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 NovacekDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled)
Format: Classical, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, 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: A Total Synthesis ...
Summary: 5 Stars
... of words, music, dance, and visual beauty! That is, please remember, the fundamental ideal of opera and the justification for its place in the food-chain of funding for the arts. It would be hard to maintain, however, that the total synthesis has always been achieved or approached. For most of the history of opera, and especially in the 19th Century, the "words" seldom approached the music in craftsmanship or intrinsic interest. Who, for instance, would read a Wagner or Verdi libretto as literature, or stage it as a play? But a few operas of the 17th Century came very close, I think, to that ideal synthesis: L'Coronazione di Poppea, for one, and Pers?e by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687).
France has a magnificent and distinct theater tradition, still embodied in the Comedie Fran?aise. It's a tradition of artifice, in the best sense, of artificial total control of posture, gesture, and expression. Every pose, every finger movement, every raised eyebrow or curled lip is rehearsed, choreographed, repeated precisely. It's the opposite of America's "method acting" tradition of naturalism, and it links French theater to French ballet and mime intimately.
French Baroque opera likewise was distinctly different from Italian/Austrian in the 17th and 18th Centuries, and it's one of the anomalies of history that an Italian, Lully, should have been the progenitor of the difference. Dance and therefore dance music were far more prominent on the French opera stage, to the point that Italian and German composers had to write to French tastes if they wanted their works to be staged in Paris. Whereas in Italy, words were increasingly subordinated to beautiful and virtuosic singing - to 'bel canto' - French taste never permitted such imbalance. I can hear Lully, stamping his baton and shouting, "Ze words, you buffoons, ze words must be comprehensible." And in French Baroque music, both in opera and in sacred music, the tone-color and agility of the singer must be calibrated to the enunciation of the French language. Lully's Pers?e, based on themes from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' aspires to that total synthesis of artistic elements. The libretto by Philippe Quinault has solid literary merit, and the drama of Pers?e per se is not the embarrassing hodgepodge so typical of Italian/English Baroque. That it has a calculated 'political' message pertinent to its contemporary audience is not a flaw; the fulsome flattery of Louis XIV is so subtly incorporated into the dramaturgy that even a Canadian of the year 2004 would have found it historically interesting, if she/he had detected it.
The Canadian orchestra Tafelmusik, with French conductor Herv? Niquet, have given us an amazing approach to the ideal of synthesizing visual, musical, literary, and theatrical elements into a coherent whole. Yes, the costumes are "period," but so are the poses and gestures of the singers. In fact, it hardly makes theatrical sense to have one without the other. The dancers are 'period' also, though the costumers had enough freedom to merely suggest rather than slavishly copy Baroque dress. The singers dance - and dance well - and the dancers give the illusion of being 'of the chorus,' a bit of brilliant dramaturgy from stage director Marshall Pynkoski and/or choreographer Jeannette Zingg. This is the Comedie Fran?aise on a musical stage!
Some critics have implied that the singing of the principals isn't up to the standard of the whole production. To my ears, that isn't so. Recall, please, that this is French opera, not bel canto, with French vowels, not Italian. My French is mediocre, but I could follow the words being sung without reference to subtitles in French or in English. That's the ideal here. If you doubt the intentionality, pay heed to the fact that very few words are set melismatically (with many notes on a single syllable). Note also the subtle through-composed setting of dramatically significant text, rather than the Italian structure of narrative recitativos followed by imagistic da capo arias.
There are several very fine imaginative modernistic stagings available of French Baroque operas on DVD -- stagings using all the panoply of modern theater, with multi-media effects, cirque du soleil costumes, jazz dance, etc. -- and I have loved most of them. This production, however, is special. It's a wondrous re-commitment of the whole opera enterprise to the historical ideal. It goes almost without saying that it was made possible by the generous public/governmental support for the arts in Canada, so much more generous than that of its southern neighbor.
More Lully - Persee / Novacek, Auvity, Lenormand, Whicher, Laquerre, Coulombe, Niquet, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Toronto reviews:
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