For
the past five years, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden have devoted a portion of
each November to Barocktage, a celebration of operas from the earliest days of
the form to the opera seria that predominated throughout the eighteenth
century. Each year has featured at least one high-profile new production, often
involving celebrated directors and lavish sets, and invariably featuring
first-rate singers and renowned period performance ensembles. This year the
rarity on offer was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Médée; and while the staging of Peter Sellars brought the classical
tragedy into the twenty-first century, it was the opera itself that proved to
be the star of the evening. The cast, led by Magdalena Kožená’s dramatic reading
of the title character, and the Freiburger Barockorchester under the direction
of Sir Simon Rattle made a strong case for the singular charms of Charpentier’s
operatic world.
If
Charpentier’s fame rests primarily on his sacred works, he was no stranger to
the theatre, and in his most ambitious foray into opera he teamed up with
Thomas Corneille (younger brother of Pierre) for an update of the Medea
of Euripedes. The work, written as a royal entertainment, was composed in the
1790s, when opera had not yet hardened into the long sequences of showpiece
arias that would become the norm in the following century; but if the form and
structure of Médée were very much of their time, the work was notable
for its gradual tightening of the drama, propelled by music of great fluidity
and expressive power. What started in the first two acts as pleasant and
mannered soon deepened into something far richer.
As
with the opera itself, the staging took a while to hit its stride. In the
spirit of conspicuous production values, the evening boasted sets by Frank
Gehry, who has previously taken time out from his day job as one of the world’s
most prominent architects to contribute stage designs to the Staatsoper’s
production of Orfeo ed Euridice. For Médée, Mr Gehry created two
large crumpled structures, simultaneously diaphanous and brittle, and a group
of three flossy clouds, which looked as though they had been created from
finely-shredded sheet metal; the latter were suspended by wires and moved up
and down seemingly at random throughout the evening.
Charpentier: Médée. Sir Simon Rattle, conductor. Peter Sellars, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, November 2023. © 2023 by Ruth Walz.
While
the sets were pleasingly textural and undeniably successful as works of
abstract sculpture, it was apparent that director Peter Sellars would have been
just as happy without them. At his best Mr Sellars can achieve much with almost
nothing in the way of sets, props or costumes, delving deep into patiently
stylised movement and physical expression to elaborate the dramatic essence of
a given work. On this evening Mr Sellars set the action mostly at the front of
the stage – apart from, and seemingly unconnected to Mr Gehry’s sculptures
– and set about reducing the work to a drama of primal confrontations. At
first Mr Sellars’ style seemed an odd fit with Charpentier’s genial manner, and
throughout the first two acts it was far easier to be intellectually
appreciative than emotionally engaged. But as the music and drama started to
intensify during the third act, so did Mr Sellars’ approach begin to yield
greater rewards, and the final two acts especially seemed to pass in a
heightened state of trance-like focus.
Despite
his penchant for minimalism, Mr Sellars used military costumes and two
rectangles of construction-site fence to locate a distinctly twenty-first
century relevance in the ancient story. (His vision of Medea as modern-day
refugee was further assisted by some freely-translated surtitles, which made
liberal use of such topical terms as ‘asylum’, ‘immigrant’ and ‘deportation’).
Yet if the image of Médée awaiting her fate in a government detention centre, separated
from her children, and causing havoc for the populist, anti-immigration ruler
of Corinth gave the staging its modern resonance, her gradual emergence as an
instrument of terrible retribution was thrillingly timeless.
Charpentier: Médée. Sir Simon Rattle, conductor. Peter Sellars, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, November 2023. © 2023 by Ruth Walz.
The
journey of Médée from self-sacrifice to furious revenge is well delineated in
both Corneille’s text and Charpentier’s music, but it was the intensely
dramatic performance of Magdalena Kožená that gave the central character her
emotional breadth. Although she had been a strong presence in the first act,
bearing Jason’s lies with a selflessness bordering on desperate, it was the
third act that served as the pivot of the evening. After Jason’s final farewell
came a solo scene of lamentation in which Ms Kožená, without resorting to
overstatement, suggested that the very axis of the drama had shifted; although
the news of Jason’s impending marriage to Créuse would not reach her until the
following scene – and was greeted with appropriate vehemence – it was the
introspective lament that emerged most clearly as the moment in the tragedy
from which there was no turning back. And while there was suitable fire in her
invocation to the spirits that ended the third act, it was the poised figure of
the final acts, systematically destroying Créon and Jason with lofty clarity,
who made the greatest impression.
Charpentier: Médée. Sir Simon Rattle, conductor. Peter Sellars, director. Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, November 2023. © 2023 by Ruth Walz.
If
there was no other figure who dominated the latter half of the drama to the
same extent, the Jason of Reinoud Van Mechelen was excellent throughout the
evening, offering a consistent balance of projective power and expressive line;
Luca Tittoto brought crisp tone and articulate manner to Créon; and Carolyn
Sampson provided the evening with a delicate, elegant Créuse. Yet the strength
of the evening’s vocal ensemble lay less in individual performances than in the
near-constant series of duets that formed the foundation of the opera: the
scenes between Jason and Médée in the first, third and fifth acts, Médée and
Créon in the second and fourth acts, Créuse and Jason in the second act and
Médée and Oronte in the third, both propelled the drama and gave the evening
its most rewarding moments of vocal brilliance.
Under
Sir Simon Rattle, the Freiburger Barockorchester delivered a performance of
forceful advocacy. The superb continuo of lutes, harpsichords and bass viol
were perhaps the most prominent group within the ensemble, tasked with
accompanying nearly all of the monologues and duets; however the full ensemble,
which also included strings, woodwinds (mostly oboes and flutes), and a quintet
of recorders, gave textural richness to the opera’s increasingly expressive
music. Sir Simon, clearly inspired by the score, moved the action forward with
a sense of purpose while never failing to draw our attention to the work’s
numerous moments of unconventional beauty, notably the introduction to Médée’s
third-act lament, the mesmerising orchestral interlude preceding Créon’s
madness, and the lucid strings that accompanied Créuse’s death.
The
world of seventeenth-century opera can seem dauntingly foreign to the
uninitiated, and several of the Staatsoper’s Barocktage productions have leaned
heavily on spectacle as a way of making these distant works accessible to
twenty-first century audiences. While Médée was unquestionably a product
of its time and place, the flexibility of its music and the clarity of its
structure revealed a work that required little in the way of modern
intervention to function as a compelling drama; it may have taken an act or two
to build up the necessary momentum, but once it hit its stride, it moved
towards its denouement with the swift, unstoppable force that powers all great
tragedy.
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