Pardon et deuxième chance : la renaissance de Titus à Baugé

A note in the programme honestly records the trepidation Opéra de Baugé felt in taking on Verdi’s Aida, a tougher prospect than the other operas with which it’s in rep, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus.

If Debussy intended Pelléas et Mélisande as a deliberate anti-Tristan, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore perhaps stumbled into the role. Donizetti was of course not responding to Wagner’s opera (which would not be written for another three decades) but to the legend Wagner would also draw on, with results that were rather more... German, shall we say, than the sunlit uplands of L’elisir.

It’s a curious thing that when operatic characters are drinking at a party, they invariably sing about how nice it is to be drinking at a party – never sports results, or the weather, or how all them bleedin’ ’ungarians are coming over to Austria and taking all our jobs...

S’attaquer à Rossini implique de comprendre son alchimie – en somme, de se souvenir qu’il ne peut exister sans qu’on mobilise la légéreté et la tenue, le souffle et la précision.

C’est que la Lucia de Bernadette Grimmett n’est pas révisionniste, et ne confond pas regard et distanciation : à rebours des malentendus transformant la meurtrière en vengeresse, et la victime en femme forte, Lucia n’apparaît ici qu’en elle-même. 

Netia Jones’ modern reimagining intrigues more than it convinces, but still makes a strong case for Dvořák’s dark fairy tale.