Verdi - Don Carlo (Vienna, 2024)

Giuseppe Verdi - Don Carlo

Wiener Staatsoper, 2024

Philippe Jordan, Kirill Serebrennikov, Joshua Guerrero, Asmik Grigorian, Roberto Tagliavini, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Étienne Dupuis, Dmitry Ulyanov, Ivo Stanchev, Ilia Staple

ARTE Concert - October 2024

The intent of a director to modernise an opera production, particularly a work based (loosely) on historical sources but often dubiously dramatised for the original audience of its time, should in theory be to make it more relatable to a modern audience less in thrall (in theory) to wealth and power being held by a monarch. Some directors admittedly take that to strange places to impose their own vision and concept, but the intent must be to bring out the essential humanity and tragedy between the private lives of such figures and their public face. Don Carlos is just such a work where those matters are to the forefront and given a remarkable musical treatment full of ambition towards Grand Opéra by Verdi, here stripped back to its essentials in the Milan version, so one would hope that a director would confront those issues head-on.

At the raising of the curtain on the 2024 Vienna production directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, opening in a modern laboratory environment, a single person in the audience can be heard on the live ARTE transmission voicing their disapproval before a single note has been played, not even waiting to see what the director's intentions are, presumably since it doesn't look like it is going to correspond with how he personally feels it should be, showing no regard for what anyone else thinks. It's clearly someone either seeking attention or ignorant about the creative team involved at this production at the Wiener Staatsoper and the nature of opera itself as a modern progressive art form. Probably all of the above. Personally, I find Serebrennikov a director of interest from past productions of Wagner (Parsifal in Vienna, Lohengrin in Paris). And if the lone booer has any sense of shame, he ought to be humiliated at the conclusion that reveals itself as a thoughtful challenge to the fetishisation of the past set against the imperatives of the present.

Serebrennikov's version of Don Carlo is undoubtedly convoluted in its treatment, adding additional levels to an opera already filled with contradictions and contrasts. Using mirror images with actors in authentic period costume doubling for their counterparts in the present day, the director actually manages to present the attraction of the historical costume drama element of the work, while making the romantic and emotional content of the personal drama work on a contemporary human level, furthering and deepening those contrasts and contradictions that fire the drama. Despite the contemporary setting appearing to be of lesser significance than the war and political events within the royal court of King Philip II in the mid-16th century, Serebrennikov also successfully finds a way to make this distant and for many, obscure historical period meaningful and contributing to the turmoil faced by the figures in the opera. 

The laboratory that so appalled at least one member of the Vienna audience is a Costume Research Institute, where scientists are studying historical clothing and recreating the dress of the period of Philip II for their research. Elisabetta, a scientist in the laboratory, is troubled over her betrayal of Carlo by her marriage to his father, the chief director of the Institute, who is a bit of a tyrant. Working in such an environment, the workers, scientists and costume designers at the institute perhaps then see their own lives and troubles reflected in the past, and it's interesting to note when seen in this context how much attention is brought to and importance given in the libretto to dress, appearance and elegance. Rodrigo and Eboli in an early scene even have a moment to discuss the beauty and grace of French women, while projections on a screen above the stage show fetishistic images of the costumes detail and fitting. Combined the opera and this production show that there is limited benefit in trying to understand people in the past through the costumes they wear, that the truth about what went on is more likely to be reflected in how people behave now.

What the production doesn't do then is examine the political and historical conflicts of the 16th century, and I think most of us can live with that. For Carlos, Elisabetta, Philip and indeed Rodrigo and Eboli - and through them - we experience human conflict, their stoicism to contain deep feelings and emotions against a world that puts obstacles in their path, obstacles that don't necessarily need to include the conquest of Flanders. The horror of the war there is compared here to an Asian sweatshop being exploited for cheaply made clothing, the associated environmental catastrophe it entails all for the folly of keeping the human mannequins of the western world in the latest fast fashion. Consumerism as oppression. Carlo just wears a plain T-shirt with a 'Liberta' slogan attached with sticky tape. Rodrigo's states 'Save our Land' and those messages are what is really important and it is given real force here. Mainly thanks to Verdi's score of course, but the scenes and imagery are equally as effective, the auto-da-fé enacted here on climate change activists disrupting the historical fashion show in protest against the destruction the environment. The burning here is the burning of the planet.

To be fair to the lone booer (and the few hesitant followers who later join him at the end of Act III) it's a valid question whether an opera like Don Carlo really needs all this directorial intervention to work effectively, or is the director just using the composer's masterpiece to impose his own views? That's a judgement call, but it can be both. Don Carlos/Don Carlo is a difficult opera to make work effectively, in my experience of seeing many productions of it. With Verdi and this work in particular, the true challenge in presenting the work lies more often in how well you can cast singing roles that are technically and dramatically challenging. It's a factor that is just as essential to overcome any perceived weaknesses or flaws in the production or indeed the opera itself. A weak link can be particularly critical in Don Carlos. Saying that, there is little to fault here in either performance or the director's presentation, which is more nuanced than the brief description I've provided above. The historical models, for example, are dressed up in the first half and stripped back in the second as their true selves are revealed. There are many other touches to make the historical converge with the modern, including biographical notes of the real life figures added in projections, and a context that permits a wider examination of the use and abuse of power.

There are, as I said, no real weak links in the singing either. Indeed the roles of Carlo and Elisabetta are as good as you could expect. Asmik Grigorian sings Elisabetta with her usual conviction and skilled dramatic interpretation. Joshua Guerrero's Carlo is also well-characterised and sung, again with the necessary ability and conviction. Eve-Maud Hubeaux's Princess Eboli is excellent, her confession to Elisabetta in Act III intense and tragic. There are deep emotions stirred on all sides, love and betrayal of friendship valued over position is an important aspect of the opera and this carries weight in all the principal roles. As such Rodrigo’s role is important too and Étienne Dupuis brings that out well in his performance. Only Philip II perhaps suffers from the direction. You don't get a sense that he really has anything grand at stake as he would were he genuinely a King under the yoke of the Catholic church's Inquisition while he is also facing a personal humiliation in his love life in his 'Ella giammai m'amò'. Roberto Tagliavini's singing isn't able to bring out the heaviness of the head that wears the crown.

Don Carlos/Don Carlo, in whatever incarnation, is one of Verdi's greatest works, or at least the one I always find that has real meaty issues as well as intriguing flaws and challenges that have to be creatively confronted by a stage director. It is also, despite the many revisions and versions, musically one of the composer's finest works, through composed but incorporating utterly beautiful melodies (although personally I'm less fond of the Spanish flavours) and wonderful attention and attunement to character detail and expression. It sounds absolutely marvellous here under Philippe Jordan and the Vienna Orchestra. If there were any sceptics left in the audience by the time the devastating conclusion was reached, they were drowned out by the deserved applause for a thoughtful and powerful account of this tremendous opera.

External links: ARTE Concert, Wiener Staatsoper

Verdi - Don Carlos (Vienna, 2020)

Giuseppe Verdi - Don Carlos

Wiener Staatsoper, 2020

Bertrand de Billy, Peter Konwitschny, Vera Nemirova, Michele Pertusi, Jonas Kaufmann, Igor Golovatenko, Roberto Scandiuzzi, Malin Byström, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Dan Paul Dumitrescu, Virginie Verrez, Robert Bartneck, Johanna Wallroth, Katie La Folle

Vienna State Opera Live - 4th October 2020

Don Carlos, the full Five-Act French version, is probably Verdi's most ambitious work, and if it was never quite a success its flaws only add to its fascination. In the right hands those flaws don't necessarily need to be weaknesses, and like much mid-period Verdi, with judicious cuts, good singers and some creative directorial ideas, the genius of the work is very much in evidence. Unfortunately if you don't have one of those elements, or indeed all of them, you're in for a struggle with this work. With this Vienna State Opera production of the full-length French version of Don Carlos clocking in at 5 hours including intervals, it's a glorious epic nonetheless even if it seems that the director Peter Konwitschny does more to highlight the opera's flaws than find a way to make them work.

Even so, I wouldn't say that the Vienna production is a struggle by any means. It's got a cast that is hard to fault and a conductor and director who should be capable of bringing fire to the work, but rather than seek to mitigate against or even exploit the works flaws, somehow Konwitschny just seems to emphasise them. What is most evidently lacking however is any kind of central idea to give it purpose, drive, energy and momentum. It has moments of excitement, mainly due to Verdi's scoring and the inner fire of the work that still smoulders, but you're left with the feeling that it should be so much more. That however is a not an uncommon feeling to have with Verdi operas of this period.

It's not as if there is any shortage of themes to latch onto in Don Carlos; love versus duty, personal lives and public faces, honour versus betrayal, family, friendship, politics and religion, war and peace, wielding power over a kingdom but having no control over human feelings and emotions. Any one of these can be expanded upon and Verdi provides the means to do so with stirring music that has strong dramatic drive and character definition, even if it's perhaps not always the most subtle. The opening Fontainebleau scene in this version can provide vital context for the love that Don Carlos has for his "mother" that Verdi melodramatically characterises as incestuous, but here it feels long drawn out and emotionally distant, Byström and Kaufmann failing to igniting any genuine passion. 

Subsequent acts show little of interest or imagination, the background is plain, costumes are traditional style, the whole things very monochrome. A tree planted at Fontainebleau remains lit throughout at front of stage, a symbol perhaps of a new life, the potential of a new beginning, one that may be closer to nature, but the tree and idea never really takes root - which may be the intention. There are a few curiously exaggerated nods and winks to the audience, particularly in the dead Charles V disguised as a monk, but there is also a lot of just plain bad acting, particularly on part of Kaufmann. Don Carlos needs control, direction and purpose to find a way through the abundance of themes and personalities, and notwithstanding the strengths of Verdi's score, it just won't work if it doesn't have adequate dramatic conviction to support them.

If there's little evidence of a directorial hand in the first half, the production shows a little more ambition after the interval. Unfortunately those are more in the nature of little touches rather than serving any grand scheme or purpose, as if to give the audience a moment's respite from the heaviness of the melodrama. This is particularly evident in the French version's unfamiliar and rarely performed ballet sequence. Entitled Eboli's Dream, it takes a more modern outlook, updating the setting to a comfortable little mid-twentieth century home. Eboli is a pregnant wife cooking for her husband Carlos when he returns home tired from work, getting ready for a little family dinner party with in-laws, the king and queen. It's played mainly for laughs, Carlos is tired and clumsy, the cooking is inevitably a disaster and they have to order in pizza. It's quite silly, but a welcome change of tone and it's always a treat to have the ballet music included in Verdi's French operas.

What Peter Konwitschny brings out then is not so much the dramatic character as emphasise the dramatic colour of the work, which being a French Verdi opera has all the range and ability of the composer in it. It may not necessarily make the best use of it, and it rather demonstrates that it is hard to match the drama with the music without it appearing very heavy-handed. Colour there certainly is though, even if some of those touches often feel distracting. In the context of a mostly through-composed opera, the Spanish colouration of the music in the friendship of Carlos and Rodrigo (and its maudlin reprises), the Andalusian gypsy music of Eboli's Veil Song and even the ballet, all feel like crowd-pleasing filler playing to convention rather than making any meaningful contribution to the drama. All are enjoyable in their own way and the production at least seeks to include them for that.

Another of those breakaway moments occurs when the opera is taken out into the foyer of the Vienna State Opera for Verdi's big choral auto-da-fé set piece, with an announcer, a film crew and photographers following the action. The heretics, looking like staff of the opera house or formally dressed members of the audience, are rounded up and beaten. Again, this is very much playing to the colour of the piece rather then illustrate it with any meaningful dramatic context. For Act IV's "Elle ne m'aime pas" ("Ella giammai m'amò" in the Italian) it's made clear that Eboli has obviously enjoyed some revenge sex with Philippe having brought Elisabeth's casket to him, only for the king to regret it the next morning. It adds a little more of a frisson to the king's condition, his conscience spiked further by the arrival of the Inquisitor, who is blind and doesn't see Eboli in his room.

If the dramatic conviction of the opera is lacking, there is at least considerable compensation in the musical and singing performances conducted by Bertrand de Billy. Surprisingly however, despite having sung this role capably before (even if I wasn't impressed by the version I attended at the Bastille in 2017) Jonas Kaufmann appears to be showing further signs of strain. More than any minor issues with the singing, I was more surprised more by his lack of any sense of real engagement with the character of Carlos and his dilemma. You could blame the director (or revival director Vera Nemirova) for that, but either way, the cracks are showing.

Malin Byström is a fabulous singer and you can't underestimate how impressive she is singing a fiendishly difficult role, although ideally a little more force and experience is needed perhaps to really put personality behind Elisabeth. Eve-Maud Hubeaux's Eboli is fabulous, well-sung, showing plenty of personality and character. Michele Pertusi and Igor Golovatenko also give fine performances as Philippe and Rodrigo. No great revelations perhaps but regardless of any minor complaints with the production and performances, the opportunity to hear such an astonishing work performed at this level is always a treat.

Links: Vienna State Opera, Wiener Staatsoper Live

Rossini - Le Comte Ory (Paris, 2017)

Gioachino Rossini - Le Comte Ory

L'Opéra Comique, Paris - 2017

Louis Langrée, Denis Podalydès, Philippe Talbot, Julie Fuchs, Gaëlle Arquez, Éve-Maud Hubeaux, Patrick Bolleire, Jean-Sébastien Bou, Jodie Devos, Laurent Podalydès, Léo Reynaud

Culturebox - 29th December 2017

There's a general consensus that Rossini's final opera Guillaume Tell is the pinnacle of the composer's relatively short but prolific period as an opera composer (around 40 operas in just 20 years), but there are other lighter and more playful pieces in Rossini's late French works that are equally as accomplished as William Tell. True there may arguably be greater masterpieces among the earlier Italian works like Mosè in Egitto and - who am I to dispute it? - the perennial charm of Il Barbiere di Siviglia - but leaving aside the re-works of Le siege de Corinthe and Moise et Pharaon, the operas composed for a French audience like Il viaggio a Reims and Le comte Ory are remarkable confections that combine a lightness of touch and crowd-pleasing numbers with extraordinarily beautiful and inventive melodic arrangements.

Le comte Ory might not have much of a plot to speak of, but the musical writing is equally as impressive and sophisticated in its expression and arrangements as the work that preceded it, Il viaggio a Reims, an opera that was written for the one-off occasion of the coronation of Charles X in 1825. Believing music too good to be lost (as it would actually be for 150 years or so), Rossini reused much of it for the composition of Le comte Ory. The earlier work had more of a variety show numbers feel to it (Rossini ahead of the game there, much as he was in his development of grand opéra and bel canto, or unforgivable depending on your viewpoint, although he can hardly be blamed for the excesses or banality of others in those fields), so Rossini had to be a little creative in how he reworked the musical material to fit a dramatic plot for Le comte Ory.

You can hardly call the plot sophisticated, as the first half of the opera involves a nobleman, the Count Ory, who disguises himself as a wise hermit so that he can seduce the credulous wives of all the men who have left them alone and unloved and gone off to fight in the Crusades. In the second half, the licentious young Comte Ory puts into play a suggestion that his page Isolier has concocted as a way that might get himself close to the Countess Adèle, sister of the lord of Formoutiers, who he is in love with. Using the page's idea for himself, Ory disguises himself and his men as nuns on a pilgrimage so that they can gain access to the otherwise inaccessible womanly delights that are locked away in the Countess's castle, fearful of the storm outside and looking for comfort.

As a way of providing a variety of colourful scenes for the composer to apply his melodic and effervescent music to however, Le comte Ory gets the job done. And with considerable style and aplomb. It's almost casually brilliant in making it all seem effortlessly light and entertaining. In fact, the work is filled with dramatic and comedic expression, allowing opportunities for individual virtuosity that impress as much as they amuse. The extravagant coloratura and high notes are more often used for comic emphasis and expression of the whirlwind of emotions that are stirred up rather than just being thrown in for the sake of showing-off. Boosted by a capella harmonised ensembles and invigorating choruses, the work transmits that sense of joyful abandon to the audience in the most direct and engaging way that any opera should.

The perceived silliness of the plot however often - in the relatively rare occasions when it is performed - leads modern directors to add a distancing effect (The Met, Pesaro) that actually has the effect of diluting the wholly intentional silliness and comedy of the situation. Why can't they just play the comedy 'straight', so to speak? Well that's what Denis Podalydès does in this wonderfully entertaining production at the Opera Comique (the Paris opera house that knows the real value of light French comic opera) with the result that the work just sparkles with the natural verve and brilliance of its composition. Not to mention that it has a superb cast capable of bringing out all those inherent qualities in the work.

Podalydès doesn't need any clever device or framing structure to make this confection any sweeter. The comedy is in the situation itself and the director just ensures that the performers play them up to the hilt and for all they are worth. Eric Ruf's set for Act I is no more than a country church and Ory is disguised more as an eccentric priest than a hermit, but I guess you might think that the distinction is negligible as far as giving people false hopes in mystical advice to a gullible congregation while serving one's own interests. It functions dramatically, other than the intentional thinness of the count's disguise of course. Act II's set places a group of anxious women huddling from the storm in a rather austere castle interior that protects their virtue from the likes of Count Ory, where rather than a bed, the Countess seems to sleep on a stone tomb.

While the setting heightens the contrasts between the repressed women and libidinous behaviour of Ory and his men, the humour in Act II is mostly derived from men, some of them with beards, all disguised as nuns forgetting to act demurely and in a holy way and instead hiking their skirts up and singing boisterous drinking songs. And if that's not funny, I don't know what is. Well, apart from some ménage-a-trois bedroom farce antics of course and Podalydès direction ensures that it is played entirely for as many laughs as it's possible to get out of the situation. In a nice little twist he also makes the Countess not quite as credulous and submissive as you might think, entering fully into the bed-hopping shenanigans which, with Isolier in a trouser role, already has some gender-ambiguous suggestiveness.

If there's a reason why Le comte Ory is actually considerably funnier in performance than it might sound on paper it's got a lot to do with Rossini's music, and it's given a vigorous outing here by Louis Langrée. Sophistication and precision aren't always a prerequisite for a Rossini musical performance, when sometimes what it needs more is fervour and passion, but Langrée's musical direction enjoys the best of both worlds. There's detail in the colouring of the instrumentation as well as precision, pace and passion in the rhythm and rich melodic flavours of the scenes and the arias. The singing, which is extraordinarily challenging for such a light comic piece, is handled with aplomb and character by Philippe Talbot's Comte Ory, who has a lovely lyrical timbre that carries even to the high notes. Julie Fuchs is a sparkling countess, putting her high notes to good use as exclamations and as a release of repressed emotions. The singing and performances are a joy from all the cast, with Gaëlle Arquez an impressive Isolier and Éve-Maud Hubeaux an irrepressible Dame Ragonde.

Links: L'Opéra Comique, Culturebox

Verdi - Don Carlos (Paris, 2017)

Giuseppe Verdi - Don Carlos

L'Opéra National de Paris, 2017

Philippe Jordan, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Jonas Kaufmann, Elina Garanča, Sonya Yoncheva, Ludovic Tézier, Dmitry Belosselskiy, Ildar Abdrazakov, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Julien Dran, Krzysztof Baczyk, Hyun-Jong Roh

Opéra Bastille - 22nd October 2017

For anyone used to the more familiar Italian version, the rarely performed original French version of Verdi's Don Carlo/Don Carlos presented at the Paris Opera could sound rather subdued and lacking the heightened emotional state one expects for this work. Even though we are very much in the domain of the 5-Act grand opera there does however seem to be some merit in adopting a more gentle approach for the French language version. If Philippe Jordan exercises restraint in the Paris Orchestra and Krzysztof Warlikowski reigns in his usual directorial excesses, the premier league cast assembled here are at least capable of finding the necessary dynamic in the contrasts of character.

One need only read and listen to the more gentle flow of the French language libretto, composed in verse and in rhyming couplets, to see that it requires a different approach from the language of the the Italian text, which in Verdi can tend towards bombastic. Don Carlos and indeed Don Carlo should never be bombastic, since the nature of Schiller's treatment of the historical drama is more reflective and interiorised conflict, exuding an air of dark melancholy and sometimes even a bleak outlook on the nature of man.

That tone is established right from the outset in Warlikowsi's production, with Jonas Kaufmann's Carlos wandering onto a bare wood-panelled set in a state of suicidal despair, his bleeding wrists wrapped in bandages. That's not how we usually see the Fontainebleau scene in the 5-Act version of the opera - with Elisabeth already in her wedding dress alongside a white horse - but it appears that the director wants to visualise this vital but usually truncated Act as a fevered dream flashback, combining Carlos's Act II gloomy meditations on death at the tomb of Charles V in the cloister of the Convent of Saint-Just, with his disappointment over the outcome of his expected engagement to Elisabeth.

Aside from a rather more abstract-modern presentation of the scenes in the locations and costumes, Krzysztof Warlikowski and dramaturgist Christian Longchamp don't apply any other real conceptual twists on the subject. The sets are elegant and economic with the space of the Bastille stage, but yet they can be suitably grand when the occasion demands. The auto-da-fé scene for example manages to get a sense of the horror with an overlay of a silent-era film projection of a giant devouring a man. It's simple and impressive, without having to fall back on clichéd imagery or mannerisms (or indeed Warlikowski-isms) that nearly always fails to effectively represent this scene in the opera.

On the other hand, Warlikowski's usual mannerisms are missed here, or at least his ability to bring focus and draw attention to the complex levels of a work like Don Carlos is lacking. The intention is to lay bare the Oedipal and Hamlet-like Shakespearean side of Verdi's reading of Schiller, with all of its character contradictions and relationship complications, but it never really gets to the heart of the work, much less find any way of overcoming the opera's dramatic and structural weaknesses. The inclusion of the indispensable Act I Fontainebleau scene and the exclusion of the dispensable ballet scene go some way towards making the work flow better, and greater emphasis is well placed on the dominant father aspect of the work by focussing on Charles V, but the roles of Rodrigo and Eboli add other dimensions that aren't as fully explored. At least, not in the dramatic context.

In terms of singing it's another matter, and ironically the performances of Posa and Eboli by Ludovic Tézier and Elina Garanča are so good that they balance out (and almost overshadow) the focus of the production on the patriarchal power play by restoring some measure of importance on the work's consideration of love, friendship, jealousy and rejection that their characters provide. The weight of those aspects of the work are almost all expected to be covered here by Philippe II, and Ildar Abdrazakov does give an outstanding performance, but it neglects the riches that can be found in the different nuances provided by Eboli and Rodrigue.

Perhaps however the strength of those performances, in conjunction with Philippe Jordan's subtle handling of musical dynamic, are enough to convey everything that is required. It certainly felt like it. Ludovic Tézier's smooth baritone is full of heartfelt expression that suggests a warm and loyal friendship with Carlos, but with an edge that revealed some of his personal conflict in his duty to the King and his belief in the Flemish cause. His performance of Rodrigue's death scene was loudly applauded and it seemed to me that he deservedly got the longest and most enthusiastic acclaim at the curtain call too. Elina Garanča wasn't far behind him though. With great stage presence and tremendous delivery, her Eboli carried force of conviction and yet tenderness and regret. Her 'O don fatale', summing up her predicament, was pretty much devastating.

That kind of conviction and delivery carried through to the back of the hall to those of us in the cheaper seats, and that was the case also for Ildar Abdrazakov. Without underestimating the greater challenges that the roles of Carlos and Elisabeth carry however, the same can't be said with as much certainty for Jonas Kaufmann and Sonya Yoncheva. Kaufmann's usual strength and force is all there and his delivery impassioned, but he doesn't have the volume to fill a hall the size of the Bastille. The detail of his performance worked much better I found when I subsequently watched scenes from the streamed performance of this Don Carlos on ARTE. Sonya Yoncheva wasn't perfect in her delivery either and felt somewhat detached, but I personally have never heard anyone sing the challenging role of Elisabeth perfectly, and Yoncheva at least is one of the best I can recall.

Such challenges and imperfections are perhaps in the nature of Don Carlos, and may indeed be the very reason for it remaining always such a fascinating work, since Verdi's venture into French grand opera neither fits to the tradition of Meyerbeer, Halévy and Auber, nor is it merely an Italian opera in French guise. Warlikowski and Jordan succeed then in some areas and fail in others, which is perhaps an inevitability with this work. You can't fault a cast as impressive as this either - you really can't do justice to Don Carlos without a cast as stellar as this - and Jordan's French touch does reveal other interesting aspects of the work. With its complicated blend of history, personal drama and the fantastical and that problematic ending that I've only seen Robert Carsen approach in any way half-convincingly (although it required much manipulation in his 2016 Strasbourg production), the perfect or definitive version of Don Carlos still remains elusive.

Links: L'Opéra de Paris, ARTE Concert

Dusapin - Penthesilea (La Monnaie, 2015 - Webcast)

Pascal Dusapin - Penthesilea

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2015

Franck Ollu, Pierre Audi, Natascha Petrinsky, Marisol Montalvo, Georg Nigl, Werner Van Mechelen, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Wiard Witholt, Yaroslava Kozina, Marta Beretta

La Monnaie Web Streaming - April 2015

The story of the Amazonian Queen Penthesilea, who launches her troops into the middle of the epic battle ensuing between Greece and Troy, is one of the stranger and lesser known of characters in Greek mythology. It was the German poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist who elaborated on the myth and the particular nature of her love of war and her love for Achilles in a High Romantic manner in 1808, and his version has been the inspiration for a number of operas in the modern age. Like the other composers who have approached the subject Pascal Dusapin's version, newly commissioned by La Monnaie in Brussels and premiered in March/April 2015, finds the dark contradictory sentiments fertile ground for musical exploration.

Long before Richard Wagner's Late Romantic exploration of the Liebestod theme in Tristan und Isolde, and three years before the author shot himself in a double suicide with Henriette Vogel, Heinrich von Kleist explored the same complex Romantic notions conflating love and death in 'Penthesilea'. Here the epic battle between two great warriors, Achilles and the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, is taken to such extremes and all the fears of defeat, capture and hatred become so overpowering that they transform into an almost erotic desire for submission that can only be satisfied in a carnal lust for death. It's the struggle between male and female desires on an epic scale of life and death.

The problem with this is that, quite apart from the warnings of their respective captains - Ulysses on the side of Achilles, Prothoe on the part of Penthsilea - and their duty as leaders over their troops, the desire to be torn apart by the arms of their beloved goes against not only the natural order of things, but it's also complicated by the laws governing their behaviour in war. As somewhat unwelcome forces in the bigger battle between Greece and Troy, not on either side (Kleist introducing a Rose Festival as the rationale for their involvement, where the Amazons capture great warriors to use in the procreation of their race) a love-struck Penthesilea has rescued the supreme figure of Achilles in battle but has then in turn been captured by the Greek warrior.

Since this would mean disgrace to Penthesilea, and since Achilles's feelings for the Amazon are no less overwhelming, the Greek warrior allows Penthesilea to think that she has actually captured him, so that they can be together. When Penthesilea finds out the truth however, she is appalled at the situation she finds herself in, and is helped escape by her warriors. Unable to give her up, Achilles has no option but to challenge her to a duel, to which he turns up unarmed and allows himself (in a reversal of the original myth) to be killed by the Amazon Queen. In a bloodlust of fury and hatred mixed with love, Penthesilea even launches herself at Achilles, tearing him apart with her teeth and devouring him along with her hounds.

Heinrich von Kleist's treatment of the Penthesilea myth is a powerful and disturbing one, and clearly tied up in his own complex Romantic notions of the purity of love in death. It's the kind of subject that calls out for a similar High Romantic treatment in an opera, but all the modern versions of the subject that I am familiar with tend to find a more modern musical language essential to the expression of the darkness of the mood and the nature of the subject. By the time Othmar Schoeck came to compose his 1927 one-act opera Penthesilea, he had already moved away from the lush post-Wagnerian symphonic scores towards the more suitably darker expression of Strauss' Elektra. René Koering's faithful setting of Kleist's text in his haunting 2008 opera Scènes de Chasse contrasts the contradictory sentiments with sung German dissonance in the conflict and a more lyrical flow to the spiritual evocations in Penthesilea's softly murmured French dialogue passages.

Dusapin's Penthesilea is very much in the same place as Schoeck and Koering, a dark and menacing place where emotions are laid bare and filled with violent intent. It even comes with an introductory preface note quoting Christa Wolf's warning that it's the beginning of the modern age, and it's not pretty ("Ce n’est pas un beau spectacle, l’ère moderne commence"). Dusapin is not particularly concerned with narrative drive and direction, nor - even though the libretto is in German - in working directly with Kleist's text, but rather it explores the extreme emotional states within the drama. The music is accordingly haunting, slow and steady, holding long sustained notes with occasional flurries and percussive blasts.  The singing is impassioned but rarely strained to wild abandon, supported and lifted rather by the music to a level that indicates the nature of the underlying sentiments, and how disturbing they are to mental stability of the singer. Which is usually Penthesilea, putting one in mind of Elektra.

It's difficult then to find any narrative progression through the work. In line with Kleist's lyric drama, the main action and the battles take place off stage, observed and commented on by the principals. The real battle however is very much a matching of wits between two forces greater than any army, a battle of personalities and two huge personalities at that. What ought to be a romantic interlude in the middle of the Trojan war should perhaps not distract such great warriors from their duty, but consume them it does. Dusapin's Penthesilea explores an intermediate state between two vast forces, striving to find a common denominator between innumerable indeterminate and contradictory impulses; between love and the desire to destroy, the will to dominate and conquer conflicting with the temptation to surrender and find peace. How does one separate the warrior impulse from the human desire to love, acknowledging the inevitability of death at the end of it all? Where does real triumph lie and true fulfilment?

Pierre Audi's stage direction seeks to find a place for these abstract concepts on the stage at La Monnaie. The stage is dark, the landscape one of dust, rocks, shields and armour - solid, bleak and elemental. Combined with Dusapin's score, the mood is heavy and oppressive, with occasional abstract projections offering another dimension above the physical representation. The love of Penthesilea and Achilles however finds no spiritual uplift here, or at most only a brief moment or two of abandonment to those passions. Most of the time their passions torment the two lovers and it comes out in the tortured singing as they attempt express the impossibility of their situation, control, direct and vent the terrible impulses that this gives rise to. It's hugely challenging for the singers not only to push to those limits, but identify with the dark place those sentiments come from, but Natascha Petrinsky is utterly convincing - and terrifying - as Penthesilea, with Georg Nigl a most steadfast and determined Achilles, and Marisol Montalvo the distraught Prothoe.

Pascal Dusapin's Penthesilea is currently available to view for free via La Monnaie's web-streaming service. The next opera to be streamed is Verdi's UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, directed by Àlex Ollé of La Fura dels Baus (reviewed here at Opera Australia), and conducted by Carlo Rizzi. It can be viewed for one month from from 29 May.

Links: La Monnaie streaming, RTBF Musiq 3

Bach - Trauernacht (Aix-en-Provence, 2014 - Webcast)

Johann Sebastian Bach - Trauernacht

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2014 

Raphaël Pichon, Katie Mitchell, Frode Olsen, Aoife Miskelly, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Rupert Charlesworth, Andri Björn Robertsson

Medici, Culturebox - Live Streaming, July 2014

J.S Bach didn't actually write any operas, so it's rare indeed to find his work in the schedule of an opera festival. Bach's Passions have a dramatic line that has seen them adapted to the stage on occasion, but the work Trauernacht, presented at the 2014 Aix-en-Provence festival, is unlikely to mean anything to opera-goers. Trauernacht (subtitled 'The Angel's Hand', but literally meaning 'Night of Mourning') is actually a collection of a number of similarly themed religious Bach cantatas gathered together and developed into a kind of narrative line by conductor Raphaël Pichon and director Katie Mitchell.

Bach wrote over 200 cantatas while he was in the position of  Cantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, sacred pieces of varying length for solo performers and small choirs quoting lines from the Bible or religious meditations on scripture. If it's a case that, like Handel's religious oratorios, these exquisite little pieces can be given a new life through a stage performance, then there's merit in the exercise for that reason alone. Unlike Handel's oratorios however, it rather more difficult (and potentially controversial) to select and adapt these works to fit a dramatic narrative. There is however a very specific sentiment explored musically in the pieces chosen for Trauernacht, and there is even an inherent drama in how the music expresses the sentiments of the few lines of text and scripture in them.

As the title of the work tells us, that sentiment is associated with questions of death and mourning. Although death is a common enough occurrence in opera works, nowhere is it meditated on at such length (even though the work runs to less than 80 minutes) and with such sensitivity as it is here in Trauernacht. The exquisite beauty of the music and an abstract mediation on such matters would then more than justify the creation of such a work, but Mitchell also attempts to find a narrative path of sorts that takes a meaningful line from sorrow and incomprehension among a family over bereavement suffered by the death of a father, through to acceptance that this is the fate of us all.

In terms of staging, this doesn't require anything too elaborate. Vicki Mortimer's designs for the Katie Mitchell's Aix production (the two of them previously collaborated in the creation of George Benjamin's Written on Skin for Aix in 2012, Mitchell also involved with The House Taken Over by Vasco Mendonça en 2013) provide a table with four chairs, a dinner table where the family place the remaining belongings - a folded suit and a pair of shoes - of their recently buried or cremated father. A fifth figure sits recessed in the darkness in the background who evidently represents the father (Frode Olsen in the main providing a haunting low whistle between cantatas), but by the same token he can be seen as merely the presence of the father or even an angel. His main role is as a focus for the thoughts and meditations of the other four members of the family to work through their anger, grief and sorrow as they move around, sometimes in slow motion, and sit down later for a meal together.

To set the funereal mood for the piece, the opening prologue is not by actually by J.S. Bach, but a motet written by his cousin Johann Christoph Bach, "Mit Weinen hebt’s sich an". All the other compositions however come from J.S. Bach cantatas, often consisting of short recitative or a single repeated line as each of the family members - in solo air, in duet and sometimes in small choral arrangements - express their thoughts and process their grief. The tenor rages at the terrible fate that awaits them all in cantata BWV 90, "Es reißet euch ein schrecklich Ende", the four singers come together at the centre of the piece to sing of their submission to the Lord's will in an extract from cantata BWV 71 "Du wollest dem Feinde nicht geben" taken from Psalm 74 ("You would not give the soul of Your turtledove to the enemy"). The father himself comes forward to sing BWV 159 "Es ist vollbracht" ("It is finished"), bringing the family to acceptance in the bass air BWV 82 "Ich habe genug" ("I am content"), and in the choral BWV 668, "Vor deinen Thron" ("Before thy throne, O Lord, I present myself").

In terms of staging, the narrative developed by Katie Michell and Raphaël Pichon for Trauernacht is very simple, but it's entirely appropriate, respectful and meaningful. The directors successfully retain the religious origins and significance of these profound meditations on death, while at the same time giving them context and expression in everyday actions and places. That's as much in the singing and the performances, the words and the sentiments behind them not merely chanted or recited, but given full dramatic expression. There's a spiritual purity in these musical compositions, in the lilting tone of the recorder, oboe and viola da gamba that mournfully accompanies the singing, weaving through the voices, granting them an uplifting grace that carries them through to a beautiful resolution.

Links: Medici, Culturebox, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence