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Armide, music by Jean-Baptiste Lully; text by Philippe Quinault, after Gersusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso. First performed: Palais Royal, Paris, 15 Feb. 1686.
Royal Opera, Versailles – 11 May 2012, presented by Opera Atelier (Toronto)
Jack Rennie (L’Amour) and Peggy Kriha Dye (Armide) – production shot by Opera Atelier
Cast: Peggy Kriha Dye (Armide), Colin Ainsworth (Renaud/Amant fortunée), João Fernandes (Hidraot), Meghan Lindsay (Sidonie/Nymphe), Carla Huhtanen (Phénice/Lucinde), Olivier Laquerre (Artémidore/Ubalde), Aaron Ferguson (Chevalier Danois), Curtis Sullivan (La Haîne), Vasil Garvanliev (Aronte).
Corps de ballet: Artistes de l’Atelier Ballet; Chorus: Les Chantres du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles; Tafel Musik Baroque Orchestra conducted by David Fallis. Director: Marshall Pynkoski; Choreographer: Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg; Designer: Gerard Gauci. Sung in French with French surtitles.
Readers of this blog will already be aware of a bias towards early French opera, partly because I like it and partly because I study it. Indeed, my book project is on seventeenth-century music-theatre adaptations of the ‘Armida/Armide’ romance (it became an even bigger deal in eighteenth-century opera), so this work by Lully has already been taking up a lot of my time. I missed the last two stagings of this work in Europe (both in Paris), so I wasn’t going to let this one slip by, and it proved to be a very good night at the theatre – and an excellent excuse to re-ignite my love/hate relationship with the French capital. Armide is a woman torn, and as such you can read the role as the start of something, a kind of archetypal operatic heroine, paving the way for such figures as Norma, Violetta, Isolde, Lulu… opera’s history may start with Orpheus, but arguably it is with Armida/Armide that really it picks up speed.
Clearly informed by a knowledge of ballet de cour (early dance), baroque theatrical gesture and stage design, the production nevertheless wore its learning lightly, offering an simplified mix of early styles. So while we (and the costumiers) were spared the big wigs, bonnets, bows, embroidered waistcoats, feathered shiny helmets and so on, the performers still wore colourful ‘early style’ costumes as well as the higher heels of baroque footwear. The dance sections were indeed danced, and danced well – something you sadly can’t take for granted in modern productions of early opera, with producers so often using the lack of a tradition and expectation as an excuse for deadly theatre. Reminding us of the first-crusade setting of the story, the designs on the stage flats drew on medieval Islamic calligraphy and manuscript illustration, with the scene of the first act’s martial divertissement (choral scene) appropriately festooned with imagined Christian booty, a curious mix of orthodox icons and muddied flags in English and French colours. The iconographic and allegorical nature of early theatre was echoed by the introduction of a danced character ‘l’Amour’ (Love, danced by Jack Rennie), complete with impressive wings. Armide is a story of how love can catch one in its power, in spite of pride or intention, so the figure of love isn’t a stranger to treatments of this story – you find him cheekily restraining Armide’s knife-arm in Nicolas Poussin’s painting from a few decades earlier, and he also features in Philippe Quinault’s first treatment of the story, with the short Armide/Renaud sequence in his metatheatrical Comédie sans comédie (1655). For that very reason I was a little nervous of the director’s intentions for l’Amour in the second act, but thankfully the winged one disappeared before the famous scene between Armide and Renaud. After all, the core of that scene is Armide’s absence of reason for suddenly falling in love with Renaud, her stuttering silences, the shock of the new. In the third act, the figure of ‘l’Amour’ became even more symbolically charged, as the agents of La Haîne (Hatred) lifted up his limp form and carried him off, suggesting a Christ-like martyr.
Armide, Act II, scene v: Armide (Peggy Kriha Dye) and Renaud (Colin Ainsworth)
In terms of the singing, Peggy Kriha Dye (Armide) has her work cut out on this side of the Atlantic by competing with the wonderful Stéphanie d’Oustrac in this type of role, though they are quite different performers. There was a beauty of tone and an integrity and intelligence to Dye’s singing and she brought a quiet dignity to a role that can seem manic. She was blessed with a superb partner in Colin Ainsworth, the first haute-contre I’ve heard to really take my breath away. Singers in this voice type (a high tenor that blends chest voice seamlessly with falsetto in the upper head register, NOT to be confused with a ‘counter-tenor’) are very scarce, and he would be the first one I’ve seen to combine the necessary heroic élan with a brilliant tone quality – his air ‘Plus j’observe ces lieux et plus je les admire’ (‘the more I see these places the more I like them…’) was everything you want it to be, and then some. Unfortunately, a lack of hautes-contre within the company (couldn’t they have asked one of the local lads from the chorus?) meant that he also had to double up as a ‘fortunate lover’ in the passacaille of the fifth act which, though musically gratifying, did manage to muddy the theatricality – Renaud is supposedly sat listening at that point. Similarly, the director or choreographer got him scampering around in the sommeil (sleep-scene) of the second act as well, suggesting a kind of dream sequence, so clearly they found his enforced passivity an obstacle to be worked around. Maybe they should have considered Carlo Pallavicino’s La Gerusalemme Liberata (1687), where the Rinaldo (in Italian this time) gets to deliver an entire da capo aria whilst supposedly asleep? João Fernandes’ Hidraot and Curtis Sullivan’s La Haîne also deserve special mention, with Fernandes’ bass especially strong and penetrating, while Sullivan showed a fine voice and an elegant physicality to match.
It’s with the men, though, that we meet the perhaps most curious and potentially challenging feature of this production, in terms of appearance and costuming. For while the physical masculinity of the men was strongly suggested, if not indeed emphasised, the women by comparison appeared straight-laced, their bodies entirely cordoned off. The men’s leotard-like costumes suggested the movement of dance – Renaud in particular, with his revealingly skin-tight velvet leggings and flowing doublet, made me think more of Tchaikovsky’s Prince Siegfried than any operatic hero, baroque or otherwise. Meanwhile, the singing women were all stuffed and bound into corsets and had their legs well-hidden by full skirts. A telling moment in this regard was in the preparation for the second act sommeil, when Armide instructed her demons (played by the male dancers) to change their appearance to a pleasing disguise, which they achieved by removing their outer skirts to reveal stockinged legs…
[This makes for quite a fascinating contrast with the Robert Carsen-directed Armide of 2008 from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (available on DVD), which goes the other way entirely, emphasising masculinity only when cross-dressed, with the stage otherwise haunted by women’s bodies. I have problems with the Carson production, though, and by all accounts it didn't enjoy anything like the warm reception that this show got!]
In an opera dominated by the idea of women’s power and ‘charming beauty’ it was curious to see such a point being made. Back in the early 1990s a critic wrote a couple of articles likening Quinault and Lully’s operatic heroines to the so-called ‘précieuses’ – educated women, like bluestockings – of 17th century French society, who were often characterised as ‘prudes’ or ‘coquettes’, thus finding a tacit anti-feminism in these works, following Catherine Clément’s take on opera as ‘the undoing of women’. In this thinking, the female characters were supposedly trapped by their own mind-set, with no option but to suffer. Maybe that’s what had the producers make such a strong distinction between the sexes. The problem there, however, is that this concept – the ‘précieuse’, or ‘precious woman’ – was itself a misogynistic caricature, so if that’s where the production concept was coming from, I’m afraid this idea isn’t so certain, and not borne out by the initial reception of these works, especially Armide. Behind this caricature of ‘preciosity’ was the actual fear of a return to the mid-17th century civil wars in France, which saw women take active roles – including Lully’s first employer, the Duchess de Montpensier… and that’s a completely different story. The issue of gender in this opera, however, is far from straightforward, so my question about what was done here is simply a question, not a criticism, and I will probably keep thinking about it for a while yet. Given our distance from the material, there is always going to be some disconnect between our feelings about ‘the core subject matter’ (desire/power/fear-of-self etc) and the way the work itself plays out, and indeed it’s part of the challenge of reviving an early work like this.
Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier (1627-1693) – a possible model for Lully’s Armide?
I’m certainly grateful that I got the chance to see this production in the theatre, and it was wonderful to feel the energy and commitment from the stage, as well as see the vividness of the design. It had me renewing my understanding of this work and questioning my own impressions, and that can only be a good thing. If I missed certain things (the prologue and end of act four, the death of Aronte, the possible references to more immediate religious conflicts of Lully’s time…), it just shows the richness of this work, as what we had more than filled the evening, and deserved the lengthy applause it got from the Parisian audience. If any reader has the chance to see this production (it will be given at this summer’s Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York, during July and August), I do recommend it.
Amadis, Act 2: Corisande (Dagmar Šašková) & Arcalaüs (Alain Buet)
Amadis, tragédie en lyrique in a prologue and five acts, by Jean-Baptiste Lully [1684], libretto by Philippe Quinault, after Essart’s translation of Los quatros libros del virtuoso cavallero Amadis de Gaula by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo (c.1492).
Cast: Cyril Auvity (Amadis), Katia Velletaz (Oriane), Isabelle Druet (Arcabonne), Alain Buet (Arcalaüs), Edwin Crossley-Mercer (Florestan), Dagmar Šašková (Corisande), Hjördis Thebault (Urgande), and Arnaud Richard (Alquif / Ardan-Canile)
Corps de ballet: Ballet de l’Opéra-Théâtre d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse (solo dancer: Robert Le Nuz); Chorus: Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles; Ensemble: Orchestre des Musiques Anciennes et à Venir, conducted by Olivier Schneebeli.
Directed by Olivier Bénézech, with dance choreography by Françoise Denieau & Robert Le Nuz, set design by Gilles Papain & Olivier Bénézech, costumes by Frédéric Olivier, lighting design by Philippe Grosperrin and still & video images by Gilles Papain & Marie Jumelin. Co-produced by Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, Opéra-Théâtre d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, and Opéra de Massy.
Over past 25 years or so, French audiences have been able to witness a gradual process of rehabilitation in one of their most important composers, as one by one Lully’s operas have been taken off the shelves and re-staged, starting with Jean-Marie Villégier’s production of Lully’s Atys that William Christie directed, first in Paris in 1987, and then New York two years later. I was lucky enough to see the latest step in this process, with this new production of Amadis, staged in Avignon and Massy a couple of weeks ago. With our love of chronology, and the insistence that opera is first and foremost an Italian art-form, it’s usual to put Claudio Monteverdi at the top of the list of early opera composers, yet only three of his works have survived, and none of them were performed after the 1640s, until the 20th century. The operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully, on the other hand, are only obscure nowadays because of the enormous shifts in fashion and politics that took place in Europe after the 1790s. Previous to that, Lully’s works were central to the repertoire and understanding of opera in France, and were restaged and adapted right through the 18th century, making Lully the first major opera composer. No understanding of opera history can be complete without him, and yet it is frustrating to see how little recognition his work still gets even now.
The partnership of writer Philippe Quinault and composer Jean-Baptiste Lully led to the creation of a new genre, the musical tragedy (tragédie en musique) in the 1670s. This mode of theatre brings together dance, sung poetry and classically-inspired drama in a way that has only occasionally been emulated since. Of the 13 operas that they created together, Amadis (1684) was the first to be based on a chivalric romance, rather than classical mythology, and it was followed shortly after by two more: Roland (after Ariosto’s Orlando furioso) and Armide (after Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata). The form of the chivalric romance is best known to us nowadays from the medieval tales of King Arthur, with knights in shining armour heading off across the countryside seeking to prove their glory and honour by winning battles and saving damsels in distress. It’s a bit more involved than that, but you get the idea.
Amadis, the knight in question, is desperate to regain the love of his beloved Oriane, who thinks he has been unfaithful to her.
Arcabonne (Isabelle Druet)
Meanwhile, the evil pair of Arcalaüs and his sister, the enchantress Arcabonne, want to destroy Amadis in revenge for him killing their brother. They entrap Oriane, as well as Amadis’ friend Florestan, and reel him in. The entrapment takes place in an enchanted forest, a favourite setting for this kind of story – one only has to think of the woods of Ariosto or Tasso, or indeed Dante’s selva oscura – and which Amadis addresses in the Act 2 air “Bois épais” (dense wood…).
The tragedy turns on the fate of Arcabonne, who is torn between love and hatred – she carries the memory of how she was once saved from certain death by a man whose face she glimpsed but whose name she never knew. Having Amadis in her power at last she gazes upon him and realises that he is the same man that saved her, the unknown saviour whom she has secretly loved all this time…
The tragédie en musique is a very disciplined form of music theatre, almost as much danced as it is sung. This production benefitted from having not only professional dancers but also in a choreographer (Françoise Deniau) who knows something of 17th-century ballet de cour, the theatrical dances that Lully would have known and danced, and from which modern ballet derives. While the choreography didn’t attempt an authentic reconstruction, it nevertheless cleverly blended old and new styles so that the dancers weren’t pushed too far out of their comfort zones whilst embodying the music in reasonable style. Musical authenticity, on the other hand, is completely taken for granted nowadays, and indeed the orchestra under CMBV’s Olivier Schneebeli played beautifully throughout, with wonderful plucked continuo (two theorbos plus lute/ baroque guitar if you please), lovely woodwind playing and a percussionist (David Joignaux) who covered an impressive array of instruments, including thunder effects!
From Act 5 Chaconne
The cast of singers were very good, including unnamed soloists from the chorus, with Dagmar Šašková (Corisande), Alain Buet (Arcalaüs) and Isabelle Druet (Arcabonne) especially strong. Haute-contre Cyril Auvity (Amadis) has begun to carve out a career in this repertoire, and his experience certainly showed, though I couldn’t help being concerned at the strain that came through occasionally in the upper register, as well as an occasional looseness in delivery, though his voice at its best is certainly as sweet as ever.
Olivier Bénézech’s production created a clear frame for communicating the narrative, both as sung and as danced theatre. Graphic projections onto the backstage suggested settings in a way that followed the original text whilst suggesting modern analogies, but instead of playing with aesthetic conceits this production helped make this old story clearer, inviting us to engage with it even more closely. I can see why contemporary audiences returned to see these works again and again, and certainly wish that I could have done the same.
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