Handel’s Semele
Canadian Opera Company
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House - March 6, 2015
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| Juno's temple gets a Chinese twist Photo credit: Karl Foster |
Lui: The Canadian Opera Company’s production
of Handel’s Semele directed by artist Zhang Huan opens with a
black and white documentary shot in modern China projected on a curtain-sized
screen, about a sixteenth-century Chinese temple that
was used as living quarters by a poor Chinese family and then dismantled and
reassembled in a hangar in modern day Shanghai. The documentary gets into
menial details such as a mother’s desire to renovate the space to make it more
appealing to her son’s potential future bride and her son’s admission that he
has been interested in both boys and girls over the course of his life. It also
tells the story of a husband who kills his wife’s lover and is then sentenced
to death and executed. This last detail in particular is supposed to serve as
the director’s framing of his interpretation of the Semele story. The
only effect though, was to immensely distract from the beauty of the overture
by forcing the public to engage with the fast changing subtitles (often in
broken English, thus doubly distracting) and follow the documentary plot that,
ultimately, had little to do with Semele.
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| Love between a god and a mortal Photo credit: Jack Vartoogian |
Lei: In Handel’s original libretto, the young and
lovely mortal Semele loves Jupiter the king of the gods who sweeps her away and
makes her his favorite mistress, which utterly enrages his wife Juno, who plots
her revenge by leveraging on Semele’s ambition to become an immortal goddess
herself. With the help of Somnus the god of slumber, Juno enacts her plan and
tricks Semele into believing that if Jupiter makes love to her in his immortal
form (as opposed to in his usual human disguise), she would gain immortality
herself. The vain and hubristic Semele falls into the trap and, when she forces
Jupiter to obey her wish, she is burned to ashes by the god’s divine thundering
force. Juno rejoices, the chorus laments Semele’s death, and Apollo announces
that from her ashes the god of wine Bacchus will be born – everybody is happy.
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| Juno gets jealous Photo credit: Jack Vartoogian |
Lui: With its tenuous link to the contemporary events
of the jealous husband who killed his rival (just as Juno causes Semele’s
death), Zhang Huan’s interpretation decidedly, if shakily, focuses on Juno’s
revenge rather than Semele’s overarching ambition, but even here I am
unimpressed. When it comes to the way this cast embodies these characters, Juno
as sung by contralto Hilary Summers was not played as a vicious woman hell-bent
on revenge, but rather was always more eager to play to the laugh. And the
audience laughed a good deal at her farcical take on the most slighted of all
the gods. Sure the score may have some playful bits for her to sing, like the
descending melismatic scale first on “fall, fall, fall” and then on “rolling down the depths of night” in the moment in which
she hatches her plan of revenge, but in the hands of most other singers (listen
to Joyce DiDonato’s recent recording of Hence, Iris, hence away) these lines are ferocious and fiery. Summers took all of
the drama out of her role, and by any indication this is the portion that Zhang
Huan found most captivating since he attempted to liken her wounded pride to
that of the poor contemporary peasant who once lived in the very temple that
was lugged all the way from China to Toronto to Brussels and now to Brooklyn,
all 17 tons of it. There must be something there. To say from the show itself
though, something was definitely lost along the way. The performance itself
hardly lifted a feather to this interpretation’s 17-ton staging.
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| Semele and the infamous humping donkey Photo credit: Jack Vartoogian |
Lei: The idea of moving the action to a Chinese
religious setting could have worked, because in Semele the Greco-Roman
gods, their ancient temples and their otherworldly whims are an essential part
of the drama. Zhang Huan’s execution of this idea, however, was muddled and
unfocused as he threw together just too much stuff that, most of the time, only
interfered with the music (such a pity as conductor Christopher Moulds seemed
to be doing a great job). The most egregious distraction was a grotesque donkey
portrayed by two actors poorly disguised and goofing around the stage in
various stages of sexual excitement, at some point even sporting an abnormally
large aroused phallus. The donkey may have represented some embodiment of
Jupiter and surely elicited many laughs and cheers from the BAM public but to
anyone with an interest in the music and singing it was just irritating.
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| Humping donkey on the loose Photo credit: Zhang Huan website |
Lui: The donkey actually seemed to be a reference to The
Golden Ass, a late antique prose narrative by the North African Latin
author Apuleius, in which the protagonist is transformed into a donkey who over
the course of his adventures takes advantage of the fact that in his new state
he is actually abnormally well endowed. The reference would not be entirely
unfounded because other plot points from Apuleius’ novel are echoed in the
opera. One of the interpolated tales in The Golden Ass is the story of
Psyche who is convinced by her jealous and conniving sisters to insist that her
surreptitious lover Cupid reveal himself for what he really is even though that
would break their pact. Virtually the same thing happens here in Act III of
Handel’s opera when Juno disguised as Semele’s sister convinces her to insist
that Jove come into her in all his godly glory as the great thunderer he is,
which ultimately leads to her hubristic downfall. I hesitate to give this
production so much credit for such a learned literary reference, but sometimes
you never can tell. If so much of the rest of what Zhang Huan includes on stage
was not so dispersive and so utterly offensive to the original spirit of the
piece, I would be more willing to accept the idea that this was an intended
intertextual reference.
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| Sumo wrestlers louder than the chorus Photo credit: Jack Vartoogian |
Lei: As it is I’m having a hard time trying to figure
out how to fit the other disparate pieces of this production into Zhang Huan’s
vision of Handel’s opera, like the peasant fisherman, whose plaintive Chinese
folk song replaced the closing number in Act I. Not to mention one of the other
major distractions, namely, the pair of Sumo wrestlers at the end of Act II
that put on a whole show of doing what I suppose Sumo wrestlers do – stomping
around, grunting, moaning and throwing each other loudly on the ground – all
this while the excellent chorus was delivering the beautiful finale to Act II.
Not only did the wrestlers have nothing to do with what was being sung (even if
they did trot off stage lovey dovey and hand in hand, go figure), but more
problematically they created a whole lot of noise that covered up the music and
singing. At some point we also have some sort of orgy going on, featuring the chorus members stripping down to their skivvies and simulating various
forms of copulation, which was mostly pitiful to watch, as this was clearly
awkward and uncomfortable for the poor singers. Some things are better left to
dancers.
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| Semele flying high Photo credit: Jack Vartoogian |
Lui: Other ideas in Zhang Huan’s over the top
production did have some potential and at times were almost successful. I
understand the instinct behind the concept of hanging Semele off a wire when she
sings the famous Act I aria Endless
pleasure, endless love, but this staging seems to have been blocked for a
much larger stage. From the balcony it was difficult to enjoy let alone even
clearly hear this most beautiful of arias because poor Jane Archibald as Semele
was dangling off a string so high above the stage that for us she was literally
singing from behind the supertitles screen and all we could see were her
legs.
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| God of slumber snoozes under blankey on temple's roof Photo credit: BAM |
The Somnus scene was perhaps the most unique moment, and
thus it appears in all of the promotional material. But even it was overwrought
with its useless blow-up doll. Slightly simpler and potentially less original
is the mirror scene in the beginning of Act III. When Juno makes her appeal to
Semele’s narcissistic vanity and plays the poor mortal into her own overarching
ambition to become immortal, a floor to ceiling wall of mirrors replaces the
curtain at the front of the stage so she can ogle herself to distraction. This
more direct effect and very literal-minded staging concept was probably the
most effective of the night, as the audience, too, reflected in the mirror, it became part of the show in a very meta-theatrical way.
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| Mirrors reflect all (Brussels 2009 performance pictured) Photo credit: Zhang Huan website |
Lei: Beyond the distractions and absurdities of this
production, Zhang Huan’s truly unforgivable choices were to change Handel’s
score and cut the plot to his whim. The first instance was to replace the final
chorus of Act I with the inexplicable Chinese fisherman singing a cappella a
Chinese folk song. Also, the sub-plot in the final act between Ino (Semele’s
sister) and Athamas (Semele’s betrothed) was completely omitted. Not content,
Zhang Huan also radically changed the finale. While in Handel’s libretto the
opera ends with Apollo announcing that from Semele’s ashes Bacchus will be born
and the chorus delivers a jubilant concluding piece, Zhang Huan’s decided
that that just did not fit his vision and ended with a modern day Chinese
peasant sweeping Semele’s ashes while the chorus hums the Internationale communist anthem. It is not an insignificant
detail as one of the themes of the opera is indeed that of metamorphosis
(Ovid is one of the sources after all) and the god of wine and pleasure
arising from Semele’s ashes is the most striking and uplifting of transformations. You may do what
you want with Chinese temples and horny donkeys but please do not tamper with
the score if you still want to sell the performance as Handel’s Semele.
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| Semele's last stand Photo credi: Gary Beechey |
Lui: As to the singers, the cast was adequate at best
and in some instances embarrassingly incapable. Soprano Jane Archibald
as Semele was the saving grace of the show. She was by far the strongest singer
on stage and at least capable of getting where she needed to, delivering a
correct (though by no means dazzling) performance, with a touch of virtuosity
in the mirror showcase piece Myself I shall adore, If I persist in gazing.
Contralto Hilary Summers (playing both Juno and Semele’s sister Ino) had
an extraordinarily low instrument (so much that at times I wondered if the
singer was male or female - one never knows with baroque cross dressing) yet
not very powerful but played both her characters in a mockingly histrionic way
that was pretty entertaining. Soprano Katherine Whyte as Juno’s servant
Iris was spunky and energetic and generally pleasant.
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| Semele and Jupiter at the height of their affair Photo credit: Jack Vartoogian |
The real issues came with
the gentlemen: Colin Ainsworth as Jupiter had excellent acting skills but was
vocally one of the weakest tenors I’ve seen live in a world class stage,
displaying a total lack of musicality, power and expressiveness coupled with a
plain inability to get in the higher registry or sustain a baroque melisma
without breaking it; the singing of bass baritone Kyle Ketelsen (playing
both Semele’s father Cadmus and the slumber god Somnus) was very low and slow
but lacked depth and was mostly (appropriately?) sleep-inducing; countertenor Lawrence Zazzo as Semele’s betrothed Athamas left me
lukewarm singing-wise but his slapstick acting was, after the donkey, the most obscene on
stage (as he unnecessarily humped a pillar, the donkey, Semele, the floor and even a chorus
member). The chorus led by chorus master Sandra Horst delivered a great
singing performance, which made Zhang Huan’s various cuts to the chorus parts
even more enraging.
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| Zhang Huan's 17-ton production Photo credit: Jack Vartoogian |
Lei: To me, this was not Handel’s Semele but
rather a multi-media Eastern hodgepodge of performance art inspired by and
riffing on Handel’s Semele. Hodgepodge which, in and of itself was an
interesting experiment. But if we think of the show as Handel’s opera, it was a
pretty sacrilegious production directed by someone who may know what he’s doing
as artist in other mediums, but declares in the program’s notes: “there are
very few people who understand opera, and even fewer artists who understand it.
In all honesty, I too do not understand opera, but I like doing things out of
the ordinary.” Maybe opera is best left to people who, at a minimum, understand
what it is.
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| Semele dissolves into ashes Photo credit: Zhang Huan |
Lui:
All of our blowhard ranting aside, this was truly one of the most spectacular
and unique operatic experiences that we’ve had all season. There is obviously a
lot of serious money behind the commission of this production. Perhaps this is
the most disappointing element of all. While I was leaving the theater I
overheard several audience members writing off the shortcomings of the evening
on the sentiment: “Oh, that’s just opera for you!” The fact that it was
obviously a moment in which opera was given some major visibility outside of
its usual sphere, I left feeling like it was yet another squandered opportunity
to inject some real life into what can be a vibrant and thrilling art
form, when in the right hands.
- Lui & Lei
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