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Reviewer: Barry
Brenesal The title on the front cover of this set, Lully Persée 1770, is inadequate shorthand. Lully, whatever his virtues, didn’t return to Earth from Mt. Olympus, where you’ll recall he was consigned by François Couperin—so he couldn’t, nearly 90 years after his death, revise his 1682 tragédie en musique. You have to look in the very small print on the back of the box to discover that the version of Persée recorded here was a revision of Lully and Quinault’s original by Antoine Dauvergne, François Rebel, and Bernard de Bury, to a heavily altered libretto by Nicolas-René Joliveau. These four are collectively responsible for roughly half the score as it is heard here, and heavily altered much of the rest. That trio of musical revisionists should have been given much higher billing, by any standard of logic. We can only wonder whether the ghost of Lully, still waving that all-encompassing opera privilege he’d purchased from Pierre Perrin, demanded that Alpha list his name alone on the set’s front cover and spine. Persée occurred at a time when Lully and Quinault were reconsidering their approach to opera in several important respects. A paean to heroism that featured Perseus standing in for Louis XIV, it tempered its creators’ previous success in high tragedy by compromises with the Parisian public’s love of spectacle and dance. Expensive costumes and extremely elaborate machinery associated with the Opéra presented a rocky seashore, a garden, two palaces, and the cave of the Gorgons. Storms, flying horses, sea monsters, fantastical ballet sequences, a damsel in distress chained to a wave-battered rock, Venus descending from heaven: These and other miraculous images were seen and approved of by an audience that, more and more, preferred Lully’s tragic monologues and the cut and thrust of Quinault’s intellectual dialectic less and less. In the latter part of the 18th century it become common for the Paris Opéra’s management to stage newly composed operas based on older librettos—sometimes original, sometimes revised. In the case of Persée, the task of revision was divided up by act. Dauvergne, who was a managing director of the Opéra at that point, took acts I and IV, with Bury composing act II and Rebel act III. The liner notes supply only a few generalized comments about the differences between the original 1682 score and its major 1770 revision. Those points they do make could, in fact, serve as a template for any of the various late 18th-century recreations of Lullian opera, which were popular in a nation that valued tradition but wanted to make it part of a living present as well. So new ballets, choruses, brief songs, and extended orchestral passages were interpolated into each act. Lully’s famed five-part writing for strings was often pared down to a more Italianate three parts. Orchestral color was increased through the addition of bassoons and flutes in Lully’s own music, while clarinets and horns were featured in newer material. Lully’s sometimes brilliant, always linguistically responsive secco recitatives were regularized over harmonic patterning, though his accompanied recitatives (which at times rise into arioso) were allowed to keep their fluidity. The latter-day collaborators were not lacking in inspiration. Even though the liner notes insist that they’re all forgotten, Dauvergne’s Hercule mourant (Aparte 042; Fanfare 36:6) would probably have drawn an approving nod from his teacher, the querulous Rameau; while François Rebel’s Pirame et Thisbè (Mirare 58; Fanfare 32:3), composed with his longtime collaborator François Francœur, is a youthful work of great verve, intent on displaying its contrapuntal acuity. It’s true that this new Persée is a work whose literary joints have grown stiff with a century’s accumulation of formulae, but that’s not surprising, and a symptom of the times in general. Musically, it is replete with gems, often of the revisionists’ devising. Dauvergne in particular reveals himself as an adept at brief, characterful ariettes. How brief may be judged by the remarks of Julian Budden, who in the third volume of The Operas of Verdi praises highly his subject for producing in Falstaff’s “Quand’ero paggio” an arietta lasting exactly half a minute, beating out Don Giovanni’s “Fin ch’han da vino” in this respect. But Dauvergne’s pair of acts in Persée furnish numerous ariettes that are nearly as short. Thus the mini-passacaille “Mon vainqueur encore,” with its excellent solo flute accompaniment, takes only 40 seconds to perform, and the duet “Les plus belles chaînes,” 41 seconds, while “Non, je ne puis souffrir” lasts just 33 seconds on this album. These are far from the equally brief but musically flimsy songs of contemporary Italian-influenced French vaudeville, and fine specimens of creative counterpoint, as well. While I’m not as sanguinary about Bury’s contribution, Rebel’s is substantial. He tends to favor arias with either orchestral counter-melodies in augmentation (of which “Medusa’s pathetic “J’ai perdu la beauté” is an attractive example) or in diminution (Mercury’s somberly beautiful “Ó tranquille Sommeil”) around the vocal part. These are far from the 19th century’s typically crude juxtaposition of two bland tunes for double chorus. All three of Lully’s collaborators make refined use of sharp theatrical contrast in tempos, textures, and key signatures to visualize elements of imaginative display, such as during the sudden attack by Phineus and his followers directly after Perseus rescues Andromeda. The performances are a mixed lot, though none are without merit. Among those that stand out, Marie Kalinine displays an excellent grasp of the drama and phrasing but presses for brilliance, and loses focus when she does. By contrast, Hélène Guillmette holds back too much, yet sings well. Marie Lenormand, whom I thought a fine Cupid in Leclair’s Scylla et Glaucus (Alpha 960), is better still as the contrite Cassiope, with bright voice to spare and the control to use it wisely. Jean Teitgen has only a couple of smaller roles, but possesses a formidably dark bass with excellent projection. (His “Ce casque vous est présenté” is splendid in its tone.) As much can be said of Cyrille Dubois, whose arias as Mercury are among the highlights of this set. Mathias Vidal unfortunately is seldom heard—in large part because Persée is one of those operas that distance the hero from the audience so as to render him iconic and more than human. When he does sing, though, it is with all the sensitivity and fearless agility one might expect, if without an ease in producing the metal required by the final rather weak fireworks piece added by Dauvergne, “Sur l’univers règne á jamais.” Le Concert Spirituel is its usual disciplined, stylish self, and Hervé Niquet presides over all with typical insight. I would, however, question his unnecessarily pressing tempos in the longer dramatic arias. Granted, they are of uneven quality, but pushing Cassiopia’s “O Junon,” Andromeda’s “Infortunés, qu’un monstre,” and Mercury’s “Ó tranquille Sommeil” only means they come across as prosaic, without a chance for each to make its case before the audience. Fortunately, Andromeda’s “Dieux, qui me destinez” anid Venus’s “Grâces, Jeux et Plaisirs” are better. Would their weight had served as an example for the rest.
The
engineering favors the orchestra over the singers a bit too much. Individual
tonal quality is lost, though the voices are always audible. That said, this
revised Persée is a fine piece of theater and a source of much excellent
music, especially in the acts given to Dauvergne and Rebel. Strongly
recommended, with reservations noted. | |
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