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Reviewer: Barry
Brenesal Earlier on the day that featured the first performance of Scylla et Glaucus, October 4, 1746, Jean-Marie Leclair wrote, “Today I enter upon a new career.” It was a deliberately ironic reference to Rameau, who was only two years older when he launched a new career for himself as an opera composer. Otherwise, as Leclair well knew, their situations were completely different. Rameau began in a cultural climate still amenable to the older tragédie en musique form, many of its nobles and their entourages as yet viewing any deviation from the late Lully and his librettist Quinault with derisive contempt. Leclair by contrast was one of several artistic figures attempting to revive in the mid-1740s lapsed interest in the tragédie en musique for at least in part symbolic, nationalistic reasons, following a year that had seen both the marriage of the Dauphin and a great French military victory at Fontenoy. Lully had been supplanted by Rameau, and the wildly popular stage form of the day was the hybrid opéra-ballet, with its mix of song, dance, and librettos that were sometimes little more than an excuse for a spectacular range of special effects. Les goûts réunis had taken the place of French purity. Neal Zaslaw, who wrote the article on the Leclair family of musicians in Grove I, declared Scylla et Glaucus a success with 18 performances in two months, but Benoìt Dratwicki, who wrote the liner notes to this release, considers the same number an inexplicable failure. My inclination is to go with Zaslaw, as operatic failures in the 18th century French capital were usually met with swift decapitation to put the offending work out of its misery. It’s true that the opera was only subsequently revived in that century in Lyon, where the composer’s brother, Jean-Marie le cadet, was director of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, but the critical reviews were positive at the time. The libretto d’Albaret fashioned for Leclair was a hybrid, tragédie en musique only by virtue of its prologue honoring the royals (which had fallen out of fashion, but was being revived once again thanks to Fontenoy), the prominence granted to its longer monologues, notably for Circe, and its unhappy conclusion. In other respects it was an opéra-ballet, its characters driven like puppets to emotional extremes that switch on and off often without reason. And it is effectively ruled by dances, airs, and such stage effects as Venus descending to convert the blasphemous Propoetides to stone; Circe attended by infernal forces as she casts a spell upon Glaucus in her palace; Scylla and Glaucus celebrating their reunion by calling upon all the sea gods to join them; and Circe calling upon Hecate as the moon to descend and take human shape, that she may bring her a deadly poison for Scylla. But, as Girdlestone noted ruefully of Rameau, Leclair seemed to find an inexhaustible vein of inspired fancy in all of this. His dances and brief airs (the folk-like “Si l’amour voit languir” is one instance; Glaucus’s gently drifting “Mais pourquoi des serments” is another, given wings by a solo violin’s fast, elaborate figurations in counterpoint to the theme) are a delight, while his arias reach deeper. Scylla’s “Serments trompeurs” borrows Italian chromaticism and passing dissonance with skill to show the depth of the heroine’s anguish; and Circe’s “Reviens ingrat” reveals that Gluck’s use of a major key to indicate heartbreak in “Che faro senza Eurodice?” was not an unprecedented stroke of genius. Leclair is indeed frequently inventive. Rameau is easily the greatest influence upon the work, but the music accompanying the magical flight in act V to the Strait of Messina, with its storm-battered rocks, is depicted with violent figurations that an expert violinist would think first to deploy; and Circe’s subsequent gloating in recitative is punctuated by those same strings engaging in bold, swiftly descending figures. Or again: In act II, when Circe invokes her spirits to cast their love spell on Glaucus, the spell’s lengthy casting takes the audible form of a passacaille, with a jolting shift from major to a central minor section in the accompaniment, and throughout which flute and vocal solos and choral interjections become part of the formal set of inspired variations. The cast is good, if variable. The best is Emöke Barath, whose Sesto, in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, under Curtis’s baton, I described as possessing “an agile, creamy soprano … though I wouldn’t have minded a dose of Lemieux’s over-theatricality being infused in her arias.” Here she sounds more dramatically into her role, expressively making much of her fifth act revival as the poison works to change her; and if a certain reserve lingers, it’s all to the good in a part that could easily descend in other hands into one long lament. I’m almost equally pleased with high tenor Anders Dahlin’s Glaucus. While his voice is gray in its lower reaches, he is capable of floating a lengthy melody with ease and beauty; and if he occasionally shorts phrase endings, he manages figures and ornamentation with great finesse. He is perhaps heard at his best in act I’s “Quand je ne vous vois pas,” where the upper notes sound freely, beautifully. Unfortunately, not as much can be said in favor of the third member of this unfortunate triangle. Caroline Mutel made no great impression on me one way or the other in Rameau’s Les surprises de l’Amour, but here she essentially resorts to vocalise in her upper register, which seems quite raw, and departs from the line at the end of numerous phrases—whether as a result of breath issues or an unfortunate attempt at emoting isn’t clear. The darker quality of her voice and its greater strength in the chest (used to good advantage) suggests that though she’s listed as a lyric soprano, she might be a mezzo with an extension that, for whatever reason, on this recording is not completely under control. For the rest, Virginie Pochon is a bit unsteady in the first verse and central section of the Sicilian Girls’ song (one of the opera’s biggest hits at its debut) and far better in the second. Her slim, attractive tone and gleaming focus are more evident as Venus. Marie Lenormand is an effective Cupid, and Frédéric Caton is that rarity, a truly chthonic French bass, rather than a baryton-noble in bass parts as has often proved the case. His Hécate and Lichas are very small parts, but performed with an easy strength, even quality, and fine enunciation that make me wish to hear more of this young singer in the future. Sébastien d’Hérin also conducted that Rameau Les surprises I referred to earlier; and what I wrote at the time, that he leads Les Nouveaux Caractères “in exciting but disciplined performances,” applies here as well. Leclair’s extremely active three- and five-part writing for the strings is tossed off with ease, and the solos on various instruments are all played with style and flair. He seconds his singers admirably, and with a strong sense of theater. The engineering is finely balanced between stage and pit, in a recording that avoids the dangers of over-reverberation. This is one of the best French Baroque operas I’ve heard in some time outside of Rameau—in fact, I’d have to go back to Destouches’s Callirhoé, issued under Niquet’s baton in 2008 (Glossa 921612) for its equal in quality, though Scylla et Glaucus is far the more forward looking. Despite my reservations over some of the singing, this is definitely worth singling out for purchase. | |
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