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By ANDREW POWELL MUNICH \u2014 Two evenings after an \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d eruption<\/a> here cost nine mostly teenage, mostly Muslim, lives, it felt perverse to indulge in 280-year-old French escapism stretching to Turkey, Peru, Iran and the future United States.<\/p>\n But there we were July 24 in the Prinz-Regenten-Theater<\/a> for Bavarian State Opera<\/a> business-as-usual, a festival<\/a> yet, and Rameau\u2019s four-entr\u00e9e Les Indes galantes<\/em> as imagined by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui<\/a>, the Belgian choreographer with stage-director pretensions.<\/p>\n And safer we were, too, than at a smaller music festival 110 miles away near Nuremberg, the outdoor Ansbach Open, where a Syrian refugee denied asylum<\/a> in this country was preparing to explode his metal-piece-filled backpack among two thousand listeners. (As luck would have it, Germany\u2019s first suicide bomber killed only himself when he detonated only his detonator and did so outside the festival\u2019s gates, not having known in advance he would need a ticket.)<\/p>\n Before departing for Turkey, the op\u00e9ra-ballet<\/em> states its premise by means of a prologue: European lovers pressed to exchange Goddess H\u00e9b\u00e9<\/a>\u2019s doux instants<\/em> (sweet moments) for Goddess Bellone<\/a>\u2019s gloire des combats<\/em> can count on intercession from a third god, Amour, as they \u201ctraverse the vastest seas\u201d in military service.<\/p>\n This plays out with amusing dramatic variance* in the four locales to music of beguiling harmony and bold instrumental color, in airs, vocal ensembles, choruses and dances. The U.S. entr\u00e9e<\/em> concludes with the Dance of the Great Peace Pipe<\/em> (penned after Agapit Chicagou<\/a>\u2019s 1725 Paris visit), minuets, a gavotte, and a most charming chaconne<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you kept your eyes closed, the performance was a treat. Opening them invited confusion, or worse, despite Cherkaoui\u2019s fresh dance moves, tirelessly executed by his Antwerp-based Compagnie Eastman<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ivor Bolton<\/a> and the M\u00fcnchner Festspiel-Orchester, an elite Baroque pick-up band, served Rameau with verve and expressive breadth, ripe string sound and fabulous wind playing. The Balthasar-Neumann-Chor<\/a> from Freiburg managed its musical challenges neatly, in opaque French.<\/p>\n The score\u2019s 17 roles went to ten generally stylish soloists. Lisette Oropesa<\/a> proved a graceful musician in the lyric soprano duties of H\u00e9b\u00e9 and Zima. Anna Prohaska<\/a>, as Phani and Fatime, stopped the show with a divinely phrased Viens, Hymen, viens m\u2019unir<\/em>. Light tenor Cyril Auvity<\/a> sang artfully as Val\u00e8re and Tacmas, while John Moore<\/a>\u2019s baritone lent a golden timbre to the sauvage<\/em> Adario. Reveling grandly in the music\u2019s depths were basses Fran\u00e7ois Lis<\/a> (Huascar and Alvar) and Tareq Nazmi<\/a> (Osman and Ali).<\/p>\n But soprano Ana Quintans<\/a> encountered pitch problems as Amour and Za\u00efre; Elsa Benoit<\/a>, the \u00c9milie, seemed squeezed by Rameau\u2019s nimble turns; Mathias Vidal<\/a> pushed harshly for volume in the tenor roles of Carlos and Damon; and bass Goran Juri\u0107<\/a>, in drag as Bellone, muddied her vital rousing words.<\/p>\n As for the staging, new on this night, conceit and a ruinous idea got the better of Cherkaoui (and BStO managers, who should have intervened if they care about Baroque opera as they profess<\/a>): he would thread together the prologue and entr\u00e9es<\/em> into one dramatic unit. Characters would appear in each other\u2019s sections, mute. Op\u00e9ra-ballet<\/em> form be damned.<\/p>\n In place of exotic lands (requiring exotic sets and costumes), the viewer would journey from schoolroom to museum gallery to church to flower shop, to no place, to some closed border crossing. The spectacle of Peru\u2019s Adoration du Soleil<\/em>, for instance, would unfold in the church. Woven throughout, clumsily, would be tastes of the plight of Europe\u2019s present refugees, and Europeans\u2019 poor hospitality. Count the ironies.<\/p>\n [*In Turkey a melodrama, as the shipwrecked lovers\u2019 fate turns on Osman\u2019s magnanimity (Le turc g\u00e9n\u00e9reux<\/em>). In Peru a tragedy, as the couple\u2019s freedom results from Huascar\u2019s molten-lava death (Les incas du P\u00e9rou<\/em>). In Iran a bucolic, as two pairs of lovers ascertain their feelings through disguise and espial (Les fleurs<\/em>, original version of Aug. 23, 1735). In the U.S. a comedy, as noble savage Zima flirts with and mocks two European colonists, reversing the pattern, before homing in on loving native Adario (Les sauvages<\/em>).]<\/span><\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Wilfried H\u00f6sl<\/p>\n Related posts:
Published: August 7, 2016<\/span><\/p>\n
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