Bernd Uhlig
Gabriel Fauré’s Pénélope, primarily based on the Odyssey, feels in some methods like a farewell to French grand Romantic opera, premiered in 1913 solely three weeks earlier than Stravinsky’s Ceremony of Spring. Apart from a famous recording with Jessye Norman within the title function alongside José van Dam as Ulysse and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic performed by Charles Dutoit, the opera stays comparatively obscure.
Pénélope additionally appears to cover within the shadow of Claude Debussy’s Pelleas et Mélisande from a decade earlier, although Fauré’s personal great incidental music to Maeterlinck’s play predated the numerous different well-known diversifications. The hyperlink between the 2 operas was obvious within the Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer time competition, having programmed Debussy’s work final 12 months, with each works introduced at Munich’s extra intimate Prinzregententheater. Jetske Mijnssen’s Pelleas framed it as a fin-de-siècle household drama. Conversely, director Andrea Breth—making her Staatsoper debut—made Odysseus’s return to Ithaca really feel equally claustrophobic, with Raimund Orfeo Voigt’s stage design that includes a number of cramped, modular rooms always monitoring throughout stage at a glacial tempo.
Whereas the Ithacan palace is suffocating, each the prelude and Act II happen in a desolate and grey stage populated solely by fragments of Hellenic marble statues, maybe reminiscences of previous glory. Within the opening moments, Ulysse sees physique doubles of him and Pénélope, the king performing as a caretaker for his spouse in a wheelchair. Breth’s thematic emphasis on reminiscence and unconscious is obvious from the prelude; Ulysses is imagining what life would have been had he remained on the island as a substitute of preventing in Troy. In Act II, the roles are reversed as Pénélope cares for her disguised husband till Ulysse positive aspects power to face up and reclaim his bow. In the meantime, Pénélope’s physique double lies as a corpse for a lot of the opera, an object of morbid fascination for her suitors on her “wedding ceremony” day.
The 4 suitors have been well-cast and balanced, notably with tenor Loïc Félix’s rounded voice and commanding presence as Antinoüs. In a very placing second, the suitors have a macabre arabesque dance with the servants, grotesquely emphasizing the phrase “dream” as they fantasize concerning the queen.
Brandon Jovanovich portrayed Ulysse with sensitivity. He had a surprisingly tender voice within the quieter moments, accompanied by Fauré’s sensible chamber music-like orchestration. But Jovanovich might have been extra forceful the moments when the Ithacan king seeks righteous vengeance. Ulysse right here was extra weary than bellicose. Victoria Karkacheva’s robust voice matched Pénélope’s defiant character. Whereas her French diction was not all the time discernible, Karkacheva gave nuance to a difficult function, notably within the intimate passages unaccompanied by the orchestra.
Thomas Mole because the shepherd Eumée had the clearest diction and projection of the forged. Because the oldest character within the story, a extra rugged voice may need been apt as a substitute of Mole’s youthful timbre, although his efficiency was nonetheless spectacular, so too Rinat Shaham because the nurse Euryclée.
Bernd Uhlig
Carried out by Susanna Mälkki, the orchestra was mellow and subdued for a lot of the night, eschewing a lush string sound and as a substitute presenting Fauré’s music as nearly proto-modernist. This was efficient notably in Act III, for instance, with the grumbling double basses and bleating trumpet because the suitors’ plans are foiled.
Nonetheless, the orchestral power within the latter half of the opera additionally proved considerably difficult for the singers, as through the tempestuous moments in Acts II and III something forte or louder coated Karkacheva and Jovanovich. This stability subject was not essentially helped by the venue as, even with a deep pit, the Prinzregententheater’s stone partitions don’t take up a lot sound. However, the singers, refrain, and orchestra blended effectively within the remaining scene’s reward to Zeus because the shepherds slay the suitors, probably the most unapologetically tonal passages of Fauré’s rating.
Breth’s delicate manufacturing and Mälkki’s restrained conducting made one not solely respect Pénélope as a hidden relic of late Romanticism but additionally discover Fauré’s looking forward to French modernism.
