L'amour de loin - et de près

If you like Pelleas et Melisande and Le roi Arthus, you will like L'Amour de loin, a turn-of-the century opera by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, which finally premiered at the Metropolitan Opera this season.  First seen at the Salzburg Festival in 2000 and two years later in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the story of a medieval troubadour in love with a woman he has never seen can easily be transported in today's era of virtual reality.

Robert Lepage's production, featuring ribbons with LED lights stretched across the stage to create a stylized version of the sea surface, was perfectly suited to contemporary music expression and overall feel of the work. Alas, they dressed Eric Owens in some sort of "princely" garb and stuck a lute in his hands to make him look more like a Latin American dictator than either a medieval prince or a modern day lover.

The production has been described as mesmerizing and dazzling, but I must admit that it was a little déjà vu for me. I also suspect that I would have enjoyed the radio broadcast more than I did the video simulcast. Except for Owens that is. If there ever was a person miscast for an operatic role both in looks and in sound, it was Owens in the role of Jaufré Rudel, a 12-th century troubadour from France.

We all remember the big hoopla about Deborah Voigt losing her signature role in a London production of Ariadne auf Naxos because of her size. The producers said they had envisioned an Ariadne in a mini skirt and our Debbie did not fit the image. The U.S. media screamed foul, but Voigt seemed to understand. Movie and theater directors audition hundreds of actors before choosing the one they deem best suited for the role. Why should opera be different? If we only needed the right voice, we could just have concert performances and do away with acting and sets.

Countess Clémence of Tripoli, the pilgrim and Prince Jaufré Rudel are the only characters in L'amour de loin, but there is also an excellent chorus à la grecque

With Owens, it's not just the size that's wrong- it's the whole persona. He was a powerful Alberich (Der Ring des Nibleungen) convincing, though not perfect Stephen Kumalo (Lost in the Stars) and an OK Orestes (Elektra). But a medieval prince he ain't, either to the eye or to the ear. On Saturday, Owens sounded more wobbly than I had ever heard him and his French was simply atrocious. There, I said it. Hence, I think he would have ruined the radio broadcast for me as well as the video simulcast. With the abundance of French baritones in today's operatic world, and Canadian Phillip Addis who sang the role recently, one wonders who decided on Owens for this production. 

Susanna Phillips, on the other hand, was well chosen and convincing as the countess d'Outremer.  Her  scaly dress made her look like a siren most of the time. Maybe it was intentional.

Saariaho’s opera has been described as “transfixing," "lushly beautiful," "groundbreaking," "haunting" and "elegiac," among other things. The libretto by Lebanese-born Amin Maalouf is simple: Prince Jaufré, a troubadour (based on a 12-th century character) in Aquitaine is tired of earthly pleasures and seeks something more transcendental. He finds it in his own imagination of a beautiful noble woman, Countess Clémence of Tripoli, described to him by a pilgrim. Clémence spent her infancy in Toulouse, and yearns to return there. From their respective shores, Jaufré and Clémence yearn for idealized images of something that may be different in reality.

Half-way across the sea on the way to meet his beloved, Jaufré gets cold feet and tells the pilgrim, "The sun shines beautifully from afar, but it burns you if you get close." The premise is reminiscent of a popular Serbian poem Strepnja by Desanka Maksimović in which she says that "joy is beautiful only while you wait for it" and that "everything shines like a star only from a distance."  She implores her lover not to come closer so she would not be disappointed. In this respect, Maalouf's story is almost identical to the Serbian poem. 

But while Maksimović wisely stops there, L'Amour de loin becomes cloyingly sentimental in its search for a conclusion and eventually veers off into religion. Jaufré becomes deathly ill during the sea voyage and dies upon meeting his dream woman. Dies happy - we are made to believe. She is brokenhearted, but says she will find consolation in loving from afar because after all, we love God from afar. Do we need that message? For me the story would have been more convincing and the opera more meaningful if the lovers had never met and continued to yearn for each other sight unseen. Or if they did meet only to realize they were idolizing a non-existing person. 

L'Amour the loin with its 21st century music and the Met's hi-tech production would be better matched with a contemporary story in which two people fall for each other (as many do these days) through the Internet. In some cases they later meet in person and really get to love each other. In others, one side has criminal intentions and the story ends tragically. But most people who "fall in love" online are simply disappointed when they meet the other party in person, and they politely tell each other good-bye. Eric Owens would fit perfectly in one such story.

Very often, real life stories are much more inspiring than the fictional ones.

Take for example American astronaut John Glenn, who died on Thursday, and his wife Annie. They knew each other since they were children. When they married (and naturally before that) she stuttered so badly that she would not go shopping except in places where she could pick up what she needed from the shelves.  Glenn was first a war hero, then after his 1962 flight into orbit became a world celebrity, and later a senator. He even ran for president in 1984. So for most of their married life he was a man of fame and power and she was low-profile. But he was a devoted husband and, as far as we know, the glory did not tempt him to stray from his wife.  

Annie underwent a successful treatment for her affliction when she was over 50 years of age. Until she was ready to step into the limelight, Glenn was fiercely protective of her.  The Washington Post on Friday quoted him as telling Annie after his return from the space, “Look, if you don’t want the vice president or the TV networks or anybody else to come into the house, then that’s it as far as I’m concerned.” 

“They are not coming in and I will back you up all the way and you tell them that! I don’t want (Lyndon) Johnson or any of the rest of them to put so much as one toe inside our house,” he said in a phone call upon landing.

They were married for 73 years. What a great love story! Forget L'Amour de loin.

*****
A clip from the Met's production:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkhaI6Nv-8Y

Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars at WNO

Kurt Weill's last work Lost in the Stars is set in South Africa, but in the new Washington National Opera's production it could be set in the United States or India any other country beset with racial and class divisions. Weill's opera - I would call it a musical - based on Alan Paton's 1948 novel Cry, the Beloved Country explores common humanity among divided people that emerges in the face of tragedy.

I read Paton's book as a teenager and I'd never seen or heard Lost in the Stars before Friday night, so I could watch the WNO performance with an open mind - almost. I lived in South Africa for four years in the early 1980s when apartheid was still firmly in place and that experience could not be entirely ignored.

Sean Panikkar as The Leader in WNO's Lost in the Stars

The first thing I noticed in the WNO performance was the scarcity of the distinctive South African accent except for the valiant efforts by Wynn Harmon, Paul Scanlan and Thomas Adrain Simpson to emulate it. All three were portraying white South Africans: farmer James Jarvis, his son Arthur and the judge. The black singers spoke in accents that could have been from anywhere on the continent or in the United States, but I would not immediately place it in South Africa.

The lack of insistence on the authentic accent works in favor of this production. The more I watched, the more I was reminded of Ferguson and Black-Lives-Matter movements in America, and less of the segregated South Africa I knew. The opera's distinctly American music idiom added to the sense that the story unfolding on the stage is taking place in the United States.

In the Maxwell Anderson's adaptation of Paton's novel black pastor Stephen Kumalo travels from his small village of Ndotsheni to Johannesburg to check on his sister Gertrude and his son Absalom. The former has become a prostitute and the latter a robber.  But when Absalom accidentally kills the son of white neighbor James Jarvis during a botched robbery, the reverend is faced with a dilemma: would he prefer his son alive and a sinner, or dead and righteous. 

Eric Owens owned the role of the rural minister whose family, or "tribe," fell apart after most of it moved to Johannesburg in search of a better life. Owens has distinguished himself in Wagner roles, but it is hard to imagine anyone else doing a better Kumalo than he did.  He shined in the title song Lost in the Stars.

Soprano Lauren Michelle was a charming Irina, the pregnant lover of Kumalo's son Absalom, whose inner strength overcomes her shyness and helps her deal with the ultimate loss. Michelle was a little stiff in her first major aria, but warmed up considerably by her next big number, Stay Well, in the second act.

Eric Owens and Caleb McLaughlin in WNO's Lost in Stars

Other outstanding performers were Caleb McLaughlin as Kumalo's grandson Alex and Cheryl Freeman as fun-loving city girl Linda. They lit up the stage with energy and charisma. One couldn't but wonder how high McLaughlin (sparkling in the Big Mole song) will reach when he grows up. He is already more confident on the stage than many adults. His talent was especially obvious in a joint scene with a peer portraying Jarvis's grandson Edward. Tenor Sean Panikkar was an attractive and striking Leader, although I could not quite understand what his role in the play was  (narrator?). But that's just me. There were also a lot of characters listed in the playbill that I could not identify on the stage. Aleksey Bogdanov as Burton (prosecutor?) was a commanding presence in the courtroom scene. Manu Kumasi's Absalom was earnest, but not quite convincing.

The challenge of Lost in the Stars is in its structure, which is part spoken play and part musical so it requires competent actors as well as singers. The singing in this production was magnificent, with moments of real brilliance and an excellent chorus throughout. But the acting abilities were uneven. Owens's included. Poignant as he was in the moments of tragedy, the acclaimed bass-baritone failed to produce the variety of expressions and nuances required to keep the spectator breathless throughout the performance. The scene in which he comes to plead with James Jarvis to intercede for his son was simply awkward.

Eric Owens and Wynn Harmon, grieving fathers in WNO''s Lost in Stars

In the end, the action of Lost in the Stars actually seems like it is taking place in South Africa. The shared tragedy brings the two grieving fathers together. Their connection, as well as the black and white children playing together in the final scenes, hint at a wider national reconciliation, which for me is more believable in the South African context than any other one.

When they dismantled the apartheid in the 1990s, South Africans established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that invited victims of egregious human rights violations to give statements. Perpetrators of violence also could testify and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution. Many culprits expressed sincere remorse and many were publicly forgiven by their victims. The process is widely regarded as a key step to a successful transition to democracy in South Africa. Lost in the Stars is a good reminder that we could benefit from it too.