MOSES AND PHARAOH – REVIEW OF 2022 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL

Reviewed by James Karas

Moses and Pharaoh (or Moïse et Pharaon if you prefer the French title)  is a grand opera by Gioachino Rossini that is rarely produced to the point that many of us have not even heard about it. The Aix-en-Provence Festival has run into the breach by producing a highly creditable production for the post-covid era. 

The opera has many fine points but it also contains some lacunae that will make you scratch your head at three and a half hours of  a performance that starts at 9:30 p.m. It may also test your stamina to stay awake. It is performed at the Theatre de l’Archevêché  with its open roof which means we have to wait for darkness to set in before the performance can begin.

Moses and Pharaoh is about the exodus of the Hebrews from their captivity in Egypt. If you have not read your Bible or seen Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, you should, because you will get a good idea about the plot there. Director Tobias Kratzer and Designer Rainer Sellmaier have a few surprises and some are not pleasant ones.

The opening scene takes place in a modern office where men in modern suits are discussing or negotiating something. They are quite animated but we do not hear what they are saying.

On the left side of the stage, we see a modern refugee camp. The people are dressed reasonably well and there are no signs of despair but they do want to get out of Egypt and go to the promised land of Israel.

One man stands out because he wears a completely different costume from the others and he is none other than Moses. Think of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments and you will get a precise picture of what he is wearing. Staff in hand and flowing robe, he looks as if he stepped out of the Old Testament. Michele Pertusi in the role has a marvelous, resonant baritone voice and he exudes authority. We do not argue with Moses  because he also has the ear of God and Pertusi because he has the voice and bearing to perform the role.

Moses and Pharaoh© Copyright: Moses and Pharaoh

by Gioacchino Rossini – musical direction Michele Mariotti – 

staging Tobias Kratzer – Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2022 © Monika Rittershaus

We know something about the negotiations and miracles preceding the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt but Luigi Balocchi and D’Etienne de Jouy, Rossini’s librettists have added a love interest. Anna (I am using the English names of the characters for convenience), Moses’ niece is madly in love with Amenophis, the son of the Pharaoh! Is she going  to give up her faith or will he renounce his pharaohship and trek across the desert to Israel?

Soprano Jeannine De Bique as Anna has a marvelous voice and she can leap across octaves like Superman can leap to the top of buildings. Not always in complete control but she still delivers a highly accomplished perfromance. Samoan tenor Pene Pati has a supple voice that reminded me of the youthful Juan Diego Florez but again with some control issues.

Mezzo-soprano Vasilisa Berzhanskaya as Amenophis’ mother Sinaide turns in perhaps the best performance of the night especially in her rendition of  “Ah, d’une tendre mère,”  in which she implores her son, tenderly and lovingly, to forget Anna and marry the  Assyrian princess chosen for him. It is a long recitative and aria and Berzhanskaya gives a bravura and memorable rendition.

Bass-baritone Adrian Sampetrean gives a solid performance as the troubled Pharaoh  who is buffeted by a desire to keep the Hebrews and the powerful miracles performed by Moses’ God.  He is responsible for some of the plot twists such as promising to let the Hebrews go and then going back on his word. Moses has God’s ear and he asks and gets some pretty awful stuff, like plagues, drought, floods and very destructive storms.

The production has some graphic videos of droughts, floods and storms, all shown to us on television news reports.

The Egyptians are not convinced and they gather in a temple to praise the mother of the goddess Osiris. They have dancers to entertain them and we are treated to an interminable ballet. The faithful in the temple start fidgeting (or is it my imagination?) the Pharaoh gets up and with every such move we think the dance is over. But it is not.

The Pharaoh finally relents and lets the Hebrews go. We have to get the parting of The Red Sea and the exit from Egypt. As we all know the Red Sea will part and we see it doing just that on a powerful video. This may not be de Mille, but it is impressive enough.

The Egyptians decide to give chase and we see men in suits and smartly dressed women in high heels running across the desert to catch the Hebrews. No horses, no soldiers just people from their office jobs running to catch up with enemy. It’s all on video of course. They catch up and the Red Sea engulfs them. We get some dramatic views of people swimming, sinking and eventually their corpses floating on the water.

It is a memorable production with some superb singing and interesting ideas. But women in high heels chasing the Hebrews across the Red Sea? No need to worry about it, I suppose. We know the Hebrews made it.

Michele Mariotti conducted the Lyon Opera Orchestra with enthusiasm in an outstanding performance.

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Moïse et Pharaon ou Le Passage de La Mer Rouge by Gioachino Rossini opened on July 7 and will be performed a total of six times until July 20, 2022, at the Thêâtre de l’Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com

SALOME – REVIEW OF 2022 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The 2022 Aix-en-Provence Festival is back with a full program of operas and concerts in the gorgeous medieval city. Richard Strauss’s Salome opened the opera season with a production by Andrea Breth featuring the 31-year-old soprano Elsa Dreisig in her debut performance in the title role. There were some marvelous moments and some worthy of complaint.

Let’s start with what I thought was the best part of the production and of Dreisig’s singing. In the final minutes of the opera, Salome has her wish and demand for the head of Jochanaan – John the Baptist – fulfilled when it is delivered to her on a silver platter or a shield, if you are picky. It is the ultimate gratification and ultimate disappointment for her and Dreisig has to express both in powerful and emotional singing. Jochanaan rebuffed her when she wanted to kiss him but now, she can kiss him and bite him like some fruit. But he is dead, and his wild eyes are closed. There is triumph and defeat for the young girl who fell in love with the wild Prophet. Dreisig’s voice soars with anger and emotion and expresses deep regret in a singular rendering of the recitative/aria.

Unfortunately, that does not hold true for Dreisig’s performance throughout. She does not have a big voice and on some occasions, she was drowned out by the orchestra, and she compared uneasily with the other singers who outvoiced her. Breth presents Salome as a teenager with Herod, her stepfather, lusting after her while she develops a passion for the imprisoned Baptist. She is a sweet girl who sings very beautifully but a bigger voice would have been nice. But she rose to the occasion in the last minutes of the production in a bravura performance.

© Copyright: Salomé by Richard Strauss – musical direction Ingo Metzmacher – 
staging Andrea Breth – Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2022 © Bernd Uhlig

Andrea Beth’s production was interesting if not entirely satisfactory for other reasons. The opening is somewhat confusing as we settle in for a dark and foggy set showing the open cover of a tomb, or maybe a cistern in this case. The scene which is supposed to be on a terrace lasts for forty-five minutes and only Salome is lit by the moon. After a while you want to see what is going on, more than you want to appreciate the director’s vision, or the set designer’s (Raimund Orfeo Voigt) and lighting designer’s (Alexander Koppelmann) view of the darkness of the soul.

For the party scene, the set consists of a gray backdrop with a large table where Herod and his guests sit for the banquet. It is not much of a banquet or a party. Everything happens behind that table until Salome agrees to satisfy her stepfather Herod’s request for a dance at any price.

Salome’s dance, with or without seven veils, is traditionally a very important part of the opera. With Breth’s vision of Salome as a young, innocent girl, perhaps we are not entitled to expect a sexually charged dance that would satisfy Herod’s lust. We get almost nothing. Choreographer Beate Vollack produces four Salomes doing some steps, but it is a long way from any kind of dance. Is it because Dreisig cannot dance or did Breth think what we see qualifies as Salome’s Dance? It does not.

The other central motif of the opera is the decapitation Jochanaan and the presentation of his head to Salome. There may be a decapitation but there is no head visible. All that Salome gets is a large bucket and we assume that the Baptist’s head is in it. She sticks her head in the bucket to give the much-desired kiss on the mouth to Jochanaan and comes out with blood on her face. We saw Jochanaan’s head at the beginning of the performance when he looked out from the cistern and the reason for not showing us his head after it was severed from his body is a mystery to me.

The other singers deserve unstinting praise. Tenor John Daszak heroically sings the dirty-minded Herod. Herodias is his wife, the mother of Salome and the former wife of his brother. Yes, welcome to Hamlet. Angela Denoke is a first-rank soprano who sings marvelously and illustrates how she was able to nab her brother-in-law after her husband “disappeared”.

Strauss’s third opera has some wild music that the Orchestre de Paris under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher played with great fervor and volume. The one-act opera lasts for about one hour and forty minutes with no intermission. It is based on Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name  

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Salome by Richard Strauss opened on July 5 and will be performed a total of five times until July 19, 2022, at the Grand Theatre de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com