The ENO continued their foray into French Baroque opera with this season’s staging of Charpentier’s Medea – a UK premiere. This production reunited director David McVicar and Sarah Connolly who sang the title role. Other renowned British voices returning to perform with the ENO included Soprano Katherine Manley (Creusa), baritone Roderick Williams (Orontes), and bass Brindley Sherratt (Creon). Charpentier’s Medea also featured the ENO debuts of Jeffrey Francis (Jason), with Bunny Christie (costume and set designer), and Lynne Page (choreographer).
McVicar sets the opera in 1940s France amongst the upper classes and military elite, thus drawing parallels between the tragic magnitude of WWII and the events that unfold in the Greek myth. The production foregrounds the timeless relevance of its themes, particularly the lesson that jealousy, betrayal, and lust for revenge, if allowed to go unchecked, can lead to sickening bloodshed. It moreover implies that this truth has been tragically ignored throughout history. Contemporary attitudes towards the role of women in society, an issue questioned in Euripides’ play of 431 BC, were also effectively emphasized by Christie’s evocatively stylish period costumes. For example, female dancers oscillated between restraint and freedom of movement as they exchanged tight-fitted pencil skirts for glittering bodices with hot pants and flowing dresses.
French opera began during the reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643 -1715) with court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687). Along with the librettist Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), Lully crafted the genre of tragédiesen music: an operatic form that was specially gilded to French tastes. The elaborate stylistic conventions of Italian baroque opera were replaced with a clear 5-act structure, with each act following a fairly regular and fluid pattern of longer arias/duets from the main protagonists, recitatives, shorter arias and divertissement endings. These ballet-inspired divertissements are a distinctive feature of French baroque opera, one that gave composers an opportunity to indulge the audiences’ love of dance, chorus and general spectacle.
Medea, by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1703) and librettist Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), premiered in Paris on December 4th 1693 and ran until March 15th 1694. The opera was greeted with a mixed reception: some critics wrote enamoured reviews whilst others’ tastes were offended, not by the shocking events within the plot, but by the apparently difficult music. Indeed, Charpentier’s harmonically colourful and richly expressive musical palette presented a French idiom accented with the Italian technical and stylistic innovations he had acquired from studying with Giacomo Carissimi in Rome. Charpentier’s musical complexity, his use of diverse, dynamic orchestration, and expressive dissonance, particularly as Medea unleashes the dreadful wrath of her revenge, would likely have sounded disturbingly alien to an audience more used to the compositions of Lully.
It was in Euripides’ play (431 BC) that Medea, not Jason, was cast as the central character. Presenting her as a mother betrayed by the husband for whom she gave everything, Euripides found a context in which to explore the extremes of human emotion, and to challenge the assumption that mothers instinctively protect their children. Indeed, Euripides’ most shocking innovation to the plot is Medea’s killing of her own sons, in order to exact total revenge for Jason’s betrayal. Corneille’s libretto follows the narrative of Euripides’ dramatisation, but it also includes modifications by Seneca the Younger, such as Jason leaving Medea for the Corinthian princess, named Creusa as in the latter’s play. In Charpentier’s opera, several adaptations by Corneille give further emphasis to exploring the humanity of the characters and the relationships between them. For instance, the Princess Creusa is seen on stage and becomes a central character whose gentle femininity creates a vivid contrast with the dark intensity of Medea. Jason is a man who can openly acknowledge that his heroic fame has been achieved due to Medea’s interventions. We see him caught between the enchantments of both women, and between the conflicting feelings of love, lust and loyalty.
The original prologue to Medea, in praise of Louis the XIV (a conventional feature of French Baroque Operas), was tastefully replaced in McVicar’s production by a lively musical overture. From an ensemble formed by a couple of violins, recorders, viola da gamba, bass, theorbos and harpsichord, conductor Christian Curnyn drew momentum and energy enough to create an impression of grandeur beyond the scale of their forces.
The curtains opened for Act 1 to reveal Medea (Connolly) dressed in a black skirt suit with vivid rouge lips, with one hand placed protectively on each of her sons’ shoulders.They stand to the right, backs turned towards us, in a beautiful mirrored room of palatial decadence (bringing to mind the famous mirrored hall of Château Versailles). To the left, luggage cases are piled high indicating their recent escape from Thessally to Corinth. This, and the occasional glimpse of a patrolling soldier in the corridor beyond, conjures an aura of displacement, unease and threat. In the first aria, Connolly won our empathy for Medea before swiftly sowing seeds of trepidation. We hear Medea disclose to her confidant Nerina (Rhian Lois) that she fears Jason (Francis) may be falling for the beautiful Princess Creusa. Growing increasingly distressed, Medea begins to contemplate what may happen if “her fury takes flight”, at which point the sorceress seems alarmingly in awe of her own powers. Verifying her fears, we soon see Jason admit his passions for Creusa to his companion Arcas. Court and army personnel welcome the arrival of victorious Prince Orontes, who has come to meet his betrothed Creusa. King Creon warmly greets the jovial Prince and they pose for photographs with spitfire pilots and soldiers whilst a smouldering Jason surveys the scene. Dancing naval officers (recalling ENO’s Mikado) add to the comic exuberance of the divertissement as we see Jason try to displace Orontes and steal a dance with Creusa.
In Act 2, King Creon (Sherrat) informs Medea that she is to be exiled from Corinth, leaving behind Jason and her sons, until the war with Thessaly is over. Medea’s physically charged protest fails to move the resolute Creon who maintains that the decision is for the safety of his kingdom. Medea must entrust her family into the care of her rival, Creusa. Connolly’s heart-wrenching delivery of Medea’s plea to Creusa – “hope depends on you…. I place in your hands those I love most of all” – poignantly portrayed Medea as a deeply caring mother and wife. We feel momentarily that the angelic looking Princess in a floating white dress has understood the warning – the young boys need her gentle care, not Jason. All illusion is swiftly dispelled as Creon and Creusa break into a gleeful duet celebrating the success of their plot. Her father, like a token of alliance, hands Creusa into the arms of Jason and left alone the pair declare their love. Putting an end to their intimacy, Orontes enters to announce he has planned a show to demonstrate his love for Creusa. Cupid enters in a glitter covered spitfire, drawn by dancing captives of love, and along with a glamorous singer they urge Creusa to accept Orontes’ proposal bringing the act to a dazzling Hollywood-style close.
From Act 3, the plot darkens as events take a sinister turn. Connolly now appears with haunted eyes, clutching at her jacket in comfort as she sings of her suspicions to a deflated and serious Orontes. The two forge an alliance and Orontes leaves. In dimmed, cold blue lighting we see Nerina and Medea mournfully bury their faces in the walls before Jason comes to bid goodbye, remaining unmoved by “this sad appeal”. Thereafter, a terrifying energy drives the music as Nerina is moved to confirm Medea’s suspicions. This is the final straw. Nerina is dismissed for her own sake before the anguished sorceress symbolically strips off the formal suit, and dressed in a black slip uses her blood to summon the demons of hell. Drums and tambourine accompany a frenzied pagan dance in which dishevelled female ghouls in grey-white dresses, some pregnant, launch themselves in violent attack against the male dancers. The poisoned golden gown intended for Creusa glitters at the back of the stage and Act 3 ends with the demons thirstily licking Medea’s bloodied arms.
In stark contrast, the curtains lifted on Act 4 to reveal a resplendent Creusa receiving the admiring attentions of Jason and Cleonis her attendant. Unbeknownst, the latter prophetically sings: “the garment Medea gave her sets her charms ablaze”. Orontes arrives to find the lovers alone together and confronts them in anger. Here Williams revealed an impressive strength and depth to this initially jovial character. The young boys are briefly seen. Connolly enters, physically contorted, dishevelled and trembling as the now raging Medea determines the course her revenge will take, still clutching the dagger with which she slit her arms. Creon’s outraged attempts to evict her from the palace are effectively quashed with black magic by the unstoppable sorceress: a host of Creusa lookalikes appear on stage to bewitch the King’s senses and reveal in full the inappropriate sexual nature of his affections, hinted at throughout the production.
Connolly’s characterisation of Medea in the final act assumed such magnetic intensity as to compellingly suggest that the sorceress was controlling the events played out on stage through the power of her mind. For instance, after Creusa agrees to give up Jason and marry Orontes if her father’s sanity is restored, Medea turns in contemplation and walks downstage left, followed by Creusa and the chorus. When Cleonis brings news that Creon has killed Orontes and then himself, Creusa furiously threatens revenge. The two heroines who now confront each other centre stage seem briefly like equal forces. But, departing with a mere touch, Medea unleashes the latent poison within the golden gown. In helpless horror, clutching her hands, Cleonis watches Creusa writhing on the floor in agony. Jason then rushes on to the scene only to replicate the attendant’s behaviour. In the last duet between the tragic couple Manley conveyed with aching emotional conviction and dignity how Creusa clings, through her agony, to the bittersweet pleasure of dying in her beloved’s arms. For some reason, Francis as Jason did not actually hold Creusa but remained sitting behind her. Medea’s revenge is complete when Jason sees the dead bodies of their two sons carried on stage. The stage set split apart as the two former lovers faced each other for a final time and then the spectre of Medea dramatically rose into the black chasm accompanied by instrumental whirlwind.
True to form, Sarah Connolly was shocking and powerful, yet also incredibly moving in the title role. Manley’s Creusa won us over through her enchantingly graceful allure, offering a breath of fresh air in contrast to Medea’s intoxicating intensity. Williams was charismatic and convincing in his portrayal of Orontes, while Francis’s Jason left something more to be desired as the hero of classical myth.
Page’s modern choreography subtly picked up on the opera’s themes to weave a sub-textual critique through the series of spectacular divertissements. Clever lighting effects throughout imbued Christie’s beautiful set with a panoply of moods, colours, and even textures to reflect events and locations in the narrative.
ENO truly captivated our attention in this UK premiere of Charpentier’s Medea, delivered with momentum and energy befitting the relentless sorceress of ancient Greek myth.