Sumptuous yet witty - Offenbach La belle Hélène

"À l'Opéra de Lausanne, l'extravagant Michel Fau s'empare du plus populaire des opéras-bouffes de Jacques Offenbach dans une mise en scène très attendue, chaussant pour l'occasion les sandales du roi Ménélas". Gloriously sumptuous yet also witty - Offenbach La belle Hélène in a new production by Michel Fau now available for a short period on arte.tv.This   is opéra-bouffe as it should be done - with wit, extravagant and idiomatic verve. As one would expect from Michel Fay, who is unique - not only an actor, but one with extraordinary musical affinities, who can bring out the music in spoken text, so it picks up on the musical logic - not Spechstimme, but declamation that accenntuates the musical line. When he narrates - such as in the recent F X Roth Berlioz Lélio, (please read more here), he makes the text fit so well with the orchestra and singers that it's hard to go back to listening to non-text or non-idomatic performance.  Fau is also a theatre historian, extremely well infomed about the performance style and ideologies in French music and theatre.  This production, lit in gold and jewel tones is audaciously indulgent, and the performances are vivid, too.  Do not miss this - it's fabulous, in every way ! (cast list and credits in the link).

Véronique Gens Wigmore Hall, Gounod, Massenet, Duparc, Hahn, Offenbach

Véronique Gens is a much-loved regular at the Wigmore Hall, generally focusing there on Mélodie and Chanson, despite her formidable reputaion in more esoteric French repertoire.  Will London ever be ready for full  Belle Époque opera ?  Or even full Baroque opera ?  In France she's the doyenne of French style.  Gens starred in Niobe, regina di Tebe and La Calisto at the Royasl Opera hopuse but we don't really get enough of her live.  (Thank goodness for recordings !)   So we're lucky to have her at the Wigmore Hall with regular pianist Susan Manoff.  Gens is sounding as fresh and lustrous as ever : a gorgeous recital, perfect balm for a sticky summer evening. 





Gens and Manoff began with Gounod, whose 200th birthday is celebrated this year, with lots of new performances and material.  Listen specially to the opera Dante (more here) sponsored by Palazzetto Bru Zane, and for a briefer sample of her opera tableaux, listen to her wonderful collection Visions (HERE) and its companion Néère, with familiar Duparc, Hahn, and Chausson mélodies.   Gens and Manoff began with a spirit of adventure, the breezy Gounod Où voulez-vous aller? the last lines lit with coloratura ebullience. Subdued refinement in Le Soir, quietly fading to silence, and  lovely piano line in O ma belle rebelle.  In Gounod Sérénade the piano line ripples while the voice creates decorative trills evoking the sound of possibly Alpine calls.  "Ah! Dormez, dormez ma belle... dormez dormez toujours!" It's a berceuse, setting a text by Victor Hugo, the music cradling the lines in gentle,rocking motion.  Gosh, how I love this song, which is, fortunately,  a Gens staple which she's done many times. A poised Mignon and an exuberant Viens, les gazons sont verts, almost literally breathing fresh air. 

Another serenade, in Lamento by Edmund, Prince du Polignac was sensual, like a serenade on a lute, with the air of something alien and exotic, possibly a guitar, evoking romantic Southern climes. The last line, though is the punchline, the timbre suddenly dropping on the words "un ange amoreux". It's a love song for someone dead, in "la blanche tombe,

Où flotte avec un son plaintif

L'ombre d'un if ?" The text is Théophile Gautier.  Massenet's Chant provençal describes a girl so pure she doesn't know her charms.  The piano part protectively with its tinkling brightness shields Gens's delicate vocal line. True innocence is harder to portray than extravagance but Massenet makes it sound effortless.  And thus to Massenet's Élégie, where simplicity gives way to almost operatic declamation.   Good programming : the songs in this section heard together form a coherent arc, complemented by Massenet's Nuit d'Espagne, which picks up the idea of lute/guitar serenade. 

After the interval, Henri Duparc and Reynaldo Hahn, representing a generation later than Gounod and Massenet,. Duparc's Chanson triste, La vie antérieure and Extase all beautifully expressed by Gens and Manoff who have performed them together many times.  But in the context of this evening's recital, what stood out was Lamento, where Duparc sets the same Gauthier text that inspired Edmund Polignac, but chooses different stanzas.  Duparc doesn't need mock guitar serenade, since he focuses more on the mournful meaning of the poem.  Gens declaimed with elegant dignity, Manoff  creating the dark, rumbling piano lines.  Good programming is important! Someone recently told me that he hated concerts because he couldn't concentrate solely on what he wanted to hear, but yow ! That's the whole point of a recital, putting things together in a way that enhances them all.   

Three songs from Reynaldo Hahn Le rossignol des lilas, Mai, and Les cygnes, ideally suited to the innate purity of Gen's style, With Infidélité and Rêverie she could display more depth and richness of tone.  As always fidelity to meaning makes all, the difference. Gens understands why the emotions in the poem (Gautier) are understated rather than overt.  A change of mood to conclude, with  songs from Offenbach's Six Fables of La Fontaine, La laitière et le pot au lait, Le rat de ville et le rat des champs, La cigale et la fourmi and for the first encore, Le corbeau et le renard.  Offenbach  replicates la Fontaine's long almost prose like lines, lively phrasing bringing out the sting in their tales.  Gen's gift for precise diction and clarity paid off handsomely.  For a second encore,  Gabriel Fauré's Le rose d'Ispahan, one of the loveliest songs in the entire canon, deliciously fragrant in this performance.  A third encore : Reynaldo Hahn's Néère. 


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Paris en fête : How to make classical music fun !

How to make classical music fun without dumbing down! Paris en fête,with François-Xavier Roth conducting Les Siècles at the Philharmonie de Paris this week, broadcast live HERE.  Proof that "education" without genuine excellence is counter-productive. This should be compulsory viewing for bureaucrats and audiences who think culture must be forced down grimly like it were poison. Please read my article End the Missionary Position in Classical Music !  This concert was so good that I've listened several times over; presumably many in the audience want more, too.  Roth is a wonderful communicator, whose enthusiasm inspires because he believes in what he does: he doesn't play games and doesn't ever dumb down.

Carmen, first. But "Who is Carmen?"  asks Antoine Pecqeuer,  another born communicator who doesn't need hype to do what he does. Carmen is popular the world over because she's a personality. Carmen lives forever: self centred Don Josés will never understand.  Thus the essence of what opera should be: human emotions in universal, infinite variety. Which is why small minds do get art.  As Pecqeuer reminded us, Carmen bombed at its premiere because it was ahead of its time. Isabelle Druet talks about Carmen so unaffectedly that the Habanera seems an extension of the personality.  Part of the fun, too, is that the Choeur des Grand Ecoles is bigger than you'd ever get on an opera stage. 

Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Délibes, Berlioz, Offenbach, a programme of pieces familiar to French audience  but with a twist to show that French repertoire is not parochial - the Bachannale from Samson et Delila. Pecqeuer talks about French tradition, from Lully to Boulez, and Roth expands. Dance is the foundation for rhythm,  structure and inventiveness. Thus, Un bal from the Symphonie fantastique.   From Berlioz, instrumental experiments and sophisticated colour.  "What does Paris mean to you?", Pecqeuer asks the audience, many of whom are young children. "Le pain" says one, totally matter of fact.  Then, the overture from La vie Parisienne, and the Infernal Gallop from Orphée aux Enfers. By now the audience are really getting into the spirit.  The Infernal Gallop, "the can can", yet again, this time with the audience singing along, Roth speeding up the tempi. Everyone's exhilarated, high on the thrill.  Is classical music elitist or dull?  No way!  Those at this concert will come away feeling that music is a vital part of life.   

Offenbach Le roi Carotte - perfect for post-truth politics

At the International Opera Awards this spring, Jacques Offenbach Le roi Carotte. and deservedly so. What a discovery!  Le roi Carotte is a wildly anarchic satire, whose message is only too relevant now, in our era of "post-truth" politics where demagogues and their followers think winning is everything. The production was a sensation at its premiere at the Opéra National de Lyon on 12 December 2015. It was broadcast on France Musique, French and German TV, the BBC, and elsewhere but in the UK it seems have have raised nary a ripple of interest.  Judging by the incomprehension with which Chabrier's L’Étoile was received in London this February (read more here) maybe one could conclude that London audiences don't get opéra bouffe, or they'd have realized that King Ouf's very name springs from the word "bouffe". In other words, puffed up, wicked, lively, as delicious as whipped creme.  

Offenbach's original, first heard in 1872, was an over the top extravaganza of 22 scenes, singing, dancing, music and comedy sketches, lasting more than six hours, which definitely wouldn't go down well with modern audiences.  Bouffe and operetta aren't quite the same thing. This new edition was prepared by Laurent Pelly, a man of the theatre who knows the genre extremely well, and indeed specializes in French theatre and opera. Remember his Ravel  L'enfant et les sortilèges at Glyndebourne?  Read an interview with Pelly here.  Pelly has directed a lot of Offenbach : La belle Hélène  Les conte's d'Hoffmann (twice) , La Périchole and La Duchesse de Gérolstein.  

Le roi Carotte is magnificent on its own terms, but a bit of background doesn't hurt. The Overture, for example, though it's pure Offenbach, has the panache of the military choruses in Gounod's Faust. This may be no accident, since going to war meant less to Goethe than it did to Gounod whose audiences gloried in Napoleon III and victories in the Crimea. When Le roi Carotte premiered, the irony would not have been lost on Offenbach's audiences, who only the previous year had witnessed the Prussian invasion and the Paris Commune.  In Le roi Carotte, the drunken student chorus is even more prominent, complete with staccato riffs to which beer mugs can be rhythmically beaten. Hedonism rules! But "Don't knock it" sing the chorus : it can all evaporate in an instant.  

Le roi Fridolin XXIV is broke and must marry Princess Cunégonde for her money.  There's a wonderful vignette, in which a crafty student, Robin-Lauron, plots to rip off Fridolin and his remaining assets (weapons).  Indeed, all the set pieces are full of character, sharply defined.  Robin-Lauron discovers Rosée-du-soir, princess of Moravia, who has been imprisoned for years by the witch Coloquinte  The pair sing a duet "Roule, petit boule" , so even if we don't have a clue why they're there, the scene is delightful.  The witch is tricked by greed into conjuring up Le roi Carotte..... 

Back in the palace, Cunégonde meets the stuffy courtiers. But who should march in but Le roi Carotte and his vegetable minions.  The court is horrified: the orchestra playing strange sounds that could come from Berlioz.  But Coloquinte the witch "conducts" from above, and the court fall over in mindless adulation.  "A bas Fridolin!"  the chorus cries. The Carrot is King.  Fridolin calls on his forebears. Ghostly knights in armour march in, singing a parody of Gounod's Gloire immortelle de nos aïeux.  "How dare you invoke your ancestors", they scold, "roi sans vertu qui les bravais jadis".  Fridolin consults a magician, Kiribibi, who sings an aria about politics, Talleyrand and a fickle public.  Fridolin and his friends are magicked of to Pompeii, "la ville de la morte" . More spooky music, more references to Faust.  Like the hedonistic students, the citizens of Pompeii sing of bread and wine. Fridolin and his companions con the Pompeiians  by invoking railway trains!  I kid you not, this is in the score and libretto  Growling ostinato, high flutes suggesting wind, whistles and speed. "La locomotive, coursier infernale, encore captive, s'ébrante le signale". The railway symbolized progress : Berlioz and Heine wrote about them, too.  The music is so vivid that the staging doesn't need to show trains. Instead a depiction of Vesuvius is wheeled in, spouting smoke.  Like a locomotive.....

Meanwhile back in the palace le roi Carotte is besieged by sycophants and salesmen - from Persia no less - but being down to earth, he prefers soup to silks.  Fridolin and Cunégonde meet. "Moi! Toi?  haha haha " they duet, the orchestra laughing along.  Coloquinte appears and sends Fridolin, Robin-Lauron and Rosée-du-soir underground in puffs of smoke, the journey described by the orchestra, playing in darkness. Here, insects rule.  "Gloria nobis", they sing as they educate Fridolin and friends about their underworld. The bugs swarm upwards.  Coloquinte can't cope.  Le roi Carotte and his radish knights get sick.  "Ça,  Le Stratège ", to use bugs to weaken veg! Crops fail, prices rise and the populace in the market place revolt.  At last they call the king a carrot. Kiribibi stands astride a barricade of vegetable crates and sings of Liberty.  The people recognize the sounds of an approaching army.   Fridolin is restored. Le roi carotte doesn't go to the guillotine. He's shredded in a vegetable press.

An exceptional opera, an exceptional production and a very good cast, details here.  Chances are it will never come to the UK, but let's hope it will be appreciated on DVD.

Offenbach Vert-Vert : Garsington Opera at Wormsley

"Monty Python meets the Belles of St Trinians? Sacré bleu !"Jacques Offenbach's Vert-Vert at Garsington Opera at Wormsley  features a girl’s school in collective mourning for a dead parrot".

"The plot, suitably Pythonesque given the dead parrot, is more or less impossible to précis. Suffice it to say we are in a girls convent school in mourning for its dead parrot, Vert-Vert. Cue general lamentations. The girls choose an innocent young man, Valentin, as a substitute parrot....."Rather like a demented Brian Rix farce, mayhem ensues. All is happily resolved in the rousing final chorus (“A slurp of wine”) but in between there are some notably tender and affecting moments. This may be comic but it is comedy with a heart."

Read more HERE in Opera Today reviewed by Douglas Cooksey

"The production - a fine demonstration of ‘more is less’ but nonetheless with several coups de théâtre as when the back of the stage opens wide and the school/chateau is wheeled to the open space beyond with Garsington’s woods as a backdrop or another occasion when the rear of the stage opens to admit the barge named Hortense which bears Valentin away - was an object lesson in pointful economy. .......Most importantly - and this is probably why the genre has never really caught on in Britain - in David Parry we had a conductor who, like Beecham, has the idiom at his fingertips, exuding panache, élan and élegance in equal measure (only French words will do). Beecham once talked of combining the maximum delicacy with the maximum virility, a comment which might well have applied to the Garsington orchestra on this occasion with its polished strings, an excellent first clarinet (Peter Sparks) in his several solos and a notably secure horn section. The score absolutely fizzed along.

Opera Rara Offenbach Fantasio

Opera Rara resurrects another interesting opera- Offenbach's Fantasio .With a good cast and a good conductor this might bring the piece into the mainstream. Read Claire Seymour's thoughtful assessment HERE in Opera Today.

".......Offenbach’s score contains many musical gems, but the overture gives little hint of the treasures to come. During the slow, mysterious introduction, Mark Elder, conducting without a baton, subtly coaxed some delicate playing from the instrumentalists of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The wide tessitura — gentle flutes aloft, unison celli below — and airy texture, together with the rather tentative melodic gestures, created an ambiguous, slightly unsettling tone, before the launch of a zippy allegro got the show on the road. But, the overall effect was rather fragmented."

"....The mood whipped up in the second act, though; for it’s here that the trademark Offenbach show-stoppers — offering both froth and charm, rapture and serenity — are to be found. And, it was also here that American soprano Brenda Rae’s star quality was revealed. 

Offenbach at the Beach - Garsington Opera

Garsington Opera scores a first AND trumps Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach (next month's sensation at the Barbican).  Garsington Opera is doing Offenbach's La Périchole at home in Wormsley Park  this season, and also screening it live in Skegness at 745pm on 1st July, part of the Skegness arts festival. Quite a venture as this will be aimed at an audience completely new to opera. There will be pre-show music and street theatre performance before the screening, and a fireworks display afterwards. Families are encouraged to come along and do the country house opera experience with picnics on the beach.

Deckchairs provided for early arrivals! Fish and chips and ice cream cones instead of salmon and champagne! Swimsuits (or winter gear, if the weather's bad), but you could always turn up in tux and gown. Stilettos on the shingle!

 It's a good idea to choose this opera instead of Don Giovanni and Vivaldi's rare L'Olympiade, because La Périchole isn't something non-opera audiences will have preconceptions about. Besides, in this production by Jeremy Sams, it will be "a hugely fun and bubbly comedy which will be performed in English, is set in the 1940s in Cuba, follows the highs and lows of the heroine Périchole, an impoverished Peruvian street singer." 
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ENO Tales of Hoffman

Mark Berry in Opera Today :
"......The pipe emblazoned upon the stage curtain and the pipes being smoked by Hoffmann and the students seem to hold the key to the director’s conception. Whatever it is that is being smoked would appear to lie behind the visions. Fair enough, but there is perhaps a little too much of the surface psychedelic, especially during the second (here, first) act, and not enough truly Romantic, Gothic darkness"

Robert Hugill in Planet Hugill:
"The good news is that a pretty full version of the opera was being used, which benefited Christine Rice's Niklausse, enabling Rice to present the fullest possible version of the character complete with the aria in the prologue and a lot else besides. The bad news is that the opera was performed with sung recitatives. No explanation given. That the cast were all English speaking would seem to have been a good opportunity to perform the work with spoken dialogue; in Munich the cast were polyglot and singing in French, so one can understand the desire to use the recitatives. My problem with the recitative version is that of pacing, it seems to inflate things (recitative is inherently slower than dialogue)."