By Cal
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDya671Jc3A
Available until: 2nd
January 2021
Some productions are difficult to
review. There are many things about this production which are really good, but no
matter how much you might enjoy aspects of a production – or even the
production as a whole – all productions have a specific aim and if you feel
they haven’t succeeded in this aim, I don’t really feel that’s something you
can ignore.
When a company puts on a certain opera, they are committing to telling a particular story. There are usually many ways in which the story can be told. They can change the time and the place in which the story is set. They can sometimes change some parts of the plot. I absolutely love Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and he has changed a lot of the original story, but it is still the story of someone who falls in love with a swan. The basic structure remains.
But if you’re watching a work in some
bewilderment, pausing it and going to read a synopsis (one advantage of a
youtube video is that you can do this), feeling rather surprised by the
description of what you’ve apparently seen and then returning to the work and still
really struggling to recognise the stories, that’s probably not a very good
sign. Even when I found out about the new story the production was trying to
tell (it’s about colonialism), I was still confused.
Of course, it might be only a very
small minority who feel this way. I know it’s not just me, but it’s
possible the majority of people know exactly what’s going on.
However, that doesn’t mean I hate the
production. Musically, it was stunning. Les Indes Galantes is an opera-ballet
so there’s a lot of orchestral music and conductor Ivor Bolton coaxes the most
beautiful sounds from his orchestra. The singers are also outstanding.
Anna Viebrock’s set and Michael
Bauer’s lighting combine to create different places and different effects and
these work really well. The sets are great to look at and very mobile – they can
be moved around easily on the stage and also moved offstage quickly to make way
for the next scene.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s choreography is
really beautiful to watch. He is also the director of the production and his
choreography background is evident throughout. He creates some incredible
images onstage, and not just with the dancing. One moment I particularly
remember is several people standing in a line, a bit like a hand on a clock.
They moved as the hand on a clock moves – the person on one end stayed in the
same place, the person on the other end had the furthest to move, but they
stayed perfectly in sync.
However, there are also quite a lot of
oddities that are less easy to understand. There are children who appear at the
beginning and the end. They sit at desks which kept falling over. It looks like
fun for the children, but it’s very confusing. Perhaps they are children who are
learning about the stories which are told in Les Indes Galantes
(it’s basically made up of four stories, or Entreés), but I wouldn’t say all
the stories are appropriate for children of that age.
There’s a scene in another Entrée
where lots of couples seem to be getting married, but the gay couple are turned
away. It’s certainly an effective way of illustrating that the character of Huascar
is not a nice man, but I would have felt more comfortable with it if the
congregation had tried to support their marriage. Later, several of the
characters start cleaning an imaginary window. They do it extremely well and
I’m sure there was a metaphorical reason which went over my head, either
because I’m stupid or I lack the necessary cultural references or maybe I’d
given up on understanding anything by then. But it didn’t make a lot of sense
to me.
The four stories have different sets
of characters so it’s customary for many of the roles to be doubled. We’re
shown shots of the singers in the opening of the opera, telling us which roles
they played. While the audience probably can’t keep all that information in
their minds, it does make it clear that some singers play two roles and that we
shouldn’t assume the same character has returned following the happy conclusion
of their love story and is now in love with someone else.
Lisette Oropesa gives wonderful
performances as Hébé and Zima, singing sumptuously, acting extremely well and
taking all the stage business in her stride. Tareq Nazmi displays a smooth
baritone as Osman and Ali. Anna Prohaska sings beautifully as Phani and Fatime,
though she has to fight against some very distracting stage business. François
Lis brings his striking bass to the roles of Huascar and Don Alvaro.
Another performer I like is Elsa
Benoit, who gives a very touching performance as Émilie in the first Entrée.
She is also one of very few characters I have seen in opera wearing glasses and
quite possibly the first who isn’t wearing them to show how geeky the character
is. Émilie is a beautiful lady who attracts the attention of every man in her
part of the opera and she looks beautiful in her glasses. Although it might not
always be an option in performance due to a need for historical accuracy, I don’t
see any reason at all why the attractive heroine or hero shouldn’t wear
glasses, but it’s very unusual in the media generally and this is probably at
least part of the reason why some children are upset or embarrassed about
having to wear glasses. There is, rightly, a movement to show more people of
colour, people with disabilities and people of different physicality in the
media. Let’s also see more people in glasses and show the world how attractive
they are.
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