Reviews 2003
Reviews 2003
✭✭✭✩✩
by Léo Delibes, directed by Andreas Geier
Opera Ontario, Hamilton Place, Hamilton
January 25, 30 & February 1;
Centre in the Square, Kitchener
February 7, 2003
"Director Dulls Exotic Feast"
Opera Ontario's "Lakmé" is the first fully staged production of Léo Delibes's 1883 opera in English Canada. Musically the production is outstanding. The cast sings beautifully and the orchestral playing is superb. All the more unfortunate then that ill-conceived stage direction should deliberately mute the work's dramatic impact, when a more sensitive director could have made the evening a major success.
Like Bizet's "Les Pêcheurs des perles" presented by Opera Ontario last year, "Lakmé" is one of many operas better known from recordings than from live performances. Its only previously staged performances in 1966 and 1983 were undertaken by small companies in Quebec. Thanks to a series of British Airways commercials the "Flower Duet" of Act 1 has gained new popularity while Lakmé's "Bell Song" of Act 2 has always been a coloratura showpiece. But the work is full of felicities like Gérard's aria "Mais d'où vient maintenant cette craint insensée?" and the love duet between Lakmé and Gérald "Oublier que je t'ai vue".
Jane Archibald is superb in the title role. She has a crystalline tone that yet is full of feeling. Her pinpoint precision and fearless excursions into the stratospheric heights of the "Bell Song" brought down the house and was the highlight of the evening. As Gérald, the British officer who falls in love with Lakmé, Stuart Howe sings in a highly cultured tenor ideal for French repertoire. His phrasing is impeccable and his pianissimos are heavenly. As Nilikantha, Lakmé's father who opposes her interest in Gérald, American Alfred Walker displays a rich, velvety bass-baritone. He brings such feeling to Nilikantha's "stances" "Lakmé, ton doux regard se voile" that he wins sympathy for this stern figure since we see that his rigor is due to his love for his daughter.
The secondary roles are all well taken. As Lakmé's servant Mallika, Anita Kraus sings beautifully. She helps makes the "Flower Duet" exquisite. As I feared, much of the audience assumed that when Lakmé and Mallika exit that the duet is over. It isn't until we hear them sing the refrain again offstage. This moment was ruined not only by audience applause even though the conductor was still at work but even more by the house management of Hamilton Place that allowed ushers to seat latecomers during the offstage singing. In future please give the ushers a bit more briefing about what constitutes a "suitable break" in the action.
All the other singers are in fine voice--baritone Alexander Dobson as Gérald's friend Frédéric, soprano Tamara Hummel and Gérald's fiancée Ellen, mezzo-soprano Mary Ann Kowan as her friend Rose, mezzo-soprano Dina Martire as Ellen's governess and baritone Dion Mazerolle as Hadji, Nilikantha's servant. The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony gives a ravishing account of the score under young Quebecois conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin even producing the tang and bite in sonority of an authentic French orchestra.
With the music so sympathetically sung and played, it is a pity the stage direction should be so perverse. German director Andreas Geier has decided, as directors mistakenly do, that he can improve upon the original plot. Thus he creates a frame for the story in the overture showing us the old, married Gérald in a wheelchair. His friend Frédéric brings him the sketchbook he had in India, whereupon Gérald muses upon the past, the opera itself becoming a kind of extended flashback. Near the end the old Gérald physically enters into the picture singing his final duet with Lakmé in his old man costume. For unknown reasons the shock of recalling her death brings on his own.
I don't mind concept productions so long as the direction serves to heighten the dramatic impact of the work. Here Geier's direction does just the opposite. By showing us an old Gérald from the beginning, he gives away the ending that depends entirely on whether Gérald will stay with Lakmé or leave with his regiment. The dramatic tension especially in Act 3 is thus ruined. Geier makes things worse by keeping the lovers physically separate for most of the act thus spoiling the key moment when Lakmé looks into Gérald's eyes and perceives that his love is not as all-consuming as he claims. Besides this, Geier's version literally foregrounds Gérald's story at the expense of Lakmé's. Imagine a "Madama Butterfly" that focusses more on Pinkerton and not on the title character! If "Lakmé" were a regular repertory work, one might wish occasionally to look at the story from another perspective. But for a director to misrepresent the story for an audience new to the work shows complete insensitivity to the occasion.
Other than his needless framing device, Geier shows little insight in finding the drama in any of the scenes. He moves singers about in geometric formations, he has arias sung almost exclusively from centre stage and he seems intent on keeping the stage picture as static as possible. In Act 2 in particular he mismanages the crowd scenes by having singers enter and exit according to whether they are singing instead of whether the action demands their presence to make sense.
Cameron Porteous is credited with the design of the minimalist set leaving Pasquale Grossi's lovely costumes from the Lyric Opera of Chicago to conjure up the period of India during the Raj. Stephen Ross's lighting is completely unnaturalistic--midday scenes are dark, there are abrupt cues in the midst of songs and the backdrop changes from orange to blue to green for no apparent reason. This is so unlike Ross's work I can only assume he doing what the director has asked.
What a pity then that the staging should be a major impediment to enjoying the musical riches of an opera so seldom staged. I do hope Opera Ontario will bring us "Lakmé" again with less interventionist direction. I also hope that the company continues to bring us operas that lie on the rim of the standard repertory. The Canadian Opera Company has neglected French opera, Puccini's Italian contemporaries and non-Wagnerian German Romantic opera for many years. This "Lakmé" proves what musical feasts such works can be. Sensitive direction can make them exciting dramas as well.
Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in TheatreWorld (UK) 2003-02-07.
Photo: Jane Archibald as Lakmé. ©2003 John Rennison.
2003-02-07
Lakmé