Texte paru dans: / Appeared in: |
|
|
Outil de traduction (Très approximatif) |
|
|
Reviewer:
Richard Lawrence Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse, to a libretto by the prolific Charles-Simon Favart, was staged at the Paris Opera in February 1743. Though described as a ballet-comique, it’s an opera in all but name. But what kind of an opera?
Hervé Niquet recorded it in 1996: 60 minutes of music, delightfully sung and played. This DVD lasts twice as long, the co-directors Gilles and Corinne Benizio (‘alias Shirley & Dino’) asserting that ‘the comedy scenes that tie the show together are lost’ and have to be reinvented. However, back in 1743 the opera was coupled with Mouret’s Les amours de Ragonde, which was sung throughout; so there’s at least a question mark over the claim that Don Quichotte is dramatically incomplete.
Favart based his fantasy on an episode in the second volume of Cervantes’s novel. In the course of their travels, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are recognised by the Duke and Duchess, who embark on a series of practical jokes for the amusement of their court. The Duchess assumes the character of Altisidore, who seeks to divert Quixote from his obsession with Dulcinea. She is unsuccessful, even when pretending to be the Queen of Japan. There are spells, and fights with a monster, a dwarf and a giant. In the end, ‘Merlin’ terminates the deception, and Quixote is praised for his steadfastness. In the final divertissement, Quixote is crowned King of Japan. Whether you regard this as silliness or rather unkind fun will depend on your taste, or perhaps your mood. The score consists of a succession of recitatives, airs, choruses and dances, none of them long: the music is mainly light, always attractive, with a moment of genuine feeling when Quixote thinks he is about to rescue Dulcinea. As Altisidore, a part originally sung by Marie Fel, Chantal Santon Jeffery provides the best singing in the show; Marc Labonnette makes an engaging, Papagenolike Sancho. François-Nicolas Geslot acts well enough as the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance (or the ‘Knight of the sad face’, as the booklet oddly puts it), but his singing sounds effortful and strained.
As for the rest…the versatile
Niquet enters the auditorium as Quixote and later appears dressed as a toreador.
He addresses the audience, and sings to them too. He plays the castanets onstage
while performing a tango (‘Hernando’s Hideaway’) with Corinne Benizio, and
engages in unfunny badinage with Gilles Benizio’s Duke. I found it tiresome. A
lukewarm welcome, then; but the 1996 CD is well worth getting. |
|
|
|
|
|
Cliquez l'un ou l'autre
bouton pour découvrir bien d'autres critiques de CD |
|
