Les Troyens, Châtelet, 11/10/2003

Farfouillant mon disque dur, j’ai retrouvé avec bonheur cette chronique de 2003 que j’avais écrite alors pour un lectorat anglophone, et un ami cher plus particulièrement. J’ai tant de regret de ne pas m’être astreint plus tôt à l’exercice du compte-rendu systématique : que de spectacles tendent à disparaître de ma mémoire, faute d’une trace écrite précieusement conservée… Retrouver la trace des premières émotions suscitées par Anna-Caterina Antonacci, que je découvrais alors pour la première fois, à quelques jours d’intervalle, en Agrippina puis Cassandre, est un vrai cadeau du sort; une histoire d'amour était née. Voici donc ce que j’écrivais il y a quatre ans à l’issue de cette représentation du 11 octobre 2003.


The new production of Les Troyens at the Châtelet was predicted to be the apex of the Berlioz celebration in France this year. This opera has never reached in France the success most true French opera lovers expected it to have. Even for the most Berliozian among the French audience, this opera was considered a monument, but a lifeless one, since no production succeeded in giving life to this epic work. For all others, Les Troyens was thought as a kitsch grandiloquent opera without real interest. When the Opéra Bastille opened twelve years ago, it was decided that Les Troyens would be the opening performance. Perhaps because those were more establishment-oriented nights than musical ones, those performances seemed to have confirmed the weakness of the opera.

Deeply in love with this opera, I consider it a special masterpiece in the history of opera. Therefore, I sat with a mixed feeling of impatience, excitement and fear, waiting for the curtain to rise for the premiere of the new production. At least in France, score has been performed for the first time uncut. I was surprised how the ballets, musical interludes and orchestral passages provided it more consistence and continuity; I have the feeling this work has to assume all its length to efficiently reproduce the epic atmosphere from which Berlioz had breathed in Virgil. Not one moment seemed boring to me at all, and the work's strength increased continuously to the predictable peak of fascination in the sublime poetic ending of act IV and the highly tragic act V, without equal in the history of opera for true grandeur and classical tragic magnificence and emotion.

We must thank the fathers of the new production. Yannis Kokkos, responsible for the staging, has created wonderful poetic moments, mixing video with superb classical and sober backgrounds, not to mention the believable acting. The many elements on stage were always interesting, never exaggerated, except the useless guns at the end of act II. John-Eliot Gardiner holds a great share of the evening's global success. Through the orchestral playing, he really gives life to the score. The incisiveness and lightness of his interpretation have been a revelation for me, since so much of this work is revealed in all its richness and inventiveness once all Wagnerian references are forgotten. Gardiner conducts this music in the lineage of Gluck, and this is the true inheritage of a musician who defined himself as a classicist and not as a Romantic. I hope Gardiner has now definitely installed a new reference for this masterpiece. Of course, his Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir perfectly fit Gardiner's vision, and are both magnificent ensembles of wonderful musicians.

The cast could be considered unusual. All the major roles have been given to lighter-voiced singers than one usually expects in this opera. On the other hand, the production has assembled an all-star cast, with some of the most interesting singers of our days.

La prise de Troie was definitely dominated by the always stunning Anna Caterina Antonacci. A magnificent Agrippina in the production of Handel's opera at the Theatre des Champs-Elysées a few days before, she has been the central figure the whole night because of her class and her beauty. A true tragedian in her own class, she sings perfectly the role, with real and superb involvement, not to mention real sense of the text and wonderful musicianship. A fabulous actress, a beautiful woman and a fascinating actress - those were the unanimous comments in the intermissions and after the performance. They could be summed in two words : Maria Callas. Her main partner for the first part, Ludovic Tézier as Chorèbe, is vocally sumptuous, but has seemed bit distant, mainly - I guess - because the staging of their long duet involved distance and coldness in their relationship. Anyway, Tézier is probably one of the most beautiful French voices of the new generation, and he proved to have the required intensity of projection.

Susan Graham sung a beautiful Dido, but suffered of course from the comparison with Antonacci. Musically wonderful in act III and especially in act IV, she has found some energy to provide a surprising violence to her act V, reaching the musical-dramatic standards of the role of Cassandra, but without the magnetic stage presence of Antonnacci. Anyway, Graham also met the challenge of singing Dido with class and musicianship. Aeneas has for long been associated with a heroic dimension, from Thill to Vickers, or even recently Lakes, Heppner or Villars. Finding Gregory Kunde as Aeneas in the cast seemed to be challenging. Kunde never cheated in any of the difficulties of the role, conjuring some heroic accents for the most difficult moments of his role and displaying a wonderful musicianship all the opera long, with a clear and elegant voice. Somehow Kunde's elegance and perfect French appeared to me far more convincing and fitting with French style than the long use of barkers cast in this role those last years. Gregory Kunde as Aeneas is an excellent surprise, and gave a wonderful performance. Mark Padmore as Iopas sang an elegiac “Blonde Cerès”, with his usual class and elegance, while Laurent Naouri was an impressive Narbal, with a sumptuous low register and a ringing voice. Listing all the roles involved in this opera would be quite fastidious: all secondary roles were excellent.

Well staged, magnificently conducted, performed with the right style for this opera, wonderfully sung by a glamorous cast and dominated by the fascinating figure of Antonacci, I hope this production recorded by BBC, NHK and France Télévisions, will be available soon both in video and audio. This night has the dimension of a mythic night at the opera and has probably been the most important operatic event in Paris in years. A wonderful event, welcome by well-deserved huge and incredibly long ovation.    

 
Depuis, la captation de ces soirées a été publiée en DVD (BBC Opus Arte), et permet de s’émerveiller encore et encore de la grandeur de la Cassandre d’Antonacci.

J’ai également retrouvée de manière similaire la critique que j’avais écrite lors de la prise de rôle de Karita Mattila, autre artiste chère, en Salomé à Bastille deux semaines auparavant : elle suivra ici dans quelques jours le temps de la remettre en forme.