Vivid and Entertaining

GIUSEPPE PENNISI attends a
Ravel double bill in Rome

Joseph-Maurice Ravel is known especially for his melodies, orchestral works and instrumental textures and effects. Along with Claude Debussy, he was one of impressionist music's most prominent figures. Much of his piano, chamber, vocal and orchestral music has entered the standard concert repertoire. Active during a period of great artistic innovation and diversification, Ravel benefited from many sources and influences, though his music defies any easy classification. As Vladimir Jankélévitch notes in his biography, 'no influence can claim to have conquered him entirely. Ravel remains ungraspable behind all these masks which the snobbery of the century has attempted to impose'. His two one-act operas have entered the repertoire of major theatres very slowly: they require a large orchestra and rather special voices. More significantly, they have very sophisticated librettos that seldom enthrall a large audience.

Although composed before and immediately after World War I, when Ravel served as a volunteer in the capacity of ambulance driver, L'Heure Espagnole and L'Enfant et les Sortilèges reach Rome as a double bill now in a production successfully staged at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2012 [see 'Fluid and Magical' by Howard Smith, 1 January 2014]. Previously, the double bill had been staged in Rome solely way back in 1947. Regretfully, the debut of this production was tormented by wild cat strikes due to the badly needed restructuring of the theatre, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. The 30 January 2014 opening night was cancelled nearly at the last minute. This review is based on the 2 February afternoon performance.

L'Heure Espagnole is an ironical take off on Italian traditional opera buffa with a very funny libretto about adultery. The opera forms part of a larger group of Spanish works which spanned Ravel's career. The Spanish coloring provides for a virtuoso use of a large orchestra and for underlying exaggerated comic effects. Charles Dutoit was in the pit; he made the audience sense the brilliant orchestration where the oft repeated comments of the clock are — as written by musicologist Rodney Miles — 'more human than the humans'. Also Charles Dutoit made the audience feel the calculated coldness at the opera's heart — an almost icy parody of Bizet's Carmen. Laurent Pelly (stage director and costume designer) and Caroline Ginet (sets) provided a fast moving surrealistic action in a Spain as seen by a Frenchman around 1905.

L'Enfant is based on a very elegant libretto by Colette: a lazy child is locked up in his room by his mother so that he is compelled to do his homework; the child indulges in an orgy of destruction of the objects in the room, but the objects come to life, sing about the suffering they have endured and the naughty brat understands the damage he has done; with a final G major cry of 'Maman', he asks for forgiveness. Ravel himself admitted that there are quotations from Puccini, Massenet, Monteverdi, Strauss (both Joseph and Richard), Handel and even American musical comedies in the score. Nonetheless, L'Enfant and L'Heure Espagnole are unmistakably twentieth century French: a modern fairy tale attempting to exorcize World War I sufferings. Rightly, Dutoit's baton explores the profoundly serious feeling at the heart of this vivid and entertaining work. Here Pelly (stage director and costume designer) and Barbara de Limburg (sets) opted for a visionary, just enchanting, approach.

From left to right: Andrea Concetti as an armchair, Katounia Gadella as the Child and François Piolino as a second armchair in Ravel's 'L'enfant et les sortilèges' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2014 Laura Ferrari. Click on the image for higher resolution

The production is very well rehearsed because the same team has performed it several times at Glyndebourne and elsewhere before reaching Rome. A dozen singers interpret some twenty different roles. Khatouna Gadelia, Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Benjamin Hulett, François Piolino, Jean-Luc Ballestra and Andrea Concetti as well as the children's chorus deserve a special mention.
The Sunday afternoon audience warmly applauded this delightful double bill.