Leon, Lightfoot / Van Manen

So I’ve skipped a whole bunch of operas and ballets that I have attended since coming back from Argentina in January. These ranged from quite good (Dvorak’s Rusalka and Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, my first operetta - note to self: love the genre, need to see more of it!) to predictably classical (Verdi’s Otello) and even borderline pornographic (Chostakovitch’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk).

On May 20, I went to see three new ballet pieces at the Palais Garnier here in Paris, Leon, Lightfoot / Van Manen. The first one, Sleight of hand choreographed by Paul Lightfoot and Sol León to Philip Glass’ Symphonie # 2, was, in my opinion, nothing short of incredible. It felt like a ballet version of the 2006 movie The fountain (except that I did not fall asleep this time - granted, the ballet lasted 20 minutes instead of an hour and a half): beautiful, even breathtaking at times, and probably full of symbolism none of which I got. The only thing that I did not appreciate about it was that there were two roles, performed by a male and a female, which were 100% symmetric except that the female gets stripped of her clothes at the end while the male does not. Seriously?.. I find that such pointless exploitation of female nudity inevitably cheapens whichever context it appears in. On the plus side, the choreography was really spooky and unique, and Phillip Glass’ (Glass’s?) music was hauntingly beautiful even pre-recorded.

Sleight of Hand. Image credit: Agathe Poupeney for OnP

I don’t have much to say about the second piece, Trois Gnossiennes. The third one, Speak for Yourself, started off really weird (the audio thing in the beginning - what the hell was that?..) but it did have a really cool visual effect of a rain later on:

Speak for Yourself. Image credit: Agathe Poupeney for OnP

Normally I am not a huge fan of these super-contemporary-conceptual types of performance art (Goecke / Lidberg / Cherkaoui that I watched in the same opera back in winter was a nice evening, but left no lasting impression, I must admit). The Sleight of Hand, on the other hmmm hand, was a rare jewel!

My final highly subjective verdict: 8/10 (more precisely, I would give the first part a 10, and not bother rating the rest)

XOXO

Olga

La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi

Since my decision to focus on the comic operas is rather recent, whereas my habit of booking tickets months in advance is not, I still have a number of, shall we say, not so light operas to review. One such example is Verdi's La Traviata that I attended in (at?) Bastille on December 11, 2018. I will try hard not to spoil the plot for those who do not know it, but let us just say that it fits well into your regular operatic storyline. You know, the one with a foreseeable yet dramatic death at the end (oops, sorry!)

Main characters: meet Violetta, a courtesan living a perfectly instagrammable life in XIX century Paris. Meet Alfredo, a young man from a "good" family who has fallen in love with her prior to their actual first meeting, I believe.

Violetta is touched by Alfredo's pure (or premature, if you ask my opinion) affection, and they begin a relationship. A few months after, the guy's father comes to plead with her to leave his son alone because she is ruining the family's reputation. The horror. <\shrug\>

I understand that it was a different time back then, so no matter how ridiculous the situation, I am not holding this part of the plot against Verdi (or rather, Alexandre Dumas Jr, whose La Dame aux camélias the libretto was based upon). But my god, is Violetta enjoying playing the victim during the father's visit! I can be a bit of a drama queen myself at times, and I can certainly sympathize with what she must be going through, but next time I am about to lose it, I'll think of that aria and hopefully that alone will be enough for me to keep myself together.

Aesthetics-wise, the music was beautiful and so was the set. By the way, do you notice how each of us somehow comes to learn a handful of opera tunes before ever setting foot in a theater? Alfredo’s “toast” aria in the first act is definitely one of these instantly recognizable pieces. Here is a recording from the Met (unrelated note: I found the cast to be much more suitable for the roles in the production that I attended). I dare you to take a peek and tell me you’ve never heard it before! Where do opera bits make it into in our everyday life though? Laundry detergent commercials on TV? Hotel elevator playlists? I give up.

The set, designed by Sylvain Chauvelot, was super elaborate and cool; here are some pictures I got off the official website:

Image credit: Sébastien Mathé, Opera National de Paris

Seating to avoid in Opera Bastille, Paris

I had trouble hearing Violetta's parts at times, which may have been due to where I was sitting: row 35, place 23 in the parterre (again, that was Opera Bastille, not Palais Garnier). There are a couple of pocket-like areas on that level that I would advise you to avoid, the acoustics seem to take a hit.

My final highly subjective verdict: 5/10 (why not, but don’t go out of your way to attend)

XOXO

Olga

La Cenerentola by Gioacchino Rossini

Running two operas and one ballet behind - got to get on with it before I fly off to Tierra del Fuego for the holidays, and recollections of Cinderella and a certain french courtesan (opera and ballet adaptations of Dumas’ La Dame aux Camélias coming up next) get replaced with memories of glaciers and (hopefully!) baby penguins in my head.

A mere week after attending the french ballet Cendrillon at Bastille, I went back to Garnier for the Italian opera La Cenerentola. Come to think about it, Cinderella’s story does not technically have anything to do with either Christmas or New Years, does it? Yet, I don’t know how you, the reader, feel about Christmas, but my inner Russian stubbornly maintains the belief in New Year miracles (my inner physicist, on the other hand, can’t help a smirk). So yes, where there is New Years, there are miracles, and that includes Cinderella. Could be that this was the logic behind l’Opéra de Paris’ programming, or could be that they intentionally like to pair operas with corresponding ballets: having watched La Traviata and La Dame aux Camélias on two subsequent Tuesdays gives some credibility to the latter theory.

I’ve got a plane to catch in a few hours, so lets dive right into the first act. The first act made me want to climb onto the stage and punch the title character in the face. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Well, neither did I. Sure there is always some variation between the different versions of this fairy-tale, but normally they all at least have one thing in common: Cinderella is depicted as a hard working self-respecting young woman and yeah, she marries a prince later, but that’s hardly the point. I am sure in any case she would have done well enough for herself, especially if she was lucky to live in a society with enough social mobil… where were we?

Unlike the Cinderella that we know and love, Rossini’s Cenerentola is a whiny little b*tch, pardon my unoperatic language. She mostly whines a lot, sings [about a king marrying a commoner #lifegoals] when other people ask her not to (for all we know, it could be 4 am), and alludes to some hidden “virtue” she supposedly has. Yickes. This goes on for much of the first act, the latter being partially salvaged by Cenerentola’s not being the sole main character in the story. The prince and his valet undergo a classic switch, and both get a significant amount of stage time.

Another redeeming quality of La Cenerentola was the casting: Florian Sempey as the valet/prince/valet and Lawrence Brownlee as the prince/valet/prince. I have already encountered the duo in Don Pasquale a few months back, where the two played Dottor Malatesta and Ernesto respectively, and both there and in La Cenerentola, they could not have been a better fit for the roles. Florian’s Dandini is hillarious, and Lawrence’s Ramiro comes out quite three-dimensional unlike the girl. I am not dissing whoever sang Cinderella’s part by the way, my problem is with the story (or rather, the lyrics that make the story roll).

The second act was quite a bit better than the first one: (a) it was shorter, (b) Cinderella had less stage time in it than she did in the first act, and (c) the whole thing just seemed more dynamic somehow. Thanks to Florian and Lawrence’s performance and the second act, La Cenerentola ends up with

My final highly subjective verdict: 5/10 (why not, but don’t go out of your way to attend)

XOXO

Olga

Cendrillon by Rudolf Noureev

Tonight (although I am sure it will be a few days before this post sees the light of day) I went to the opening night of Cendrillon - Prokofiev’s ballet choreographed by Rudolf Noureev (aka Nureyev in the English-speaking world), again at Opera Bastille. I first started attending ballets back when I lived in Dresden, 2013-2016. Ah the fond memories of the Semperoper… Remains one of my favorite opera houses to this day, but I digress. Back to Cinderella!

Image credit: Yonathan Kellerman / OnP

Ever since I discovered the wonderful over-the-top operatic acting, I have been a lot more into opera than I am into ballet. Still, it is good to change things up every once in awhile, and Cendrillon is certainly a fine way to do just that. Not mind-blowing by any means, but entertaining, speckled with funny moments, and undeniably pretty. During an opera (at least ones I enjoy) I tend to be too engrossed in the story to pay much attention to the music, but while watching a ballet, my mind tends to wander. Wandering to Sergei Prokofiev’s music is an adventure, and a whimsical one at that :) The starting chords gave me a strong sense of déjà entendu: but where could I have heard it before? I was never one for classical music growing up. Reading, on the other hand, has been been my passion from a young age, and before that there were audio books. Twenty five years ago these came in the form of vinyl records. One of those vinyls I used to listen to as a small kid living on a naval base in the Far East of Russia was Cinderella, an audio fairy-tale set to music excerpts from Prokofiev’s 1940s ballet. I wonder what I would have thought if someone told me back then that the next time I would hear those tunes would be in a Parisian opera house :)

Cendrillon. Apparently that’s just French for Cinderella, but when I first heard it, I figured that it was some sort of a male counterpart. That not being the case, here comes a twist within a twist: in a way, Cendrillon was a tribute to Noureev’s own rocky road to success - from a soviet defector in 1961 to director and chief choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet up until 1992, how is that for a Cinderfellow story!

To keep up with the times, in Noureev’s creation Cinderella gets transplanted into Hollywood, her fairy godmother gets replaced with a movie producer, ball with a film set, and prince with who appears to be a leading movie star. And who needs a wedding when you can sign a movie contract? Surprisingly, despite these seemingly major changes to Perrault’s story, the atmosphere and the general feeling of the original remain untouched. Could I be biased because I heard Prokofiev’s music while listening to the unedited fairytale in my childhood? Maybe. Is the music alone, visual charm of the experience aside, worth braving the cold November rain? It is.

My final highly subjective verdict: 6/10 (nice to see)

XOXO

Olga

L'elisir d'amore by Gaetano Donizetti

Before I proceed to what I would have never imagined writing just a year ago - my first opera review (gasp!) - let me preface by saying that I know absolutely nothing about classical music. Zero! Nada. Of course, as I attend the Opera more and more often, I am growing increasingly curious about how in the world all those folks sitting in the orchestra pit manage to produce what for me is a beautiful backdrop to the opera’s main course - the theatrical performance. To me, a good opera is a high dimensional (could you tell I was a physicist yet?) beast centered around a good story. It is then the job of the actors (yes, opera singers are primarily actors in my eyes), the music, and the set - in that order - to make that story shine.

So… This past Monday, 19/11/2018, I went to see L'elisir d'amore, a comic opera in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti, at Opera Bastille here in Paris. I have already seen (and thoroughly enjoyed!) his Don Pasquale earlier this year, so I had a good feeling as I got off work and squeezed myself and a strategically packed salmon sandwich into the subway. Yes, you can bring food to the opera - just be reasonable about what it is (I’ve seen mainly sandwiches and tidy lunch boxes), have pity on your neighbors (make sure nothing smells at all and, for the love of god, no noisy wrappers!!), and enjoy it in the foyer during the intermission. The food at the opera bar is overpriced, but more importantly - the options tend to be as limited, as the queues are long :( Water bottles are obviously allowed in as well - this ain’t no airport, dears.

The Story*

*Here at LOLing we have a strict no-spoiler policy, so you may continue reading with a peace of mind.

Right, back to the opera. L'elisir d'amore apparently premiered in 1832. I am always curious about these dates, because it makes me appreciate the timelessness of the narrative so much more. If people did not fundamentally change during the last 200 years, perhaps there is hope for us all to make it another 200, eh? The story starts off as a classic “he was a punk, she did ballet” kind of thing: a young unremarkable villager Nemorino is madly in love with the beautiful and well-read Adina. Who said men were thrown off by educated women? Not our late 18th century Nemorino, as it seems to only add to Adina’s high value in his eyes (or so I inferred from his first aria). Then there’s another man, Sergeant Belcore, who rushes in and proposes to our lady almost immediately. Adina is not interested in either one: she seems mildly annoyed by Belcore’s snobby approach and engages in friendly mockery of Nemorino. She loves her single life and intends to keep it that way. Looks like Nemorino is headed straight for Heartbreaksville when a mysterious Dr. Dulcamara arrives in town…

(I was going for something in between a movie trailer and a book description with this, I suppose.)

The Actors

I don’t recall seeing any of the cast before (and I usually look up the singers who make an impression on me after the performance). As I am no expert, I cannot vouch for anyone’s singing, but I can confidently say that Valentina Naforniţă makes one convincing Adina. Every gesture, every facial expression, her physique - everything is consistent with the image of a pretty, smart, independent, in the beginning ever so slightly conceited, young woman. You can clearly see hints of her liking Nemorino early on, despite her initially rebuffing his advances. Well done!

Nemorino, played by Vittorio Grigolo. Hehe, you can tell an Italian from a mile away :) Character-wise, I was more consumed with Adina’s part of the story, even though Nemorino plays a bigger role in it. Just for this reason, I don’t have as much to say about Vittorio, apart from the fact that him and Valentina make a powerful and persuasive acting duet. What stood out to me, however, was Vittorio’s showing of gratitude for the audience applause. His very genuine reaction truly was a pleasure to see :)

Gabriele Viviani (also known as Dr. Dulcamara): the father of modern scammers, funny until you find yourself falling for one of his schemes.

The Set

Just how I like it: a modern setting (I was picturing Italy in the 1950s, for some reason), but none of that minimalist-conceptual-modern-art stuff. The outfits are more or less present day; Dulcamara travels by truck. An easily transferable (to today, that is) story in a relatable setting - quite the opposite of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde that I saw (more like, had to force myself to finish) at the same opera house earlier this month. Don Pasquale, on the other hand, was done similarly, and I loved every minute of it (will probably review that one as well, even though it has been a few months).

My final highly subjective verdict: 7/10 (would recommend)

XOXO

Olga

Welcome / Bienvenue

Hi, my name is Olga and I am an addict.

It all started a year and a half ago when I went to my first opera, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.

The posters plastered all over the Paris metro made this classic of Russian literature look more exciting than Marvel’s latest, and I had one of those J Crew bridesmaid dresses that I didn’t have the occasion to wear in four years. “I’ll probably be too fat for it by the time anyone I know gets (re)married,” - I mused while hesitating dropping 162€ on the cheapest ticket that remained on sale. Long story short, despite Anna Netrebko not being quite like the Tatiana Larina I imagined back in high school, I had a lovely evening and got instantly hooked on the opera genre.

Last night I attended my 13th opera (more on it another day), where a friend of mine suggested that I start posting reviews of the operas that I see. “What an awesome idea!! Why haven’t you proposed it before?!” “I did. Twice. You had this exact same reaction the previous times.” Damn, my memory must be even worse than I thought… Without further ado I headed home and added a new blog page to my website. The title was an obvious choice: yesterday’s performance made me realize that so far the operas I have enjoyed the most were, in fact, comedies. So here is to many more LOLs at the Opera :-)

XOXO

Olga