Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
✭✭✭✭✭
by Béla Bartók / Arnold Schoenberg, directed by Robert Lepage
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
May 6-23, 2015
“A Revival of One of the Greatest COC Productions”
The double bill of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung directed by Robert Lepage was an important landmark for the Canadian Opera Company. The premiere of the production in 1993 received such acclaim that the COC was invited to take it to theatre and music festivals around the globe, bringing a level of recognition to the company that it had never dreamed of. The production was revived in Toronto in 1995 and in 2001. Now the COC has revived it for the first time in its new home, the Four Seasons Centre, and the production proves to be just as riveting now as it was twenty-two years ago.
Back in 1993 Lepage had not yet become as obsessed as he now is with computerized stage machinery. The great virtue of his Bartók/Schoenberg double bill is that it employs common elements of modern theatrical production – lighting, set design, movement – in extraordinary ways. His brilliant use of these elements enhances the impact of each work and helps create links between them.
Both operas take place behind a scrim within a gold-tiled frame inside the proscenium. The frame deliberately distances the works from the audience while the gold-tiled frame recalls the work of a painter like Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), a contemporary of both composers. Michael Levine’s set for Bluebeard’s Castle presents a corridor in forced perspective with the seven doors in the wall on stage right and a castle wall directly opposite on stage left. Light from the oversize keyholes shines directly on the opposite wall emphasizing the darkness and symmetry of the space.
Lepage’s greatest insight in the Bartók is not to show us what lies behind each door, but rather its effect as manifested in various kinds of light projected on the wall opposite. These effects, designed by Robert Thomson, range from a reddish-gold rectangular glow from the small first door of Bluebeard’s torture chamber to a reflection from the fifth door of his domain, i.e. the Earth, that depicts continents beneath the curve of the stratosphere that covers the entire wall. The sixth door introduces light reflecting off a pool of water hidden behind the lower edge of the golden frame, while the seventh shows Bluebeard’s previous three wives seemingly rising up through the water to take their place with Judith. In leaving her mother in mourning and her fiancé behind we come to see, as Judith does, that in entering Bluebeard’s castle she has entered the realm of death.
Lepage and Levine link the two operas by using the same wall on stage left and the same hidden pool. In Erwartung, the stage right wall of doors has disappeared and along with it any sense of stability or proportion. The nameless Woman appears slumped by the wall in a straitjacket. “Erwartung” means “expectation” in German but with more emphasis on the idea of waiting than in English. In the original libretto by Marie Pappenheim the Woman wanders through a forest in search of her lost lover. She stumbles across his dead body, cries for help, accuses him of unfaithfulness and then in despair wanders away.
In Lepage’s version the Woman is housed in a mental institution. The action begins when a white-coated psychiatrist opens his notebook and ends when he closes it. Except for a projection of dead branches onto the wall, there is no forest. Instead, Lepage’s Woman wanders through the forest of her memory where scenes from the past (played by actors) appear and disappear spotlit for a few moments in the darkness. At one startling point the wall becomes the floor and the floor a wall to show how disoriented the Woman’s mind has become.
In Lepage’s view the Woman’s lover has not been unfaithful. Rather, the Woman is suffering from psychosis. She views the sexual side of herself as alien to her romantic side. She has killed her lover because he desired her sexual side which in her mind has become the “other woman.” Near the end her dead lover rolls downstage, his foot landing in the hidden pool. This sets off a series of ripples projected onto the front scrim that turn blood-red and gradually cover the entire stage opening. When this image fades we see the Woman in the same position as when the opera began.
Canadian bass John Relyea and Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova are well matched in Bluebeard’s Castle. Both have voices full, rich and equal in volume that easily sail over the massive orchestral sound. Though the story of the Bartók is symbolic, both Relyea and Gubanova play their roles as real people locked in a contest of wills. Relyea conveys a deep sadness mingled with acquiescence to the knowledge that Judith must inevitably discover the truth.
In Erwartung Canadian mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó gives a finely detailed performance as the Woman, both as singer and actor. Bewilderment gives way to fear, anger, and distress as the Woman relives the fragments of the past that rise unbidden in her memory. Szabó’s voice is infinitely expressive but lacks the hard edge that would help it more consistently cut through the orchestral texture. Yet, the very lack of such hardness also contributes greatly to our empathy for her character.
With this repertoire conductor Johannes Debus is fully in his element. In the Bartók he emphasizes the rhythm that underpins the orchestral sound and drives it ineluctably forward. In the Schoenberg he emphasizes the work’s lyricism to such an extent that we are as fully drawn into the intricacies of Schoenberg’s lush sound world as we would be in Richard Strauss’s Salome or Elektra. In both the Bartók and Schoenberg, Debus carefully balances the general sweep and magnificent mass of the sound with keen attention to its inner detail. In both the COC Orchestra played with immaculate precision with special praise due to the brass. This production helped put the COC on the map and, as the revival so powerfully demonstrates, it has lost none of its impact.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review will appear later this year in Opera News.
Photos: (from top) John Relyea as Bluebeard and Ekaterina Gubanova as Judith; Mark Johnson as the Psychiatrist and Krisztina Szabó as the Woman. ©2015 Michael Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.coc.ca.
2015-05-09
Bluebeard’s Castle / Erwartung