Composer Georg
Frideric Handel
Librettist Cardinal
Benedetto Pamphili
Conductor Emmanuelle Haïm
Director Krzysztof Warlikowski
Set and costumes Malgorzata Szczesniak
Dramaturge Christian Longchamp
Lighting Felice Ross
Choreography Claude Bardouil
Video Denis Guéguin
Bellezza Sabine Devieilhe
Piacere Franco Fagioli
Disinganno Sara Mingardo
Tempo Michael Spyres
Orchestra Le Concert d’Astrée
Continues at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché until
**** (out of 5)
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del
Disinganno premiered in Rome in the year of Our Lord 1707, a time when
Our Lord’s representative on earth, the Pope, had banned productions of opera
in the Eternal City. Handel had music in his blood and composed something that
His Holiness would permit: an oratorio. Not just any work on religious themes
but a rousingly Catholic promotion piece based on a libretto by Cardinal
Benedetto Pamphili.
The title means the triumph of
time and enlightenment and the oratorio is an allegory sung by Time,
Enlightenment, Beauty and Pleasure. As becomes an oratorio, the four figures
debate the virtues and vices of their namesakes and if you have not guessed who
will win the argument you will probably end up in Hell.
Director Krzysztof Warlikowski was given this static work and
instructed to produce it for an opera festival where listening to Handel’s
music and four accomplished singers for two and a half hours may not prove as
uplifting as His Eminence hoped for or the audience paid for. As the list of
credits indicates, Warlikowski decided to convert the oratorio into an opera.
We start with a video of an orgiastic party. We see
young people dancing, drinking, passing out and being taken to the hospital in
a wild display of erotic pleasure and decadence. All in modern dress and in
today’s decadent world.
The stage of the Théâtre de l'Archevêché is divided
by into two banks of seats with a glass enclosure in the middle.
We meet Bellezza (Beauty) admiring herself in the
mirror (there is no mirror but who cares) worried that her looks may not last
forever but Piacere (Pleasure) assures her that she will always be beautiful. Beauty
is dressed in a leather jacket and she looks like she may have been employed in
the oldest profession. Pleasure is in a hospital bed and he may not have taken
a bath for a while. We are not thrilled by them as representatives of what
(most of) our hearts desire.
Tempo (Time) and Disinganno (Enlightenment) arrive
to inform us that beauty is fleeting and there are more important virtues. Time
looks like he could have just left a doorway in the Cours Mirabeau where he
slept and Enlightenment with her fur coat looks like she espoused her new
calling because there was not much left of her old attractions. In short, all
of the allegorical figures look like wrecks so far.
The ‘illustrated” version of the oratorio provided
by the director continues with a good number of beautiful women, stunningly
dressed parading in the glass enclosure in the centre of the stage. Was there a
man or a woman in the audience who did not say to hell with the moral
strictures of Time and Enlightenment, that is where I want or want to be? No
doubt, I was the only one.
It should be noted that while the beautiful women
are on stage, Time sings about funeral urns which enclose what used to be
beauties but who have become ghastly skeletons but at that time he is totally unconvincing.
The visual illustrations of pulchritude beat moralizing hands down.
In the second half, Time and Enlightenment spruce up
their appearance but they are a long way from convincing to adopt what they say
which may not be the same as what they do.
Il Tempo contains a great deal of music
and singing and the vocal mettle of the principals is tested and triumphs.
The sermon becomes heavy handed at times. The tears
of the poor become pearls in heaven we are told and the oratorio is about
saving our soul. The message is never in doubt but in the end it is clearly
stated and Beauty repents and sees the true light of God. That is what the text
says but this Beauty knows better: she commits suicide.
Seeing a woman conduct an orchestra is still a
relative rarity and a continuing disgrace. Emmanuelle Haïm does a brilliant job
of conducting Le Concert d’Astrée in Handel’s wonderful score.
Warlikowski took a tough task of converting a
preachy oratorio into a superb opera.
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