Emmanuel Chabrier, L’étoile. New York City Opera, 3/18/10. Conducted by Emmanuel Plasson with Julie Boulianne (Lazuli), Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (King Ouf), Jennifer Zetlan (Laoula) in a production by Mark Lamos.
In New York, you can currently hear two very different examples of 19th-century French opera. Last Tuesday I saw Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet at the Met, and on Thursday Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’étoile next door at the New York City Opera. Compared to Thomas’s stern austerity, Chabrier is all bubbles. Got to say I prefer Chabrier. This is a score of considerable musical sophistication and refinement, but also not above a long ensemble about tickling. (Hi, Eric Massa!)
And this production is a fun night out. The plot is pure Offenbachian silliness: a king is looking for a victim for his annual celebratory public execution, but his astrologer warns him that his choice’s horoscope is closely linked to his own, and should he carry out the execution the king himself will die within a day. Meanwhile the would-be victim, Lazuli, falls in love with the King’s fiancée. Hijinks ensue. How can you not love an opera that has a “Song of Impalement”? Such non-stop goofiness would become tiring, though, if there weren’t a fair number of lyrical moments as well, and if the music weren’t so consistently inspired.
The City Opera’s production, by Mark Lamos, goes for the goofy end of things, it’s surreal, brightly colored and with a lot of choreographed musical numbers–think a great deal of bobbing up and down. It’s entertaining and effective, and fits the character of the music very well. Even the many choruses get entertaining choreographic treatment. The empty white stage is subject to much bricolage, in the old movie musical sense. The story is cute enough but often an excuse for flights of musical mischief and parody, which the production treats with suitable fantasy. It’s a revival, and while it’s the first time I’ve seen it, I suspect the first iteration may have been a little bit dramatically tighter, and maybe more attuned to the poignant moments in the score. But it’s still great fun.
The orchestra sounded great (conducted by Emmanuel Plasson, son of Michel Plasson), and the singing was mostly strong. This was my first experience with the new acoustics of the unfortunately-named David Koch Theatre, but I had only been to the old version two or three times so I can’t make a detailed comparison (love those aisles, though!). But I think it’s an improvement, everything is clear if not the most resonant. Julie Boulianne sounded great as Lazuli, but was sometimes covered by the orchestra in the faster and lower parts of the role. Jean-Paul Fouchécourt sounds like he is past his best tenorial days, but he’s still hilarious and stylistically perfect. Jennifer Zetlan was bright and mellifluous as the Princess Laoula.
So the City Opera isn’t the Met. We know this. But this is a great opera (one I doubt the Met could stage successfully), and the production, despite some sketched-in bits, is cheery and silly and inventive and visually more interesting than a lot of things you see next door. So why the rows and rows of empty seats? This company is in a bad place, or rather hopefully getting out of a bad place, and they need your support. By all means go and admire Simon Keenlyside’s biceps singing over at the Met, but please consider a visit to City Opera too. You’ll get an entertaining night at the opera, and help to ensure that this company stays with us in the future. They need you! And you might not realize it, but you need L’étoile too–it will cheer you up, at least.
Their remaining two productions this spring are a revival of Mark Lamos’s lovely minimalist production of Madame Butterfly and a production of Handel’s Partenope by the fantastic Spanish director Francisco Negrin. I’m hoping to go to the latter.
Next: This William Christie fangirl sees her idol in person for the first time. Fairy Queen at BAM!
Photos from the New York Times/Sarah Krulwich. Sorry, Times, but I couldn’t find any of the current cast on the City Opera website.
City Opera trailer:
2 Comments
Thanks for your always interesting and informative posts! Apropos of the imminent NYCO Partenope, a few comments: As I mentioned the other day in my blog (exegette.blogspot.com), Francisco Negrin has done at least two different stagings of Partenope, the first in 1998 at Glimmerglass (a version that subsequently traveled to the NYCO) and the second in 2008 for the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen. I'm wondering whether the NYCO is reviving Negrin's first, using the Danish second, or if Negrin is staging a third version this year. By the way, Negrin was apparently born in Mexico City, not Spain.
I've seen the Partenope at Glimmerglass and NYCO has the same production. Whether Negrin's staging is being refreshed by himself, an assistant, or by a NYCO asistant director working from the production's prompt book I don't know.
But I liked it so much at Glimmerglass that I'm going back this spring to see it again.
The acoustic at the State Theater before the unfortunate acoustical "enhancement" tended to suppress the presence of voices and other sounds coming from the stage. The enhancement added a harsh, shrill edge to women's high voices for at least the first season. Thereafter, they had it tuned better but it still wasn't very natural or very exciting sound.
For both Esther and Don Giovanni last fall the improvement was striking — the sound came at you and had a vibrance about it that has been lacking before. The sound from the stage had a profile. They may tweak it for a while by adding or subtracting sound-absorbent materials here and there, etc. but the improvement finally turns the place into a respectable venue for opera and electronics are not involved.