissantes, Andreas Homoki, Pascal Charbonneau, Ana Quintans, Neal Davies, Frédéric Caton, Krešimir Špicer, Dominique Visse, Pierre Bessière

Aix-en-Provence - 11 July 2012

Marc-Antoine Charpentier worked for many years in the shadow of the officially appointed court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully and it seems he has remained in his shadow ever since, largely overlooked even as French Baroque music is being rediscovered in modern times, favouring Lully and his successor Rameau over Charpentier and Campra. There may be genuine musicological reasons for this choice, but judging by this rare performance of Charpentier’s David et Jonathas for the 2012 Aix-en-Provence Festival - the first staged performance of the work in over 300 years - the problem seems to lie with the difficulty of adapting this kind of work for a modern stage, since musically it is rather something of a delight.

First performed in 1688, a year after the death of Lully, David et Jonathas, a “Biblical tragedy in five acts with a prologue” is based on the friendship between David - slayer of Goliath - and Jonathas, the son of King Saul. The difficulty with adapting this work to a stage production is similar to the nature of attempting to stage Handel’s religious oratorios, the libretto by Père François de Paule Bretonneau in this case making it somewhat difficult to grasp a clear dramatic or narrative thread. Essentially however, the main thrust of the work is relatively straightforward, dealing with Saul’s growing mistrust of the shepherd boy David, who he has initially welcomed into his company. David is shown to be a popular hero, the people celebrating his successes in battle, but Saul suspects that he may be using his popularity and his friendship with his son Jonathas as a means to overthrow his rule and replace him as king of Israel.

Another reason why the work may be difficult to follow was that it was originally written to be performed as musical interludes inserted into a performance of the theatrical drama Saul. The Aix production does its best to create some dramatic situations out of this Biblical story, adding flashback scenes during what would have been musical ballet sequences that fill out the background of the historical conflicts, building up the childhoods of David and Jonathas and including other significant incidents such as the death of Saul’s wife, all of which seems to have an impact on destabilising the king’s mind, leading to more wars and a tragic outcome. The Aix production also notionally sets this staging of the opera during the Palestinian Civil War and the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, which may or may not be necessary as a meaningful parallel for the audience - but other than perhaps influencing the costume design, in reality there’s little direct reference made to the origins of the modern political conflict in the region.

The stage design rather places the action within a box of bare wood panelling, sparsely decorated with nothing more than wooden chairs and a long table, giving the impression more of a Quaker community room, or even occasionally looking like something out of a Western. Cleverly designed (I still can’t work out quite how they manage it), the walls and ceilings move to compress the space, open it out or split it into several rooms, blocking and boxing in to create a dramatic focus and tension to the singing. It’s hardly necessary, since the singing itself is more than capable of finding the right dramatic tone, and if anything the staging tends to over-emphasise it and place it at odds with the often delicate elegance of Charpentier’s beautiful musical arrangements and joyous choruses.

More often it’s simply trying to make the opera visually more interesting and dramatic than it might otherwise be. The production sparks into life during those magnificent choral arrangements, celebrating David’s successes in battle, and there are many of those. It’s less successful in providing psychological justification - and even suggestion of sexual attraction in the closeness of the relationship between the two men (notwithstanding the role of Jonathas being performed by a female singer). If the libretto and the flashback scenes don’t really bring this out sufficiently, it is however made impressively real and on occasion genuinely touching through Charpentier’s beautiful use of melody and his use of woodwind instruments - evocatively brought out by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants (who incidentally, take their name from a Charpentier opera) - and through the fine singing performances.

As David, Pascal Charbonneau has a powerful presence and voice, wonderfully expressive in a way that gives genuine character to the role, but it does tend to sound slightly constricted and nasal on those more stretched emotional sections - and this is a tragedy where the despairing cry of ‘Hélas!’ features heavily. I don’t think the actual acoustic of the boxed stage helps though. Elsewhere the singing and dramatic performances were excellent, even if the true quality of Ana Quintans singing only really came through in the very moving final act death scene of Jonathas. Neal Davies sang Saul with force and passion, but the stage direction and imagery used to convey his descent into paranoia suspicion and grief wasn’t always convincing. Still, this is clearly an extremely difficult work to adapt dramatically to the modern stage, but more than worthwhile for the opportunity of seeing this rarity from a neglected composer given full dramatic consideration and performed so well.

This performance of David et Jonathas was recorded at the Aix-en-Provence Festival on 11th July 2012 and viewed via internet streaming. It is currently still available to view on the ARTE WebLive web site or via the ArtsFlo Media site. Some region restrictions might apply.