Stefan Brion
Luigi Cherubini’s Médée was first carried out in 1797 on the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris, of which he was the director. Beneath Napoleon, the Feydeau and Favart troupes have been merged to create the Opéra Comique. So we would say this manufacturing on the Comique is a homecoming, particularly because it follows the 2008 vital version utilized by Christophe Rousset in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s manufacturing, which I noticed in each Brussels and Paris. Franz Lachner’s 1850s recitatives are eradicated and the spoken textual content restored, in keeping with the opéra comique format. Whether or not or not that truly makes an opéra comique of Médée, or somewhat a hybrid of some type was, even in opinions after its premiere, open to query. For La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique, a paper based in 1794, for instance, it was:
‘… neither comedy, drama, tragedy, comedian opera nor grand opera. It’s a combination of sung and spoken tragedy, somewhat disparate for true pals of the artwork, however which, it’s mentioned, will turn into established, because the public welcomes it.’
On the title web page of the rating, spoken dialogues or not, it’s merely an ‘opéra.’
Other than two of the principals’ being introduced sick (extra of that later), the principle drawback with this new Médée is, to my thoughts, a well-known one: directorial overload. Marie-Ève Signeyrole (assisted by her dramaturge) focuses on two essential themes. I’ve abridged, however not in any other case altered, the next quotes, taken from an interview on the home web site:
The very first thing that us was how we might cope with the query of the foreigner, the stranger and the monster. This lady has left every thing, her nation, her homeland, her household, her customs, her tradition, her faith, and finds herself a stranger in a land of asylum that repudiates her.
Second:
‘Typically, it’s within the want to kill themselves that (girls in jail for infanticide) kill their kids. While you speak to them, you realise they have been all victims of home violence or incest of their childhood. They’re a part of a cycle of violence that they’ll in the end perpetuate. On this model of Medea, we give her a up to date counterpart (an actress), in jail for all times. The kids are each the kids of this lady in jail and Medea’s. They’re the hyperlink between the 2.’
And so:
‘What if Medea have been the product of a racist, patriarchal society?’
Already, with the actress and the kids — albeit essentially the most convincing, most engagingly pure youngster actors I’ve ever seen — on stage practically on a regular basis, we will see overload looming. Those that hate motion throughout overtures would go bananas. Even earlier than the orchestra strikes up, in silence damaged solely by sound results, we encounter the black-walled jail cell with its barred window, and the actress, her wrists grubbily bandaged. Quickly, she’s joined by Jason and the youngsters, on a fake crusing ship, and there’s video of a uneven sea, its water turning crimson, and even spoken textual content (not from the libretto), in the course of the music. The actress, sitting or standing, doing nothing, grafted-on extras and motion, filmed and dwell video, sound results, spoken and projected texts, an interpolated nursery rhyme, and a litter of furnishings and props, are nearly fixed options of the primary two Acts, an over-busy amalgam that makes it arduous, at instances, to maintain up.
Stefan Brion
In Act I, the ladies’s refrain members are seamstresses bustling to complete near-naked Dircé’s marriage ceremony gown on a catwalk of huge, black tables pushed collectively diagonally throughout the stage. Because the Argonauts arrive, the tables are rearranged, banquet-style with chairs and candelabras, cluttering the stage greater than want be and forcing the refrain to squeeze in round them. The costumes, anticipating the marriage, are modern party-wear, with fancy millinery for the ladies, although one wears a 20s flapper gown, as if totally fashionable Millie strayed in from one other theatre by mistake. Oddly, contemplating the designer has labored for Bob Wilson, these costumes aren’t particularly well-cut or good.
In consequence, Créon’s courtroom has an unexpectedly cheesy, low-budget look, not improved by the greige double-breasted coat and trousers he wears all through. Dircé now has an off-the-shoulder white gown; Jason is dressed as a groom however, a serial womaniser in addition to a chain-smoker and youngster beater who slaps his son loudly for his boisterousness, sings his love to not his bride however whereas flirting with one of many visitors. Médée arrives in an unique caftan with heavy oriental jewelry and a tattooed chin, to mark her outsider standing. We by no means truly see the golden fleece, however the briefcase it’s carried in glows with golden mild each time it’s opened.
Act II finds Médée and her companions hanging out washing on a large spider’s net on the rear. Attention-grabbing element: Médée holds somewhat garment to her nostril. In Euripides, at one level she recollects the scent of her kids’s delicate pores and skin. I puzzled if the director was pondering of that. Whereas Créon dialogues together with her, ending up someway together with his head cradled in her lap, his males, in black, drag Néris and the others off to beat and rape them. Jason arrives in his shirtsleeves, drunk, flask in hand. Médée begins dipping white roses in poison and weaving the deadly wreath.
Stefan Brion
I used to be so exasperated by the manufacturing to this point that I thought-about leaving on the interval (positioned lopsidedly after Acts I and II). However as Act III would solely be an additional half-hour, I stayed. After I do go away on the interval, folks normally inform me it bought higher after; so it did this time, with easier units and fewer of the Manichaean, me-too tub-thumping. Two of the tables are actually within the centre of a easy set. On them, the actress on one facet and Médée, now in black, on the opposite set out the youngsters’ breakfast: cornflakes and milk, the latter in close-up, for some cause, on video on the rear. In what appeared to me fairly a intelligent little bit of enterprise, even comedian reduction, Médée’s tergiversations over the kids’s destiny are handled as a mock duel between her and her laughing children (somewhat as a contemporary mum would possibly say, ‘You’re so cute I might eat you’), she wielding a breakfast baguette, her son his spoon. When the time comes truly to do the deed, the set has been simplified to only a white curtain towards the black background, and a sheet and two pillows are sufficient to symbolise the victims, fortunately not current.
As I discussed above, after the viewers had settled in, the baleful man-with-a-mic, as acquainted to opera-goers as the ever present bravo man, stepped out to make an announcement. Each Dircé (Lila Dufy) and Médée (Joyce El-Khoury) have been sick however had agreed to soldier on. Not a promising begin, and Lila Dufy was clearly affected. I’d guess she has fairly a wealthy, ductile voice, however within the circumstances she was understandably cautious, thinning at what might be normally a candy prime, and her diction was cloudy. (Unusually good diction was in any other case, as my neighbour remarked, a putting function of the entire night.) Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, however, was evidently in the most effective of well being. New to me, she combines a fluid, golden mezzo voice with equally radiant stage presence.
On this manufacturing, Jason is such an disagreeable character that it was nearly arduous to evaluate his singing pretty. Julien Behr is a tenor whose voice, after I first noticed him in Hahn’s Ciboulette, over ten years in the past, I already discovered “younger, candy and fairly.” Now that his profession has reached the stage at which his portrait fills the quilt of the present concern of Opéra Journal, his voice is stronger and naturally extra mature, and he has the dramatic temperament and preferrred weight for Jason. The directing left him, nevertheless, no room for attraction, bodily or vocal. Edwin Crossley-Mercer has additionally, equally naturally, matured, in his case gaining a sure rondeur and velvety plumminess, with out impairing his diction. His phrasing rings as true as ever. He appeared, nevertheless, vaguely uncomfortable within the function as directed by Marie-Ève Signeyrole, trussed up in his frock coat and rolling his eyes like a silent-film villain.
Stefan Brion
Joyce El-Khoury relied on her expertise, vocal method and dramatic skills to hold her by. These ubiquitous post-covid coughs and colds play havoc with anybody’s respiration, so in fact there have been instances when it was arduous for her to maintain a word within the function’s middle, and she or he had to make use of all her expertise to ‘cheat’ her method artfully by the highest notes. However what successful she product of it, given the circumstances. I might solely think about what we’d missed. She was loudly applauded and cheered.
Laurence Equilbey’s conducting was fortuitously extra vigorous than for her flaccid Freischütz on the TCE in 2019. “Weber ought to zing, not slouch,” I wrote on the time. Right here, Cherubini zinged. Nevertheless… I ventured, when reporting on the current Castor et Pollux below Currentzis, to jot down that “so far as I do know, it’s a virtuoso ensemble however not a ‘HIP’ one.” I used to be taken to job for that by a girl from Russia: “Currentzis is actually working towards HIP like since 2004.” Not desirous to provoke a fruitless debate, I didn’t ask her how she squared that with the cimbalom within the pit.
However anyway, regarding Equilbey’s Insula orchestra, my thought this time was that it’s a “HIP” ensemble, however not a virtuoso one. I don’t perceive how press critics can declare, as I’ve learn, that Insula provides technical perfection. Whereas the conductor stays centered on the singers and stage, giving the orchestra fewer cues than they want, the orchestra prefers staggered assaults, doubtful tuning, undisciplined cross-rhythms, chaotic cadences in accompanied recitatives — OK, it’s tough to navigate collectively by a twiddly fioritura and nonetheless ‘land’ in time with the singer on stage, however Equilbey ought to have given them extra assist — and obbligato solos unworthy of a significant home. This appeared like amateurism to me. And whereas Laurence Equilbey is extremely praised for creating the Accentus Refrain, I’m unsure they’re lower out for opera. Like strolling and chewing gum, they appear to search out it arduous to sing and act on the similar time and have been sometimes, within the warmth of the motion on the crowded stage, shambolic.
