Guergana Damianova/OnP

After playing thoroughly modern Millie, seeing (and struggling to write up) three new works in succession, I was back on more familiar ground this week with The Rake’s Progress at the Palais Garnier.

The production isn’t new; it was Olivier Py’s first opera for Paris, in 2008, and it returned in 2012. But for some reason, it had escaped my attention till this season. The last time I saw the work was in Berlin in 2013 in a production by Krzysztof Warlikowski.

This week’s performance raised, for me, an issue we’re all familiar with but which is quite rarely discussed: the impact of directorial and design decisions on the acoustics of opera. The question is, taking into account the dimensions and acoustic peculiarities of the theatre they’re working in, do (or should) directors and their set designers do all they can to ensure their creations give the best possible support to the singers on stage?

Guergana Damianova/OnP

I’m perfectly happy, myself, to see La bohème in outer space, or snails entwined in (stunning) videos during La Damnation, so long as the production is good. Creative teams’ contributions to the visual and dramatic impact is obvious. But how often have I had to lean forward with my imaginary ear trumpet and strain to hear singers variously abandoned in the middle of a vast and nearly empty stage, with not a shred of scenery behind them, or perched high up on a scaffold, facing stage rear, or flat on their tummy on the floor?

Modern productions eschew traditional scenery in favour of open structures and props, but these offer scant help in funnelling voices into the hall. I know nothing about stagecraft, but wonder if these considerations are on the curriculum in the places where set designers train. Do they learn to design sets deliberately to channel the sound forward? I suspect not, but, of course, I may be wrong. I’m not trying to make a case for lining singers up with their toes on the edge of the pit, like peas in a pod, but I sympathise with the wise critic who wrote just this week, on an eminent opera forum, of a recent McVicar production in Madrid: ‘I liked the way he let the soloists sing from the front of the stage…’

You’ve probably guessed by now why I raise this question. I was looking forward to hearing three highly praised singers I’d heard so often and so much about: Ben Bliss, Golda Schultz and Jamie Barton, for the first time. Until the last act, I was disappointed, and I think the production was largely to blame, as variations in their audibility at different times in the staging, depending on where they stood and what they had behind them, seemed to show. This wasn’t just my imagination. It was already complained of in 2008 reviews; and this year, for example, premiereloge-opera.com noted (in French) that ‘the set design, especially in the first act, is not particularly helpful to the singers: on a raised platform in the middle of the stage, they seem buried in the scenery: not really ideal conditions in which to display the full range of their voices.’ First and second acts I’d say.

Ben Bliss and Golda Schultz seem born to sing together – a perfect couple, or matching pair, out of the same mould. Much of what you might say about the one might apply equally to the other: youthful charm and vocal good health; perfect intonation, right up to Schultz’s gilded top; delicacy and elegance in phrasing; sweet but interesting, pure-butter-shortbread timbre…

Bliss makes the perfect, guileless ingénu, growing fatter and seedier as the story progresses. Schultz plays Ann Trulove with more knowing nous than is sometimes the case, making her London appearances first pregnant, then pushing a pram, and finally with her son in a silvery suit recalling Tom’s and implying he could follow in his father’s footsteps. But certainly, in Act I at least, neither was easy to hear, and Golda Schultz might do well to work on her diction for a while, as it was hard, from start to finish, to catch what she was singing. A pity when, as another wise person wrote recently on that very same eminent forum, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman’s libretto is one of the greatest and most beautiful.

Jamie Barton seems born, too, to sing the bearded Baba the Turk, throwing herself, in Marilyn Monroe wig and glittering hour-glass dress of vast proportions, into the role with alacrity – and with a tendency, as Igor Stravinsky’s spiky score leads her up and down the stave, to land on her chest voice with a juddering thump. But in this staging, her truculent numbers were a let-down. It was only in Act III when, unless my imagination is playing tricks, the singers standing more often towards the front of the stage, that her more lyrical, compassionate aria allowed us properly to savour her rich, treacly timbre and expressive gifts.

Guergana Damianova/OnP

Iain Paterson, got up in black leather, with a widow’s peak, and drawing a black skeleton from Tom’s suitcase, makes a convincingly unctuous, insinuating and hypocritical Nick Shadow, a sort of evil Jeeves, but his voice sometimes sounds tired and I’m not sure he has the deep, dark oomph required, even if this is Stravinsky, not Boito. Ruper Charlesworthon the other hand, as Sellem, seemed responsible, single-handed, for galvanizing the production from the start of the final act, dashing energetically around the stage and at last singing out loud and clear.

Mother Goose is a role that sounds promising but is actually rather thankless; Justina Gringyt?, here costumed as a dominatrix running a brothel full of Crazy Horse red-wigged whores, with a diminutive, body-stockinged acrobat on a leash, brought glamour to the part, but is surely quite a glowing mezzo, not a contralto as defined in the score. Trulove isn’t the most exciting role in the repertoire, either, but Clive Bayley brought to it all the paternal dignity and experience you’d expect from him.

The chorus was all over the place, perhaps because they sometimes had to dash around while singing their tricky parts. At the end, they were parked (and packed) uncomfortably, high up and far away, in narrow bleacher seats, perhaps not the best place to sing from.

The orchestra was not at its best, either, but I’m not sure what orchestra we had, as the Bastille was giving Rigoletto the same evening. The playing was listless and undisciplined, despite Susanna Mälkki’s visible efforts to hold things together. Overall, the performance felt lacklustre, in need of more vim, vigour and variegated colour. Audiences know, as a third wise critic on that eminent forum also recently stated: applause after the first two acts was just modest and polite; but after act three, more enthusiastic, with cheers, of course, for the principals.

Leaving aside the acoustic issues (though they’re surely important ones), this production, maybe because Py was still fresh and in his creative prime in 2008, maybe because he was especially inspired and motivated by his first job at the Paris opera, was the best of his I’ve seen. It was, at least, a jolly good show. Whether or not it actually suited Stravinsky’s music or Auden and Kallman’s text, is another question. It ‘lacked seedy, Hogarthian wit,’ according to a friend. Still, Hogarth’s storyline translates well enough into Py’s dark yet glitzy universe. The features, drawn from cabaret, revue and circus, that people now moan about as his ‘tics’ such as showgirls, clowns, muscle-men, bare breasts, orgies and so on, contrasting with skeletons, memento mori, and symbols of the vanities, were new at the time. He hadn’t yet, it seems, thought of introducing drag queens (including himself as his alter ego, ‘Miss Knife’), or someone chalking up slogans on the walls.

The world of Pierre-André Weitz, Py’s go-to designer, is also now familiar, but though the current run is a revival, the staging shows no sign of age. The production is set on a black stage, open to the rear, as usual with Weitz. The symbolism of black and white is clear enough, in props and costumes, while bright primary colours mark the passing scenes. With some books, a skull, and an hourglass placed where a prompter’s box might be, we open in Trulove’s house, an airy white room, aloft, mid-stage, in a letterbox. Its curtains billow gently in the breeze from a row of industrial fans, visible behind. This is the setting that ‘buried’ the voices in the quotation above. Ann and Tom are in bed, a bed we meet again in most scenes, up to the very last. Once Tom sets off for London and the story gets going, we meet Weitz’s trademark modular structures: rectangular frameworks of black steel and stairs, wheeled in and out in full sight to form the different spaces the plot requires.

Guergana Damianova/OnP

We also meet his familiar neon lights: red for Mother Goose’s knocking shop, blue for Baba, yellow for the auction. They pick out the rectangles, but also appear in random formations, as if thrown down, spillikins-like, on a giant disc at the rear. Into this rather glacially slick environment parade Py’s archetypes. Mother Goose’s Crazy Horse whores, all red and black, and bear-chested roaring boys in a whirlwind knife fight, divide into couples, threesomes or more, of every gender, for an orgy in all known positions. Oiled-up athletes meet crawling, writhing acrobats, clowns and dwarves. Baba’s blue-and-white freak-show world features bespangled Paris showgirls with their giant trucs à plumes and, while neon windmills spin to grind Tom’s stones into bread for the masses, workmen in blue overalls wave the red flag. The auction – where Sellem’s galloping about galvanises Act III – is held in a dark warehouse, with a whole cabinet de curiosités laid out on its shelves. This time, it’s lit up in yellow, with the bourgeoisie bidding in luxurious black – ready, later, to mourn Tom’s decline and death.

Throughout, there are extras doing mysterious, extraneous things, and Ann’s on stage (eventually, as I said before, with Tom’s son, hinting at posterity) more often than the directions call for. This annoyed my neighbours, relatively new to opera, who found there was too much going on at once. Seasoned opera-goers are, of course, used to it by now, though they continue, at times, to grumble.

Seedy and Hogarthian or, rather, not, the production tells the story straightforwardly enough, with legible symbols, plenty to look at and keep us from dozing off, and without too much Konzept. A jolly good show. I haven’t found it anywhere, complete, on video, but as the microphones would iron out the acoustic issues, it should make an enjoyably entertaining one to watch.

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