Picture by Frédéric Iovino
I initially purchased tickets for this Lille manufacturing of Věc Makropulos (The Makropoulos Case) as a result of Véronique Gens was solid as Emilia. A favourite work, by Janáček, a favourite composer, with a singer whose tackle the function was one I used to be all in favour of witnessing — and a city I like. I booked seats for the ultimate efficiency, the one one suitable with my diary, then went by means of the same old rigmarole on-line: finding a handy lodge, with parking, that accepts canine, and an honest restaurant close to the opera home open late sufficient on a Monday night time. Within the occasion, Gens dropped out and was changed by Aušrinė Stundytė. However, having seen the latter in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s memorable 2019 manufacturing of Woman Macbeth of Mtsensk, I wasn’t as upset by the information as I might need been. So on Monday night time, there I used to be, in Lille.
The Lille Opera has a checkered historical past — each in its buildings, and as an establishment That is no place to enter all that, however for these , right here’s a hyperlink to its English-language entry on Wikipedia. And right here’s one other, to the home’s personal web site, the place it will likely be clear that their programming, if restricted, is intriguing.
Kornél Mundruczó, new to me, is a Hungarian actor, film-maker and director. His manufacturing of Věc Makropulos was first staged ten years in the past by the Opera-Ballet Vlaanderen (based mostly in Antwerp and Ghent), and gained an Worldwide Opera Award. A 2020 revival in Geneva was severely impacted by Covid restrictions: the orchestra was, so I learn, changed by a recording and the viewers saved to a minimal. It’s, unsurprisingly, cinematic in really feel, utilizing large-scale projections, and influenced by numerous iconic administrators and their works, cited by Mundruczó in a program interview. As befits the plot, it straddles a borderline between naturalism and fantasy.
Lille is to be congratulated for reviving it in fashion, with a full orchestra — the Lille Nationwide — within the pit; it was an actual privilege to see and listen to this fascinating work up shut with a powerful, well-directed solid, in a 1,100-seat home with good acoustics. (Lately, I’ve solely seen it on the Bastille, albeit in Warlikowski’s tremendous manufacturing.)
Mundruczó’s makes use of solely two units and runs with out a break. It opens in an nameless, wood-paneled courtroom. A big allegory of justice hangs above the tribune, with its row of microphones, piles of recordsdata, and hi-tech seats. In the course of the bounding orchestral prelude, bikers in full-face helmets, all black, rifle methodically by means of the recordsdata on the desk till one holds up a paper for all to see. They go away, and because the characters take their locations, we’re plunged right into a driver’s-view video of a journey by means of a snowy forest panorama.
When Emilia enters, in denims, a bit checked jacket, short-cropped hair and sun shades (the director mentions Bowie and Björk as influences), she’s carrying the identical type of helmet. So, curiously, is Hauk-Schendorf, when his time comes. Had been they each amongst these mysterious bikers? Was it Emilia who discovered and brandished the paper? What was the paper? The components she was out to get better, or a logo of it? Was our quick journey on a quick machine by means of the snowy forest Emilia taking the paper dwelling, or Emilia using to the courthouse? I didn’t work this puzzle out, and located no clarification in this system notes. What was clear from the beginning, nonetheless, was that the revival (by Marcos Darbyshire, an Argentine director who labored with Mundruczó on the 2016 unique) was very professionally directed.
One vital element earlier than I transfer on. Because the director’s emphasis is much less on Emilia’s opera-diva glamour, extra on her frailty and vulnerability, suspended in some liminal area between life and demise, even at this early stage within the story she has one arm bandaged. She doubles up, as if with cramps, staggers, almost collapses, and, unseen, coughs up not blood however, much less expectedly and extra startlingly, a viscous black liquid.
For the remainder of the opera, there’s neither empty stage nor lodge room. We transfer, as an alternative, to Emilia’s spacious lodge on the sting of a forest, a liminal area, removed from metropolis life and social norms. The decor is up to date, however with the odd trace at artwork deco. By means of a window on the left and one other, panoramic one, on the rear, we see the snowy forest in life-size movies. There are some boxy, trendy armchairs with a coffee-table in entrance of a roaring hearth, and reverse, to the best, a kitchen island with excessive chairs, a sink, and, within the wall, a large fridge. Plenty of flowers have been pulled from their vases and litter the ground. Later, Emilia will stuff them right into a bin bag.
However there’s additionally a hospital drip, with a pouch of viscous black liquid hanging from a metal stand on wheels, and on the bed room platform in entrance of the large rear window, an array of blinking medical gear on a rack. Each time the fridge door is opened, which is very often, it emits clouds of steam, bathed in a blaze of golden gentle from inside (Felice Ross’s lighting is great all through, as regular), and inside we see neither meals nor drink, however neat rows of drip pouches, crammed with a black, viscous liquid.
Emilia, chilly, now has a pretend fur thrown on carelessly over operating shorts and lengthy johns, or maybe tracksuit bottoms. Any longer, her garments, even her hair, shall be regularly stripped away, like days peeled off a calendar, as magic — or one other actuality, past life — takes over from realism. Hauk-Schendorf, for instance, arrives, helmet in hand, in strobe-lighting in opposition to a gauzy curtain; his episodes might be dream sequences, whereas Emilia hovers, fragile and weak in her bald head and bandages, in a liminal area between her exhaustingly gone and the prospect of aid — by some means.
She is, in fact, fading sooner than the libretto suggests. And, bizarrely, none of these urgent in on her, nagging her, needing her, appears to note the bandages, the drip, or the viscous black liquid. However I believe that’s the Mundruczó’s level: they’re all self-obsessed, oblivious to Emilia’s personal state of exhaustion, disillusionment, insensibility, and struggling. Solely Hauk-Schendorf indicators his affection, giving the drip pouch a jolly squeeze to re-inject some viscous black vitality into her.
Actuality, then, slips away with Emilia’s garments, even her pores and skin: scratching at her thighs, she strips it off underneath her nails. As a substitute of blood, viscous black liquid oozes out. In a spine-tinglingly transferring second, as she sings “I might really feel demise’s hand on me. It was not so dreadful,” she smiles in aid and relaxes her shoulders, as if at that very second she’s made her thoughts up, and the load of life can even now slip deliciously away.
On the very finish, the others transfer again to line up like statues within the darkness, the components goes up in flames, the contents of the lodge — every part, together with the kitchen sink — rise magically into the air, and Emilia sings her remaining ‘Our father…’ in Greek. Curtain.
Picture by Frédéric Iovino
My regular worry with a Janáček work is that, confronted with some killer vocal writing, the boys would possibly let the facet down. Right here, there was none of that, although veteran baroque specialist Jean-Paul Fouchécourt — he joined Les Arts Florissants 40 years in the past — mustered much less sheer quantity than these round him. Expertise tells, although: combining vocal and dramatic subtlety, he long-established a completely charming Hauk-Schendorf, radiating pale urbanity. (I used to be going so as to add, “within the little time out there,” however it seems, in line with the conductor, Dennis Russell Davies, that Hauk-Schendorf has the longest steady intervention within the rating.)
Character tenor Paul Kaufmann, first on after the orchestral prelude, set the tone for the night with an unusually wealthy, resounding Vitek, right here portrayed as a scruffy lush, sleeping underneath the courtroom desk. How he managed to sing so properly whereas hopping about on one foot as he pulled his socks on was a thriller to me. Jan Hnyk (the one precise Czech within the solid) was a vocally glowing Dr. Kolenatý, a agency, deep, crunchy baritone and maybe, to me, one of the best of the boys general. He painted a convincing portrait of the bustling, bewildered lawyer.
Denys Pivnitskyi (Albert) has an ample tenor voice, as broad as his participating smile, as muscular as his determine and as vigorous as his performing. Like many a Bertik, he might solely take a passing swipe on the two or three stratospheric notes within the rating, however they’re split-second affairs, not “Nessun Dorma,” and I most well-liked his sturdy singing general to a few of his bleating forebears in the identical function.
Searching again over time, I discovered I’d already seen our Jaroslav Prus. Over twenty years in the past, as regards to The Bassarids on the Châtelet, I wrote “Robin Adams was an fascinating discover as Captain of the Royal Guard.” Effectively noticed, although I say it myself. Although listed as a baritone, his voice sounds to me very a lot bass-baritone, darkish and rock-solid. He, together with each Paul Kaufmann and particularly Jan Hnyk, are undoubtedly singers I’d be comfortable to search out on solid lists sooner or later. With Krista, Emilia herself, and 100 musicians within the pit, they sadly left the elegant however softer-voiced Janek, Florian Panzieri, considerably within the shade.
Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur by some means sandwiched a triumphal Néris, on the Théâtre des Champs Elysées final week, between two Kristas in Lille, one the night time earlier than, one the night time after. She provides, I wrote, ‘an image of vocal well being, with a wealthy, highly effective, luxurious, grainy mezzo voice, not too darkish, constant in timbre and power from high to backside.’ In different phrases, a Krista de luxe.
And so I come to Aušrinė Stundytė. I’ve thought arduous about how one can describe her efficiency as Emilia Marty, when the truth is it was every part you may think about if you happen to already know her voice, and her dramatic dedication and skills. It’s not a ravishing voice. (I wouldn’t anticipate to listen to her quickly, or ever, as Arabella or within the 4 Final Songs.) Quickly to be 50, she’s labored it arduous in dramatic roles, and the result’s fairly a, sure, arduous, rigid sound, with echoes of her unforgettable forerunner within the function, Anja Silja. However her voice is kind of constant, she nonetheless has all of the notes, and the highest ones, simply once you worry the worst, ring out like a bell. Anyway, Emilia Marty isn’t Arabella or (Die ägyptische) Helena, it’s a type of roles the place performing is not less than as essential as vocal magnificence, and on the performing facet, Stundytė can scarcely be faulted. “Elle a eu des moments magnifiques,” stated my neighbor, summing all of it up.
Picture by Frédéric Iovino
Amongst his credentials, Dennis Russell Davies can checklist a number of seasons as principal conductor of the Brno Philharmonic, and it exhibits. His studying of the rating was marvelously symphonic and the orchestra (one other potential weak hyperlink in Janáček performances) rose to the event with gusto. The danger, with a symphonic method to opera, is that the singers could also be left to fend for themselves whereas the conductor focuses on the pit, however this was certainly not the case right here; and the cinemascope sound suited Kornél Mundruczó’s cinematic manufacturing to a tee.
A few weeks in the past, after Das Wunder der Heliane in Strasbourg, I remarked on “the creativeness proven of their programming by France’s regional opera homes.” This Věc Makropulos is one other instance of the tenacity and creativity of those homes in face of adversity. These are turbulent occasions in tradition as elsewhere, and Lille Opera particularly has had a troubled historical past and (as a look on the schedule I linked to above will present) provides solely three or 4 works a 12 months with full orchestra. However they soldier on, they stage some fascinating rarities in a single format or one other, and it’s heartwarming to search out performances of this high quality nonetheless occurring in France’s 25-or-so regional opera theater. We’re fortunate to have them. For the way lengthy, I’m wondering.
