Lully - Persee / Novacek, Auvity, Lenormand, Whicher, Laquerre, Coulombe, Niquet, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Toronto
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cyril Auvity, Herve Niquet, Marie Lenormand, Monica Whicher, Stephanie NovacekBrand: Naxos OF America INC
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); French (Original Language)
Format: Classical, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 127 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Euroarts
Movie Reviews of Lully - Persee / Novacek, Auvity, Lenormand, Whicher, Laquerre, Coulombe, Niquet, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Toronto
Movie Review: Superb performance of near-forgotten masterpiece from 1682
Summary: 5 Stars
SOURCE: Live performance by Opera Atelier from the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, 2004.
SOUND: Perfectly satisfactory for a captured live performance on stage before an audience. I find the solo voices and orchestra are well-balanced with a slight and wholly proper emphasis on the former. (On the other hand, the Good Grey English Magazine, "The Gramophone," complains that the theorbo--a kind of two-necked lute--is given undue prominence. I can't say that I noticed it.) The audience--Canadian, eh?--is well-disciplined and discloses its existence mainly in appropriate applause.
CAST: Persée, Perseus, a heroic son of Zeus - Cyril Auvity (tenor); Andromède, Andromeda, Daughter of Kepheus and Kassiopeia - Marie Lenormand (soprano); Céphée, Kepheus, King of Ethiopia / Medusa, snake-haired but mortal, one of three Gorgon sisters - Olivier Laquerre (bass-baritone); Cassiope, Kassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopia - Stephanie Novacek (mezzo-soprano); Phinée, Phineus, brother of Kepheus and jealously in love with Andromeda - Alain Coulombe (bass); Merope, Sister of Kassiopeia and hopelessly in love with Perseus - Monica Whicher (soprano); Mercure, Hermes, divine messenger and trickster god - Colin Ainsworth (tenor); Vénus, Aphrodite, goddess of love - Vilma Vitols (soprano); Vulcan, Hephaistos, divine smith - Unidentified (bass); Minerve, Athena, warrior goddess - Unidentified (soprano); Hades, Aidoneus, god of the underworld - Unidentified (bass); Euryale, immortal Gorgon sister - Michiel Schrey (tenor); Sténone, Stheino, immortal Gorgon sister - Curtis Sullivan (bass).
CONDUCTOR: Hervé Niquet with Tafelmusik and the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir.
TEXT: With a playing time of only 127 minutes, against the 165 minutes of a rival CD from 2002, this is plainly a heavily cut performing version of Lully's "Persée." I admit to no personal familiarity with this opera beyond what appears on this DVD, but secondary sources suggest that an allegorical prologue has been eliminated in its entirety, along with a scene for Sténone and Euryale and some choral music in the combat scenes in Act V. The opera is sung in 17th Century French with English subtitles.
PRODUCTION: The staging of "Persée," is clearly intended to suggest the late 17th century by the general appearance of costumes and props and the specific use of postures and gestures straight out of baroque paintings and prints. Poor Mercure, for example, is obliged to hold such twisted postures and exaggerated gestures that even the campiest drag queen from my hometown of San Francisco might look askance. Good use is made of some simple painted flats and the boxes on either side of the stage at the Elgin Theatre become effective playing spaces. No attempt, however, has been made to replicate the elaborate, gorgeous and stunningly expensive stagecraft of the 17th Century.
COMMENTARY: The Good Grey Gramophone informs me that "Persée" went unperformed for more than two hundred years until it was revived by Opera Atelier in 2002. Having watched this performance, cut down as it is, I can only wonder why. Opera of this vintage is not and never will be a favorite of mine, but nevertheless, "Persée" is, beyond any doubt whatsoever, a first-rate piece of musical theater.
Giovanni Battista Lulli was born in Florence in 1632. When he was fourteen, he moved to France and promptly became then and forever Jean-Baptiste Lully. In France, he started off as a nobleman's page, rapidly acquiring fame as a dancer, actor and composer. Before he was twenty, he was working for Louis XIV, the Sun King, himself. From there by easy steps, he became head of the king's 21-piece "small" orchestra, then Music Master for the royal family, finally earning a royal monopoly for producing operas in Paris. On top of all that, he was a successful courtier in Louis' hot-house of a royal court. And, oh, yes, he also performed in some of Moliere's works and collaborated with him on a series of ballets--in which he had the innovative notion of including professional female dancers for the first time. He died in 1687 from an infected wound he had accidently given himself while conducting.
Lully wrote about twenty operas, which he called "tragédies en musique," based either on classical subjects, such as "Psyché" (1678), "Proserpine" (1680) and "Persée" (1682) or on such Romance novels and epics as "Amadis de Gaule" (1684), "Roland" (1685) and "Armide" (1686).
"Persée" was an opera written with Louis XIV very much in mind. In fact, the Sun King had suggested the topic to Lulli, as the composer and librettist made exquisitely clear in their obsequious printed dedication of the work to him. By 17th Century standards, it is a pretty faithful adaptation of the story of Perseus as it appears in Ovid, although it stops short with the translation of Perseus, Andromeda, Kepheus and Kassiopeia into the heaven immediately after the triumph over Phineus. The most unexpected and amusing change is the astonishing transformation of the three Gorgon sisters into two basses and a tenor.
The music of this 1682 opera is quite unlike that of the succeeding generations. Lully shifts from recitative into song (not arias as understood by Handel, say) with a casual smoothness that Wagner, himself, might have envied. On the whole the music is straightforward and not excessively decorated. The orchestral texture, with its emphasis on plucked rather than bowed instruments, is a bit odd but still quite pleasant.
The singers are uniformly excellent, almost amazingly so. Frankly, I can't believe that a cast of better singing, better acting, better dancing, better looking performers could be assembled to surpass this one. Even so, there is one stand-out performance, that of Olivier Laquerre, who is an excellent King Kepheus and then, buff and bearded, is an absolute hoot in snake-haired drag as Medusa!
Five golden and bejewelled stars from the Sun King's court? Believe it!
More Lully - Persee / Novacek, Auvity, Lenormand, Whicher, Laquerre, Coulombe, Niquet, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Toronto reviews:
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Summary of Lully - Persee / Novacek, Auvity, Lenormand, Whicher, Laquerre, Coulombe, Niquet, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Toronto
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