2024-01-30 16:06:12
The laudable Palazzetto Bru Zane Foundation has been campaigning for the visibility and dissemination of 19th century French music for 15 years with a budget of 1.2 million euros per year. And not just in their home country. For some time now, the focus here has also been on female composers, who have been neglected even more than their male colleagues. That’s why symposiums and festivals have been arranged and, of course, CDs have also been released.
A box with eight CDs that is not praised enough was dedicated to 20 “Compositrices” and featured completely unknown names such as Mel Bonis, Marthe Bracquemond, Hedwige Chrétien, Marie-Foscarine Damaschino, Jeanne Danglas, Clémence de Grandval and others. Some, like Louise Farrenc, are already being played again elsewhere, others are resurfacing for the first time from the no longer sounding past thanks to Bru Zane’s research. These also include the Paris-born daughter of Irish-Scottish parents Augusta Holmès (1847–1903) and Louise Bertin (1805-77). Within a few days, two operas were shown as German premieres in Dortmund and Essen.
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Holmès’ “La Montagne Noire,” a lyrical drama in four acts and five pictures but which is decidedly a Grand Opéra latecomer, premiered at the Paris Opéra in 1895 – only the third work by a female composer there – and was considered a flop . Although Claude Debussy did praise the music of the artist, who was also amorously well-connected, trained under César Franck and revered as a “muse” by Camille Saint-Saëns. The composer’s allegedly weak libretto, which was based on Wagner and Slavic myths, was particularly criticized.
“The Black Mountain” tells about the Montenegrin warriors Mirko and Aslar. Returning from a battle against the Turks, the two swear eternal loyalty to each other until death as blood brothers. In the final victory over the Ottoman troops, Mirko saves the beautiful Turkish woman Yamina. Even though he is actually engaged to Héléna, he falls in love with this typical operatic femme fatale, leaves his girlfriend and commits high treason against Montenegro. Aslar pursues him to restore his brother’s honor.
Bedröppelte Machos
At the Dortmund Theater they believe in the qualities of Holmès, whose choir-filled music is opulently late romantic and who, especially as a woman, is not afraid to destroy male heroic myths. The Balkan guys, otherwise very macho men, stand there self-conscious and embarrassed. And in the end, the woman who unconsciously but willingly became the cause of all evil, who drove a wedge into the seemingly unbreakable friendship, survives.
At the conductor’s desk, Motonori Kobayashi cooks things up with many decibels; pure passion, love for the fatherland and heartbreak unfold between folk dances and distinctive folklorisms. Emely Hehl took care of the more conventional production with colorful costumes (Emma Gaudiano) and a box set (Frank Philipp Schlößmann), which, like the interior of the protagonists, only slowly opens up.
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In Dortmund, for the first time ever, the previously deleted ending with the triumphant seductress is played: Aude Extremo as Yasmina, who, after a colorfully exotic party, squeezes out the last of her grateful role. Mirko, who had already been reduced to an ass by the director (Sergey Radchenko is a touchingly broken tenor hero), gets the short end of the stick: he is deprived of his honor, his ex-girlfriend, and even his life.
Even at the end of the 19th century, this was not allowed to happen (yet) in the burgeoning symbolism as a creation of a woman. But now we can see and hear how the rich-sounding baritone Mandla Mndebele, as Aslar, who ultimately dies in a hail of enemy bullets, kills his blood brother out of a misunderstood concept of honor and the church reinterprets the murder as the sacrifice of an alleged hero. The male-dominated opera society of the late 19th century was spared this. The famous Montenegrin gusla player and singer Bojana Pekovic is now breaking the tableau-ness and cultural appropriation of this era.
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As abstract and naturalistic as the “Black Mountain” in Dortmund appears, it is as alienated as a director’s theater in Essen, where Tatjana Gürbaca is in charge. Here, where Louise Bertin, the Paris Opéra predecessor of Augusta Holmès, gets her due, the director also has to work as the leading actress. The original soprano has become ill, and from the side Netta Or, her not exactly small part, sings fearlessly from the sheet music. And Gürbaca is Gretchen, playful in her red dress, or better: Margarita.
In the Essen Aalto Opera You are not playing Louise Bertin’s “Notre-Dame” variation “Esmeralda”, which ended the paraplegic publisher’s daughter’s musical theater career at the Opéra in 1837, but rather its surprise success in 1831 at the Théâtre Italien, the first opera ever based on Goethe’s “Faust” ( Spohr composed in 1816 after Klinger and Kleist). This “Fausto” was impressively revived in concert in June 2023 by the Palazzetto Bru Zane in Paris, in the original version with Faust as mezzo. In terms of sound, this is music that is entirely indebted to its time, with echoes of Mozart and Weber.
“Fausto” by Louise Bertin in Essen
What: karl forster
Andreas Spering, who is at first a little lame and then quicker in his tactics, can make things particularly rustic in Essen. The hellish mocking scenes in the witch’s kitchen, where the choir dressed in fifties outfits perform mockingly and Almas Svilpa as Mefitofele has a diabolically glittering voice, are reminiscent of Meyerbeer’s “Robert the Devil”, which was released at the same time. Before that, he was still lying dead under the dissecting knife of the grumpy doctor (in Essen, as in the premiere, a tenor sings: Mirko Roschkowski, who is almost vocally underchallenged). Because we are in a cool white clinic/nursery school (stage: Marc Weeger); Gürbaca wants to emphasize the closed atmosphere of the close community that seems to suffocate Margarete.
Thirty years later, Charles Gounod also adopted the four acts of Bertin for his much more popular “Faust” scenario, enriched with a church scene and Walpurgis Night. For her, things move more quickly, like a play opera. Gürbaca tries to maintain a satirical view of the exposed bourgeoisie, where it is Fausto who brings everything to himself. Collateral damage here too: the baritone-charming George Vîrban’s Valentino, who was killed early on.
“Fausto” will not be a repertory opera given the thematic, male music theater competition. But it is definitely an important, interesting excavation. And now you would like to get to know Bertin’s “Esmeralda” and one of the other Holmès operas. So much female power in the opera pot.
#Faust #Louise #Bertin #Phantomesses #Opera