Category Archives: DVD review

Ponnelle’s Ulisse

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Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria is the third of the Ponnelle/Harnoncourt Monteverdi collaborations and perhaps the best.  Itseems to stick closer to the original Zürich staging and be less obviously a film though it was recorded in the studio and lip synched.  The orchestra and conductor are visible and, in Act 3, Irus descends into the pit throws himself all over Harnoncourt.  It’s the conductor too who gives him the knife he kills himself with.  Is this the first (of many) times when Harnoncourt has been drawn into the theatrical action?

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My darling goat

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Meyerbeer’s Dinorah ou le Pardon de Ploërmel must be a very strong candidate for the silliest opera ever written.  It concerns a young girl, Dinorah, who is deserted on her wedding day by her fiancé Hoël who disappears in search of a cursed treasure.  She goes mad.  There’s sheep and goat ballet, a lullabye to a goat accompanied on the bagpipes, more sheep and goat ballet and a scene where Dinorah sings a very difficult aria to her own shadow.  There’s a “ghastly” enchanted glen scene at the end of which Dinorah, pursuing her pet goat, falls into a river; apparently fatally.  Rather than resolve this we then get another half hour of pastoral with a hunter and a reaper and assorted shepherdesses and, inevitably, dancing sheep and goats before Hoël shows up having rescued Dinorah. He persuades her that the last twelve months have all been a bad dream and they get married accompanied by much pious singing.

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Armide at Versailles

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Lully’s Armide is pretty much the archetypal tragédie en musique.  It features an allegorical prologue praising Louis XIV’s multiple virtues, delivered as a dialogue by La Gloire and La Sagesse followed by five acts based on the Armida/Rinaldo story from Tasso.  There are also, of course, lots of ballet interludes.  As such, it isn’t all that easy to stage for a modern audience.  Robert Carsen and William Christie’s approach for their 2008 Paris production is to frame the story in the context of Versailles.

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The god-damn son of a bitch is dead

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“The god-damn son of a bitch is dead”.  So says one of John A. Macdonald’s henchmen on checking his watch to see that the scheduled time of Louis Riel’s execution has passed; at least in Harry Somers’ 1969 operatic version of the story.  Louis Riel, on the face of it is a historic narrative about the leader of the 1869 and 1885 Métis opposition to the expansion of the Dominion of Canada.  But it’s deeper than that.   It’s a complex work dealing with fundamental questions of identity and belonging and of the relation between people and state.  Written during a weird combination of the orgy of cultural nationalism that greeted the centenary of Confederation and Canada’s most turbulent political violence it transcends the Canadianness of its story and clear parallels could be found in many countries, including Canada, today.  This is really about “culture wars” in all their complexity and horror.

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Adventure story

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Robert Carsen doesn’t seem disposed to treat Handel too reverentially.  Although there is some of the trademark Carsen cool minimalism in his 2011 Glyndebourne production of Rinaldo (not to mention symmetrically arranged furniture) there’s also a degree of humour, as there is in his Zürich Semele.  I find it very effective and, judging by the audience reaction, so did the people who saw it at Glyndebourne.

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Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein König

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In many ways Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots is a typical mid 19th century French grand opéra.  It takes a sweeping, epic story; in this case the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and grafts onto it the elements the paying public demanded; spectacle, ballet, showpiece arias etc.  The result is unwieldy and, when applied to such grim subject matter, almost grotesque.  The 1991 Deutsche Oper production by John Dew (performed in German as Die Hugenotten) takes these disparate elements and works with them; mixing laugh out loud and extremely grim to create a piece of music theatre that is truly disturbing.

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Allons enfants de la Patrie

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There can’t be many French Revolutionary propaganda comedies but Cherubini’s Koukourgi is one of them.  Written in the crisis year of 1792 and intended for the Théatre Feydeau it never actually made it onto the stage and remained unperformed until it was staged by the Stadttheater Klagenfurt in 2010.  By then the dialogues, the overture and the finale had been lost but music director Peter Marschik found a couple of bits from other Cherubini operas to fill the musical gaps and director Josef E. Köpplinger supplied rather arch German dialogue to link the musical numbers (sung in French).

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Born to the anvil, not the hammer

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Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve is often credited with being the first true Spanish opera.  It’s certainly one of very few works in that language one might encounter in an opera house.  It’s hard to see why it’s not performed more often.  It’s a dramatic story about the tragic love affair of a gtpsy girl and a wealthy young man and the music is a blend of verismo and flamenco.  The orchestration is quite exciting and the Spanish influenced vocal lines are very easy on the ear.  It really ought to have a rather wide appeal.

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Starry Tosca

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Puccini’s Tosca doesn’t seem to lend itself to Regie type treatments.  Even quite adventurous directors seem to mostly stick to the very specific time and place of the libretto (even though, as Paul Curran pointed out to me, the plot makes no sense in the Rome of 1800).  In the 2012 Royal Opera House recording Jonathan Kent certainly takes very few liberties with the piece; the church is a church, the palace a palace and the castle a castle. There are a few deft design touches.  Both Cavaradossi and Tosca wear very bright colours indicative of the new dyes that became available at the period (actually I think this is a slight anachronism – must check with the fashion lemur) whereas Scarpia is more conservatively attired.  Generally though it’s pretty straightforward.

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Campy Poppea

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J-P Ponnelle’s 1979 film of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea with Zürich forces conducted by a young Nikolaus Harnoncourt is like his Orfeo only more so.  Sets and costumes are that rather odd “ancient baroque” that Ponnelle is so fond of.  The acting is stylized and hyperkinetic and so is the camera work with close ups from weird angles all over the place.  So far, so Ponnelle.

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