PARIS — La vestale is one of those operas more referred to than known, especially in its original French form. Gaspare Spontini’s 1807 three-act, ancient Roman drama anticipated Norma in some ways, but in structure, scale, and musical procedure influenced Berlioz, Verdi, and Wagner, among others. The 20th century’s most noted revivals found Tullio Serafin conducting his edited, Italian-language edition for two U.S.-born sopranos: Rosa Ponselle at the Metropolitan Opera (1925-27) and Maria Callas at La Scala (1954).
Unheard at the Paris Opera since 1854, the worthy and at least somewhat engaging opera returned to the huge Bastille stage this season. As all too often in major European houses when a largely unfamiliar work resurfaces, it was entrusted to a fashionable, wildly imaginative director, American-born Lydia Steier — who, with her dramaturg, Olaf A. Schmitt — clearly felt zero responsibility to elucidate La vestale’s story as conceived. Instead, she imposed conceptual frameworks and unleashed the usual technological tropes of Regietheater. No onstage videography, thank goodness, but sentimental “backstory” videos that towered over the characters, often dwarfing them at their most important solo moments when the audience might wish to concentrate on their words and music. Add on visual imagery and direction drawn from a familiar media source: The Handmaid’s Tale, its distressing contemporary urgency perhaps not well served by its increasing ubiquity in design and dramaturgy references.
Most strikingly, the underlying concept Steier seemed to be advancing here was that since this is a work of Napoleonic Imperial resonance, it is necessary to demonstrate — and state in repeated onstage writings — that Power is Bad and the Powerful are Monsters. She and Schmitt essentially rewrite the story so that the second tenor character Cinna — a loyal friend to the military hero Licinius, involved with the titular priestess Julia, for whose hand he became a general years before, and whose cruel father forced her into the Vestal cult of chastity — in this staging betrays them. The deus ex machina miracle rescuing the doomed illicit lovers is not allowed to function. We see their corpses — and that of the Grand Vestal, a semi-maternal mezzo-soprano character here turned into a Mrs. Danvers-like gorgon who beats and abuses her priestesses, not least Julia — hung upside down over the rejoicing final chorus. Cinna, like Napoleon, crowns himself leader.
This refusal of redemption echoes Steier’s final scene for Die Frau ohne Schatten at Baden-Baden in 2023, in which the unscripted character of a bereft mother dug wildly into the dirt for her child’s corpse, overpowering the major key rejoicing of the opera’s reunited central couples. Happy endings just aren’t cool! But it’s one thing to work transformations on Frau, quite a well-known work at this point, or on the repertoire staple Fidelio, regularly the object of revisionist doubt in German theaters. Few living have ever seen La vestale; surely, a rediscovery deserves greater fidelity.
Bertrand de Billy held up his end in the pit. The orchestra and especially the chorus performed with considerable eloquence. But he tolerated that other common scar inflicted by directorial license: oodles of extra-musical noise. Screams, groans, and catcalls were superimposed on the score, along with endlessly repeated spitting at dishonored women. In this and in the shaved heads, the imagery derives from post-WW II French Resistance vengeance. There was even a baddie character lighting up a cigarette, last decade’s hoariest cliché, to make very sure that we grasp that Bad Things Are Being Done. It got rather ludicrous, and often contradicted Spontini’s music.
That said, Speier drew powerful performances from her leads and chose an excellent neo-classical central design by Etienne Pluss, a degraded version of the Sorbonne’s Grand Ampithéâtre. Elza van den Heever’s luminous upper register and clear timbre stood in sharp contrast to recorded souvenirs of Ponselle and Callas, but as always she gave her all interpretively, bringing considerable technical discipline and feeling to Julia’s four quite contrasting arias. Steier staged these all as freeze-frame moments, with only Julia animated, which worked just fine.
Van den Heever won an ovation, as did the tireless, stylistically acute Michael Spyres, whose Licinius deserved somewhat better solo music than Spontini gave him. The lovers’ long Act Two scene crackled with excitement. Their voices somewhat dwarfed that of Mozartian tenor Julien Behr (Cinna), but his keen artistry was on display. Ève-Maud Hubeaux (La Grande Vestale) and Jean Teitgen (Le Souverain Pontife) both have imposing, theater-filling voices not of the utmost tonal beauty but very effective in this idiom; Hubeaux’s command of words proved more vivid than Teitgen’s. For all the staging’s (literal) overkill, this Vestale held one’s interest.
The next night in the city of Montpellier (in Occitanie, close to the Mediterranean), I had the pleasant (and rare) experience of revising way upward my opinion of a singer embarked on a major career. As part of the local Radio France Occitanie Festival, French-Danish soprano Elsa Dreisig (all of 33 years old) joined conductor Tarmo Peltokoski (all of 24) in a fine concert with the rocketing Finnish maestro’s next longtime gig, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. The city’s comfortable, flexible-capacity Opéra Berlioz, in a 25-year old convention center, has fine sightlines. Other festival front-liners included Marianne Crebassa, Evgeny Kissin, and Cécile McLorin Salvant.
Peltokoski started out with a vigorous Meistersinger Prelude, showing sweep but not much charm. The Toulouse orchestra is an admirably high-caliber regional ensemble. The brass played almost too brightly, and the transitions between the work’s themes needed more humanizing elasticity. The final offering, Ravel’s maximally orchestrated version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, better suited both the players (wonderful percussion and brass work here) and Peltokoski’s flamboyant interpretive instincts. It must be said the triumphal, clearly imperial nature of “The Great Gate of Kyiv,” the suite’s final section, does not make for unalloyed aesthetic enjoyment at this point in world history.
At mid-concert we heard Richard Strauss’ final scene from his final opera, 1942’s Capriccio, starting with the ravishing moonlight music. A handsome stage figure, Dreisig entered to warm applause. I’d found neither of her pre-pandemic solo recordings memorable, and — not over-impressed by a Micaëla in a 2023 semi-staged Strasbourg Carmen — wondered what my French colleagues were hearing. In recent years, she has added some improbable parts to her basically lyric repertoire, including Elisabetta in both Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux, written for soprano drammatica d’agilità.
Dreisig entered the Straussian vocal universe the summer of 2022 at the Aix-en-Provence festival as Salome — seemingly too heavy a part, but in the small hall she apparently pulled it off. Her reading of the Capriccio scene proved most impressive. The voice, very bright and easy on top, carried over the orchestral waves, and she sang with admirably secure pitch plus verbal and emotional specificity. (No text was supplied or projected, so this was Capriccio in which music trumped words from the start.)
Without grandiosity, Dreisig showed the Countess’ vulnerability and her wish to achieve art. Two days after this concert, Dreisig and Peltokoski and this orchestra presented the Four Last Songs in Grenada. Then she headed for her first Countess in a concert version of Capriccio led by Christian Thielemann (no less) at Salzburg (no less) on July 26. She seems very well launched in the role and would be fine casting in the undervalued Daphne as well.
