REQUIEM - REVIEW OF 2019 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

I don’t think anyone has considered Mozart’s Requiem – a mass for the dead – as an opera. It is his last composition and he left it seriously unfinished because, well, he died. Don’t tell conductor Raphael Pichon and director Romeo Castellucci that – they know he died, they think the Requiem can serve as an operatic work. They have taken Mozart’s unfinished work and by adding from his other compositions and works by other composers have fashioned a glorious evening at a mass for the dead, make that the opera.

There is plenty of choral music to be sure but there is also joyous singing and dancing, a review of some historical events and finally a wonderful and completely unexpected affirmation of life. 

Aix-en-Provence Festival 2019 © Pascal Victor / Artcompress

The evening begins with a bed on the stage and a woman smoking. We hear a beautiful voice singing a cappella an anonymous hymn about Christ being obedient unto death for us and exalted by God. The orchestra joins in with somber music and we hear male voices chant “he filled me with bitterness” from Mozart’s K 477B.

People come on stage dressed in black and carrying black flags. They drape the deathbed as we listen to the Introit, the first part of the Requiem proper. A Kyrie eleison sung by the chorus follows that is so splendidly done it rises to the ears of the Lord in heaven.

The Pygmalion Chorus with soprano Siobhan Stagg, alto Sara Mingardo, tenor Martin Mitterrutzner and bass Luca Tittoto provide the glorious, celestial splendour of the sacred music. The Pygmalion Orchestra conducted by Pichon provides the accompaniment.

We do the entire Requiem as put together but Pichon and Castellucci and see delightful, celebratory dances in colourful East European costume. Evelin Facchini is responsible for the gorgeous and spirited traditional choreographies.

Through generous use of projections, Pichon and Castellucci with dramaturge Piersandra Di Matteo also attempt to list and illustrate in part how we have evolved from vertebrates to homo sapiens. They also list all that we have lost, all that has died. The civilizations or cities that have disappeared from the Minoans, the Myceneans, the Etruscans, the  Lydians, the Phrygians, the Illyrians, the  Pelasgians and a host of others. 

Aix-en-Provence Festival 2019 © Pascal Victor / Artcompress

The number of categories of things from the past and the present that that they presented were so fascinating in themselves that they ran the danger of being distracting.

The last part of the requiem, Communion, sung by the entire chorus is an invocation to the merciful Lord to grant the dead eternal rest with the saints forever. The evening finishes with the beautiful traditional burial service mass for male voices “In Paradisum.”

An unforgettable evening.

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Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with additional chants by other composers as put together by Raphael Pichon, Romeo Castellucci and Piersandra Di Matteo is being performed eight times until July 19, 2019 on various dates at the Théâtre d l’Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press - www.greekpress.ca/

LES MILLES ENDORMIS - REVIEW OF 2019 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Les Mille Endormis (The Sleeping Thousand) is a one-act chamber opera by Adam Maor (music) and Yonatan Levy (libretto). Maor is Israeli, born in 1983, and Levy is Canadian, born in 1973, and Les Milles is their first foray into the creation of an opera. The work has been commissioned by the Aix-en-Provence Festival and the theatres of the city of Luxemburg among others. It premiered in Aix on July 6, 2019.

The sleeping thousand of the title are Palestinian detainees of Israel who have gone on a hunger strike.  The result is a type of biblical plague. The earth will not grow food, the crops grow dead and there is a real crisis. The United Nations is considering a resolution to stop rainfall over Israel and the United States will not veto it Reality and unreality go hand in hand.

The opera is cast for four singers. The Prime Minister sung by Polish baritone Tomasz Kumiega is a classic politician beset by a problem that he is out of his depth to handle. He deteriorates in front of our eyes as he struggles with an unsolvable problem. 

                                              Festival of Aix-en-Provence 2019 © Patrick Berger / Artcompre

Nourit is the Prime Minister’s assistant, sung by Israeli soprano Gan-ya Ben-gur Akselrod as the good and faithful servant.

S. is the head of Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency and the man who thinks of deftly solving the problem of the hunger strikers. American bass David Salsbery Fry sings the role of S.

French baritone Benjamin Alunni takes on the roles of Minister of Agriculture, the Voice of the People, a protester and the Cantor.    

What do we do with the hunger strikers? They cannot be tried or set free or left to die or much of anything else. S. has a solution.  There is no choice but to put all of them to sleep. And we see them arrayed in the Prime Minister’s office on scaffolding all wearing orange overalls.

The plot is part biblical, part science fiction, part theatre of the absurd and with perhaps some expressionism in the heady mix.

Three years after putting the Palestinians to sleep, things seem to be better but not great. Five years later the problems are hallucinations, nightmares and inability to sleep. The Prime Minister, the main character in the opera is starting to lose it.

A Cantor enters and chants Plague of Firstborn Children, an apocalyptic description of pestilence. Jewish babies struck with epileptic fits babbling in Arabic. Blood comes out of a Jewish child’s mouth and it is attributed to tongue-biting caused by involuntary Arabic speech.

This may be satire but it is delivered by the Cantor in a somber monotone addressed directly to the audience. He is dressed in a white robe with a gold, shiny globe on his head that looks like something from a sci-fi show. What are we to make of it?

Seven years later the plague is still on. The Prime Minister has not slept for a long time and the Arabs are eating all Jews at the Khafia. The Prime Minister looks like a jackal. The thousand are not sleeping and Nourit will be sent to infiltrate the Arab world of dreams.

She does go and then Levy gives a quick and unsatisfactory end to the tale. He has only an hour and fifteen minutes and he has packed a great deal for the audience to absorb on a first hearing.  S’s last words are the ambiguous and intriguing “my whole life I have spoken only nonsense.” 

                                                Festival of Aix-en-Provence 2019 © Patrick Berger / Artcompre

Elena Schwarz conducts the United Instruments of Lucilin, a small ensemble based in Luxemburg that specializes in contemporary music.  

The opera has elements of satire, even comedy as it focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian problem. It is sung in Hebrew as the creators look at the huge problem in the Middle East.  

Levy is not afraid to satirize the Israelis for jumping to conclusions that are not warranted by the facts and for being basically ridiculous in some aspects of their treatment of Palestinians.

The music is taut, sinuous and at times somewhat monotonous. This is a highly ambitious work that tackles a major political and human tragedy from a number of angles in a very short time. Are they trying to do too much very fast? Perhaps.

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Les Milles Endormis  by Adam Maor (music) and Yonatan Levy (libretto) opened on July 6, 2019 and is being performed five times at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume, Aix-en-Provence, France. http://festival-aix.com/

James Karas is the Senior Editor – Culture of The Greek Press. www.greekpress.ca

TOSCA – REVIEW OF 2019 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Aix-en-Provence Festival does not hesitate to stage original, often brilliant, sometimes touched by genius productions of operas.  For example, Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov turned Carmen into a psychiatric therapy session. He turned Don Giovanni into a family drama that takes place entirely in the library of the Commendatore’s house. Peter Sellars took Mozart’s mostly lost Zaide and turned it into a melodramatic anti-slavery tract to compete with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And Rigoletto found work in a circus.

This year we are invited to a rehearsal of Tosca. To be more precise, it is a performance that pretends to be a rehearsal that becomes a concert performance that ends up as a production touched by genius or a travesty.

We all know that the first act of Tosca takes place in the grand church of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome where Mario Cavaradossi is painting and hiding the escaped political prisoner Angelotti. Wrong.

                                    Aix-en-Provence Festival 2019 © Jean-Louis Fernandez

This production directed by Christophe Honoré opens in the posh apartment of a diva who is listening to Vissi d’arte on a CD and on a projection screen we see the CD spinning. She is listed as the Prima Donna (Catherine Malfitano) in the program who speaks English to her son and he replies in French. They are getting ready for a crew to film a rehearsal of Tosca.

Puccini steps in and we see the Sacristan (Leonardo Galeazzi) doing his bit at a lectern, score in hand. We will see almost all the characters grab a score and check what they are supposed to be singing. It’s all a casual rehearsal as we see the diva roaming around the numerous people who are doing their job. Tosca (Angel Blue), Cavaradossi (Joseph Calleja) and Angelotti (Simon Shibambu) are going through their roles. The nasty Scarpia (Alexey Markov) appears and proves that he can sing the role but there is no reason to get all worked up. It is just a casual rehearsal.

We get the joke and now can we get on with the performance in the second act? We are in Scarpia’s apartment in the Palazzo Farnese. There are several rooms and screens above them so we can see everything from a different angle or close up. The Prima Donna is everywhere and she will be with us almost uninterruptedly until the end of the opera. She does not sing.

Are we going to see the grotesque evil of Scarpia, hear Cavaradossi being tortured and witness Tosca kill the loathsome creep. Why bother during a rehearsal? Singers move around, they sing but not much else is required of them. We see Cavaradossi drinking and eating at the beginning of the act and lying on a bed with the Prima Donna sitting by him   while he is supposed to be tortured

                                    Aix-en-Provence Festival 2019 © Jean-Louis Fernandez

Tosca throws some ketchup on Scarpia when she is supposed to be murderously stabbing him but the whole atmosphere is laid back. Angel Blue does get to sing Vissi d’arte but why let her show off her vocal splendour? The projection screens are there so let’s show photos of other sopranos in the role. Photographs of Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Leontine Price and, you guessed it, Catherine Malfitano appear on the screen. Is there a point to this? Is Angel Blue joining the ranks of the erstwhile greats? Is she surpassing them? Is there a reason to spoil her singing by having us look at photographs of other singers?

By this time you figure it can’t possibly get worse. Wrong.

For the third act which takes place on the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo, the orchestra is brought on the stage leaving no room for much else. There is a miniature of the castle at the side of the stage and we get a close up of Ms Malfitano looking into it. She walks across the audience to the other side of the theater and sits on the stage. She will go and touch the conductor and walk through the orchestra during the scene and when Tosca and Cavaradossi are singing their incredibly moving duet she will be right there with them. When Tosca is supposed to be jumping off the parapet (she does not), Malfitano will be lying down on a terrace above the orchestra. 

                                         Aix-en-Provence Festival 2019 © Jean-Louis Fernandez

That is not all. The third act switches from a rehearsal to a concert performance. Cavaradossi appears in a tux and sings “E lucevan le stele” and Tosca comes out dressed to kill. She gives instructions to Cavaradossi about how to act after the fake shooting while he is standing on the side of the stage near the model castle and she is centre-stage. He is not shot and she does not jump off anything but simply raises her hand.

This is only a partial list of the unbelievable things in this production. I can add many more and express my disbelief that they actually put on a production like that. Is this what we can expect from Pierre Audi, the new Artistic Director? Or is the production touched by such genius that I missed it?

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 Tosca by Giacomo Puccini is being performed eight times between July 4 and 22, 2019 as part of the Aix-en-Provence Festival at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché, 26 Rue Gaston de Saporta, Aix-en-Provence, France. festival-aix.com/fr

JAKOB LENZ - REVIEW OF 2019 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Aix-en-Provence Festival is in its 71^st season which shows admirable longevity and it has a new artistic director, Pierre Audi, which promises change and renewal. Audi has scheduled six operas for the season most of them never seen at the Festival in Aix before.

One of the new productions is Jakob Lenz, a one-act chamber opera composed by Wolfgang Rihm on a libretto by Michael Fröhling which premiered in Hamburg in 1979. It has been produced in cities across Europe but it has made only a couple of tentative steps in the United States with productions at the Julliard Theater in New York and in Bloomington. I can find nothing about it being produced in Canada.

 

 Aix-en-Provence Festival 2019 © Patrick Berger / Artcompress

The opera is based on a novella by Georg Buchner, the man who provided the material for the more famous Wozzeck. It tells the story of the poet Lenz (Georg Nigl) who has serious emotional and mental issues (probably schizophrenia) not the least of which is his mourning for his love Friederike. He roams the mountains, hears voices and ends up with his friend Pastor Oberlin (Wolfgang Bankl).

The closely written and intense novella which deals largely with internal turmoil would appear to be almost impossible to transfer into a libretto but Fröhling has managed to do it. It may be worth noting that Lenz, Oberlin and Kaufman are historical figures.

Lenz stays with Oberlin for a while but his emotional turmoil, the voices that he hears and the images of Friederike that haunt him drive him back to the mountains. He hears the voices again and despairs of finding Friederike.

Their friend Kaufman (John Daszak) joins them. He is a friend of both men, but Lenz’s mental illness makes it impossible for them to deal with him and they finally put him in a straitjacket, tie him up to a bed and leave him.

The emotional and even intellectual breadth of the opera takes your breath away and the performance of Austrian baritone Nigl is simply heroic. Austrian bass-baritone Bankl as Oberlin and British Tenor John Daszak as Kaufmann give impressive performances though the demands on them are not as strenuous.

The opera has 2 sopranos (Josefin Feiler and Olga Heikkila), two altos (Camille Merckx and Beth Taylor) and two basses (Dominic Grosse and Eric Ander). They provide the eerie atmosphere and stamp the mental hell in which Lenz agonizes.

The music is modern, dissonant, sometimes jarring, sometimes cacophonous and at times harmonious. It represents the violent emotional tempests that Lenz is going through as he hears his voices, jumps into pools of water (indicated only metaphorically in this production), tries to revive a young girl who he thinks is Friderike and bears a cross in unmistakable emulation of the suffering of Jesus. It is heavy-duty stuff. 

Aix-en-Provence Festival 2019 © Patrick Berger / Artcompress

It is a dark opera done in modern dress. The stage décor by Martin Zehetgruber represents metaphorically and economically the rocky mountains, Oberlin’s residence and the more bizarre states of mind of the half-naked and Christ-like Lenz. He is seen wedged on what looks like a shelf and in positions of pain as he wrestles with his voices, God and his own dementia.

Director Andrea Breth handles the intense and overwrought material with a skillful hand as she takes us through the complexities of the plot in an hour and a quarter with no intermission. 

Ingo Metzmacher conducts the Ensemble Modern orchestra through the permutations of what sounds like a very difficult score.

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Jakob Lenz by Wolfgang Rihm is being performed three times in reprise of the 2014 Stuttgart Staatsoper production. On July 5, 8 and 12, 2019 at the Grand Théâtre de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France. http://festival-aix.com/

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press. www.greekpress.ca