Blazing Berlioz Damnation of Faust Simon Rattle Barbican

 

Blazing Berlioz The Damnation of Faust at the Barbican with Sir Simon Rattle, Bryan Hymel, Christopher Purves, Karen Cargill, Gabor Bretz, The London Symphony Orchestra, The London Symphony Chorus directed by Simon Halsey, Rattle's chorus master of choice for nearly 35 years. Towards the end, the Tiffin Boys' Choir, the Tiffin Girl's' Choir and Tiffin Children's Choir (choirmaster James Day) filed into the darkened auditorium to sing The Apotheosis of Marguerite, their voices pure and angelic, their faces shining.  An astonishingly theatrical touch, but absolutely right.  If Simon Rattle can achieve such excellence in the cramped confines of the Barbican Hall, imagine how Britain's cultural life would be transformed if a world class concert hall with state of the art facilities were built.  The arts are central to the nation's economy and prestige. Britain cannot afford to slip.

As Rattle has said, the London Symphony Orchestra have the potential to do a lot more repertoire, given the chance. Berlioz The Damnation of Faust is an extravagant work. The stage was crowded with performers, and the volume projected into the shoebox that is the Barbican Hall  threatened at times to overwhelm.   On the BBC Radio 3 re broadcast and on medici.tv the sound balance might be better, but the live experience was intoxicating, despite the acoustic.  Wisely, Rattle held his forces back, emphasizing instead the intricate orchestration  and textures that make this piece so exciting.  It is a sprawling drama, whose theatrical effects are embedded in the music.  In Berlioz's time audiences didn't need literal realism. They paid attention to the music. This performance was so vivid that the Barbican Hall seemed transformed as if by magic, as Berlioz's music came alive.

Faust, the old scholar, watches peasants dancing in the countryside. "Tra la la , Haha ha!" sing the chorus.  It is Easter. Spring has come. Nature blossoms. Christ has risen.  Dare Faust dream of rejuvenation ?    Bryan Hymel sang Faust, the rich, ringing warmth in his voice bringing colour to the role. Hymel then injected chill fear."Hélas! doux chants du ciel, pourquoi dans sa poussière Réveiller le maudit?". Faust is no fool : he already senses the immensity of what is to come.
A Faust as strong as Hymel needs an equally singular Méphistophélès.  Christopher Purves provided an authoritative counterbalance.  The expressiveness in Hymel's voice contrasted with the authority in Purves's voice and his purposeful enunciation. The way Purves sang "Ô pure émotion!" showed how Méphistophélès had sized  Faust up.   A strong Brander, too, in Gabor Bretz.  Though the part isn't big, it's important, for Brander is to the students what Méphistophélès is to Faust. The chorus sang lines that swayed from side to side, as drinkers do.  But an undercurrent of violence runs through the merriment. Purves sings the Song of the Flea but the drunks think it's funny.   In the Voici des roses, Purves suggested the thoughtful side of Méphistophélès.'s character:  low winds and strings evoking melancholy.  The devil is dangerous because he understands human sensitivity, and uses that to manipulate.  Perhaps Méphistophélès. is a kind of Oberon, for Faust is lulled into a dream by a magical flute melody, later taken up by the strings, and the songs of gnomes and sylphs.  A magical scene which owes much to Mendelssohn.

For Faust, a reverie of love. For the students, mindless delusion as they march off to war. Hymel's  aria "Merci, doux crépuscule! " was a star turn, beautifully articulated, glowing with feeling. The phrase "Que j’aime ce silence," glowed beautifully, followed by a deeply felt "et comme je respire Un air pur!"  The orchestra responded in kind, with transparently delicate textures.  When Méphistophélès. butts in, a violin plucks a banal ditty, like a student with a lute. But Faust is made of far finer stff, as is Marguerite.  Karen Cargill sang the Song of the King of Thule .with sincerity.  The song is a paean to fidelity, loyalty so strong it defies death. Garlanded by viola and cellos, it's anothe moment of "silence" where Méphistophélès and the world cannot reach.

Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust owes as much to Shakespeatre as to Goethe. In the magical Evocation, fireflies dance, piccolos playing bright figures augmented by darker hued winds and strings. Textures as transparent as these need this kind of definition There was humour, too, in the trombones and tuba,  which not every orchestra can carry off as well as the LSO.  Purves curled his tongue around the final words, with the menace of a snake, for now Faust and Marguerite have their encounter.  Hymel's "Ange adoré"  glowed resplendently, and his cry "Marguerite est à moi!." scaled the heights.  But the world intrudes, After fast paced exchanges, the lovers are torn apart.  The cross currents between soloists, choirs and orchestra were very well defined.

Then, back to solitude. Cargill's Romance showed her at her finest. matched by evocative oboe accompaniment.  Although some incarnations of Faust emphasize the God/Devil angles in the legend, Berlioz was very much a Romantic, for whom Nature was an alternative diety. Thus the importance of the Invocation. Hymel sang the aria Nature immense, impénétrable et fière, with such fervour it seemed an act of faith.  But Fast is doomed.  Méphistophélès and Faust set off on horses that fly through the sky, defying the laws of Nature.   Wailing woodwinds, and a frenzied pace in the orchestra, tensely plucked pizzicato.  The children's voices screamed "Ah!" and the tubas wailed pounding staccato, Now, Méphistophélès has little need for formal language. "Hop ! Hop!" screamed Purves. My flesh creeped, thinking of the "Hop Hop" at the end of Wozzeck.  The men's chorus walked on stage, among the orchestra, singing their demonic chorus : skat lyrics before the term was invented, interspersed with machine-gun staccato.  Are the demons the students and soldiers?

"Hosana !" sang the  choirs at the back of the stage. Harps sggested angels, and the palpitating, ascending rhythms, the flapping of wings, or the image of water (as opposed to the fires of hell)   And then the children's choirs filed into the auditorium, illuminating the darkness with their high, pure voices.  Like a miracle !

Triomphe! Meyerbeer Robert le diable, review, Royal Opera House

Why was Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable an overwhelming success in its time ? The Royal Opera House production suggests why: it's a cracking good show! Extreme singing, testing the limits of vocal endurance,  and extreme drama. Robert le Diable is Faust, after all, not history, and here its spirit is captured by audacious but well-informed staging. Listen with an open mind and heart and imagine how audiences in Meyerbeer's time might have imagined the madness and magic that is Robert le diable.

Bryan Hymel is outstanding, singing the difficult, unusual part with exceptionally fluid, lyrical singing, the cruel tessitura negotiated with such strong technique that we hear the part, not the effort. He isn't simply displaying vocal skill, but infusing the part with greater psychological depth than  the text itself suggests. That is true artistry. Opera is not singing alone, it is drama with music at its heart.  The extremes Meyerbeer writes into the vocal line express Robert's tortured soul: Hymel makes them ring with emotional conviction. In the duet "Mon coeur s'élance et palpite",  he almost steals the show though Isabelle has the killer high notes. Many other exquisite moments, like the Act Four "du magique rameau". Hymel, still only 33, is a voice to cherish.

The parts of Alice and Isabella are tours de force. Alice is a maid from Normandy, as the orchestra tells us with  vaguely folk melodies. Although she carries a letter from Robert's mother she is not Micaëla whose love for Don José is tainted with possessiveness.  Meyerbeer's audiences would have no trouble identifying Alice with Joan of Arc, another girl from Normandy who fought against all odds.  Marina Poplavskaya's Alice is no bimbette, but a heroine worthy of Jeanne d'Arc herself.

Poplavskaya's voice soars clear over the orchestra in the tricky early parts of the opera. But it's in her confrontation with Bertram that she shows the intelligence she brings to the characterization.  Poplavskaya reaches the horrendously high notes with clarity. Alice is direct, she doesn't make a fuss, so this intense portrayal is psychologically true. Yet it also refects the recurrent staccato in the music, and the thrusting, stabbing passages in the orchestra. The mock medieval battle in the text is outclassed  by the cosmic battle for Robert's soul. Poplavskaya's Alice is lithe and energetic, for she's a swordsman duelling against death.

Isabella's two biggest arias, "Idole de ma vie" and "Robert, toi que je t'aime" define the word "show stopper". Done well, the audience is stunned and the action stops until applause subsides. That alone can make good theatre.  In  the Cavatina, the word "Grâce" is repeated in elaborate variations. Then the orchestra chimes in, provoking even greater feats of vocal gymnastics.  You're left gasping. Patrizia Ciofi received much applause for standing in at the last moment. She's very experienced, having first taken the role more than ten years ago.  Perhaps she'll  slip back into gear as the run continues.  She's excellent, but this is a role that needs heart shatteringly astonishing singing.

John Relyea sings Bertram's set piece arias at the end of Act Four impressively but he is no pantomime villain.  Tellingly, he sings details like the recurrent "mon fils, mon fils" with gruff tenderness. He wants Robert because Robert is his son.  Relyea's subtlety suggests why Bertram was once loved by the saintly Rosalie, Robert's mother. While Meyerbeer milked the plot for melodrama, there's room in the music for the depth Relyea brings to it.

Since many people know nothing of Meyerbeer other than Wagner's slander, our modern approach to Meyerbeer is distorted.  Wagner was such a complex person that it's nonsense to take a simplistic view of the Wagner/Meyerbeer relationship.  Alberich-like, Wagner had to attack Meyerbeer to  hide how much he owed him.  It's a classic troll tactic. No wonder Wagner understood the Niebelung mind. If Meyerbeer's use of the orchestra seems over the top to us, it's because we are thinking in Wagnerian terms. Meyerbeer extends his characterizations with motives that run through the opera like a thread - drinking songs, marches, Norman folk songs. Develop these further and call them Leitmotivs.  He also uses the orchestra sparingly - harps around Isabella's angelic singing, brooding winds and brass around Bertram.  The large orchestral flourishes are deftly done, and move the action forward, without overpowering - you want to hear those clear high notes shine.
 
If we free ourselves of Wagner snobbery, we can appreciate Robert le Diable's true place in music history. Its obvious antecedent is Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz and its direct descendant Berlioz The Damnation of Faust.  All derive form the High Romantic fascination with Gothic fantasy and the occult.  Meyerbeer may not be "modern" taste but that reflects on our awareness of period opera. Even Bach was largely forgotten until Mendelssohn championed his music.  Perhaps the shadow of Wagner is so strong that we don't let ourselves enjoy Meyerbeer because we're too worried about what others might think.

We should bear this background in mind when assessing this Royal Opera House production, directed by Laurent Pelly with designs by Chantal Thomas. This would go a long way towards a reasessment of Meyerbeer because it is very well researched and erudite. The ballet, where the ghosts of dead nuns are seem rising from their graves, is based almost exactly on the original Paris designs. The etchings we see are also based on authentic period imagery.  The huge revolving mountain that dominates the stage could come straight out of a Gothic painting or novel. To 19th century people, wild landscapes represented fear and superhuman forces. Think the Wolf's Glen in Der Freischütz.

Robert le Diable is melodrama, by no means po-faced. This staging is colourful because the music is colourful.  How Meyerbeer's audiences must have thrilled to the sight of semi-naked nuns dancing lustfully. They would have enjoyed mock medieval pgeantry without worrying too much whether it was authentic.  Our modern obssession with period-specific staging meant nothing to audiences who were used to seeing zany mixtures of period and style. Ironically, this is a much more authentic staging than many realise. In many ways, we are less open to the art of imagination now than our forebears were once. Why shouldn't we have as much fun as they did?  Pelly and Thomas are giving us a chance to see the opera in period context. We should value the chance to see this opera done in this way because chances are we won't get many opportunities since it's not at all an easy work to stage.
This ROH production is being recorded and filmed. BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting an audio version on Saturday 15th December (link here).

Longer version of this review with full cast list in Opera Today Go to Opera Today for a full download of the 1985 production and libretto

photos :  Bill Cooper, Royal Opera House, details embedded

Meyerbeer Robert le Diable - who's behind it

Much has been made of the cast changes at the Royal Opera House Meyerbeer Robert le diable that starts Thursday. It's easy to make a fuss if you don't actually know what's involved.  But listen to the music - it's fiendishly difficult, created to shock and awe. The tessitura in most parts lies so high that few singers are conmfortable in the range or have the stamina to stick it out for hours, That's another reason why ballet features - it takes the pressure off the singers and gives them time to rest.  Some of these arias are tour de force killers, easier to pull off in concert performance than in full staging.

When we hear it at the ROH, we should bear in mind how rare it is to hear music of this type. We are fortunate. Bryan Hymel will be singing the title role. He was specially chosen because he's a high lyric tenor, with a clear, refined top and elegant ping.  Hymel sang Enée in Berlioz Les Troyens  with great subtlety. Although Enée is a hero, he's not butch but filled with human conflict. Hymel's interpretation was right for the part, a truly refreshing approach.  Please see my review of Les Troyens live  and my analysis of the broadcast ). Hymel also impressed greatly as the Prince in the ROH Rusalka, another of his signature roles, with which he shot to fame. Read about that Rusalka here and why Dvořák may have chosen that voice type here, and read my interview with Hymel in February 2012. It's vital to understand the voice type and its relationship to the genre. We're used to heavier Italianate tenors in the Verdi manner, and to German Heldentenors, but the French style is different and more refined. It has to be heard on its own terms. Since there's a revival in 19th century French opera, we need to accustom our ears to voice styles like this.

John Relyea is singing Bertram. Several years ago Relyea told me “I find villains in general to be great fun to do. I suppose you can say that they are much more direct in the sense that they don’t have the same sort of inner conflicts that you get with “normal” characters and heroes. A lot of the bass repertoire is of course the “patriach” type, kings, priests, sympathetic charismatic roles whose inner worlds are developed from humanity and compassion. Villains' aims and goals are unwavering, most of the time and on a certain level that’s easy, but I like the clarity of a villain’s mind and the way they focus so firmly on objectives. It gives you a line to follow."

Patrizia Ciofi has been singing Isabelle since the 1990's, so she's a wise choice for the Royal Opera House. Hear her in the first four performances and in the video below (Paris 2000).  Marina Poplavskaya is singing Alice and Jean-François Borras is singing Raimbout. It's a strong cast, better than we might deserve, I sometimes think. .The director is Laurent Pelly, who specializes in French  repertoire.   Pelly's very sharp, passionately intense about what he does. Read here what he's said about Ravel L'enfant et les sortilèges for Glyndebourne. HERE is a link to a clip where he talks about the production. Get a glimpse of the production - quite amazing. "C'est un ouvrage très particulaire, très difficile, très longue, très mystérieux ....un blockbuster".

Tomorrow a survey of Robert le Diables of the past and a download.

Sensational Berlioz Les Troyens, Royal Opera House

Sensational Berlioz Les Troyens at the Royal Opera House. Berlioz, who understood theatrical gestures so well, builds his opera around the most audacious dramatic device in ancient history: the Trojan Horse. The population of Troy delights in the spectacle, but then all hell breaks loose and the city is destroyed. David McVicar's new production is similarly audacious. The orchestra roars full tilt. Even the instrumentation is extravagant - the ophicleide wails like a strange monster. Then the Horse looms into view, moving in a surprisingly realistic way. its eyes shining as if the creature were alive, which adds a poignant twist.

The Greeks and Trojans had much in common with the age of Napoleon III.  David McVicar and his team  (Es Devlin, Moritz Junge, Wolgang Göbbel), brilliantly captiure the expansive, extravagant spirit of Berlioz's time. France at its imperial peak, colonizing Africa and Asia. Paris was being rebuilt on a grand scale. Berlioz wasn't doing history re-enactment but writing to stun Paris with its audacity. His orchestration isn't the music of antiquity, but the most advanced and adventurous of its time. Berlioz isn't doing history re-enactment, and his audiences interpreted Virgil through the filters of Claude and Poussin.

Grecian pottery depicts figures with  minimal background: in Berlioz, the background is extreme and densely textured. The principals and secondary parts have to be strongly cast to stand out.  Berlioz writes psychological depth in the music rather than in the text, so a strong casting and good direction are of the essence. At The Royal Opera House, the singing and acting was superb, thus expanding the spirit of the roles for maximum dramatic impact.

Anna Caterina Antonacci created the part of Cassandre with John Eliot Gardiner in Paris in 2003. She's pitted, alone, against the hysteria in the chorus, and the militaristic violence in the orchestra, but her voice holds its own and soars through with dark intensity. Cassandre and Chorèbe (Fabio Capitanucci) are counterparts to Didon and Énée, but Eva-Maria Westbroek's Didon and Bryan Hymel's Enée were more than a match for the sheer passion of their characterization.

Eva-Marie Westbroek sang Cassandre in the Amsterdam Les Troyens in 2011 (Pierre Audi). She's also a natural for the warm, happy Didon we see in Carthage (the desert city brilliantly depicted in multi dimensions so we get a sense of its teeming activity). This throws her portrayal of Didon's extreme grief  into sharp relief. When Westbroek sings of her anguish, the set is bare but for blue-grey curtain, the staging speaking for her as much as the orchestration. Westbroek's such a sympathetic Didon, we feel her agony.

Bryan Hymel sang Énée in the Amsterdam production last year, and brings experience to the role. Anyone who bought tickets expecting Jonas Kaufmann would not have been disappointed. If anything, Hymel's bright lyric tenor suits the part better. In the duet "Nuit d’ivresse et d’extase infinie!"  he conveyed such beauty and sensitivity that he fleshed out the action man hero side of Énée, and the role became a real personality. Hymel's Farewell aria was stunning,  and ended with an exuberant flourish that was both heroic and tragic. The audience burst into spontaneous applause for the first time. Some audiences clap at anything, but this audience was far more sophisticated. You don't do a demanding five-hour opera unless you really care. Hymel is still only 32, and has years of potential ahead.

Brindley Sherratt's Nabal was powerful, setting the opera in context. Duty, fate and tragedy, love cannot compete except in death. Also outstanding was Ji-min Park as Iopas, singing the plangently lovely "O Blonde Cérès". Park is only two years out of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme but a singer who should go far. Indeed, all the singing and acting was top notch, the entire cast on message, the chorus well blocked and expressive.

Coming from a background in Berlioz songs, I can't bear the bombast some like in Les Troyens, but Antonio Pappano's approach is more perceptive. He understand that what makes this opera work is its variety. Berlioz is flashing his virtuosity. The carnage music must be strident, but Berlioz writes music of surprising delicacy, and even humour. Pappano characterized the ballet scenes sensitively. These are important, not mere filler, for they set the context of the opera. Berlioz's Paris audiences would have liked this exotic orientalism had they heard it, for it fitted their image of themselves as rulers of North Africa and beyond. Wisely, McVicar and his team used the exotic theme in the set, where the "world" (ie the model of Carthage) floats in a magical cosmos of blue, green and red light, illuminated by stars. Perfect union of music, staging and meaning.

This Berlioz Les Troyens is an experience no-one should miss. Alas,  performances are sold out solid and you might have to pay way over the odds to get in. Luckily, it's being filmed and will be in cinemas in November and hopefully out on DVD. it's a milestone for the Royal Opera House and they'd be mad not to revive it soon.View it LIVE on mezzoTV on 5th July here  and hear it at the BBC Proms (unstaged)  from 22nd July.

A more formal review with full cast list is here in Opera Today. Please see the Opera Today download of Sylvain Cambreling's 2006 Paris performance HERE (not commercially available) with libretto (not the Bärenreiter edition used in London)

HERE is a link to the online, international, free stream broadcast of the 5th July performance, with my review of the film version. 
Photos copyright Bill Cooper, details embedded.