REQUIEM - REVIEW OF 2026 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas 

The production of Mozart’s Requiem at the Aix-en-Provence Festival beside The Magic Flute and Die Frau Ohne Schatten may appear odd but it was produced there in 2019 so there is that precedent at least. I associate a requiem done by an orchestra with a chorus and soloists, but this production is a fully staged work. A glance at the program reveals that the following people are involved: a director, a dramaturge, a choreographer as well as a set, lighting and costume designer. The last three are handled by Director Romeo Castellucci.

I saw the 2019 production and admittedly forgot it and was curious about my reaction to a fully staged offering.  Mozart’s Requiem lasts less than an hour and is at times recorded in beautiful cathedrals. By definition, a requiem is a mass for the dead, a solemn chant for their souls and a prayer for our eternal souls.

Mozart’s Requiem falls squarely in that description. It was left unfinished at his death, and several composers had a hand in finishing it and experts are not sure who contributed what but that is not our concern.

The Festival’s production goes beyond the Requiem that we have inherited incorporating other Mozart compositions and using some Gregorian chants. The program does not give us details of these, but what can be played in less than an hour is stretched to about 100 minutes. It goes from the solemnity and vigorous parts of the Requiem to dance routines and some boisterous celebratory segments.

First let us praise the Pygmalion Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Raphael Pinchon. The soloists are Melissa Petit, soprano, Beth Taylor (alto), Duke Kim (Tenor) and Alex Rosen (bass).  The interplay among soloists, the chorus and the orchestra reach heights of supreme splendor. They go from the simple four-word chant Kyrie eleison to the bleak Dies irae, the Day of Wrath, the day that will dissolve the earth in ashes.

The Requiem implores the Lord for eternal rest and perpetual light for the souls of the departed, prays for mercy on us, warns about the day of judgment that awaits all of us, and glorifies the Lord and expresses our gratitude for his mercy. That is a spectrum that covers the breadth of Christian life and faith.

Scene from Requiem. Aix-en-Provence Festival 2026 © Monika Rittershaus

But Castelucci, Dramaturge Piersandra Di Matteo, and Choreographer Evelin Facchini have a lot more in mind. As Costume designer, Castellucci adds costume changes including a scene with traditional red and white dresses, with flowers at the back of the stage, has colourful hats on the dancers who perform some dance-around-the-rosy and a number with plenty of colourful streamers around a Maypole. The stage décor changes and at one point the rear wall of the stage is sprayed and painted in green and red.

The back of the stage has titles preceded by the word Extinction and it calls for the disappearance of just about everything from music to literature to a couple of dozen things that may be considered as civilization and some others less crucial items that I cannot remember. They appeared on the dimly lit rear panel, and I stopped paying attention to them.

Near the end of the performance, the entire floor of the stage was raised from the back up so that it ended up standing almost vertically. Water ran down cleaning the dirt or whatever was supposed to be on the boards. I assume it was rather crude cleansing of our sins but after everything had become extinct, I am not sure.

The following two verses embrace the Catholic faith on which the Requiem is based. They encompass the extremes of heaven and hell and affirm the love and generosity of God and Jesus. I am not sure that the additional forty minutes inserted by Romeo Castellucci and his artistic so-workers added much to the Requiem.

Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory,

deliver the souls of all the faithful

departed from the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit.

King of awful majesty,

Who freely savest the redeemed,

Save me, O fount of goodness.

The end of the performance was greeted by a few loud boos followed by bravos from some members of the audience. The orchestra, the chorus, the soloists and the dancers received only positive responses. The artistic backstage people were booed again when they appeared for a bow.
______________________________
Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opened on July 4th and will be performed a total of five times until July 12, 2026, at the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, France.  http://festival-aix.com/

James Karas is the Culture Editor of The Greek Press, Toronto

THE MAGIC FLUTE - REVIEW OF 2026 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Aix-en-Provence Festival is up and running for its 2026 season. It opened with Mozart’s Magic Flute and will run frum July 2 to July 21, 2026. The Magic Flute was produced at the Festival in 2014 by Simon McBurney and that production was revived in 2018. This year we get a new production conducted by Leonardo Garcia-Alarcon and directed by Clement Cogitore.

Cogitore has some definite views about his treatment of this opera. His Magic Flute is an opera about war and its grim consequences, and he wastes no time displaying his views. As soon as conductor Garcia-Alarcon begins the overture, we see projected videos and still photographs of a world at war. Destroyed buildings, hungry children rummaging for food, refugees and a world consumed by devastation are shown in frightful detail. It is so overwhelming, I found myself watching the horrors of war and not listening to the music. That is no fault of Garcia-Alarcon who does a splendid job conducting the Millenium Orchestra

The theme of war and its devastation is seen throughout the performance but there is progress towards peace, and we see construction or reconstruction as the damage is rebuilt and we see people enjoying life on the beach or by a pool as normality of sorts is restored.

The opening scene shows a little boy pulling a small cart. He stops and spreads a white sheet and lies down. We hear Prince Tamino (Mauro Peter), the hero of the opera, yell for help as he is pursued by a monster. The little boy is the adolescent Tamino, I guess, Peter is the adult Prince and there is an infant Tamino. The heroine Pamina is sung by Ying Fang but we also have an infant and adolescent Pamina played by two different actors on different nights.

There are numerous children on stage and Cogitore, I guess, wants to emphasize the fact that this is an opera about children’s innocence being destroyed by war and innocence and civilization perhaps being regained by the masonic faith which is the underlying message or strength of the opera for those who can get it.

 I repeat that the backdrop of war persists throughout the performance. The emphasis is on darkness, and we see many scenes through a scrim. Cogitore is responsible for the rich collection of videos. The sets designed by Alban Ho Van aid and abet the principal aim of the opera. The opera is seriously dramaturged by Simon Hatab.

Scene from The Magic Flue, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2026 
© Jean-Louis Fernandez 

Costumes by Wojciech Dziedzic are a potpourri of styles and far from royal or formal attire. The grim lighting by Sylvain Verdet added to the grim view of the production.

Chinese soprano Ying Fang and Swiss tenor Mauro Peter sing well amid the paraphernalia of children and sets that rob the opera of its humour and magic. French soprano Sabine Devieilhe as Queen of the Night is momentarily surrounded by children during her first aria and they sing or say something as she is singing that I did not get. During her second aria with those tortuous high notes, she did a decent job but the atmosphere in which she was singing did not prove propitious to a superb performance.

British bass Brindley Sherratt has a marvelous rolling low register that one needs for Sarastro, the High Priest of Isis. He has two major arias, and he sings one standing at a lectern on a raised platform. He sings his second aria seated at a desk, wearing a suit. What are we supposed to make of that for a character who is the voice of Masonic love and peace? 

We have the high-minded Tamino striving to prove himself worthy of becoming a Mason. But we also have the bird catcher Papageno (Sean Michel Plumb) and his future wife Papagena (Emma Fekete). They are comic characters in an opera produced in a popular theatre for the purpose of making money. It was the idea of Emanuel Schikaneder who wrote the libretto and financed it.

Papageno gets a laugh minutes after the curtain rises when he pretends to have slain the monster that was chasing Tamino. There was no monster and no laugh. If there was a twitter of a laugh during the entire production, I must have missed it.

This a production that is so overwhelmingly quirky, Mozart’s wonderful Magic Flute almost disappears. Too bad.

It may be worthwhile noting that this is a coproduction with Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.

__________________

The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder opened on July 2 and is being performed a total of ten times until July 21, 2026, at the  Théâtre de l'Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, France.  http://festival-aix.com/

JAMES KARAS IS THE CULTURE EDITOR OF THE GREEK PRESS, TORONO

EL ULTIMO SUENO DE FRIDA Y DIEGO – REVIEW OF 2026 LIVE FROM THE MET IN HD TRANSMISSION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Met has wound up its 2025-2026 season of transmissions Live in HD with El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego composed by Gabriella Lena Frank with a libretto by Nilo Cruz. It was first produced in 2022 and now gets a grand production by the Met. The title refers to artists Frida Khalo and her husband Diego Rivera but the opera has little to do with their lives. But we do see some of her paintings and Rivera’s famous scaffold and  we are made aware of some of their tempestuous lives together and apart.

The opera has more to do with the Orpheus and Euridice myth turned on its head. This opera takes place in 1957, three years after the death of Frida. Diego goes to the cemetery on The Day the Dead in 1957 to seek a connection with her. The mythology is neither Greek nor Christian. It is Aztec.

Diego wants to see Frida so she can help him on his journey to the underworld. He is dying or is already dead and he wants to see her on earth and then make his way to the underworld with her.

We all know that Orpheus went down to Hades to implore the gods to give Euridice back to him using his lyre to convince them. It works but in the end, he loses her because she disobeys the order of the god not to look at him until they reached the earth. She looks at him.

Carlos Álvarez as Diego and Isabel Leonard as Frida in a scene from 
"El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego." Photo: Marty Sohl / Met Opera

The Orpheus myth has mesmerized composers for more than four hundred years. The very first opera (now lost) was Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (1600). Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607) was the first great opera and that was just the beginning. More than 80 operas have been written based on the myth and there have been six operas based on it in the 21^st  century.

Aside from the large Met chorus and dancers, El Ultimo Sueno has only four characters. Mezzo soprano Isabel Leonard sings Frida with an exceptionally beautiful voice. She is dressed as Frida in some of her self-portraits. Leonard bears amazing resemblance to Frida and it is one of the pleasures of the production.

Tenor Carlos Alvarez looks like a portly Diego thanks to padding and he is a passionate third husband to Frida. The marriage was tempestuous and, in many ways, unpleasant as they were both serially unfaithful but three years after her death and on the death of Diego we want them to find peace in the underworld. 

El Ultimo Sueno has huge production values that only an opera company like the Met can dream of providing. The first act in the cemetery and the underworld features a large cast of villagers in the cemetery who want to see their loved ones. It switches to the underworld, and we see skeletons, ghosts and dancers that are dazzling. There is a huge skeleton of a red tree with branches above and roots below. The tree of life and death?

The peasants recognize Diego in the cemetery and tell him that he needs faith in his heart to be allowed to see Frida. We meet the Warden of the Dead, Catrina with the hideous deathly face and body. She is the frightful guardian of the souls. She lays the rules for allowing someone to visit the earth. Only 24 hours and no touching. Frida had a horrible life on earth and is reluctant to go back but she eventually relents. 

Not much happens in the Orpheus myth and in El Ultimo. The librettist has added a character called Leonardo sung by countertenor Nils Wanderer. He is a fan of Greta Garbo and emulates her appearance and comically her manners. He wants to go to the earth to see her. Wanderer does a fine job vocally and is entertaining as a would-be Greta Garbo.

El Ultimo Sueno has some lush music and some grand flourishes but I would like to see and hear the opera more times to appreciate its contents and context. But the Met Opera Orchestra performs brilliantly under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Seguin. On first viewing, it proved impressive, enjoyable and a work that demands to be seen again and again.
_________
El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego by Gabriella Lena Frank (music) and Nilo Cruz (libretto) was transmitted Live in HD from New York’s Metropolitan Opera at select Cineplex theatres across Canada on May 30, 2026. There was an encore showing on June 19, 2026, that I saw. For more information go 

to: www.cineplex.com/events.

James Karas is the Culture Editor of The Greek Press, Toronto