The latest Opera Vision Youtube recording to catch my attention is a recording from L’opéra nationale de Paris of Spontini’s La Vestale. Productions of La Vestale are rare and most Opera Vision streams come from considerably less prestigious houses so this is particularly welcome. I reviewed a Palazetto Bru-Zane audio recording of this work in 2023 and I’m not going to repeat what I wrote about the performance history and the plot. Here I shall concentrate on the Paris performance.
The title of this review of a 2022 recording of Rameau’s Platée is prompted by the fact that I’ve rarely seen this much high quality dance included in an opera production. It’s really spectacular. But back to basics. Platée is a comic opera of 1745. The production filmed in 2022 is by Laurent Pelly and was making its fifth run at the Palais Garnier. There’s an earlier video release of the 2002 run.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden is a rather odd opera. It’s set in some sort of idyllic pre-Christian Russia where the tsar is approachable, just and benevolent and the people spend most of their time drinking and having sex. Into this world comes Snow Maiden, the fifteen year old daughter of Winter and Spring. Her parents have various things to do and so decide to park the girl with the local peasantry. Various romantic complications ensue involving a rather nasty, rich merchant Mizguir and the mysterious Lel, who may be a shepherd but likely isn’t mortal either. The mating behaviour of the locals confuses Snow Maiden as she is incapable of falling in love. Eventually Spring grants her that faculty and she gives herself to Mizguir, while really wanting Lel, but the rays of the sun on the first day of summer melt her. The natives ignore her death and get on with singing and dancing.
It’s been rumoured for weeks but now it’s confirmed. Alexander Neef will leave the COC at the end of the 2020/21 season to head up L’Opéra de Paris. I don’t think anybody should be surprised. He’s a relatively young guy with a lot of working years ahead of him. He’s been in Toronto eleven years. It’s probably for the best for everybody that he moves onwards and upwards. Toronto will miss him. He’s been, in my view, a force for good here but, realistically, could he have continued to be transformational? I doubt anybody could. Has he solved, or would he solved, all the challenges facing the COC? No he hasn’t. Would anybody have done better? I doubt it.
operaramblings 