A mural depicting Etna erupting is the only hint of Sicily in Stefan Herheim’s opulent staging of Les Vêpres siciliennes, returning to Covent Garden for the first time since the Verdi bicentenary celebrations in 2013. Composed just two years after La traviata, which is guaranteed to fill opera houses season after season, Vêpres is rarely performed, especially in its original French version. Uncut, it’s a creaky five act vehicle, but Verdi’s music often exhilarates, especially the duets between the French governor, Guy de Montfort, and the young Sicilian who turns out to be his son, Henri.
Herheim updates the opera from 13th-century Palermo – the original plot concerns the Sicilian uprising against their French oppressors – to the time and location of its première: Paris 1855, specifically to the Salle le Peletier, predecessor of today’s Palais Garnier. Here the French-Sicilian struggles are replaced by artistic rivalries. Jean Procida, the leading Sicilian rebel, becomes a ballet master (Erwin Schrott in his dandiest element) in bitter dispute with the manager of the opéra-ballet, Montfort (baritone Michael Volle).
As a metaphor for how artists are exploited by society, it’s heavy-handed but often makes for magnetic viewing. During the overture (one of Verdi’s very best), Herheim relates the backstory to the parentage of Henri – the result of Montfort raping a member of the corps (pregnant dancers reappear to prick Montfort’s conscience during his Act 3 aria “Au sein de la puissance”). Gesine Völlm’s costumes and Philipp Fürhofer’s sets are lavish, the ballet rehearsal scenes plucked straight from a Degas painting, so it’s doubly ironic that André de Jong’s choreography is often galumphing and that Herheim then cuts the entire half-hour ballet, de rigueur for Parisian Grand Opéra in the mid-19th century. However, Verdi himself was more than happy to jettison the ballet when adapting his opera for the Italian stage and at least it ensures we’re out of the House before 11pm!
We are often thrust into the Peletier’s auditorium, the chorus staring out with a degree of detachment from their plush boxes. A winged cherub – a Herheim trope – appears first as executioner, then as Cupid. Herheim turns the wedding day massacre into a masked ball which ends with a psychotic Procida – in black ball-gown and skull mask – feigning to stab the revellers with a fleur-de-lys at the end of a French flag. But Herheim bungles the denouement, lowering a backstage lighting rig to blind the audience. It’s never less than a dazzling spectacle though and impresses by its sheer sumptuousness and chutzpah.