Different Women

'Electra' and 'Elena' at Aix-en-Provence,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

This year's Aix-en-Provence Festival features five different operas and several concerts; it extends throughout the month of July, and was preceded in June by a large gamut of musical activities (mostly by the Académie Européenne de Musique) open to the local population (and visitors) either free or at very low prices.
I saw three operas. I decided to forgo the new production of Rigoletto because in Verdi's bicentenary year it is on the program of several Italian opera houses where I can get it with a more local flavor, and also a revival of a 2010 production of Don Giovanni already reviewed in this magazine ['Nearly a Male Lulu', 10 July 2010]. Here, I focus on two stagings premiered in Aix but programmed to travel to several countries: Elektra (jointly produced by the Aix Festival with Milan La Scala, New York Metropolitan Opera, Oslo National Opera of Finland, Berlin Staatsoper-unter-den Linden and the Barcelona Liceu, and likely to be leased by several other theaters) and Elena (already scheduled to go to Versailles, Montpellier, Lille, Angers, Rennes and Lisbon, and most likely also to tour Italy and the UK). In another article, I will review the world premiere of Vasco Mendonça's The House Taken Over and some of the contemporary music concerts.
They are, of course, very different: Elektra is the well known Strauss-Hofmannsthal masterpiece which often features in Music & Vision; Elena is the first revival in modern times of an opera by Francesco Cavalli, the score and libretto of which were rediscovered quite recently in the main library in Venice. The only thing they have in common is that they deal with women, and women's voices dominate the vocal part of both works.

Evelyn Herlitzius as Elektra, Waltraud Meier as Klytaemnestra and Adrianne Pieczonka as Chrysothemis with servants in 'Elektra' at Aix-en-provence. Photo © 2013 Pascal Victor. Click on the image for higher resolution

The production of Elektra was most awaited because it was the debut (with this opera) of stage director Patrice Chéreau (and his team starting with Richard Peduzzi for the stage set) and of conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. Aix provided a top notch orchestra, the Ochestre de Paris, and an all star cast: Evelyn Herlitzius (Elektra), Adrianne Pieczonka (Chrysothemis), Waltraud Meier (Klytämnestra), Mikhail Petrenko (Orest) and Tom Randle (Aegisth). In two minor roles, still effective: the ninety-two-year-old Franz Mazura (Der Pfleger des Orest) and seventy-nine-year-old Sir Donald McIntyre (Ein alter Diener). This was a tribute by Chéreau to friendship because he learned a lot from them when they worked together in the then considered revolutionary Ring in Bayreuth (1976-80). He was then in his early thirties, and Pierre Boulez was in the pit.
I saw and heard Elektra on 10 July 2013, the opening night. After two hours of extreme musical and dramatic tensions, there were twenty minutes of standing ovations. Chéreau and Salonen worked together to stage an Elektra different from most usual stagings: more tender than customary but for this reason even more touching in its extreme family drama in a war-torn setting looking like a Balkan country in recent times. The balance between pit and stage was very well kept. The Orchestre de Paris responded quite well even though, occasionally, it seemed to lack tint. Evelyn Herlitzius and Adrianne Pieczonnka were superlative. Waltraud Meier has sung as a soprano for several years. Thus, she avoided some of the depth of the lower register.

Donald McIntyre as as An Old Servant and Mikhail Petrenko as Orest in 'Elektra' at Aix-en-provence. Photo © 2013 Pascal Victor

Elena, of course, is a totally different thing. A seventeenth century opera dealing with complicated intrigues in several Greek kingdoms where the young Princess of Sparta is courted by several young men and eventually marries Menelaus who in order to woo her disguises himself as an Amazon.

A scene from 'Elena' at Aix-en-provence. Photo © 2013 Patrick Berger

Rather than Homer's poems on the Trojan war, the libretto recalls Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night, and Corneille's L'Illusion Comique. Although some recent rediscoveries of baroque operas did not promise to go a long way, Elena is a very enjoyable piece of work requiring a small ensemble of eleven instrumentalists on period instruments, with twelve or thirteen singers for as many as twenty-six roles and comparatively simple sets.

In Aix, the Cappella Mediterranea was conducted by Leonardo García Alarcón. The staging by Jean-Yves Ruf in the effective single set by Laure Pichat was quite swift (as needed). The cast was quite young, with an average age under thirty. The four protagonists were Valer Barna-Sabadus (a counter-tenor with a very high register), Emöke Baráth (a voluptuous lyric tenor ), Fernando Guimarães (an effective bass) and Solenn Lavanant Linke (an all-round soprano assoluto).