Charpentier's David et Jonathas on Opera on 3: 28 September

[doversoul1]

Donald Macleod presents Marc-Antoine Charpentier's David et Jonathas recorded at this year's Aix-en-Provence festival and conducted by William Christie […] a staging by Andreas Homoki first given in July this year at Aix, repeated at the Edinburgh Festival in August

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n118f

Synopsis and some photographs on the webpage.

[Flosshilde]

I saw this production at the Edinburgh Festival. I wasn't sure about it (the production - too many moving walls, & two opposing armies not diferentiated enough). Great singing though, especially Jonathas, so it will be interesting to 'see' how it is on the radio.

[David-G]

I saw this production at the Edinburgh Festival. I wasn't sure about it (the production - too many moving walls, & two opposing armies not diferentiated enough). Great singing though, especially Jonathas, so it will be interesting to 'see' how it is on the radio.

I also saw this production at Edinburgh. I was quite sure about it! Musically it was excellent - but the production, oh dear me. You are absolutely right, Flosshilde. Far too many moving walls. And it was very hard to make out who were the Israelites and who the Philistines. (But you see, this was intended! Apparently the idea was to show a happy multi-ethnic society... Why this modern concept was thought relevant for Israelites and Philistines, I have no idea.) On the evening that we went, the titles failed in Act 1; the staging was so unclear and confusing that I only just about recovered my understanding of the action by the interval, at the end of Act 3.

The production was extremely ugly. You have to imagine that everything took place in shoe-box cavities (with moving walls!!) in a black curtain filling the proscenium. The shoe boxes were finished inside to look like wood-effect vinyl (ghastly). Large tables and numerous chairs (many, of course, overturned) filled the spaces. At the end of scenes the black curtain slid like a shutter to cover the shoe box; sometimes (and this was unforgiveable) hiding the singers before they had stopped singing.

I was puzzled by the appearance early in the opera of a 1950s family sitting around a dining table. I suppose I must be extremely unintelligent, because it was only towards the end of the opera that it dawned on me that the 1950s father was Saul (!), the mother was the queen (who does not actually appear in the opera), and the two children were David and Jonathan in flashback. As I said, I found the whole first half incomprehensible.

Between Acts 3 and 4 there is an "intermediate scene" in which Saul visits the witch, and asks her to invoke the ghost of Samuel; the ghost then reveals that the heavens have abandoned Saul, and will take back all that was bestowed on him. This scene actually constitutes the prologue to the opera. However, "the artists working on the production decided to insert it between Acts 3 and 4 to ensure the clarity and coherence in the narrative". I felt that this messing around with the structure of the opera was quite wanton, and also unnecessary. If only the artists had been equally concerned to ensure "clarity and coherence in the narrative" during the five acts as well as in the intermediate scene!

Rather to my surprise, I did not feel an oppressive alienation which often grips me when watching an opera which is being destroyed by the producer. (The recent Rusalka at Covent Garden comes to mind.) On this occasion I watched with a sort of horrible fascination, but there was still a part of my mind which was able to enjoy the music - to some extent.

The whole thing would have been so, so much better as a concert performance.

[Flosshilde]

You must have been on the same night as I was - at first I assumed that the surtitle-ist had decided that the text didn'y need translating, & then as the period without themn got longer realised that there was a mal-function.

The whole thing would have been so, so much better as a concert performance.

Usually at a concert performance the disadvantage is that it's not totally clear at the beginning which character the singer is portraying (especially so in a Handel opera, for example, where there might be several female singers & only one man); in this production one had the same problem.