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New Blogger from Paris – with News

Paris, Thursday, October 11, 2012. When I was growing up in San Diego, one of my passions was the New Yorker column, “Letters from Paris” by the grand and gifted Janet Flanner. Her reports from this city, full of energy, intellect, passion, contradictions and good food, could have been one of the reasons I live here now.
What I will focus on here, of course, is the extraordinary musical activity which is too often not reported in the English-language press. The music scene here is one of the most rich and remarkable in the world. With loads of resident professional orchestras, several important halls and a rich operatic canvas, this city can be the ideal life for those who care about music. When great orchestras travel, Paris is a certain stop and one can literally hear the cream of the world’s orchestras during the course of year. An offshoot of these riches is an oft-recurrent dilemma: what event wins your attention in any given night? There is one gentle warning, however, to any reader who has gotten this far: I ain’t no Janet Flanner.
The collective exhale after Monday’s announcement that Stéphane Lissner will be the next director of the Opéra National de Paris in 2015 created a wind that shook trees and rattled windows all over France. Particularly since that same Mr. Lissner, a few days before, denied he was a candidate and assured all that he was keeping his job at Milan’s La Scala Opera, the first non-Italian to hold the job since La Scala was founded in 1778.
For the French, their Opéra is, like the Louvre, a cultural icon. With its massive government support, two opera houses and the world’s leading ballet company, it is the hub of musical life in France. After the years of Gerard Mortier, with his aggressive introduction of avant-guard, director-driven opera, the public, it was thought, wanted a more measured approach. Nicolas Joel, with a good reputation leading the opera in Toulouse, was given the job. His unrelentingly conservative approach, however, while a change from the Mortier years, started critics grumbling. His third season now looks very much like the first two and suddenly the question of his succession in 2015 became topic number one.

The Parisian-born Lissner is highly regarded by the French cultural establishment. His work at the Théâtre du Châtelet and his remarkable leadership of the Aix-en-Provence Festival made him the obvious candidate for the Opéra National de Paris opening. But the trouble was that he was also popular internationally and his hiring at La Scala – where he demanded, and received, total administrative and artistic control – very soon restored the luster to Italy’s premiere cultural showpiece. Internecine warfare had left that grand stage only a shadow of what it had been and by restoring the “La Scala” brand, introducing innovative stage direction, Lissner gave the orchestra and company a fresh and enhanced presence in Italian cultural life. That new image also led to increased corporate sponsorship which filled budget gaps as Italy’s economy sagged these last years. Lissner had a contract through 2017 and could have stayed as long as he wanted.

Nicolas Joel, in charge in Paris through June of 2015, was a candidate for the three year extension of his term at the ONP but this would have been a tough sell. Joel read the currents in the air and, in an interview with a Sunday newspaper 24 hours before the Minister of Culture’s announcement, gave a “you can’t fire me, I quit” statement where he declined any extension and blamed minor budget cuts for his decision. A well-liked contender is is Belgian Serge Dorny. He has taken France’s second house, the Opéra National de Lyon, to new artistic levels, giving it more respectability and a contemporary shine, something Paris could very well use.

The popular wisdom thought Dorny from Lyon was the logical choice and the surprise was general when Lissner agreed to return from Milan just when he was finally fluent in Italian, very well compensated and hugely popular there. A little clue to this surprise I found just the day before yesterday in an obscure website, lyoncapitole.fr. It reported on a regional government audit of the Opéra National de Lyon for the period 2005-2009 which had some bombshell numbers. First was a dramatic 63% rise in the general operational overhead during the period under review. Another little detail: the personnel absentee rate in 2010 was 19.12 days a year compared with an average of 8.27 in the private sector. There were other major problems in the structure of the institution and it was, in summary, a very negative report. Can we assume that the Minister of Culture in Paris was made aware of this audit? Did the reluctant Lissner suddenly becomes the only option? This audit has not yet been a subject of discussion in the French cultural media but could it even call into question Dorny’s future in Lyon?

The Théâtre des Champs Elysées is celebrating it’s 100th Birthday in 2013 and the old girl, in her art-deco splendor, has never looked so fine. The riot during the first performance of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” only two months after the opening, has not been forgotten and several orchestras will play this work – now an old chestnut – during the centenary season likely without any public noise in the hall except applause.  Operatically, the season boasts a Medea trilogy. Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s “Médée” leads off on October with a production designed by Pierre Audi (who leads the opera in Amsterdam and whose name could also have been in the hat for the Paris job). “Médée” (2009), by the contemporary French composer Pascal Dusapin, follows in November with, finally, Cherubini’s “Médée” (in a provocative Warlikowski production from Brussels) completing the cycle in December.

At the Paris Opera, two classic productions by Robert Carsen lead off. The first, in the big Bastille house, is the much-cherished production of Offenbach’s “Contes d’Hoffman” which is available on DVD and always sells tickets, as it should. Carsen’ s production of Strauss’ “Capriccio,” in the Palais Garnier, was commissioned as a reflective, fond “good-bye” by the opera’s director Hugues Gall (1995-2004) and critics were much pleased with its return. Even with Michaela Kaune taking the role originally sung by Renée Fleming and Philippe Jordan in the pit, It was still not reason enough to overcome my normal reluctance to revisit these antique institutions.

The Orchestre de Paris, under music director Paavo Järvi launched their season on September 12 and 13 at the Salle Pleyel with a program of Poulenc, Prokofiev and Stravinski that was missing élan. The Poulenc, “Litanies a la vierge noire,” remained distinctly earthbound and, after the intermission, the “Firebird” Suite of Stravinsky, while showing off the gifts of the first-desk musicians, lacked much forward momentum. Luckily, Lang Lang was there strike a match under the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto. At the TCE, it was the turn of the Orchestre National de France to open their season with conductor emeritus Kurt Masur. Coming back for the first time  after the shocking tumble off the same stage last year but looking thin and frail, he provided vigorous accompaniment to Sara Chang in the Brahms Violin Concerto. After the intermission, he sculpted a broad, reflective Brahms First Symphony, the first segment of his Brahms Symphony cycle.

Yesterday Masur, 84, confirmed, in a general press release, what insiders already knew and many in the audience suspected from his trembling hand: he has Parkinson’s Disease. It’s being well treated, he says, and it will not affect his future schedule.

It is good to learn that the Salle Gaveau is getting higher visibility this season. This small treasure among Parisian halls, with likely the best acoustics of them all, has been selected to host a project by the label Naïve, “Gaveau Intime.” Major names like Anne Sofie von Otter, Fazil Say and Rinaldo Alessandrini are on the schedule.  Incidental intelligence: one of the artist that will appear at Gaveau this year, the orchestra and choir conductor Laurence Equilbey, made public a study she commissioned. Last year in France, 96% of the operas and 95% of the concerts were conducted by men. Plus ça change…

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