Guergana Damianova

I don’t know if anyone reads my blog regularly, but if they do they’ll have noticed I sometimes complain of directors’ leaning heavily on their set, costume, and lighting design teams, while forgetting actually to direct. Not so with Christof Loy’s Il Trittico, premiered in Salzburg three years ago, and now at the Bastille. His production relies above all on the singers’ vocal and acting skills. It is aesthetically unobtrusive and relatively Konzept-light, but meticulously directed, well-acted and, at the end, dramatically shattering. At the end, that is, because, though the staging may be light on Konzept, Loy takes it upon himself to change the order of the triptych, putting Gianni Schicchi first and Suor Angelica last.

I’m not usually keen on directors’ fiddling about with operas in this way, though I admit there are exceptions, where as a result of the fiddling another, different, legitimate work of art arises phoenix-like out of the reassembled parts of the deconstructed original. In interviews, Loy has given his reasons for reshuffling Puccini’s pieces, to do with establishing a Dantean progression from hell, via purgatory, to heaven, along with a coherent vocal and dramatic one – ‘three ages of woman’ – for the singer who takes on all the star soprano roles. I am not totally convinced it was necessary, but as a contributor to a French forum quipped, while Loy may not have many ideas, this, at least, was one.

While not exactly a single set, his production inhabits a single, simple but lofty beige-walled space with one door at rear left. The costumes, if not outright contemporary, are (other than the nuns’ habits) modern. In Schicchi, there’s a tall French window with louvred shutters on the left, a fridge-freezer in the corner nearby, a row of chairs for the bereaved family on the right, and Buoso’s bed in the middle, flanked by gold candlesticks. Florentine sunshine streams through the blinds, casting graphic shadows on the far wall. A ceiling fan rotates slowly. The buffo action in Schicchi is relatively restrained – no zany slapstick here, any more than there will be full-out verismo bodice-ripping in Il tabarro or mawkish Catholic Kitsch in Angelica. But Loy’s Personenregie is minutely choreographed, a directorial tour de force reminiscent of Bieito’s extraordinary Exterminating Angel on the same stage a year ago, albeit less eye-poppingly virtuosic.

Il Tabarro is more cluttered and less successful. Perhaps Loy was defeated by the work’s tedious predictability, sordid atmosphere, and obvious padding: La Frugola’s Ping-Pang-Pong dreams of a cottage in Hunan or wherever – who cares? – then Giorgetta’s paean to Belleville. ‘We know what’s going to happen, so for heaven’s sake get on with it,’ you think. Between a black steel staircase screwed to the left-hand wall, from street level, I suppose, to the quay, and a realistic barge on the right, is an incongruous ‘living room’ of shabby old furniture (armchairs, a sofa, a chest of drawers, a standard lamp…) offloaded, among the packing cases, on to the cobbles and joined when required by an orgue de barbarie on pram wheels. Lamp posts strut diagonally across the stage, receding mistily behind the rear wall – not solid, we realise, but a gauze. Dancers dangle inexplicably from the iron stairs, the costumes are downright ugly and tackily un-French (more London or Berlin bohemian than Parisian) and the action, even when crisis comes with a thud and a scream, remains somehow inconsequential.

In Suor Angelica, a few stone steps now rise to that rear door, and through it we see a white radiator against a white wall, under frosted, institutional windows. Plain wooden tables and chairs are unstacked and moved around by the nuns ad hoc. A row of simple, white globe lights hangs high above, and on the left is a plot of potted herbs that will come in handy later. Once again – in contrast with the messier Tabarro before it – the action is well managed, convincingly conveying the brainlessly cheerful atmosphere of the convent before the august guest arrives. More about her later.

Guergana Damianova

Many of the cast members are new to the Bastille. Towering above all, and most welcome, was Misha Kiria’s Schicchi, a roguish ogre of a man in his swaggering prime, a picture of jovial cunning, owning the stage and dominating the proceedings with grinning ease, dramatically and vocally. ‘A born scene-stealer,’ as one eminent opera-vlogger visiting Paris put it in a nutshell afterwards. His impressively healthy voice rang out resoundingly from top to bottom.

Alexey Neklyudov was (at least on the evening I attended) unfortunately a weaker choice. His Rinuccio was only half audible. What we did hear was, in the middle range, pleasantly rounded and supple, but he ducked the top notes, so his “Firenze” aria was a disappointment. ‘Par quel mécanisme – i.e. through what process,’ asked another French blogger, ‘was this tenor hired? He doesn’t even strip off.’ I wondered if another newcomer, Dean Power, here Gherardo and later the song-seller, with his brighter, more accurate top, might have done a better job with the role.

After quite a long international career, Enkelejda Shkoza’s mezzo shows pardonable signs of wear and tear, but she put it to perfectly effective use as a sparklingly comical ‘character’ Zita. She remained with us throughout the evening, less convincing when got up in a voluminous pink tutu and multicolored Chanel jacket as La Frugola, more convincing as a solemn Zelatrice.

Asmik Grigorian was of course not an obvious fit, vocally or temperamentally, for Lauretta. Hers is not, I think it’s safe to say, a beautiful, rounded, lyrical voice, but an edgy, even hard, dramatic one. But as we all know, she can act, so she played the youthful ingénue as best she could, and her “O mio babbino” was even more of a show-stopper – both figuratively and literally – than usual, giving us our first opportunity of the evening to gape at her vocal range, subtlety and power.

The supporting cast, in Schicchi as throughout the evening, formed a strong team.

In Il tabarro, Joshua Guerrero’s dark-timbred, vehement, even violent tenor stood in stark contrast to Gianni Schicchi’s weak Rinuccio. He was well paired with (or, more appropriately, pitted against) Roman Burdenko’s tough, black, hard-hitting Michele, though, dare I mention it yet again, the latter’s lowest notes played hard to get.

Of course, Giorgetta is a more obvious role than Lauretta for the tragedienne Grigorian. She played the weary wife well. But to be honest, Il tabarro is so unrelievedly tedious to me that I don’t recall the performance in great detail. I spent the hour just wishing it would end – as, after so much tedium, it does, abruptly and with oddly little impact.

The relatively cheerful first half of Suor Angelica, as the nuns fuss about, drew on the strong teamwork I mentioned above. However, when I wrote about Paris’s new Das Rheingold earlier this year, I noted the ‘unusually radiant and seductive’ Rheinmaidens, and February’s Woglinde, Margarita Polonskaya, here stood out as an equally radiant and charming Suor Genovieffa. I’ll be looking out for her in future. Also outstanding, at the other end of a long career (she debuted as Maddalena in 1970 and by 1975 was cast as Flosshilde in Bayreuth) was Hanna Schwarz’s La Badessa, with a voice that seemed briefly to suspend time, tolling like a bell, as if from another world.

Guergana Damianova

As the eminent American vlogger I mentioned above rightly stated, ‘Until the Principessa comes in, there is a lot of sweet music and lovely singing, but we all await the real drama to come.’ It came, in spades. From the unwelcome guest’s arrival to the end of the opera, we witnessed one of those rare and blessèd instances that make up for all the expense, frustrations, and disappointments of persistent operagoing – this, even when taking into account the state of Karita Mattila’s voice, now best confined to moments of quiet determination or menace in the middle range.

She played a stunningly charismatic grande bourgeoise, in a dark trouser suit, black patent heels, and jewels, emotionally more complex than the total monster often expected and delivered in this role. Pacing in agitation around the stage, she showed signs of vacillating between duty and at least a hint of stifled sympathy. Of course the confrontation with Grigorian was one those present will never forget.

Nor will they forget Asmik Grigorian’s final scene.

After the clash of titans, the nuns deliver a battered suitcase to Angelica, presumably, the one she brought with her to the convent. She takes out a photo of her son, a stuffed toy, and some clothes she caresses as she sings “Senza mamma” in tears, with delicately gauged intensity rising to a pianissimo as perfectly-pitched as her heart-rending fortissimo outbursts in the opera’s concluding minutes. Grigorian’s is not, as I said earlier, a seductively lyrical voice, but an edgier, more dramatic one, charged with emotion. I can’t find the words (yes, this is a cop-out) to describe the range of colors, dynamics and expression she deploys while, left in the dark by the retreating nuns, she slips out of her habit and into a black dress and stilettos, lets down her hair, smokes one last cigarette, and mixes and drinks her poison.

In this production, realising she’s damned to eternity by her suicide, she gouges her eyes out with her gardening shears – fortunately out of our sight, lying in the doorway. Only then does she ‘see,’ with blood in place of tears, her son: no starry skies, beams of light or Virgin Mary, just a little boy running on in shorts and a striped jersey. Having had, as the French forum-contributor I mentioned above claimed, few ideas, suddenly, one upon the other at the end, Loy had perhaps too many.

When the final curtain rose again on Grigorian, alone on the stage, there was an explosion of cries of ‘brava!’ and applause. As our US vlogger also noted, there was even a standing ovation, a rarity in Paris. But there were numerous overseas visitors in the house. A party of Americans in front of me, sodden hankies in hand (what is it that makes Americans so weepy?) shot to their feet and stayed put, doggedly. Eventually, those behind, even I, had no choice but to stand up as well if they wanted to see who was taking a bow.

So the whole parterre was up and cheering, stretching its collective legs, when all of a sudden, Schicchi and Michele swept Suor Angelica off her feet and on to their shoulders while Carlo Rizzi led the orchestra (which had played well most of the evening, after a briefly indifferent start), cast, choir and audience in a ragged but heartfelt chorus of “Happy Birthday to You.”