A luxury jewellery company’s gathering at an exclusive beach resort is not the most obvious setting for Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles, but in New Zealand Opera’s new production it proves a more convincing idea than it might sound on paper. Director Stephen Barlow relocates Bizet’s opera from an exoticised ancient Ceylon to The White Pearl, where luxury brand Pêcheur & Perle has gathered for its annual retreat. The idyllic surroundings, careful curated luxury and increasingly loathsome behaviour inevitably suggest television series The White Lotus , while allowing the production to sidestep much of the 19th-century exoticism that feels awkward in the modern day.
The love triangle remains straightforward even in this different setting. Old friends Nadir and Zurga find their bond threatened by the arrival of Leïla, the woman they both once loved, while the rituals and prohibitions surrounding her turn private jealousy into a matter of life and death. The libretto, and associated supertitles, does not always sit naturally with the directorial conception, but the mismatches are less distracting than one might expect. Arcane ceremonies and solemn vows at a luxury corporate retreat may sound implausible; then again, who knows what the ultra-wealthy get up to at their private resorts? Yannis Thavoris’ sleek, relatively simple set conveyed considerable luxury without cluttering the stage.
Musically, this production offered something exciting. NZ Opera General Director Brad Cohen worked on the critical edition used here, reconstructing the opera’s original 1863 form rather than relying on the posthumously revised version from the 1980s. Most conspicuously, the celebrated Nadir-Zurga duet does not conclude with the later-added grand reprise of “Au fond du temple saint”; instead, Bizet moves into the livelier “Amitié sainte”. Act 3 is more extensively different and the opera ends not with a conventional climactic set-piece but with Zurga left alone to an uncertain fate after allowing the lovers to escape.
The restoration makes an excellent case for Bizet’s youthful score. The incomparable melodic gift that would later produce Carmen is already consistently apparent, as is his flair for orchestral colour. Benjamin Bayl and the Auckland Philharmonia caught the swing of the score’s ‘exotic’ writing with plenty of flair, while retaining its more delicate colours. The repeated climaxes of the Act 2 finale were especially well built, generating real dramatic momentum as the crowd turned on Nadir and Leïla.
Filipe Manu was an ardent and vocally resplendent Nadir. Warm and forthright alongside Samuel Dundas in the famous duet, he brought an almost Verdi-like breadth to its more vigorous second section. “Je crois entendre encore” was the evening’s most purely beautiful singing: delivered, for additional difficulty, largely while reclining on a deckchair, its high-lying phrases cresting in a delicious half-voice, beautifully cushioned by the cor anglais and muted strings. He and Madison Nonoa also combined gorgeously in the lovers’ major duet.
Nonoa’s Leïla was particularly delectable in the opening acts. Her invocation to Brahma floated through the theatre in a pearly, focused tone, negotiating its decorations with apparent ease, while “Comme autrefois” brought greater emotional warmth into the sound. The instrument itself is not large in the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre: at times it resembled a beautifully cut jewel being viewed from some distance. In the more agitated final-act confrontation with Zurga, she sang with commitment but sounded slightly subdued against the emotional torrent around her.
Dundas made that torrent compelling. A natural, chummy presence opposite Manu in Act 1, his Zurga became progressively more riveting as friendship, jealousy and rage pulled him in different directions. The opening of Act 3 was a tour de force. Zurga’s aria is not always a moment one waits for, but Dundas, singing from a bath in his resort cabin, gave it an unusual intensity. The voice seemed to grow in amplitude as Zurga cycled through love, friendship and the desire for revenge. By the time Leïla arrived, we were watching a man already close to collapse. The restored stretches of the duet gave Dundas more space to express Zurga’s transition from sympathy into outright jealousy and vengeance.
Anthony Robin Schneider made one regret that Bizet neglected to give Nourabad an aria. His resonant, beautiful bass immediately commanded attention whenever he intervened. The only relative disappointment came with the chorus’ first entrance, which sounded a little threadbare beside the polish elsewhere. It was a small distraction in a performance that made the strongest possible case for an opera too easily treated as Carmen’s attractive but immature older sibling. Heard in something close to the form Bizet actually conceived, Les Pêcheurs de Perles has plenty of lustre of its own.
