Handel: Hercules on stage and on DVD Les Arts Florissants / William Christie Dejanira Joyce DiDonato Hyllus Ed Lyon Iole Ingela Bohlin/Hannah Bayodi * Lichas Katija Dragojevic Priest of Jupiter Simon Kirkbride
Director Luc Bondy Set Designer Richard Peduzzi Costume Designer Rudy Sabounghi
Luc Bondy seemed to favour a more serious face value approach, setting his action in a concrete post-combat no-man's-land with a thick layer of sand covering the stage and scenery comprised of a wrecked statue and a rusting 40-gallon oil drum. Such dreary surroundings depress the spirit, and the sad lack of audible words (and no surtitles) diminished concentration. Acts 1 and 2 were played without a break, so it was a somewhat battle-weary audience that trooped out at the interval and showed a measure of reluctance to return indeed a sizable proportion did not. There were of course, many things to admire. Les Arts Florissants played as stylishly as ever and the chorus provided a resolute and spirited backbone to the drama. Much has been written and superlatives justly abound in describing Joyce DiDonato's agility of voice and her totally rapt and focussed performance. Her slow deterioration into madness was superbly done although the irreverent thought crossed my mind that some of her head shaking might have been an unconscious attempt to rid herself of sand. * Unfortunately Ingela Bohlin had a throat infection, so she mimed the role of Iole on stage whilst it was sung from the pit, very creditably, by Hannah Bayodi, a member of the chorus. It is simply bad luck that Iole is involved in the only two duets in the piece, where the distance between actor and singer was most disconcerting. An evening to remember, but one in which the whole proved somewhat less than the promise of its individual elements. (First published on The Opera Critic) and Rodney Milne is positively apopletic: - - I fear this report is on only the first half - two and a quarter hours of it - as I fled foaming none-too-lightly at the mouth at the interval. What on earth is the point of performing one of the first great music dramas set in English if no one involved displays the faintest interest in text? We were a good ten minutes in before you could tell what language was being sung - - the conductor William Christie consistently allowed his players to cover the voices, and a cast that had plainly been given not the slightest encouragement by either conductor or director to invest the words, even when audible, with any dramatic meaning - - the chorus's delivery of the word 'Jealousy' made Inspector Clouseau sound like the most studied of underplayers. As for the production, with Hercules as a Radko Mladic-style thug, lole a cocktail-quaffing bimbo leafing through her fashion mags, and Dejanira a neurotic Californian housewife, I thought it beneath contempt. - - (Opera, May 2006)
Bel Air Classique DVD BAC013 [Palais Garnier, Paris December 2004] Shimell, DiDonato, Spence, Bohlin, Ernman, Kirkbride Having shared the evening at the Barbican with SF ( Musical Pointers had not qualified for press tickets) and been reluctant to return after the too-long awaited interval, we have been astonished by the inspired DVD, which has made sense for us in retrospect of the acclamation this production had received when new.
The mainly close-up filming (all the singers marvellously photogenic and living their characters) focused attention on the slowly unfolding drama of grief, hope and disappointment leading to despair, retribution and madness; a heady brew.
Sub-titles (not provided in the Barbican theatre) were essential to grasp fully the language of Broughton's libretto, the meanings of which would often be hard to decipher and comprehend unaided whatever effort was put into diction. Luc Bondy's stage direction has innumerable subtleties, some funny and simultaneously moving moments - e.g. kitting out Toby Spence, the splendid Hyllus, with map, camera, thermos and laptop for his imminent departure to search for his father, encouraged by the chorus, treated here as individuals whilst singing Handel's " O filial piety, courageous love", was a choice example.
Peter Grahame Woolf
See Amazon *****(2 reviews)
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