European Opera Centre/UCH Limerick: Dardanus (Rameau)

Dardanus, music by Jean Philippe Rameau; livret by Charles-Antoine Le Clerc de La Bruère; edition (based on 1744 version) by Gilles Rico

University Concert Hall, Limerick – July 22, 2011; presented by European Opera Centre and University Concert Hall

Cast: Svetli Chaumien (Dardanus), Myrto Boccolini (Iphise), Romanas Kudriasovas (Anténor), Dionisios Tsantinis (Ismenor), Joanna Freszel (Vénus), Ilektra Platinopoulou (L’Amour), Ryszard Kalus (Teucer)

Orchestra (on period instruments) conducted by Nicolas André; production directed by Bernard Rozet. Sung in French with English surtitles.

Last week saw the first performances – as far as I know – of a Rameau opera in Ireland, when the Liverpool-based European Opera Centre, in association with the University Concert Hall, presented Dardanus on July 20 and 22.  It was a strangely under-promoted event, and slipped well under the radar for most people, with the only mention in the national press being a brief reference in The Irish Times ‘Ticket’ supplement on the previous Friday.  Perhaps they only had a limited promotional budget, or else the producers viewed these as ‘rehearsals with audience’ (i.e., previews), but really they had nothing to be ashamed of.  As a student production, it stood up well against professional presentations of other early operas I’ve seen in Ireland.

The biggest problem was posed by the venue itself: as the concert hall does not have an orchestra pit, the stage was split into two levels, with the orchestra on the lower level, nearest the audience, while the singers performed behind the players on the upper level, and surtitles were projected on the back wall.  Inevitably, this meant that attention was split between the orchestra and the performers – a situation not helped by the fact that this was one of the largest, and best, period orchestras I’d heard in Ireland.  After the minimal accompaniment usual in recent Opera Theatre Company Handel productions, this was certainly a welcome change.  It meant, however, that the action on stage felt inevitably distanced, though the projection and good singing from the ensemble (Myrto Boccolini’s Iphise especially standing out) meant that this was less of a problem than it could have been.

The plot: Dardanus loves Iphise, the daughter of his enemy Teucer, and she loves him; Teucer, however has promised Iphise to Anténor. Dardanus enlists the help of magician, Ismenor, and (after a lot of trouble) things eventually come round in his favour, and the lovers live happily ever after.  Rameau radically revised Dardanus in 1744 and again in 1760 from its original form in 1739, and interestingly it was an account (truncated?) of the 1744 version that we heard.  This dropped the intervention of Neptune (and his sea-monster) from the original version, preferring instead a more naturalistic series of twists by having Dardanus languish in a prison cell, adding the beautiful aria ‘Lieux funestes’ for this scene.

It was in this latter version of the opera that it finally achieved the fame it deserved with audiences in 1760, so it was good to see it being used here in preference to the first version.  Possibly taking a cue from the ‘naturalism’ of this version, the director’s concept fell back on a theme that has become depressingly familiar in recent years, namely ‘the rehearsal’.  Cue non-costumes, newspapers, singers slouching in chairs and pretending to be scruffy actors.  It was dire when they used it in Opera Ireland’s Handel Imeneo back in 2005, and perhaps a bit less annoying here, but it screams lack of imagination like nothing else…  Transforming the prologue to a ‘framing-narrative’, the two allegorical figures Vénus and L’Amour were depicted as a pair of stage directors who amuse themselves by getting their actors to re-enact this story of Dardanus, and occasionally wandering back on stage for the sake of extra stage business, laying out candles, lighting them, gathering them up again, and so on.

Presenting any kind of early opera to a modern audience isn’t easy and always involves compromises to be worked around.  While early French opera allows you to avoid the whole castrato issue, there is instead the problem of recreating the rich stagecraft of designs and effects (known in the trade as merveilleux) and all the dancing.  Opera in France evolved from courtly dance theatre and for this reason dancing retained a special role in French opera that you never find in Italy – it is very much part of the way the story is told.  In modern productions there are three choices in dealing with the passages of dance music that inevitably interrupt the singing: recreate the early choreographies (reasonably possible, as records exist, and early dances have been recreated); create entirely new dances for the music; or let the music play on and leave a yawning gap on stage, for which stage directors either try to compensate by inventing stage business or else darken the stage and treat the music like an entr’acte.  Unsurprisingly perhaps, given EOC’s focus on giving opportunities to young singers, they went with the latter options, with much moving about for the various tambourins, menuets and riguadons, while for the wonderful final chaconne – when dancers would have celebrated the marriage of Dardanus and Iphise – instead down came the lights, as if it was the end of a film or something, credits rolling etc.  This isn’t unique, of course, and speaks volumes about the variable nature of ‘authentic performance practice’ nowadays – expected for music, but still optional in every other department??

Hopefully when another one of Rameau’s pieces returns to Ireland (and no, I’m not holding my breath), we might see something more of the ambition that his wonderful and quirky operas deserve. For a tentative dip in the water, though, this deserved a lot better notice – and bigger audiences – than it received.