Adès - The Exterminating Angel (Paris, 2024)

Thomas Adès - The Exterminating Angel

Opéra National de Paris, 2024

Thomas Adès, Calixto Bieito, Jacquelyn Stucker, Gloria Tronel, Hilary Summers, Claudia Boyle, Christine Rice, Amina Edris, Nicky Spence, Frédéric Antoun, Jarrett Ott, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Filipe Manu, Philippe Sly, Paul Gay, Clive Bayley, Thomas Faulkner, Ilanah Lobel-Torres

Paris Opera Play - 5th March 2024

When it comes to the films of Luis Buñuel, the ideas and sentiment behind them isn't particularly deep or complicated, but it's the surrealist treatment that distinguishes the works. You could possibly break most of them down to the filmmaker rejecting and making fun of the establishment, the bourgeoisie, the church and their perversions, but he does so in a slightly surreal way that gives them an unexpected character, and a very daring one that challenged many sacred cows. Whether it's Catherine Deneuve as a young newlywed housewife who becomes a prostitute at a high-class brothel in order to enact the deepest sexual fantasies that her young husband is unable to fulfil in Belle de Jour, the story of a nun who resists the lecherous advances of her uncle, renounces her vows and gives his estate over to homeless beggars after his death in Viridiana (including a parody of the Last Supper), some of the images and situations in his films are indelible. None more so than The Exterminating Angel.

Again the idea is a simple one where things seem to go wrong at a dinner party organised by Edmundo de Nobile and his wife Lucia after an evening at the opera. They are surprised to find that the servants are not there to collect the coats of the guests, and this initial upset seems to be the catalyst for throwing the evening into turmoil. The scene is repeated as if to suggest that if the servants, the workers, aren't there to look after them, the upper classes don't know what to do or how to function. They drop their coats on the floor and thereafter everything rapidly falls apart. Enrique drops the hors d’oeuvre ragout, and then Pablo the chief wants to go an visit his sick sister. Even though everything has been prepared, Lucia is outraged. She is going to hold these useless servants to account.

The evening and the celebration for Leticia, the opera singer they call "the Valkyrie", never seems to take off and eventually they each decide to leave. This pleases Lucia, as she intends to conduct a little affair when they go, but somehow no-one seems to be able to leave the room. Perhaps the servants aren't there to open the doors for them. Trapped in uncomfortable proximity with each other in a room they are unable to leave, all the little insecurities they have kept hidden rise to the surface and they find themselves forced to enact them. The further the evening progresses and extends into days, the tensions and pretensions intensify and soon turn from petty arguments and affairs to violence and barbarism.

Buñuel's 1962 film is wildly absurd as it is, so imagine how much more the story must be when Thomas Adès and Calixto Bieito put their stamp on the opera version of the work. The essential theme that must carry over is surely to mercilessly rip into the pretensions of the upper classes and have fun in the process. Subtlety isn't essential, the more extreme the better. Adès certainly has fun introducing strange untypical sounds and instruments like the use of the ondes martenot into the buoyant orchestration. It's as richly and creatively scored as you can imagine, and Adès himself has tremendous fun conducting the Paris Orchestra through it. Yet it is not wild, but controlled, the implication being that the guests haven't lost their minds, they are simply being extreme, or perhaps just unrestrained versions of their true selves.

As a dramatic situation, that is inevitably limited. Taking place in one room where everyone seems to be losing their mind for two hours, the point seems to be made very quickly, and it's just a matter of seeing how far they can push this and what the eventual outcome or explanation for the strange event might be. Inevitably, there is no easy answer and there are many ways of looking at the resultant chaos and the ineffective ways they try to deal with it. The image of sheep - which Calixto Bieito manages to introduce in his own way - suggests conformity and inability to think for themselves to the extent that they are unable to leave a room unless everyone else does, or it could have religious connotations, which are certainly treated with scorn by Buñuel. That is also suggested here, even though the opera version does not include Buñuel's horror in the cathedral epilogue.

Given that, the question must be whether The Exterminating Angel gains anything by being an opera. Unquestionably Adès brings something fresh to the work. Making use of a wide variety of musical instruments and arrangements, it's as musically inventive as you would expect from this composer, finding varied expression for each of the characters, and layering them together with great skill. In terms of transferring those ideas to a stage production, this must be a rare case where the plot of the opera itself has an absurd side that even surpasses what Calixto Bieito usually brings to a production. But then we are talking about Luis Buñuel here, one of the original surrealists, and - while it might not seem like it - Bieito is actually more subtle and suggestive here than the original work. It could be just that the Catalan director has found a work that fits with his own sensibility and indeed I actually would be surprised if Buñuel wasn't a major influence.

If there is one slightly different stance or slant that the opera takes, it's maybe taking the opera evening aspect of the story and making a little more of the idea of musical resolution. This is there in the original, I seem to recall, but unsurprisingly perhaps it takes on another meaning when it is seen in the context of an opera itself, the guests seemingly unable to move until the unfinished playing of Paradisi by Blanca on the piano is brought to a conclusion. As if having to acknowledge that, Adès self-references his own music trapping the guests, and scores the opera singer at a higher pitch than the others, in the same range as Ariel in his version of The Tempest. The finale then, rather than follow Buñuel's cathedral ending, has all the surviving guests emerging dazed from the room, confronting their inner selves and suggesting (in my mind anyway) that the audience do likewise. You must wonder what the audience in the expensive seats at the Bastille make of it, and if that's the only intention in bringing The Exterminating Angel to the modern opera stage, it is surely justification enough.

While occasionally it seems like (controlled) chaos on the stage, there are actually many little touches in both the music, the direction and the singing performances to keep things moving along and give the viewer much to think about. Each of the characters have their own hang-ups and ways of dealing with being locked in that reveals another aspect of the society that the original creator wants to expose and mock. The singing alone is striking enough to grab your attention. There is an exceptional cast assembled here, and each have their own distinctive part to play. It's hard to just pick out one or two in a cast that includes great performances from Nicky Spence, Christine Rice, Philippe Sly, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Paul Gay and Clive Bayley, but Jacquelyn Stucker is exceptional as Lucia di Nobile, Claudia Boyle delivers an impressive lament/lullaby late in the opera for Silvia's son Yoli and Gloria Tronel hits those stratospheric heights as the opera singer Leticia.

External links: Opéra National de Paris, Paris Opera Play

Adès - Powder Her Face (NI Opera, 2017)

Thomas Adès - Powder Her Face

Northern Ireland Opera, Wide Open Opera, Belfast - 2017

Nicholas Chalmers, Antony McDonald, Mary Plazas, Adrian Dwyer, Stephen Richardson, Daire Halpin

Lyric Theatre, Belfast - 27th January 2017

Musical boundaries have certainly been pushed over the last seven years that Oliver Mears has presided as artistic director of the newly formed Northern Ireland Opera, and they don't come much more daring and frighteningly modern than Thomas Adès's 1995 opera Powder Her Face. Like all works involved in scandal however there's an indistinct boundary between whether the scandal lies in the source material - here, the notorious 1950s' divorce trial of the Duchess of Argyll and the detail revealed about her promiscuous lifestyle - or with the opera itself, infamously well-known for its rather graphic musical depiction of one of the sexual scenes in the opera. As is often the case with such material, the notoriety rarely lives up to the reality, but NI Opera's collaboration with Wide Open Opera on Adès's Powder Her Face makes a convincing case for its music-theatre qualities.

The nature of the material and how it is approached in Powder Her Face presents such challenges and if it's not pitched right it's more likely to provoke giggles than shock, but in reality neither response is particularly helpful in getting to the point of the opera. The point of Powder Her Face however, it must be said, has always been difficult to judge. Director Antony McDonald recognises that there's no way to avoid the elements of shock and giggles, but the trick really is to effectively control where the shocks and giggles should be, and to try to put them in service of the human story that is too often overlooked in the case of the Duchess of Argyll.

It's the human story that seems to be lacking in Philip Hensher's libretto. The opera is divided into eight scenes that cover the years from 1934 through to 1990. The scenes and the limited number of characters involved don't seem to be particularly well chosen and scarcely seem adequate to shed any real psychological light on the Duchess or even the extent of her scandalous extra-marital activities. The main content of the opera is framed by the two scenes in 1990, which seems to provide a distancing social context for the work, viewing the past through modern eyes. There seems to be as much emphasis placed on the peripheral characters of the servants and the hotel staff as there does on the Duchess, and their response to her, to her position and to her notoriety is emphasised in the libretto.

In the 1990 scenes, the hotel staff are deeply disrespectful, putting on her coats and jewellery and acting out the contrast between her airs and graces and the reality of her disgraced reputation. Their behaviour is in marked contrast to the how the servants and the 'lower classes' behave in the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1970s. Subservience and simmering resentment at their treatment, not to mention being used for sexual gratification, seems to deteriorate in equal measure with the decline of the reputation of the Duchess of Argyll. If the libretto suggests that Powder Her Face is a play about changing attitudes towards class and social orders, it doesn't seem to reveal anything profound or revelatory. It's the music of Thomas Adès however that gives the work another dimension.

And it's the music that suggests the tone to adopt that best suits the presentation of the opera. Antony McDonald previously directed the NI Opera/Wide Open Opera production of Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest, an equally challenging work where tone and presentation is of vital importance, and helped turn it into one of the most astonishing and entertaining productions I've ever seen. (Can we see it again please?). He seems to get the tone absolutely right yet again in this elegant and stylish Powder Her Face, not relying solely on the literal content of the libretto, but finding rather ways of presenting it that respond to the playful period musical touches with an underlying discord that contrasts with the rather more tragic personal fate of the Duchess. The Belfast audience dutifully gasped when provoked, giggled at all the right moments and responded with enthusiasm at the conclusion.

That kind of response is never solely related to just one successful aspect of a production; it all has to work together. Sensitivity to the content of the libretto and the tone of the music is one thing, but the underlying humanity of the characterisation is best served by the singing and the acting performances. That's particularly the case with the depiction of the Duchess of Argyll. Judging by the 1990 framing scenes, the audience are being asked to sympathise with this woman without there seeming to be any real humanising content provided in either the scenes or the music, but Mary Plazas - who clearly has great experience with this role - showed how much dignity there was in a woman subject to pressures of her libido and her position. It's a terrific performance that completely humanises the role.

It's this aspect that is vital not only in the understanding of Powder Her Face, it's what also ensures that the opera has a greater universality and life-span beyond the social context or the period class issues it raises. It's the degree of truth in the human story that lies underneath such issues that will determine whether the opera can sit alongside the depictions of women at odds with their times and society in La Traviata, Madama Butterfly or Lulu. As it stands, it's impossible to judge whether Powder Her Face will have a place alongside such works, but the Northern Ireland Opera/Wide Open Opera production and Mary Plazas's performance certainly got beneath the surface of a woman who is struggling to control and balance her own desires against the expectations and judgements of society, even as that society gradually changes.

The whole vitality of work, its relevance across the different periods that present differing responses of an unforgiving society, are very much contained within the performances of the other three singing roles in the opera. It's amazing in fact just how much can be conveyed by the brief scenes of no great expositional nature when you have a small cast that are capable of imbuing them with verve, personality and an essential degree of unselfconsciousness. Adrian Dwyer, Stephen Richardson and Daire Halpin throw themselves into the roles, always judging the tone perfectly. Richardson is permitted some of the more slapstick moments (and slapping with a stick moments) as Hotel Manager, Husband and Judge, which he delivers with gusto. Daire Halpin makes deceptively light work of the challenging range and variety of Maid characters, forming a terrific double act with Adrian Dwyer who is equally as impressive as the Waiter in a number of guises.

Without subtitles, the English text doesn't always carry over when it has other voices singing over one another and a complex musical arrangement to follow, but Nicholas Chalmers measured the chamber orchestration exceptionally well, with a sense of fluidity that gave greater continuity to those separate scenes with their variations in musical and dramatic tone. Credit where credit is due, Nicholas Chalmers' contribution is often overlooked alongside the more visual artistic direction of the Oliver Mears' stage productions, but he has also been an important factor in the Northern Ireland Opera success story. Certainly, the response to the opening night of this new production of Powder Her Face would seem to vindicate the approach that has been adopted by Mears and Chalmers with their NI Opera venture, and I'm sure that it will be maintained with the promising appointment of Walter Sutcliffe as the new incoming artistic director.

Links: Northern Ireland Opera

Adès - The Tempest

Thomas Adès - The Tempest

Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2012

Thomas Adès, Robert Lepage, Simon Keenlyside, Audrey Luna, Alan Oke, Isabel Leonard, Alek Shrader, Toby Spence, William Burden, Kevin Burdette, Iestyn Davies, Christopher Feigum, John Del Carlo

The Met Live in HD, 10th November 2012

Following the furore surrounding his controversial high-tech production of Wagner’s Ring cycle for the Metropolitan Opera across their past two seasons, Robert Lepage returns somewhat to his roots as a traditional theatre director for a work that may not be equal in scale and stature to Wagner’s epic work, but is ambitious and challenging nonetheless, to say nothing of a bit of a commercial gamble. Lepage, as was made clear repeatedly in interviews and in programme notes, has directed Shakespeare’s play ‘The Tempest‘ eight times in his career, so you would expect him to know what works and what doesn’t (something that might not have been so clear in his handling of the Ring). An opera based on ‘The Tempest‘ is however a different prospect altogether, particularly one that has been necessarily condensed and ‘translated into English’, and requires a very different approach to staging. Fortunately, in this production for the Metropolitan Opera, ambitiously broadcast live in HD to cinema theatres across the world, Lepage was considerate of the different requirements that opera and Shakespearean theatre demand. It’s fortunate also that composer Thomas Adès also has a very clear view of the work and brings it across marvellously and musically in The Tempest.

Shakespeare usually has to be considerably reworked when adapted to an opera, meaning that it is necessarily condensed, streamlined and stripped largely of its poetry. Having a kind of musical element of its own, ‘The Tempest‘ however would appear to be a work that is more open to musical adaptation than most other Shakespeare works. Considering its scope and range - taking in comedy, family drama and political intrigue - but most notably having a supernatural and musical element that takes in the spirits of the spheres through Ariel and the baseness of the earthy Caliban, the whole drama taking place on a magical island of “noises sounds and sweet airs” - The Tempest would appear to be both a challenge and a gift for a capable musician. Adès manages to integrate all the rich elements of Shakespeare’s work wonderfully, not just accompanying the various strands of comedy, drama and romance that are rather compressed in the dramatic playing, but making up for the lack of poetry in the libretto by deepening the sentiments through the musical dimension. It’s not always the most melodic of arrangements, but it’s wholly appropriate to the context of the scenes, never discordant and often quite beautiful in its symphonic sweep.

The most difficult element - from the point of view of composition, from the nature of the singing challenges and from the assault on the ears of the listener - is undoubtedly in the tricky characterisation of Ariel. It’s necessary that Ariel appear to be a spirit creature from another, higher dimension, but held under the power of Prospero the pain of his captivity and his desire to escape from earthly bonds should also be an element in the character’s make-up. Adès expresses this in the highest extremes of the soprano range, which is by no means easy on the ear or even entirely intelligible, but it does have an otherworldly quality. That however is just the most extreme example. Elsewhere Adès shows himself capable of strong individual characterisation in each of the roles and personalities, in the comedy of Stefano and Trinculo, in the romance of Miranda and Ferdinand, in the dark scheming of Antonio and Sebastian, and in the nobility of the King of Naples in his grief for Ferdinand whom he believes dead. What is marvellous about Adès’ writing for The Tempest is that he not only fully characterises and enriches expression of each individual character - without having recourse to themes or leitmotifs - but that he makes them coexist and work together. In drama that’s difficult enough, but to bring those musical elements together into a coherent piece is much more challenging. That’s however where opera traditionally excels and Adès shows wonderful facility for this necessary ability.

And then, of course, there’s Prospero, with his thoughts of revenge for having being usurped from the throne of Milan by his brother, his enslavement of Ariel and Caliban, his exercise of power over the island and his daughter Miranda, and the relinquishing of all those powers and claims by the end of the work. Not only must the development of Prospero’s character arc encompass all these elements, but his personality must be seen (and heard) to exert an influence over everything that happens - his watchful eye monitoring the activity of the crew that his storm has shipwrecked on the island. If the final realisation and capitulation of his powers still seems a little hurried and arrived at without too much deliberation or conflict, Adès nonetheless manages to characterise this as successfully as it could possibly be. Much inevitably depends on the quality of the singer, and Simon Keenlyside (reprising a role that he helped create in the original 2004 Covent Garden production of the work) is a commanding presence that brings Prospero to life and brings a necessary degree of humanity to the part. It’s an extremely challenging role - particularly in the singing - and Keenlyside did show a little strain in places, but nothing that couldn’t be seen as characterisation of Prospero’s own personal conflicts and dilemmas.

The singing and characterisation was marvellous almost right across the board here, and it went some considerable way towards making a difficult work much more accessible and enjoyable. Audrey Luna was simply astonishing as Ariel, as lithe and agile in her movements as in her voice (Lepage effectively keeping Ariel almost exclusively floating up and above or outside the drama as a mischievous but otherworldly sprite), and the casting of Isabel Leonard and Alek Shrader as the beautiful couple of Miranda and Ferdinand - the great hope for the future - could hardly be more perfect. Leonard’s rich and luxurious mezzo-soprano was wonderfully expressive with clear diction and real strength of character, blending wonderfully with Shrader’s handsome tenor voice. Caliban might have been a little marginalised as a character here, never really working his way into the main drama, but Alan Oke made something wonderful of the role in his singing and performance, interacting well with the character pieces of Stefano and Trinculo. Countertenor Iestyn Davies - who made a strong impression in last season’s Rodelinda at the Met - again demonstrated a voice of incredible beauty and clarity. Adès’ writing is so strong that it provides notable roles also for Toby Spence (the original Ferdinand) as Antonio and particularly William Burden who gave wonderful expression to the grief-stricken sentiments of Naples. Only bass-baritone John Del Carlo seemed to struggle with the difficult range of the vocal writing of Gonzalo, but nonetheless sang his Act III solo piece (not quite an aria) very well.

If the singing went some way towards making a potentially difficult work more accessible, Robert Lepage’s stage direction and Jasmine Catudal’s clever set designs played their part in helping it all flow together marvellously. The importance of the direction shouldn’t be underestimated, as it any one element in the machinery of an opera can impact on all the others, and - working perfectly in accord with the music as opposed to a preconceived idea of Shakespearean ought to look like - Lepage’s contribution was a perfect fit for the work. The setting of the first act within a reproduction of the La Scala theatre certainly ties in with the notion of music, theatre, opera and even Prospero’s claim to be Duke of Milan, but more than being notional, it provided a conceptual approach to the theatricality of the staging, with figures slipping beneath the platform of the stage, and dropping into the prompter’s box. The Native Indian tattoos and markings on Prospero beneath his military greatcoat, with feathers woven into his hair, and the shaman-like appearance of the disinherited Caliban hinted at some of the underlying themes in the work relating to colonisation and exploitation of native populations, without needing to take this any further and over-complicate the progression of the drama.

The colour and spectacle of the production was well-served then by the simple magic of theatre props and machinery, the planks of the stage replacing the rather more high-tech planks of the unwieldy (but nonetheless impressive) Machine for Lepage’s Ring cycle - and it was a simplicity that worked alongside the music and with the themes here rather than try an impose a presence on them. As a consequence, with the composer Thomas Adès himself directing the orchestra from the pit, working to the strengths of the singing and to the movements on the stage, this felt like a truly complete opera production, one where all the elements work with and support the other to create that particular magic that comes only from this particular fusion of music and theatre - opera.