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Bachtrack, 29 Juli 2017 |
Von David Karlin |
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Giordano: Andrea Chenier, Bayerische Staatsoper, 28. und 31. Juli 2017 |
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Top class voices, powerful drama in Bayerische Staatsoper's Andrea Chénier
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There’s a strange thing about Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier: the opera
has a reputation as a star tenor vehicle, but the most powerful part of the
opera by far is Act 3, when the leading man is absent and we see a near-rape
scene between the baritone (who else?) Carlo Gérard and the prima donna,
Maddalena di Coigny – he a senior official in the French Revolution, she the
daughter of the aristocratic family where he was once a servant. It’s Act 2
of Tosca with a twist – Gérard is a man of great humanity who is ultimately
able to master his passions and do the right thing.
Luca Salsi and
Anja Harteros nailed it in the middle. Setting the scene with “Un dì m’era
di gioia”, in which Gérard is riven with doubt over where the revolution is
taking both France and himself, Salsi brilliantly portrayed a man who
possesses huge strength but no longer knows how to direct it, the raw power
of his baritone tempered by beauty of timbre. Harteros then gave a
barnstorming “La mamma morta”, telling how her mother died protecting her at
the door of her bedroom as the mob closed in – the irony all the more bitter
since the mother is a profoundly unsympathetic character. Harteros’ voice
has it all: a high register smooth and sweet as a master patissier’s whipped
cream, complete control over the shape of every phrase, a slight quaver of
vibrato to intensify a key syllable and – most important of all – total
commitment to the text and to her character. The end of the aria “Prendilo,
dunque! Io son già morta cosa!” (“Take my body, then – I am already a dead
thing”) was genuinely shocking, a moment to make your hair stand on end.
The occupant of the “star tenor” vehicle was the current starriest of
all, Jonas Kaufmann. His voice is continuing to recover: if he was less than
perfectly convincing in this role in March, he is now back to something
close to his best. The qualities of his voice – the dark timbre and the
smooth delivery – are well-aired; what’s been in question is his ability to
step on the accelerator and generate some excitement. Last night, he started
more strongly than he often does, making an impact in Act 1 when Chénier
kicks up a scandal by daring to mention the starving masses in polite
company. A Kaufmann-Harteros duet is a thing to savour, and their grand duet
in Act 2 did not disappoint: Kaufmann’s trademark crescendo-from-ppp
blending wonderfully into the exquisite softness of a Harteros note held at
perfect stability. His aria in the Act 4 trial scene, “Sì, fui soldato”, was
powerful and full of conviction.
Andrea Chénier has a large
supporting cast, all of it strong in this production: I’ll give particular
nods to Elena Zilio’s Madelon – as we’ve remarked before, Zilio does the
aged, grieving mother character superbly – and Andrea Borghini as Chénier’s
friend Roucher. All the singers were helped by Omer Meir Wellber’s
conducting, with unerring choices of tempi, perfect control of co-ordination
and balance between singers and orchestra, and the ability to extract great
character from the music in the passages where the orchestra could be let
off the leash.
Philipp Stöltzl and Heike Vollmer’s historically
accurate sets are impressive for their execution if nothing else: we see not
just a single doll’s house set, but a whole series of doll’s houses which
shift and transform so that we are always seeing simultaneous views of what
is happening to different people in different places. In Act 1, therefore,
as the Coignys welcome their guests, we see the fomenting of discord amongst
the servants downstairs, in Act 2, we see both the crowd outside the
revolutionary headquarters and the happenings in the various offices, and so
on. It all lends a great air of realism to proceedings (with the exception
of Mathieu’s unexplained Jack-the-joker make-up), but it can become wearing,
since your eye is continually being drawn away from the main action – in one
case, extremely so since Kaufmann and Harteros’ faces were in shadow as they
sang one of their big duets.
By the interval, I’d been enjoying the
music. By the end of the opera, I was completely bound up in the drama: this
production makes a strong case for Andrea Chénier’s continued presence in
the repertoire.
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