Charpentier - Louise (Aix-en-Provence, 2025)

Gustave Charpentier - Louise

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Giacomo Sagripanti, Christof Loy, Elsa Dreisig, Adam Smith, Nicolas Courjal, Sophie Koch, Marianne Croux, Annick Massis, Grégoire Mour, Carol Garcia, Karolina Bengtsson, Marie-Thérèse Keller, Julie Pasturaud, Marion Vergez-Pascal, Marion Lebègue, Jennifer Courcier. Céleste Pinel, Frédéric Caton, Filipp Varik, Alexander de Jong

La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 11th July 2025

When you look through any older books written about the history of opera, Gustave Charpentier's Louise is often referred to as one of the standards of the repertoire. Those days are long past and in all my time viewing opera, I don't recall an opportunity to have actually seen it performed. In its day, composed in 1900, it did indeed cause a scandal in France when it was presented at the Opéra-Comique with its bold depiction of female desire and rebellion against family, but that might be considered mild by today's standards and indeed it was out-played in that respect by Richard Strauss's Salome in 1905. Louise fell out of fashion and disappeared with many of the French works of this period by the likes of Massenet and Gounod, becoming the kind of works nostalgically revived usually only - again - at the current Opéra Comique in Paris.

Musically and in terms of its subject rather than chronologically sitting somewhere between Manon (1884) and La Bohème (1895) and maybe even an extension beyond both of them, Louise seems an odd choice for revival at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, but Christof Loy is the kind of director well equipped to examine such a work deep beneath the surface. He has an affinity for strong female characters in opera who find themselves condemned for seeking liberation from the oppression of social mores and conventions (Salome, Francesca da Rimini, Das Wunder der Heliane, Euryanthe, Jenůfa). While Louise may not measure up to some of those works in reputation, Loy's production makes you question why it has been neglected for so long, but without a director with that kind of clear vision and modern outlook, you can also understand why.

The re-location of the setting of the opera from the Belle Époque Paris to a mental institution department of a hospital in a more recent period however does not exactly strike you as a terribly original idea - off the top of my head I can recall the 2017 Vienna Parsifal directed by Alvis Hermanis and of course, there is Stefan Herheim's version of La Bohème that takes it to another extreme altogether - but it can be an effective distancing technique to cut through any fake operatic glamour that might distract from the reality of the circumstances. And Louise does need - and merits - a more rigorous approach. In the first act Louise sees herself as a Sleeping Beauty dreaming of her Prince, while the boy next door Julien sees her as his Ophelia. These happy scenes - as chaste as they are, relying on stolen glances - are of course a delusion, since Louise has strict parents who keep a tight rein on the young woman. But Charpentier's music and the libretto hint that there is more than that suggested in this situation.

Louise turns away from this restrictive hold on her life and does indeed run away to Paris, seeking to live an independent life and choose who to love. It's not just a dream for Louise, but many young women during this period living in the provinces. "A hellish life here" ("Notre vie d’enfer”), comments one father of three daughters, "Who can blame them for seeking paradise out there?"). Paris of course is that dream, but life there is difficult for Louise, who finds that it is not any easier there for a young woman seeking to live independently. The way that her dreams and illusions are shattered however suggests that the damage is inflicted not just by the sheltered life enforced by her parents, but that there is an element of abuse hinted at in their intimidating behaviour in the original opera that Loy is keen to draw out and make explicit. And apply in a wider context.

In the waiting room of the psychiatric hospital, the vision of Julien is just a warm memory, an allegorical illusion for the promise of the paradise of Paris, and that indeed is the reality that Charpentier depicts. Accompanied by her mother - wonderfully portrayed by Sophie Koch, a great role for her - she is not just over-protective, but overpowering and intimidating. Loy sees this oppressiveness as having a detrimental psychological impact on the young woman. As does her relationship with her father, not just cossetting her like a child, but fondling and caressing in an inappropriate and troubling way. The father is something of a bohemian, believing that money doesn't bring happiness and he thinks that they should all be content with their lot as a close family. You suspect the mother's objection to Julien is that the young man interested in her daughter too closely resembles her husband.

Loy pursues the inevitable consequence of this family background, combining it with the sinister setting of the psychiatric hospital in a way that changes the whole tone of the work, allowing for no real romantic scenes other than those in Louise's head. In this setting, Louise's fate becomes tied to that of Mimi in Henry Murger's original novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème, where the young woman is actually institutionalised - something skipped over in Puccini's opera adaptation. Herheim managed to introduce this stark reality in his adaptation of that opera and Loy likewise chops up the timeline to highlight the injustice and inequality of women and the fate that many would have been subjected to. It lets you know right from the start that there is going to be no happy ending here.

The Paris street scenes then all take on a hallucinatory quality, the patients, doctors and hospital employees taking the roles of the disillusioned lives on the street. The short Act II (presumably shortened by Loy as cuts have been employed for this production) offers some light relief, but it's also brief and carries this darker undercurrent. In the original Louise is in Paris, her colleagues in a stitching factory dreaming of love and suspecting that she has a lover. They sing of the romance of "the voice of Paris". In Loy's version, they are all hospital cleaners (quite a lot for a fairly rundown looking institution) and Louise imagines them making her wedding dress while she is serenaded by a street singer, Julien below the window. The chorus soon turns to threatening as they gang up on her and make fun of her situation.

Louise's continued idealisation of love and freedom in Paris, escaping from her abusive home life, is in reality short-lived as her father’s illness allows her parents to appeal for her return and, true to form, even blame her running away as the reason for his illness. Her return to the place of unhappiness takes on an almost unbearable intensity in Loy’s suggestion of the extent and nature of the abuse, but again it does seem to be a justifiable response to what appears to be hinted at in the original work. Pelléas et Mélisande comes to mind, the father - an absolutely brilliant performance by Nicolas Courjal - sounding Golaud-like with his imprecations to his "p’tite enfant". Louise premiered in 1900, two years before Pelléas et Mélisande, but it seems to have tapped into the same undercurrents, finding another elliptical way of expressing them. The final act and fate of the young woman is almost devastating in the intensity of the emotions and the naturalistic treatment employed here.

Although Loy has found a serious line to follow through the work, you do get the impression that otherwise there might not be a great deal to the opera and that any serious intent would get lost in the conventionality of the operatic arrangements. Nonetheless, musically it's rich and beautifully scored, with a distinct French character; Ravel comes to mind, Massenet of course and, as mentioned, even a little Debussy (but I have to say almost everything that has a shimmery quality and a French spoken rhythm reminds me of Pelléas et Mélisande). For the sake of a modern revival and tighter focus, conductor Giacomo Sagripanti seems to accept that some cuts are necessary, stating that its length is part of the weakness of the opera which tries to take in too much. Do we lose out on the colour of the work? I don't think so. Even with cuts, there is an extravagance still there in the sentiments, the choral pieces and the wild romanticism; the production just puts a different shade on it, one that is suggested to a large extent by the nature of the subject, the female perspective of romantic illusion being crushed by reality.

A lot rides on Elsa Dreisig as Louise and of course she is outstanding, both in her singing and acting. Louise even seems somewhat oppressed vocally in first two acts, but literally finds her voice in Act III, and in that original controversial expression of female sexual pleasure. Loy uses that same sense of oppression and liberation to a slightly different purpose of course, presenting an interesting modern insight into the character, although it's clear that the darker intent is there to a large extent in the actual composition. Done this way, as with Herheim, does force you to look more critically beneath the surface of the glittery first half of the work and see that it is not all lovely and romantic being a young woman running away from abusive parents and finding it difficult to live a life as an independent woman on the streets of Paris. "Cité de joie! cité d'amour!… Protège tes enfants!" ("City of joy, city of love... Protect your children").

The character of Julien might suffer from such a reworking, becoming an ideal, an illusory dream of love and romance, but Adam Smith's singing is superb and makes a great impression. To Louise's claim that "It's Paradise" and "It's a fairy dream”, his character repeatedly tells her that "No, it's life", trying to keep the young woman grounded in the real world that would be normal for anyone except someone who has not been used to such love and acceptance. With those terrific performances from Sophie Koch and Nicolas Courjal distorting that picture as her oppressive parents, Christof Loy succeeds in bringing into the present Charpentier's attempt to introduce naturalism into opera as a "roman musical", a musical novel. It's not a profound work; it has limited drama; but it has a firm basis in reality and in the psychology that still can hold true for many young women today.

External links: ARTE Concert, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Mozart - Mitridate, re di Ponto (Madrid, 2025)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mitridate, re di Ponto

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2025

Ivor Bolton, Claus Guth, Juan Francisco Gatell, Sara Blanch, Elsa Dreisig, Franco Fagioli, Marina Monzó, Juan Sancho, Franko Klisovic

OperaVision - 4th April 2025

There are limits to expression in 18th century opera seria, even for Mozart, who was only 14 years old when he wrote Mitridate, re di Ponto in 1770. Even with the long flowing arias where each of the figures pour out their hearts, it's within the context of generic feelings and expectations, the arias capable of being lifted and inserted seamlessly into other works; which was often the case, and borrowing is still common practice when rediscovering and recreating lost works of early opera. The main action tends to play out off-stage, only referred to in-between in the recitative, and in the case of Mitridate, re di Ponto - based on an Italian language adaptation of Racine's play Mitridate - the context is the war between Pompey's Roman army and King Mitridate of Pontus around 63BC.

Not that you'd get any real sense of that from Mozart's opera or the libretto written by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi. The events of the war remain in the background, the focus instead on the impact - or opportunity - that the war presents to the main characters of the opera. With King Mitridate believed to have been killed by Pompey, his sons Farnace and Sifare, both from different mothers, seek to consolidate their own position. Farnace, the elder, plans to seek an alliance with Rome, his only use of force being applied to his father's fiancée Aspasia to be his Queen. Sifare is in love with Aspasia, and the feelings are mutual. Mitridate however is not dead, the news of his death a ruse to find out the truth about his sons, and indeed his wife to be.

The plot then is somewhat contrived, but the purpose is indeed to contrive a situation where truth can be brought out into the open, where human feelings can be freely expressed, the war less important really than the personal battles even if it is merely in the context of domestic rivalry, jealousy and assertion of dominance. Essentially though, the opera is primarily an excuse or opportunity to give singers the opportunity to shine and show their range and talent, and there is a challenge - particularly in a modern production - to try to keep those emotional expressions within the realm of true human feelings. That's not easy considering the setting, the plot and the larger than life characters, but of course much depends on the inventiveness of the musical setting and that's perhaps easier to find in Mozart's music.

Mozart's early works of opera seria have languished along with many of his youthful works for this reason. Limited by the conventions of the style, there is little apart from the prodigious talent of the age of the composer to set them apart from other works of the period. Mozart would find ways to place his own stamp on the opera seria format as a mature composer in Idomeneo (1780) and advance it in La Clemenza di Tito (1791), but even the earlier works have echoes of the brilliance of those later works and that can be brought out by a sympathetic production.

Mitridate is not one of those great Mozart operas. Brilliant certainly, incredible as the work of a 14 year old composer, but to really appreciate its qualities, you need more than a static opera seria production, and you really need to pull it out of the historical period, which is little more than a pretext really for the human drama. You won't get a static production from Claus Guth, and you won't get robes and togas or ruined temples. The crux of the drama, needless to say, would be more familiar to a modern audience who has seen Succession. I haven't but I expect most people have, and as such they would immediately recognise the setting and the subsequent battle for wealth and power in Mitridate in the absence of love and respect.

The whole of the opera (or at least half of it) takes place in a modern 'palace', a luxurious mansion. I'm not even sure how much the average person could relate to this Succession-like situation as a common family drama - Guth includes a silent servant who looks on the whole affair disapprovingly - but, as has often been established through the history of opera, everyone is capable of experiencing and indeed denying human feelings. If the incestuous situation played out here between an ancient ruler of a kingdom and his sons and a conspiracy with one of them to side with Romans is not everyone’s experience, the sentiments of love, lust, jealousy, trust, betrayal, repentance and forgiveness are more familiar, and they can indeed lead to tragic outcomes.

That would be very much within the enlightened view of Mozart, certainly more so in his greater works, but Mitridate, re di Ponto gives the young composer an early opportunity to explore those sentiments. At this stage it's very much a male power-play, although the assignment of roles of the sons to alto castrato (Farnace) and soprano castrato (Sifare) makes that a little more ambiguous, certainly when cast now as countertenor and soprano trouser role. Aspasia, the Queen, certainly has little to show in the way of personality in the early stage of the opera other than resisting the aggressive advances of Farnace, seeking help of his brother Sifare, unaware that he has deep feelings for her. Wait until their father gets home. Believed dead after battle with Pompey hence his sons’ rather inappropriate advances on their prospective mother, Mitridate is actually alive and on his way, having faked his death so that he could observe the ambitions of his sons revealed.

While it seems a little shallow of purpose and characterisation, all these roles can be given greater depth with good singers and adequate direction. If you have that, it makes it much easier to see how much Mozart's music contributes to their definition and expression. You can't argue with the likes of countertenor Franco Fagioli as Farnace, and soprano Elsa Dreisig as Sifare. Both singers put a stamp on the personalities of the two sons even within the generic characterisation, and Mozart's musical description can be seen as contributing to that; blustering defiance and lust on the part of Farnace, guilty desire and wary lack of confidence on the part of Sifare. Even the music for Aspasia, as sung superbly here by Sara Blanch, shows the conflict that rages within her over the actions of the sons and the doubts about her feelings for Mitridate. The opera is blessed with such wonderful vocal writing for all the roles, with no bass, baritone or even mezzo-soprano roles. Juan Francisco Gatell fills the typical sweet high Mozartian tenor as Mitridate, Marina Monzó an impressive Ismene, and even the roles of Marzio (Juan Sancho) and Arbate (Franko Klisovic) have something to contribute in terms of range of voice and character. 

While the setting of the opera doesn't call out for any dramatic scene changes, director Claus Guth typically tries to delve a little more deeply the sentiments of the characters and relate them to the psychological impact that the situation has on them. The 'shadow side' of the opera takes place behind the living room in a colander-like environment and it's here that the characters mostly take their interior monologue arias where grapple with their feelings and fears. Mitridate, back from the 'dead', is shown dealing with his own mortality in his first scene with a double and black masked figures, and he struggles in a shadow play struggle with a double of his unfaithful son Farnace lusting after Aspasia. Sifare grapples with his feelings for multiple aspects of Aspasia being stolen by dark figures and Aspasia expresses her conflict between duty and love. Farnace, it appears, doesn't have a conscience; his demons haunt him in the 'real world'.

These elements don't really need such separation or elaboration, but it does at least make the opera a little more interesting visually and shows that the real drama takes place on a purely psychological level. Considering the solipsistic nature of the arias, with there being little direct confrontations or expression in this opera through duets or ensemble pieces - even 'conversations' feel one-sided - there is a good rationale for this. Guth however recognises that there is a gradual overlap between the interior and exterior worlds as the opera comes to a resolution as the characters gradually come to an accommodation with their inner lives and, remembering that this is supposed to be about a war-time situation, recognise the true enemy is Rome for the defiant ensemble finale. 

I haven't heard Ivor Bolton conducting for a while (the last time indeed was Idomeneo in 2019), and here as musical director at the Teatro Real, it's always a treat to hear him conduct works from the Classical and early Classical period with sensitivity and drive. You can easily get a little tired of the opera seria conventions and repetitions, but here Bolton never lets you forget that you are listening to the music of Mozart. If it's not always original, Mozart's music in Mitridate, re di Ponto feels well suited to every situation and does have those flashes of brilliance, rhythmic drive and dramatic intensity, but with a lightness of touch that offers hope for these unfortunate figures to escape from the darkness of their personal torments. Musical direction and stage direction successfully working then working hand-in-hand then with fine singing from the entire cast, this is surely all you want from an early Mozart opera.

External links: Teatro Real, OperaVision

Mozart - Così fan tutte (Salzburg, 2020)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Così Fan Tutte

Salzburger Festspiele, 2020

Joana Mallwitz, Christof Loy, Elsa Dreisig, Marianne Crebassa, André Schuen, Bogdan Volkov, Lea Desandre, Johannes Martin Kränzle

ARTE Concert - 2 August 2020

It was going to have to be different if the Salzburg Festival was going to go ahead in any form this year, but despite a reduced programme and reduced audience on account of the Covid-19 restrictions and despite a characteristically minimalist stage set for a Christof Loy production, there's nothing in the least socially distant or socially distancing about this reworked version of Mozart's Così fan tutte. In fact the 2020 Salzburg production is a very physical, tightly choreographed, condensed in its cuts and in the precision in which it gets to the heart of Mozart's extraordinary and oft misunderstood opera.

It's appropriate in this case for Così fan tutte and exactly how you want it to be, because despite all its buffo comedy elements, Da Ponte's ludicrous plotting and the libretto's seemingly superficial and clichéd characterisation, the opera is actually deeply insightful in its observations about human nature, about love, relationships, men and women, about holding illusions and facing up to reality. Far from being a light comedy, the libretto is beautifully poetic, the music deeply moving and extraordinarily expressive of a wide range of human emotions and experiences that come from heart and the head. Or it can be if it's allowed to be.

Loy's minimalist 'generic' productions tend to work well with such works, where you don't need to be distracted by the mechanics of the plot, the period or the location, and can focus on the characters and the relationships between them. It may seem obvious but that can be done physically and spacially, the distance or closeness between them the characters measured out in their proximity to one another on the stage, whether they look at each other or not, whether they touch or hold. Fiordiligi and Dorabella here are clearly close friends, comfortably tactile in each other's company. The boys Guglielmo and Ferrando are tactile in a little more rough and tumble way, playfully jostling their master, Don Alfonso, showing more eagerness to impress than feel any real feeling for their girlfriends.

Loy, who in my experience usually works with as full an uncut version of an opera as possible, takes the opportunity of working with conductor Joana Mallwitz not just to compress the opera down for health and safety reasons (reducing the time spent in the hall for the audience, with no interval where they can mingle and spread any virus contagion), but to cut back on the more buffo elements, the dialogues that might be more offensive and sexist to a modern audience. That doesn't have to be the case - Christophe Honoré managed to integrate those potentially objectionable views into a rather more questioning view of Così fan tutte and humanity in his 2016 Aix-en-Provence production - and it does occasionally make the opera feel a little too rushed here, losing a nonetheless important element while not really making the plot or motivations feel any more credible or realistic.

Arguably, the plot was never meant to withstand the scrutiny of realism, but the human emotions and experiences in this remarkable work are nonetheless timelessly truthful and insightful. Christof Loy and Joana Mallwitz necessarily put aside some of the more comic interludes and sacrificing this aspect of the human experience, and instead look for those moments of beauty that is brought out by what is patently and intentionally a fake situation. It's faked or contrived by its creators however precisely to evoke specific emotions in order to understand what is important. It's not hard either to see where those moments of truth and beauty are; you need to look no further than the exquisite arias, more beautiful here than any in the far more famous arias of Don Giovanni, and at least on a par with the finer moments of that other Mozart/Da Ponte masterpiece that is Le Nozze di Figaro.

The compression employed here that requires some measure of suspending disbelief actually heightens the necessity of their being a willingness to believe on the part of both sets of lovers. And what Mozart and Da Ponte achieve is indeed a school for lovers, an education on its joys, anxieties and insecurities, its feelings of deep spiritual awakening and devastating fears of betrayal. It's a bit of a crash course, achieved by sleight of hand over an intense period of a day, where you are never really sure how aware the characters are of the game they are playing or at what point reality takes over and it stops being a game.

Seen that way, the opera is actually employs a post-modernist meta-behavioural effect far ahead of its time, one similar to that achieved by the late filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in Certified Copy (2010). I don't use this example randomly, since Kiarostami directed Così fan tutte in a production at Aix-en-Provence in 2008 (that I saw subsequently at the Coliseum in 2009), which makes me wonder whether, subconsciously or otherwise, he picked up the idea from Mozart and Da Ponte and expanded on it. You can't think of Così as naturalistic - it's ridiculous and silly, and yet everything about it is beautiful, achingly beautiful and right. It's completely authentic and makes perfect sense on a deep emotional and human level, on "how quickly a heart can change".

It's been a tough year for the arts, but there's a reminder here that we can't afford to lose or fail to nurture the kind of talent that is evident on the stages of Salzburg and mirrored on stages across the world. Like the Salzburg Elektra, the talent here is world class, as good as any classic historical performance of these works, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Marianne Crebassa in particular is just outstanding here as Dorabella. Elsa Dreisig brings that dreamy sincere youthful idealism to Flordiligi and there is plenty of youthful enthusiasm in the performances of André Schuen and Bogdan Volkov. Lea Desandre is a bright and entertaining Despina and Johannes Martin Kränzle an ideal Don Alfonso, charmingly mischievous with just a hint of a sinister motive. Much of the secret of making these characters work and come alive is just sheer nerve and enthusiasm, putting cynicism aside and being willing to believe that we can aspire to be better. That's half the battle with the opera as much as in the matters of love it deals with.

August 2020 may have meant a reduced opera programme for Salzburg, with only Elektra and Così fan tutte staged, but the choice of works and their presentation - both premiere performances broadcast live-streaming - showcase everything that is brilliant about opera, about why it is important and why we must find a way to keep it and other performing arts alive through the current crisis. There's a lot we can learn from the arts about dealing with the current times, a lot that Strauss, von Hofmannsthal, Mozart and Da Ponte have to show us. Elektra shows one response to the world, of individuals put through extreme and challenging experiences, mental illness, enforced separation, Così another very different but challenging experience. Both however show that we're only human and capable of making mistakes, but the consequences of not learning from them are too terrible to imagine.

Links: Salzburg Festival, ARTE Concert

Mozart - Don Giovanni (Paris, 2019)

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni

L'Opéra National de Paris, 2019

Philippe Jordan, Ivo Van Hove, Étienne Dupuis, Ain Anger, Jacquelyn Wagner, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Nicole Car, Philippe Sly, Mikhail Timoshenko, Elsa Dreisig

Paris Cinema Live - 21 June 2019 

It's not as if Mozart's operas works aren't already clearly progressive works, in their musical qualities as well as in their expression of the injustices and inequalities within society, and as such they always seem to be capable of revealing other aspects and changing facets that reflect the times we are living in. The 'droit de seigneur' of Le Nozze di Figaro can certainly be applied to contemporary situations, showing that Mozart was already there with #MeToo long before its time and there's also something about Don Giovanni that takes in all the complexities of male and female relationships on a deeper and more universal level.

If we can recognise what is universal and true in Mozart's Don Giovanni, it doesn't need a director like Ivo van Hove to bring it out or add anything new to it. Not that you have to, since attempting to fit those works to contemporary morals and attitudes can still be problematic. Sometimes the best thing you can do is let a work speak for itself and the sign of a good director is knowing when to step back and where to intervene and what to highlight to bring to the attention of the audience. Van Hove's setting of his Paris Opera production consequently aims for the universal, blending modern and period characteristics, but feels almost respectful of Mozart in terms of the plotting, not daring to mess with it too much.

Of course in Don Giovanni, certain choices have to be made by any director that have considerable influence on the tone of the work. One of the first choices any director has to make is whether Don Giovanni is a seducer and a lover of women or an aggressor and an abuser. Even within that you have to determine whether he is a victim of his own desires, incapable of being anything but his nature (and whether the women who are drawn to him are not more than creatures of nature too) and thus deserving of some sympathy.

Some productions in the past have suggested that Donna Anna was leading him on, that the killing of the Commendatore is just an accident or self-defence, that his only real crime is arrogance in believing that he is above the laws of nature, that he is in control of them, that there is no harm or consequence to his behaviours, that he is exempt (whether through nobility, vanity or just arrogant superiority) from paying any price for his actions. While it's valid to explore the many possibilities that this fascinating character and the other fascinating characters play in the opera (and they all have an important part to play), there's no real doubt about how Mozart saw Don Giovanni. It's in the original title; a dissolute punished.

Ivo van Hove clearly wants to stick with that line of thinking, and I'm minded to consider the previous Paris Opera production directed by the filmmaker Michael Haneke in relation to this, Haneke making the original title explicit, taking a political spin on the work and making the punishment very much a case of earthly justice of the people deposing a cruel, thoughtless and arrogant leader. Van Hove's choices are less imposing on the work and not so politically minded, but his outlook on it means that the production unquestionably has a darker colour that doesn't permit the usual comic interplay with Leporello. Van Hove's contribution, if it adds up to anything, is in holding to this consistent tone, in getting the performers all working together to bring that character to the fore and making it feel as deep and real and meaningful as Mozart scores it.

What is also noticeable about this production - although really you should already be aware of this - is that the women in Don Giovanni are amazing. Mozart's enlightened thinking was genuinely far ahead of his time. Without having to expressly evoke any contemporary application, it's evident enough to anyone currently witnessing the rise of the #MeToo movement that these are women in Don Giovanni who are here prepared to stand up against their aggressor, not let society say that they are complicit, nor let it make them doubt their own nature. The may have been naive perhaps in their expectations of someone like Don Giovanni, but nothing more than that, and he has gravely abused their nature, their trust and their person.

That comes out well, and it's a director's job to ensure that that it does, so whether you recognise Ivo Van Hove's hand in this (as with his theatrical work his directing of actors is a lot more subtle than his bold and experimental scenic touches suggest), his choices and directions unquestionably strike an accurate and consistent tone. And it's not just in the casting and performance of Don Giovanni, although Étienne Dupuis is outstanding as a serious, calculating and manipulative noble here, his singing and performance striking a superb balance between charming and utterly deadly, but how the other characters respond to him is vitally important.

I've pondered before when considering Le Nozze di Figaro how important the secondary roles are in Mozart's operas, and concluding that if you give due attention to the casting and character of all the roles, there are greater dividends to be found. There's no such thing as a secondary or minor role in Mozart's operas - in the Da Ponte trilogy of works at least - and that the operas achieve their true greatness when all of them are given serious consideration. I don't think Don Giovanni can be anything but great, but when you give those superbly detailed characters (in terms of personality, as well as in the incredible pieces of music that Mozart writes for them), the true genius of the complexity of people's behaviour and their relationships is apparent.

In that respect, this is a great Don Giovanni. Director intervention might appear minimal, but the coaching of the performers to find the real people within those roles, to bring out what Mozart and Da Ponte put there is evident here. Of course, it's consideration of the fate of the women that is just as important, if not more important than Don Giovanni (although Don Giovanni and Leporello must also be taken seriously in how they display another side of human nature), and when you do that, not only do you get heartfelt, fiery performances from Jacquelyn Wagner as Donna Anna and Nicole Car as Donna Elvira, but you get the whole richness of women's sentiments and personality when you take that attention down to Elsa Dreisig's sincere Zerlina. Superb singing from Philippe Sly as Leporello, Stanislas de Barbeyrac as Don Ottavio, Ain Anger as the Commendatore, and Mikhail Timoshenko as Masetto kept a strong consistent tone across all the relationships in the production of this work.

How much the production design contributed to the overall impact of the work is difficult to determine, but it clearly worked well. The whole opera takes place here outside Don Giovanni's imposing grey castle with little of the usual film references that you associate with an Ivo Van Hove production and instead more of an Escher quality, or Duke Bluebeard's Castle in the sense of the maze like entrapment of the castle's staircases, alleys and doorways. Modern suits are mixed with medieval attitudes. It's uniformly grey, but there are flashes of colour there when the director wants to draw attention to aspects of the drama and the music.

There is little also of the director's customary use of projections, Van Hove keeping those tricks in the bag until later for maximum impact. The use and wielding of guns give an extra edge of danger, of threatening masculinity and abuse of power. The effects are saved for the finale, as you might expect in the descent to hell scene. What you might not expect is the superb handling of the necessary final sextet, often cut in darker interpretations of the opera. Here it is necessary to give a sense that this dark masculine world can be healed and it's women, Mozart's women - the clue already revealed in the seemingly throwaway scene between Zerlina and Masetto - who are the healing force in the opera. I expected something a little more radical from this director doing Don Giovanni, but no it didn't need it. Van Hove sees what is important in the opera, in Mozart's outlook, and he nails it.

L'Opera de Paris, Culturebox

Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie (Berlin, 2018)

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Hippolyte et Aricie

Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, 2018

Simon Rattle, Aletta Collins, Anna Prohaska, Magdalena Kožená, Gyula Orendt, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Peter Rose, Adriane Queiroz, Elsa Dreisig, Sarah Aristidou, Slávka Zámečníková, Serena Sáenz Molinero, Roman Trekel, Michael Smallwood, Linard Vrielink, Arttu Kataja, Jan Martiník

ARTE Concert

The tragédie lyrique operas of Lully and Rameau, since they were written for the French royal court in the 18th century, must be seen above all as grand spectacles. There are moral lessons to be imparted in their treatments of ancient Greek mythology that can still carry through, but what essentially strikes a modern audience when these works are performed is their extravagant blend of music, dance and colourful dramatic presentations that they seem to inspire. That spectacle can take many forms, from the ultra-traditional (Hippolyte et Aricie, 2012 Atys 2011) to the stylishly modern (Les Boréades, 2003),  or radically reworked (Les Indes Galantes, Bordeaux 2014) but whatever the case, the visuals must match up with the elaborate musical arrangements.

The 2018 Berlin Staatsoper production of Hippolyte et Aricie clearly doesn't go for the traditional approach of Paris 2012, and to be frank, it doesn't even go for anything recognisably contemporary like Jonathan Kent's 2013 Glyndebourne production or anything remotely naturalistic. On the other hand, there's nothing particularly naturalistic about the mythological subject and, looking back on Rameau's musical presentation of Racine's Phèdre today, there is something now otherworldly about the arrangements and the sound of the instruments themselves that, apart from Handel making them a little more familiar, is not commonly heard in the main repertoire.

Since the story revolves around Theseus's descent into Hades (following the traditional prelude of a dispute between the gods) you might at least expect there to be an otherworldly quality to the presentation, but this production very much has its own visual interpretation of those places. When you delve into such places and act outside the laws of nature - Phèdre falling in love with her husband's son Hippolyte and upsetting the order of her own marriage and Hippolyte's marriage to Aricie - well, then those consequences have far-reaching impact. That's something you can hear in the music and that's interpreted with some originality in the Berlin staging.

It certainly has extravagance and spectacle. The opening prelude is a dazzling display of mirrors and laser beams that are reflected and spread out across the auditorium of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Jupiter takes the form of a glitterball and even Phèdre is dressed in a gown of small fractured mirrors. The subsequent scene in the Underworld sees Theseus, Pluton and Tsiphone under individual coloured lights, each with their upper body bound up in a frame of interlocking circles, while dark furies shuffle around them on the stage, and the Parques (Fates) fire out superhero-like laser beams from their fists. Designer Ólafur Elíasson puts on quite a show.

So the production certainly has a distinct character of its own and is appropriately and literally dazzling as a spectacle, but it is still very much in keeping with the otherworldly character of the operatic places of mythology evoked by Rameau's elaborate rhythms and harmonies. Those aspects of the world of the immortals spills over into the 'real' world of Hippolyte and Aricie, and the production design takes this into account, allowing the dramatic impact of all this on the human characters to play out and speak for itself when Theseus returns to find his wife in a compromising situation with his son. You don't need special effects to see how he feels. Is this any way to greet someone who has just come back from the dead?

In the second half of the production Aletta Collins continues to explore whatever elements of stagecraft and choreography can best represent the underlying sentiments of Hippolyte et Aricie, never settling for anything conventional, but simplifying it to let the human emotions reassert their prominence. Sometimes that is nothing more than a Bill Viola-like projection of rippling water, but when Rameau's music steps up a gear, you get the full visual accompaniment and dancing.

It's a worthy attempt to revisit and re-envisualise Rameau, but it doesn't really make the work come alive, engage and having meaning the way that the impressive 2013 Glyndebourne production did. It's always great to hear what other performers can bring to these roles however and I think Gyula Orendt comes out as the strongest character here with his Theseus. Magdalena Kožená is not ideally suited to Phaedre or is perhaps not best suited to the more elaborate rhythms of French Baroque (even though her Gluck Orphée et Eurydice in the Paris Robert Wilson production is still a favourite of mine). Anna Prohaska and Reinoud Van Mechelen are fine as Hippolyte and Aricie, but they always feel like bland roles to me. Peter Rose is an excellent Pluto. Simon Rattle's conducting of the Freiburger Barockorchester didn't really grab me, but like most period baroque, it probably needs to be best experienced live. That perhaps goes for the production as a whole as well.

Links: Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, ARTE Concert

Bizet - Carmen (Aix, 2017)

Georges Bizet - Carmen

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2017

Pablo Heras-Casado, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Michael Fabiano, Elsa Dreisig, Michael Todd Simpson, Gabrielle Philiponet, Christian Helmer, Pierre Doyen, Guillaume Andrieux, Mathias Vidal, Pierre Grammont

ARTE Concert - 6th July 2017

Obviously there's going to be a significant proportion of an opera audience that are going to want their Carmen with all its idealised exoticism, wild gypsies and romantic passions; those are surely the essential ingredients listed on the package. That percentage might be significantly lower and expectations rather different at a production of Carmen at the Aix-en-Provence festival, particularly one directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. The challenge surely is to repackage the work, but not change the ingredients too much, but is that even possible for a dish like Carmen...?

There's some truth to the idea that Tchernaikov's method is a cool Russian response to wild Latin passions, but there is a sense that the director is genuinely trying to find another way to connect with the underlying essence of the work. Tcherniakov's Carmen has one of his distancing constructs built around it, which he tends to do when an opera's plot is too ludicrous to take seriously in this day and age. Similar to his Il Trovatore for La Monnaie - another over-heated drama - it encloses the work within a kind of dramatic version of inverted commas, where the story is played out by a group of actors in a role-playing exercise.  

The introduction shows a husband and wife whose marriage has lost its sparkle, who have gone to an unusual form of counselling that involves role-playing. The administrator has examined the questionnaire and profiles and has determined that the opera Carmen is the best fit for therapy. The husband will be Don José, his wife later participating as Micaëla in an effort to eventually draw her husband and his Carmen experiences back into the real world. Tchernaikov then ditches the conventional spoken dialogue pieces of Carmen and replaces them with various interventions from the administrative staff and actors who read out the stage directions in preparation for the next scene.

The Carmen role-play all takes place within an office-like environment with everyone donning name badges of the characters they will play. There's certainly nothing of the more familiar Sevillian imagery of seductive gypsy women and macho bullfighters, the Carmen of this production an actress who acts self-assured but who in reality is a little self-conscious, struggling awkwardly with the rose in her hair and a little embarrassed at the kind of role she has to play. Her aim however is not to seduce Don José in the traditional manner as much as encourage him to participate, to inject a little imagination and find a way to let some passion back into his life.

Such a construct proves to be a little infuriating in places, with a lot of silly fooling around that risks over-complicating and distorting the intent of the original work. Arguably, the romanticism of Carmen is already implicit in the idealised exoticism of its imagery and rhythms and in the artificial construct of the opera drama. Surely no-one thinks that Carmen is a work of social realism and everyone is aware of opera as heightened drama and passions? On the other hand, stepping back a little further does provide a way of looking at the themes and the passions of the work in a more (post-)modern context.

Whether it needs this kind of reconstruction and updating is debatable then, but there is a case to be made that Dmitri Tcherniakov is just turning the focus of the opera back onto the dramatic content of Bizet's musical arrangements to see if it still stands up and achieves its aims when removed from all the lazy mannerisms that have become attached to the work. It could be argued that by cutting most of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy's dialogues and plotting, liberating it from the opera-comiqué conventions that would have been similarly restrictive to the composer, Tcherniakov is even reducing the work down to its purest essence.

Even if you have to indulge Tcherniakov's twisting of the plot, it does turn the focus back to the power of the music to tell its own story and to touch on the underlying reality. Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado works with Tcherniakov on this with arrangements that might not always be "authentic" to the intentions of the original, but which through their ringing rhythms and popular melodies nonetheless touch on the passions at the heart of the work. Like this production's "Don José", the music similarly has to find its own inner truth and connect with it afresh to put some real excitement back in there, rather than just relying on lazy mannerisms and faked emotions.

It's important to find your way into Carmen, but you can't run into it blindly, Tcherniakov's production seems to say, and it's important to find your way out again refreshed by the experience and not ready to murder someone. I think. With this director, you never know quite where that will lead, whether to take it entirely seriously or even if it all will make sense. This is after all a director who completely reversed the ending to Dialogues des Carmélites (a controversial move that led to a legal challenge and the DVD of the Paris production being removed from sale), so there is always the potential for it to be as if you were seeing a work for the first time. And if you can do that with Carmen, that's really something.

If Carmen felt fresh and held one's attention once again at the 2017 Aix-en-Provence festival, a lot of it was also to do with the casting. The singing might have been slightly compromised by the need to act in and out of character, but only slightly. Interpretation counted for more in this production and Stéphanie d'Oustrac's Carmen and Michael Fabiano as Don José were never anything less than committed and passionate in their performances, delving deep into the complex personalities that Tcherniakov has created for them here. Elsa Dreisig's Micaëla was also excellent and made a great impression.

Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, ARTE Concert