PARIS — From solid Baroque to deconstructed Verdi to a range of modernism, a week in Paris before Christmas offered insights into the presentation of vocal music, from warhorse to rarity. The three modernist works stood out at a time when experimental 20th-century music is becoming relatively rare everywhere.
Honegger at the Philharmonie
Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake, Dec. 13) has disappeared from performance schedules even more rapidly than other major modernist pieces. One reason is that it’s a truly eccentric work: a highly dramatic oratorio on a non-Biblical figure who no longer commands the worshipful attention she once attained, at least in France. But another factor is surely cost, especially at a time of shrinking budgets. It calls for a large orchestra, large chorus, large children’s chorus, nine soloists, and four orators.
Still, there’s nothing remotely like it, and this performance at the Philharmonie de Paris had a certain international flair. The visiting Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra was led by its French music director, Alain Altinoglu. They were joined by an Austrian chorus, the Wiener Singverein, and a French children’s chorus borrowed from the Orchestre de Paris. The speaking role of Jean went to French actress Marion Cotillard, who had portrayed Joan in performances of this work elsewhere for more than a decade but never in France.
In 11 scenes over 80 minutes, via a mix of spoken and sung text (by Paul Claudel), including choral elements, the 1938 oratorio is set in Joan’s last days, as she reviews her life in flashbacks, some of it fictionalized. Honegger’s eclectic score includes a bit of everything, from Baroque to jazz, and his modernist approach remains totally accessible. His experimentation and his obsession with new and different sounds, complex harmonies, and dense rhythmic patterns are all part of the infectious appeal of the work: The orchestra includes two prepared pianos, an ondes Martinot, piccolo clarinets, celestas, and saxophones.
The old-fashioned iconography of the text might be tiring but for its wildly colorful portrayals. Joan is brought before the Tribunal of Beasts: a Pig (a tenor with frenzied high notes), assisted by a Sheep and a Donkey, along with bleating from the chorus. Joan mocks the hypocrisy of the Church, “the Devil’s agent,” backed by sound effects that resemble those from a horror movie, with Honegger at his most inventive.
His experience writing movie scores makes this all very effective. Joan is condemned by the Church and handed over to the English after a card game featuring the kings of France and England and the Duke of Burgundy. Joan revisits her childhood, is visited by the Virgin, then confronts flame, death, and martyrdom.
After minor coordination issues early on, Altinoglu delivered a perfectly calibrated performance, sweeping and often intense. Among the soloists, Belgian soprano Ilse Eerens was especially luminous as the Virgin, and the actor Éric Génovèse was riveting as Frère Dominique. The choruses were solid. But the anchor of the performance was Cotillard, displaying the full range of human emotion.
Rake’s Progress at the Palais Garnier
This season, the Opéra de Paris revived Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress in a 2008 production by French director Olivier Py at the Palais Garnier (Dec. 17).
The Rake’s Progress can be a hard work to pin down. Musically, it’s something of a pastiche, with bits robbed from the 18th century, especially Mozart, and it uses Classical forms: recitative and aria. But while the formality of those conventions creates a distance, Stravinsky’s score does the opposite as it creates a kind of intimate exposure of the protagonists’ feelings. And if the libretto, by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is a morality play based on a set of Hogarth engravings, modern productions like this one accentuate the parody aspect of the work while exploiting it for shock value and camp.
Py has an entrenched stye that he apparently brings to every opera. His trademarks — neon lights, vertiginous stairs, platforms, disguises, feathers, and nudity — were all here in a production that turned the brothel into a music hall, yet another of his regular devices. But the vulgarity was too much. To me, it was a trashy mess, lacking in subtlety and overpowering the wry nuance suggested in the text and score. Well, I can’t say it wasn’t diverting.
Musically, this was a good night. Tenor Ben Bliss captures the full range of Tom Rakewell, from chipper enthusiasm to deep sadness. He is especially effective as his character sinks into madness. And if he sounds more American than Cockney, it seems to fit this production, which doesn’t have much of a London feel.
Soprano Golda Schultz portrayed Anne Trulove in a nicely nuanced performance, with excellent coloratura, exciting high notes, and an aura that makes it clear why Rakewell would fall for her. Scottish bass-baritone Iain Paterson was an ideal Nick Shadow, with just the right look and deviousness.
American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton turned in a scene-stealing performance as Baba the Turk, dominating the stage with charisma, panache, and charm, not to mention her powerful, deftly controlled voice.
Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki, who emerged as a master of contemporary opera, kept things together beautifully, supported her singers, and brought clarity to the score. Still, I found her approach a bit cold, lacking in spontaneity.
Schoenberg’s Pelléas et Mélisande, in a Viennese Evening with the Orchestre de Paris
Performances of Schoenberg’s Pelléas et Mélisande, which had its premiere in 1905, don’t come along very often. It calls for a giant orchestra, so there’s that. And it’s always been somehow eclipsed by Debussy’s opera, which opened in 1902. But Schoenberg’s purely orchestral work is a masterpiece, worthy of repeated listening, and not just because it manages to bid farewell to Romanticism while helping to usher in a new era.
Schoenberg’s score is full of swirling emotions and energy. It’s dense, taking chromaticism to the edge. But the motifs are easily discerned, and one key to enjoying the work is to study them in advance so that you recognize the way they describe the characters and relationships and the way they’re piled up together at the same time. There’s a love scene that clearly looks back to Tristan und Isolde.
Daniel Harding, former music director of the Orchestre de Paris, returned to the Philharmonie to conduct a lucid reading of Pelléas (Dec. 19), with clear textures and intense drama. There wasn’t a dull moment as the score careened from mystery-movie score to the sound of the giant orchestra playing tutti, to passion, with nice dialogue between horns and strings, with Harding ever attentive to nuance.
This concert was a “Viennese Evening,” with Pelléas preceded by a trio of works by Johann Strauss II. And despite the fact that only a few decades separated the two composers, the contrast between old and new Vienna was striking, with the Strauss pieces also invoking Vienna’s iconic New Year’s Eve celebration a few weeks early.
The overture to Die Fledermaus opened the concert, with Harding spinning the opera’s themes elegantly. Then came Strauss’ famed Wiener Blut, played with just the right sensual sweep. That led right into Frühlingsstimmen, a coloratura showpiece, and Sabine Devieilhe was triumphant with her clarion voice, crystalline timbre, and superb musicianship.
“Happy Birthday Bill!” – Paris Celebrates William Christie at 80
To celebrate his 80th birthday, William Christie, the master of the Baroque, has embarked on a grand tour, starting here at the Philharmonie, where he led his ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, in a concert of excerpts from Rameau and Handel (Dec. 14). The title? “Happy Birthday, Bill” (in English, reflecting his U.S. origin; Paris is Christie’s adopted city). The hall was packed with adoring fans.
The concert opened with excerpts from Rameau’s Les Indes gallantes, from the sublime overture to the “peaceful forests” with tenor Bastien Rimondi and soprano Emmanuelle de Negri joined by bass-baritone Renato Dolcini, all in top form with impeccable technique. The attention to detail and nuance was also apparent in the chorus and the period-instruments ensemble.
From the start, what stood out about this concert was the joy and intense engagement of everyone onstage as they smiled, swayed, and sometimes mimed the words. All of this seems to flow from the love that radiates from Christie. There is simply no conductor, of any age, who can match his combination of grace, charm, and energy. Beaming affectionately at his soloists, he interacts with them as they sometimes use him as a foil, singing directly to him even as he manages to cue his musicians.
The second part of the program, all Handel, began with excerpts from Ariodante, with soprano Ana Maria Labin and mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre. Dolcini returned as a dramatically compelling King of Scotland with Desandre as Ariodante, her voice mellow and flexible, full of charisma as she danced with Christie.
We heard the ode L’Allegro, il Penserosa ed il Moderato, a rarity that has become a Christie favorite, with soprano Rachel Redmon’s dazzling high soprano in a duet with a flute. The finale was the aria “Endless Pleasure” from Semele, with Redmon joined by the elegant tenor James Way.
Then came the surprises. Tenor-conductor Paul Agnew, a Christie protégé, showed up to convey greetings and then led lead the ensemble in Rameau’s “Puissant maître des flots.” Nathalie Dessay came bouncing onstage to serenade a visibly surprised Christie with “Che sento? So pietà de me non senti” from Handel’s Giulio Cesare. She showed her voice to be in fine shape, only to be followed by Laurent Naouri, her husband, who sang an excerpt from Charpentier’s Te Deum. He was followed by a French television celebrity before Agnew led the audience in “Joyeux anniversaire.”
The following night, the indefatigable Christie moved to the Opéra Comique to lead his ensemble in a performance of Rameau’s Les fêtes d’Hébé, staged by Robert Carsen (available on Mezzo Live). The birthday celebration, with a different program, will come to Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on Jan. 28.
Claus Guth’s Rigoletto at the Bastille
Claus Guth’s production of Rigoletto, which debuted at the Opéra de Paris in 2016 and was revived this season, has been the subject of much handwringing. But I’d been deeply impressed by his 2018 production of Handel’s Jeptha at the Palais Garnier (when he was joined by the aforementioned forces of Les Arts Florissants), and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. For the Dec. 16 performance at the Bastille, the “first cast” was in place, with Venezuelan prodigy Domingo Hindoyan conducting.
During the overture, a Rigoletto dressed in rags appears with a cardboard box from which he mournfully retrieves Gilda’s blood-stained dress. The entire opera then unfolds inside a stage-size version of the cardboard box, with this Rigoletto, a doppelganger, looking on and interacting with the singers as he recalls his career and downfall. It’s a spare and gritty deconstruction of Rigoletto, totally pessimistic and vain, focused on the purity of Gilda and the debauchery of everyone else. Gilda also gets doppelgangers, three in her case, portraying her as a child at different ages. As she sings “Caro nome,” they hug Rigoletto, and one doppelganger, a ballerina, dances. The intention of these extras, of course, is to intensify the focus on these two characters, which I think it does.
Gilda is often accompanied by projections of her as a child, walking about. Other projections (all by Andi A. Müller) include a dog licking at Rigoletto’s mask, flung to the ground after Gilda’s abduction. When the Duke, after sniffing cocaine, sings La donna è mobile, Maddalena, in dominatrix gear, dances with a bevy of showgirls, perhaps from the Moulin Rouge, cheapening the encounter. The Duke’s men (the men of the chorus) are kept busy dancing, miming, and making a range of hand gestures. For someone who just wants a traditional Rigoletto, there are many to choose from. Guth’s alternative dials down the focus and is, I think, in sync with the dark cynicism that abounds in Verdi’s score.
Christian Schmidt designed both sets and costumes. The latter are mostly modern, ranging from formal wear to starkly casual, though Rigoletto dons a Harlequin costume from time to time.
Russian baritone Roman Burdenko was an intense, expressive Rigoletto, hard and bitter. His voice has power, color, and subtlety. Italian soprano Rosa Feola portrayed Gilda in a house debut after singing the role elsewhere to some acclaim. She has a distinct sound, technically solid but without the power needed for a theater this size, and with considerable vibrato in the top notes as well as minor intonation issues. The requisite innocence flowed from her voice and acting, but there was something tentative about her, and she never quite threw herself into the role.
Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan made his company debut as the Duke of Mantua. He masterfully portrayed the sleaze and shallowness of his character. Missing were the redeeming qualities that endeared him to Gilda. He does have a robust, liquid sound, though he overdoes it with the held notes and other tricks. He’s quite fit, as tenors go, looking good in a muscle T-shirt for the final scenes.
American baritone Blake Denson made his company debut as Monterone. He has ample power and is physically imposing. Georgian bass Goderdzi Janelidze was impressive as Sparafucile, with a powerful, deep voice. French mezzo-soprano Aude Extrémo was a sensual Maddalena.
Yet another company debut was that of Hindoyan, a protégé of Daniel Barenboim and now music director at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. His balances were superb, and if he sometimes seemed to rush a bit, he showed the ability to maintain both drama and precision.
