Opéra de Lyon (live stream), 24/03/2021

 Dukas : Ariane et Barbe-bleue

Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon

Lothar Koenigs

Paul Dukas is widely known for one work in particular, the symphonic scherzo The Sorceror's Apprentice.  After that, his best known piece is his ballet score La péri, particularly its fanfares, and otherwise, his output is almost completely neglected.  There is not much of it, admittedly; a deeply self-critical composer, he abandoned or destroyed a great deal of his output, and he also more or less ceased composition altogether in his late forties, a good twenty years before his death.  Yet there is a symphony, a monumental piano sonata and, above all, this opera that are all well worth exploring.

Ariane et Barbe-bleue is Maurice Maeterlinck's retelling of the Bluebeard fairy-tale.  Ariane is Bluebeard's new, sixth wife.  As she arrives at his castle, her beauty excites concern and compassion amongst the peasants on his land, who do not wish to see her become yet another victim, but Ariane has come with one purpose in mind, to transgress.  Bluebeard gives her six silver keys and one gold key.  The silver keys open the doors to his treasury, from which spill forth rivers of precious gems, but the gold key is forbidden.  It is the only one in which she is interested, however, but the other doors need to be opened before the door with the gold lock is revealed, and that opens on a dark, descending staircase, up which floats a distant song.  The other wives, as Ariane has believed all along, are still alive.  Bluebeard returns, angry, but the peasants attack the castle.  

In the crypts, Ariane finds the other wives, pale and terrorised, and leads them back up to the light, but they cannot yet leave the castle, which is enchanted against them.  Bluebeard returns with guards to quell the revolt but is overpowered, and the peasants deliver him to Ariane for her and the other wives to be revenged.  However, they tend his wounds and free him, and when Ariane prepares to leave the castle, having accomplished what she set out to do, the other wives refuse to accompany her, preferring to stay with Bluebeard.  They choose the security of the familiar over the uncertainty of freedom.

Dukas's opera is frequently compared to Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.  They are both based on Maeterlinck and their composition overlapped.  Pelléas premiered five years before Ariane; Mélisande appears in Ariane as one of the wives, though it's a minor role, and Dukas actually quotes Debussy a couple of times to depict his Mélisande.  Musically, it's not a piece you can break down into convenient numbers, it's very organic, with the use of leitmotif, but also a very symphonic structure.  The opening of the doors is effectively a theme and variations, which is highly unusual in an opera.  Bluebeard barely sings at all, but Ariane is on call throughout, it's really quite a big sing.  That said, the most interesting music is in the orchestra, certainly in Lothar Koenigs's hands, that was what I was listening to mostly throughout this performance, although the singing was more than adequate.

The production was directed by Àlex Ollé of the Catalan theatre collective La Fura dels Baus.  He was clearly tapping into the #MeToo zeitgeist, with the wives showing clear psychological, and some physical indications of abuse.  His ending was more ambiguous than Maeterlinck's - Bluebeard is not freed, and as Ariane walks away, it's up in the air as to whether the women are experiencing the difficulty many victims of abuse have of separating themselves from their abusers, or if they are actually going to take revenge.  The setting was the banquet hall of the wedding reception, preceded by a sort of transparent washroom, with a large rectangular cut-out that was like a two-way mirror; we saw the characters, but they were not looking back out at us, but at their reflections.  There was rather a lot of climbing up and down a structure of piled tables and chairs, which got a bit tiresome, but did produce some visually striking effects, notably the very end of Act 2.  

Dukas : Ariane et Barbe-bleue
Opéra de Lyon, March 2021
(© MarFloresFlo, 2021)

As mentioned, the evening really belonged to the Lyon Opera orchestra under Lothar Koenigs, revelling in the sumptuous score, but the chorus was evocative when needed.  Only four of the five wives sing, the fifth is a mute part, but all were good and clear.  Bluebeard is actually a very small part, only singing very briefly towards the end of the first act, and Tomislav Lavoie was more than adequate.  The bulk of the singing is undertaken by the Nurse (Anaïk Morel) and Ariane (Katarina Karnéus), both mezzos but well contrasted, Morel with a dark, smoky tone, Karnéus strong, brightly shining, as queenly in timbre as she was in deportment, inflexible in her purpose, but not without compassion, and singing in very good, clear French.  All in all, this was a very satisfactory staging of a too-rarely heard opera.