Agree with you, Valmont about Horizon Chimerique, and the other late cycles, Le jardin clos and La chanson d’Eve. Maybe a really nuanced performance of Penelope would reinstate it: John Eliot Gardiner can have a way with half-tint French music, or maybe another of the guys more associated with early music – how about William Christie – if you play it like conventional romantic music it doesn’t work – the idiom is more particular than that.

Gabriel Fauré’s Pénélope

Libretto by Rene Fauchois
Laurent Pillot, Conductor
Lawrence Edelson, Director

Three performances:
Wednesday and Friday, December 9 & 11, at 7:30 PM
Saturday, December 12, at 2:30 PM

It is usually wednesday, friday, sunday, but for some reason this year they’re doing Saturday instead of Sunday.

This is very much what I was trying to say, albeit much more clearly and more eloquent. I LOVE the l’horizon chimerique, I’ve sung and studied them in depth, they are wonderful and very harmonically advanced compared to his earlier songs, but the structure is still there.

This though makes me really want to sit and check out the score, because I’m sure that it is brilliant on paper, with very well thought out and intricate compositional techniques. All this work and love left me lost as an audience member unfortunately.

And it’s such a pleasure to find someone else who knows and “gets” that marvelous Tavernier movie. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it. It’s a kind of vacation for me.

http://www.laurentpillot.com/

If you know the late chamber music, the 2nd piano quintet, the string quartet, and the late piano nocturnes and song cycles then you’ll want to explore this piece. On a personal note, I discovered this world through a 1980′s film ‘Un dimanche a la campagne’ by Bernard Tavernier – a fin de (last) siecle story of a family – one of those French films where almost nothing happens, and it happens exquisitely – and I was blown away by this strange peculiar sounding music that the director used and which I couldn’t place: it was late Faure. I’ve never experienced the piece onstage so it may be the most colossal bore, but personally I love the sounds it makes, cogent, pungent, muted and mysterious.

It may well be one of those works best suited for the theatre of ones mind – I’d love to be proven wrong by a professional production. I do think Faure was a wonderful composer, and I prefer the elusive later works, of which Penelope is one, to the more obviously attractive earlier pieces on which his popularity resides.

Again, I am not saying it’s a complete failure and not worth experiencing, and maybe with further listening it will grow on me, but after my first Penelope experience I felt that it is not a strong enough piece to earn a spot in the standard repertory. In my opinion if one is going to choose a Penelope and Ulysses story for the standard repertory, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria is the better piece by far.

Well, if THAT’s your test of “genius,” you would do well to state that at the beginning of your comments on the music so we could skip them.

Cooper Nolan was fine, a voice student with talent, but not quite in Guilbeau’s league (few are).

I have a (probably too long for most) review of the entire show over on my blog:

http://sharkonarts.blogspot.com/

I adore this opera (and have from the first hearing 20+ years ago. Krunoslav – If you love Faure, you should enjoy this! I’m still riding the high from last night!

p.

As to the orchestra, I thought that Mr. Pillot was trying very hard to elicit some sort of elegant phrase or interesting dynamic, but everything seemed to be lacking emotion orchestrally. I guessed that they were uninterested because they all but ignored Mr. Pillot’s conducting. I could be mistaking ‘uninterested’ for ‘under-rehearsed’, as I know there is usually very little rehearsal time for the overworked students at conservatories, but the accuracy to the page made me think that they knew the notes. Everything was played accurately, but not emotionally.

And I thought the conductor and orchestra did very well. Where did you get your information that the players were “uninterested”? It happens that I was told that the students were enchanted with the piece, and I thought it showed.

It is painful for me to see another work of genius, presented with care by an educational institution, dismissed in this manner. I can see why such sublime music is not universally popular — especially since the story is unavoidably rather static (see “Sad is Bad,” on another thread); there are certainly no chase scenes or their attendant music — but I’m disappointed to see it treated as you have treated it.

I don’t love Fauré. Who is this “we” that you’re referring to?