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. Other than a famous recording with Jessye Norman within the title position 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 fantastic incidental music to Maeterlinck’s play predated the numerous different well-known variations. The hyperlink between the 2 operas was obvious within the Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer season competition, having programmed Debussy’s work final yr, with each works offered 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 consistently 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 recollections 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 evident from the prelude; Ulysses is imagining what life would have been had he remained on the island as an alternative of combating in Troy. In Act II, the roles are reversed as Pénélope cares for her disguised husband till Ulysse positive factors energy 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 “marriage ceremony” day.
The 4 suitors have been well-cast and balanced, significantly with tenor Loïc Félix’s rounded voice and commanding presence as Antinoüs. In a very hanging second, the suitors have a macabre arabesque dance with the servants, grotesquely emphasizing the phrase “dream” as they fantasize in regards to 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 may have been extra forceful the moments when the Ithacan king seeks righteous vengeance. Ulysse right here was extra weary than bellicose. Victoria Karkacheva’s sturdy voice matched Pénélope’s defiant persona. Whereas her French diction was not all the time discernible, Karkacheva gave nuance to a difficult position, significantly 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 an alternative 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 an alternative presenting Fauré’s music as nearly proto-modernist. This was efficient significantly in Act III, for instance, with the grumbling double basses and bleating trumpet because the suitors’ plans are foiled.
Nonetheless, the orchestral vitality within the latter half of the opera additionally proved considerably tough for the singers, as through the tempestuous moments in Acts II and III something forte or louder coated Karkacheva and Jovanovich. This stability challenge 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 nicely within the closing scene’s reward to Zeus because the shepherds slay the suitors, some of the unapologetically tonal passages of Fauré’s rating.
Breth’s refined manufacturing and Mälkki’s restrained conducting made one not solely recognize Pénélope as a hidden relic of late Romanticism but additionally discover Fauré’s looking forward to French modernism.
