Musée d'Orsay

The grand central space of Musée d'Orsay, housed in what used to be a train station.

We spent a full day at Musée d'Orsay in January. Alas, many of the museum’s key paintings were not on display, and Joshua missed seeing artworks he had keenly wanted to see (most of all, “The Floor Scrapers”).

A visit to Musée d'Orsay provides a magnificent experience—but the greatest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings reside in the United States.

American art collectors were the first to recognize the importance of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and bought up Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings left and right when the artworks were brand new, with the paint barely dry.

By the time the French government decided to enter the art market and begin buying Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings for France’s museums, most of the greatest artworks had already left the country and were safely ensconced in the Western Hemisphere. Moreover, the French government, entering the art market thirty years too late, still had to contend with American buyers prepared to outbid and out-buy the French government.

Such accounts for the fact that the collection of Musée d'Orsay, large as it is, is disappointing to Americans. The quality of the collection does not match the quality of the building.

(And the quality of the main restaurant of Musée d'Orsay—the restaurant with the giant clock face, and with portal windows overlooking The Seine—had greatly deteriorated between 2004 and 2013.)

“Taxis Of The Marne”

One of the legendary “Taxis Of The Marne”, now on display in the World War I section of Musée de l'Armée at Les Invalides.

When my brother and I had visited Paris in 2003 and 2004, the World War I section of Musée de l'Armée had been closed for a multi-year redesign and reinstallation. It was only in January of this year that we were able at last to visit the World War I section of Musée de l'Armée.

In early September 1914, one month into the war, German forces were already at Paris’s outskirts. The ease of the German advance through Belgium and Northern France en route to Paris had shocked British and French command. By September 6, German troops were in position to capture Paris within the following 24 hours.

In desperation, French authorities decided to send to the front 6,000 troops being held in reserve for the defense of Paris.

There was a problem: the French rail network, already clogged (to the extent it was working at all), was not in a position to transport 6,000 reserve troops to the front.

To accomplish the troop movement, French officials ordered 600 Paris taxis to assemble at Les Invalides. Each taxi was ordered to deliver five soldiers to the front, return to Paris, and pick up another five soldiers for transport to the front.

The tactic worked. The German advance was halted. Within days, British and French forces were able to mount an effective counterattack that drove German forces 40 miles from the city.

Paris had been saved.

And stalemate set in for the next four years.

Chief Of The German General Staff Helmuth von Moltke knew instantly that the war on The Western Front had been lost in the 72 hours that had transpired between September 6 and September 8—and he informed the Kaiser by cable that defeat was now inevitable against Britain and France.

Moltke was soon thereafter relieved of command.

Within days, Moltke’s health collapsed, mental and physical, and he was forced to return to Berlin.

Eighteen months later, during Berlin funeral services for Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz, Moltke himself keeled over.

He had died on the spot.

Pont Neuf

Pont Neuf (“New Bridge”), now the oldest bridge in Paris across The River Seine.

Pont Neuf was completed in 1607. Its construction required twenty-nine years.

The famous equestrian statue of Henry IV may be seen at the right.

Quiz Time

The first person correctly to identify the Paris building in the above photograph will win his or her choice of free concert tickets for tomorrow night.

Option Number One: The Minnesota Orchestra, Hannu Lintu, conductor, Alban Gerhardt, cello. Program: Dvorak Carnival Overture, Elgar Cello Concerto, Prokofiev Symphony No. 5.

Option Number Two: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, John Storgårds, conductor, Christian Tetzlaff, violin. Program: Sibelius Valse Triste, Schumann Violin Concerto, Corigliano Symphony No. 2.

The winner, in making his or her selection, might wish to note that Tetzlaff is one of the three of four finest violinists in the world today, while Gerhardt would not even have a career were Heinrich Schiff still in his prime.

The winner might also wish to note that most observers, comparing the two Finnish conductors, would rate Storgårds above Lintu, although such comparison is of piffling consequence, much like arguing whether Kansas or Nebraska has the higher mountain range.

Each program, in its way, is attractive. Joshua and I had penciled both concerts into our calendars—this was to be the weekend of The Battle Of The Finns—but we have decided not to attend either concert owing to our outrage over Monaco’s new policy on Guillemets.

Instead, we shall devote our weekend to teaching something useful, such as algebra, to my parents’ dog.

Salle Pleyel

Salle Pleyel, the primary concert hall in central Paris, named after the piano manufacturer.

During my previous visits to Paris, Salle Pleyel had been closed for extensive renovation. It was only last month that I was able to see anything other than the exterior of Salle Pleyel.

A splendid example of Art Deco architecture and design, Salle Pleyel opened in 1927. A 1928 fire required the auditorium to be reconstructed. The reconstruction was done on the cheap, with the result that the auditorium lost not only its beauty but also its acoustics.

The auditorium was to remain notorious for the next 74 years, known worldwide for its disadvantageous seating layout and atrocious acoustical properties. It was only in 2002 that Salle Pleyel was closed for wholesale renovation, one purpose of which was to create at long last a concert hall worthy of Paris.

The current auditorium, completed in 2006, is entirely new and entirely modern, and bears no resemblance to the original auditorium or its 1928 replacement. The rest of the building has been restored to its original Art Deco elegance.

After only two visits, Salle Pleyel has become one of my favorite concert halls.

Intimacy And Exquisiteness, Atmosphere And Presentation

Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788)
Portrait Of The President Of Rieux
1741
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris

Pastel On Paper Mounted On Canvas
46 3/8 Inches By 36 Inches

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Maurice Quentin de La Tour carried the difficult and capricious pastel medium to a point of sheer technical brilliance not reached before or since. His mastery of pastels led not only to imitation but to fears that he would provoke a distaste for oil paint.

Masterpieces From The Norton Simon Museum, a publication of the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

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In this magnificent portrait, first shown at the Salon of 1742, the artist presented Suzanne-Marie-Henriette de Boulainvilliers (1696-1776) dressed for a ball. The subject was forty-five years of age at the time of the portrait.

“Portrait Of The President Of Rieux” is one of the most significant pastel portraits created by the greatest of all pastellist artists—and among the largest in size. It is among the half-dozen largest portraits by the artist, and among the half-dozen finest portraits by the artist.

Because the portrait was owned by the subject and her descendants from 1741 until 1920, when it was sold to the founders of Musée Cognacq-Jay in the portrait’s one-and-only sale transaction, the portrait remains in its original wood frame, very rare for an artwork almost 300 years old.

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Hundreds of art websites on the worldwide web—including Bridgeman!—attribute “Portrait Of The President Of Rieux” to Georges de La Tour instead of Maurice Quentin de La Tour. Such misattribution is as unfathomable as an inability to distinguish Gustave Charpentier from Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

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“Portrait Of The President Of Rieux” is one of the key masterworks on display at Musée Cognacq-Jay, a museum devoted primarily to 18th-Century French art and housed in an 18th-Century hôtel particulier. At the museum, “Portrait Of The President Of Rieux” hangs in a third-floor salon directly opposite another portrait by the same artist.

I love Musée Cognacq-Jay for its intimacy and its exquisiteness. The museum owns twenty or thirty artworks worth seeing over and over and over, supplemented by another 200 or so artworks not of great importance. One visits Musée Cognacq-Jay for atmosphere and “presentation” as much as for art.

Musée Cognacq-Jay owns Rembrandt’s earliest top-tier masterpiece, “Balaam’s Ass”, painted in 1626.

The Rembrandt was not on display last month. It was off-view for cleaning and restoration.

Three Paris Concerts

We heard three orchestra concerts on three successive evenings in Paris.

The first concert was by Orchestre National d'Île de France, playing under its Music Director, Enrique Mazzola, at Salle Pleyel.

Orchestre National d'Île de France is a full-time orchestra that serves not only Paris but the entire Île de France, frequently playing in suburban and exurban locales. The orchestra is of fairly recent provenance, founded in 1974, and has had one Music Director of note, Yoel Levi, who surely found the job a challenge.

Orchestre National d'Île de France is not a good orchestra. It is by far the least of Paris’s four full-time concert orchestras. Ensemble is not tight, the orchestra’s sound quality is thin and wispy, and the orchestra lacks deep musical instincts. From the appearances of the musicians onstage, three-quarters of the orchestra’s membership is comprised of musicians at the very ends of their professional careers while one-quarter is comprised of musicians at the very beginnings of theirs.

The primary work on the first half of the program was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1; the sole work on the second half of the program was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 3 (“Polish”).

The Beethoven sounded as if it had not been rehearsed; the Tchaikovsky was a sloppy, loud, vulgar performance, the kind of thing one seldom hears in the U.S., even from provincial ensembles. I found Mazzola, a Spaniard who studied in Italy, laughable in the Tchaikovsky, so over-the-top was his interpretation.

The pianist in the Beethoven was Cédric Tiberghien, a French pianist highly regarded in France, but never able to establish a U.S. career.

Tiberghien was, I believe, having an off night. There were lots of slipped notes, and Tiberghien appeared unable to relax, most likely because he was working with a poor conductor. Mazzola did what he wanted in the Allegro, changing tempi constantly, which threw Tiberghien off. Mazzola conducted the Largo like a dirge, which made the lengthiest middle movement among all Beethoven concertos go on forever and ever. Even the jaunty Rondo was a mess—the conductor displayed a tendency to speed up at the ends of phrases, with the result that the players became in sync neither with themselves nor the soloist. (Mazzola’s Tchaikovsky also displayed the same tendency to speed up at the ends of phrases, a practice that single-handedly destroyed the Alla tedesca as well as the Scherzo and Finale.)

Two short works were placed at the beginning of the concert.

Panufnik’s “Katyn Epitaph”, from 1967, was first. Little more than an eight-minute crescendo, “Katyn Epitaph” received the one convincing performance of the night—and I suspect “Katyn Epitaph” ate up a significant portion of the available rehearsal time.

A world premiere was next: Svitlana Azarova’s “Mover Of The Earth, Stopper Of The Sun”, billed as an overture. I had never previously heard a note of Azarova’s music—in fact, I had never even heard of Azarova until we had booked our tickets for the concert.

“Mover Of The Earth, Stopper Of The Sun” was written in a very conservative idiom; it was the musical equivalent of an Alex Katz painting. The composition demonstrated a genuine mastery of orchestration—there was some real color to be heard—but the musical materials and the composer’s manipulation of those musical materials, on one hearing, did not strike me as fundamentally imaginative.

I have no idea whether the composition was a representative work of the composer.

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The following evening we heard Orchestre National de France at Le Théâtre du Châtelet.

Le Théâtre du Châtelet is not the normal venue for Orchestre National de France concerts—Théâtre des Champs-Élysées is the orchestra’s permanent home—but Théâtre des Champs-Élysées had been booked for the evening, forcing Orchestre National de France to play elsewhere.

Despite its poor acoustics, Le Théâtre du Châtelet is much-used for orchestra concerts—for Paris orchestras as well as visiting orchestras. (In 2003, I had heard Riccardo Muti lead the orchestra of La Scala at Le Théâtre du Châtelet.)

At the time we booked our tickets, Colin Davis had been announced as conductor for the January 24 Orchestre National de France concert. Nonetheless, we had not expected Davis to appear, knowing that Davis has been canceling most of his scheduled concerts for the last year, often at short notice.

As we had anticipated, a few days prior to the concert, it was announced that Davis would not be appearing, and that Neeme Järvi would be on the podium instead. The scheduled program—Mozart and Sibelius—was unchanged.

I have never been a Järvi admirer. Järvi is famed for his glibness, skating over the surface of an enormous repertory. Järvi’s secret, I believe, is that he chooses faster-than-necessary tempi in order to keep things moving at all costs—a practice that, for him, has proven successful (within obvious limits).

The concert began with a performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 (“Haffner”). Järvi is not a Mozart conductor, and I had expected nothing from him in the “Haffner”.

Järvi surprised me greatly, offering the finest performance of the evening. Järvi’s Mozart was abstract Mozart, like Beecham’s—and, in the right hands, abstract Mozart can work beautifully. I was in rapture the entire performance, marveling at its freshness and ebullience of spirit, the most distinguishing characteristics of this “Haffner” interpretation. Järvi’s may have been the finest “Haffner” I have ever heard.

Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 followed, with Arabella Steinbacher—wearing a ridiculous dress in a shade of purple I hope never again to encounter—as soloist.

I had heard Steinbacher once before, exactly two years ago, playing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 with the Boston Symphony (under Dohnanyi).

Steinbacher had been unimpressive in Mozart in 2011, and Steinbacher remained unimpressive in Mozart in 2013. I do not know where Steinbacher’s strengths lie—but they clearly do not lie in the music of Mozart. Steinbacher comes across as bland and uninteresting in the music of Mozart, aimlessly pecking away at the notes.

Steinbacher produces a beautiful but unvarying sound; her music-making lacks tension and personality and rhythmic life. Like Julia Fisher, with whom she shares a teacher, Steinbacher seems to be going for an all-purpose “radiance” in her performances. Radiance is a one-note device (and a device unable to sustain any performance for long), and I believe Steinbacher needs to add a touch of Anne-Sophie Mutter-like steel to her arsenal.

In the Mozart concerto, Järvi tried to stay out of the way—when he probably should have inserted himself into the proceedings and seized control. It appeared to me that Järvi deliberately tried to keep the orchestral contribution low-key in order not to upstage Steinbacher. Giving the spotlight to the soloist is not always the best course of action for a conductor—and, at this point in his career, Järvi no longer need worry that a soloist might attempt to undercut him behind the scenes, and cause him loss of engagements, if he took command of a performance.

The second half of the program was devoted to Sibelius’s Symphony No. 3.

Davis does a masterful Sibelius Third—Davis is far and away the best living exponent of this symphony—and it would have been a rare privilege to hear Davis lead a work he conquered more than forty years ago.

Järvi is not a Sibelius conductor at Davis’s level. Järvi’s propensity to skate over the surface comes to the fore in music of Sibelius—Järvi’s Sibelius, above all, sounds “colorful”—and the Paris performance of the Sibelius Third was lightweight, without mystery or soul or grandeur. It did not cohere as a complex, fascinating and profound work, which the Sibelius Third very definitely proves to be under Davis’s guidance.

What we heard from Järvi was conducting more appropriate for Sibelius’s incidental music from the 1890s (music light and pleasant, but nothing much beyond that): tunes were brought to the fore, beauties of orchestration were highlighted, the music was paced so as to bounce along agreeably. Amid this outpouring of bucolic delights, symphonic argument became lost; the music was drained of content and drama. Järvi’s performance was, in essence, facile—always the standard knock against Järvi.

At the conclusion of the performance, I observed widespread smiles among members of the audience. The Sibelius Third is not supposed to cause an outbreak of smiles.

I last heard Orchestre National de France in 2004 (under Daniel Harding, in music of Berg and Mahler). That long-ago night had not been a happy one. The orchestra’s basic intonation had been shockingly poor, the level of ensemble dismaying. I honestly wondered, throughout the performance, whether the musicians were deliberately insulting Harding, a conductor widely disliked (the musicians studiously avoided looking at Harding all night, and Harding appeared to grow more despondent by the minute).

The orchestra clearly has improved since that unfortunate concert nine years ago. Parisians like to claim that Daniele Gatti, Music Director since 2008, has performed miracles with the orchestra—but I believe such assertions may be carrying things too far. Orchestre National de France in its current state remains nothing more than a typical French ensemble.

The French idea of an orchestra remains different from—and alien to—the Central European or American idea of an orchestra: a body of musicians that plays as one. French orchestras, for better or worse, have always been 100 musicians, playing as 100 musicians. The result: French orchestras are of comparable quality to French armies; both institutions are preternaturally incapable of performing their functions at a high level.

At the conclusion of the scheduled program, the orchestra and Järvi performed an encore: Sibelius’s “Andante Festivo”.

That there was an encore at a standard subscription concert surprised us. After the concert, I asked an elderly man sitting near us whether the orchestra typically played encores.

His answer: “Never”.

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The following evening, we were back at Salle Pleyel, hearing the Orchestre de Paris under Paavo Järvi, the orchestra’s current Music Director.

The Orchestre de Paris is once again Paris’s finest orchestra, the traditional place it has occupied in the pecking order.

In 2003 and 2004, that honor had gone to the orchestra of the Paris Opera, a tribute to the work of James Conlon, Principal Conductor of the Paris Opera from 1995 to 2004. In 2003, I heard the finest Strauss “Salome” I ever expect to hear from Conlon and the orchestra of the Paris Opera—the orchestra had been magnificent—and I had experienced that “Salome” only one night after hearing an unimpressive and nondescript Orchestre de Paris in a subscription concert at Théâtre Mogador, at the time the orchestra’s temporary home while Salle Pleyel underwent renovation.

The Orchestre de Paris has an excellent array of winds. The wind playing is the shining glory of the orchestra, and is much finer than anything we are accustomed to hear in the Twin Cities, where the winds of the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra are not top-of-the-line.

The brass section of the Orchestre de Paris is competent—the Orchestre de Paris is probably the only Paris orchestra of which such may be said at present—but the level of sheer virtuosity does not approach that of brass sections of American orchestras.

The orchestra’s strings are the weak link. The strings of the Orchestre de Paris produce a featureless, un-beautiful sound. If a listener seeks richness, depth and coloration from a string section, the listener will find the Orchestre de Paris strings disappointing. If a listener seeks transparency, translucency and delicacy from a string section, the listener will find the Orchestre de Paris strings disappointing.

Music of Schumann, Lutoslawski and Beethoven was on the program. (When I had heard the Orchestre de Paris in 2003, music of Lutoslawski—the Concerto For Orchestra—had been on the program that night, too.)

Schumann’s “Genoveva” Overture started things off. Järvi gave a “by-the-notes” reading—Schumann is definitely not a Järvi strength—and the performance failed to ignite, lacking emotional weight and cumulative power.

Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto followed the Schumann. Krystian Zimerman, who premiered the Lutoslawski in 1988 and for whom the work was written, was soloist.

Until we arrived in the concert hall, we had been unaware that the Lutoslawski was being performed in order to mark the 100th anniversary, to the day, of Lutoslawski’s birth: January 25, 1913.

The performance—from pianist, conductor, musicians—was excellent. It was the best thing we heard in Paris.

I have come to the conclusion that the Lutoslawski Piano Concerto must be the finest post-war piano concerto. No matter how many times one hears the work, one always hears countless new and fascinating things. In less than a quarter-century of existence, the Lutoslawski Piano Concerto has already been recorded at least six times, four times to stunning effect. Of modern works for orchestra, only Lutoslawski’s Symphony No. 3 can claim a comparable number of commercial recordings.

I agree with the prediction Shostakovich made near the end of his life: Shostakovich’s own music would not survive the test of time, but Lutoslawski’s music would. (In making his pronouncement, Shostakovich did not have the benefit of knowing the late flow of masterpieces yet to come from Lutoslawski’s pen.) Lutoslawski surely is the great post-Stravinsky composer, with the necessary nod to Carter and Dutilleux.

Zimerman, who no longer appears in the U.S., now looks old, even shopworn. His virtuosity was undiminished, although his countenance grows more dour each time I see him.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”) concluded the program.

The storm music was lively—in what otherwise was an abysmally tedious performance. The first, second and fifth movements were deadening beyond belief.

Järvi can be a profoundly boring conductor . . . and I was bored out of my mind by Järvi’s Beethoven.

The audience appeared to be bored, too. The applause after the Beethoven was less than half the applause at the conclusion of the Lutoslawski—and the audience present was a regular subscription audience, and not a specialist modern-music audience.

Järvi achieved something I did not think possible: he made me appreciate Osmo Vanska’s Beethoven.

Vanska’s Beethoven may be criticized relentlessly. Little more than an accumulation of details, Vanska’s Beethoven is fierce if not brutal, unsophisticated and one-dimensional, exaggerated and anti-intellectual, un-German and un-Classical, totally lacking in spirituality and heart—and wholly empty.

Yet, as a general rule, Vanska’s Beethoven is not boring.

L'Opéra Bastille

It is hard to believe that this eyesore, which opened only in 1989 and already is falling apart—literally—inside and out, was chosen over more than 700 other entrants in an open architectural contest.

Francois Mitterand chose the winning entry himself—proof positive that politicians never should be allowed near such matters.

In another twenty or thirty years, the building will have to be demolished and replaced with something else.

I doubt anyone will miss it.

Sweeping, Grand, Somber, Majestic, Brutal

Until last week, I had never attended a performance of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina”.

I have never seen the Metropolitan Opera production, first presented in 1985 and revived last season after a long absence, and I have never seen the Wiener Staatsoper production, mounted for Claudio Abbado in 1989 but no longer in the Staatsoper repertory.

The New York production is generally considered to be quite good, yet the retired Vienna production enjoyed an even higher reputation, and was thought by many to be one of the most significant Staatsoper productions of the post-war period. Vienna’s “Khovanshchina” was not part of the Staatsoper’s 2001-2002 season; if it had been, I would have attended one or more of the “Khovanshchina” performances while studying in Vienna that academic year.

Last Tuesday, at the Paris Opera (at L'Opéra Bastille), we caught the first of seven scheduled performances of “Khovanshchina”—all but one of which had sold out not long after the booking period opened. The Paris “Khovanshchina” was the first revival of an acclaimed Andrei Serban production that had premiered in 2001 when James Conlon was Music Director at the house (and was not a new production, contrary to what we had believed back in the second week of December, when we had booked our trip).

“Khovanshchina” is a history opera—and a remarkably accurate one. It tells the story of the 1682 Moscow Uprising, a civil war in all but name, the outcome of which allowed Russia to begin its long period of Westernization (a process still incomplete).

“Khovanshchina” is sweeping, and grand, and somber, and majestic, and brutal. It is, I believe, a great opera, greater even than “Boris Godunov”.

The opera is not structured like Western drama; there is no conventional plot, there are no primary characters that dominate the action, there is no linearity to the proceedings. “Khovanshchina” is a series of near-random, pageant-like formal tableaux, most involving large crowds, that depict the various forces tearing the Russian nation and Russian people apart in the late 17th Century. One need not grasp all the particulars of each scene in order to appreciate the swelling power—and ultimate tragedy—of the work.

I find “Khovanshchina” gripping from beginning to end—for me, the four-hour performance passed in a flash—and others must cherish the opera, too, because “Khovanshchina” has become a major box-office draw in the West in the last thirty years.

Paris used Shostakovich’s 1959 arrangement and instrumentation of the score, which has now completely supplanted the earlier Rimsky-Korsakov version. In recent years, many companies using the Shostakovich have substituted Stravinsky’s 1913 arrangement and instrumentation of the final scene—Vienna always used the Stravinsky finale, and the Met used the Stravinsky finale for the first time last season—but Paris continues to use the “pure” Shostakovich edition.

Aside from one small role, the Paris Opera had engaged an all-Russian cast for this revival. I found every singer convincing if not exceptional; two, in particular, stood out: Larissa Diadkova as Marfa and Vladimir Galouzine as Prince Andrei, both of whom offered searing physical and vocal portrayals. I cannot recall the last time I saw performances so fine and so praiseworthy.

The conductor was Michail Jurowski, once a major name in Russia but now less well-known than his son, Vladimir, also a conductor.

I had never previously heard Jurowski. Jurowski’s career has not gained much traction in the West. He has held nothing but minor posts since leaving Russia; he seldom obtains prestige engagements (“Khovanshchina” was Jurowski’s Paris Opera debut).

I was diffident about Jurowski’s work in “Khovanshchina”. His tempi were much slower than Abbado’s in the live Abbado recording, and musical tension often dissipated—and there was no compensating increase in elemental power (which I believe is what Jurowski was going for). Jurowski was unable to provide the high orchestral finish, including the miraculous exploration of timbre and texture, that Abbado had brought to “Khovanshchina”—but Jurowski was contending with the players of the Paris Opera orchestra, whereas Abbado had had the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic at his disposal.

I was impressed with the chorus of the Paris Opera—and “Khovanshchina” provides a genuine workout for chorus. According to the Paris Opera program booklet, there were 120 singers in the “Khovanshchina” chorus, all full-time choristers at the Paris Opera.

The physical production was a satisfactory one. The costuming was especially good: colorful, rich-looking—and easily differentiating for the viewer the various social milieus of the players in each scene. The stage design was moderately attractive, and provided large playing spaces—but it was all too obvious that the company had been unable or unwilling to devote to “Khovanshchina” the full resources the work deserves. The stage settings had clearly been devised and constructed with cost-control as the overriding principle.

I learned an interesting fact from the program booklet: the Paris Opera had first staged “Khovanshchina”—in the Rimsky-Korsakov version—in 1923 (the performances were sung in French), decades before any other company in the West took up the work. The conductor for that 1923 Paris Opera production: Serge Koussevitzky.

“Khovanshchina” At The Paris Opera

Stage direction: Andrei Serban (former head of The Guthrie). Stage design and costume design: Richard Hudson (best known for his work on the stage version of “The Lion King”).

Salle Favart

Salle Favart, once again home to L'Opéra Comique.

L'Opéra Comique operates much like Theater an der Wien, offering on average one production per month in strict stagione.

Like Theater an der Wien, L'Opéra Comique lacks its own chorus and orchestra, and engages existing ensembles of appropriate size on a per-production basis. Its productions are often shared with or imported from other theaters, and its recent history suggests that L'Opéra Comique is obliged to focus on small-scale works requiring limited resources.

L'Opéra Comique appears to lack the lavish funding, political muscle and artistic cachet Roland Geyer, over the last decade, has managed to bring to Theater an der Wien. (Geyer should be the person running the Metropolitan Opera; he is probably the best in the world at what he does.) Theater an der Wien, which routinely engages international-level conductors, directors and singers, clearly operates on an entirely different level than the current Opéra-Comique.

It would seem to me that L'Opéra Comique needs to develop its own company—that is, its own chorus, orchestra, artistic staff and individual identity—if it is to survive and thrive long-term. As it stands now, L'Opéra Comique is a little more than a roadhouse for touring productions, and might easily be shut down at the next change of government.

“Unfunny Camp Is Contemptible”

I believe the borrowed iconography for this tableau from the “David et Jonathas” staging we saw in Paris speaks for itself. Any reasonably intelligent person can see instantly the subtext of the director’s intended message.

It was hard for us to gauge the reaction of the Paris audience to the production. Applause was polite but not fulsome—and nothing like the extended and enthusiastic outpouring of gratitude for the “Khovanshchina” performance we attended two nights later.

Of course, “Khovanshchina” is a far greater work than “David et Jonathas”—and “Khovanshchina” had been superbly cast and superbly performed, whereas “David et Jonathas” had been weakly cast and weakly performed. Such easily may account for the differing public receptions.

The local reviews I was able to track down for “David et Jonathas” were not illuminating. Not one writer had anything intelligent or worthwhile to say either about the musical presentation or the stage presentation.

It is possible that the Paris press covered the production more fully when it was unveiled last summer at the Aix-En-Provence Festival, and therefore saw no need to rehash the production on its reappearance in the capital.

However, I am skeptical that the production was ever adequately addressed by the French press. (In fairness, I must add that French critics may have believed the production too unimportant to address at any length.)

A Gay “West Side Story” Set To French Baroque Music

On one of our trips to Paris in 2003 and 2004, my brother and I visited the Harmonia Mundi disc shop on Avenue de l'Opéra. At the time, the modest-sized shop seemed to have in stock virtually every Harmonia Mundi disc ever issued, including discs never released in the U.S. or discs no longer in print in North America. I took advantage of the occasion—and prices: new issues aside, every disc in the shop was available for eight Euros—and bought thirty or so Harmonia Mundi discs and had them shipped home.

I still have not listened to all the discs I picked up that day.

In fact, it was only last month, after the passage of almost ten years, that I at last listened to Harmonia Mundi’s recording of Charpentier’s tragédie biblique, “David et Jonathas”, one of the sets I had acquired at the Harmonia Mundi shop in Paris. The instigation for my listening: a January trip to Paris, a trip during which we attended a performance of “David et Jonathas” at Salle Favart.

Listening to the Harmonia Mundi recording fifteen or so times, I found “David et Jonathas” to be the least interesting and least inspired Charpentier piece I had ever encountered. The score is primarily contemplative music, and demonstrates little melodic gift and little instrumental imagination. It is an academic work, written for a college of Jesuits and intended to be given a single performance, and features none of the rhythmic and harmonic life to be found in Charpentier’s very finest music.

(The work ended up being performed by more than one Jesuit college, which solely accounts for its survival: a copy was made by a copyist for a Jesuit college performance outside Paris, and the copy survives. The composer’s own score was not preserved, and Charpentier never included “David et Jonathas” in his meticulously-maintained and elaborately-bound notebooks intended to represent his official and comprehensive work-product; Charpentier’s notebooks, in remarkable condition, survive in French national archives to this day.)

Charpentier was at his best in church music. All Charpentier church music I have heard is at a very high level.

Charpentier’s instrumental music is nowhere near as fine—instrumental music was, after all, the Couperin family trade; the Couperins possessed not only the franchise but also the talent—and Charpentier’s operas, the late and great “Médée” aside, are weaker still; they are several notches below the operas of Rameau.

I do not believe that Charpentier’s strength was dramatic music. Even his noble “Médée” suffers in comparison to the operas of Rameau—and his five-act “David et Jonathas” offers far less musical and dramatic interest even than the slight but charming one-act pastorale, “Actéon”, which Charpentier wrote in 1684, four years before “David et Jonathas”.

Whatever dramatic instincts Charpentier possessed were, in “David et Jonathas”, hampered by the libretto: there is no overt drama in the work. Each of the five acts is a pure psychological portrait of one of the characters (and not a particularly penetrating portrait, at that). Nothing happens; the stage action portrays nothing more than self-examination.

Each act begins with an instrumental movement and concludes with one or more instrumental dances, between which characters sing of their sorrows in a bland stream of arioso. The blandness may be explained by the circumstances surrounding the composition: in writing for a Jesuit college, Charpentier was writing for non-professional voices with limited ranges and limited vocal techniques (scholars have speculated that one or more professional singers may have been hired for important solo roles, but the constricted vocal requirements suggest otherwise).

The Harmonia Mundi recording of “David et Jonathas”, now out-of-print (and commanding astonishing prices on the aftermarket), does the work no favors. First issued in 1988 and reissued at budget price in 1998, “David et Jonathas” is one of countless William Christie/Les Arts Florissants recordings that have come and gone over the years, capturing vapid and depth-free readings of little-known scores that require performers of genius to bring to life.

In the “David et Jonathas” recording, Christie’s conducting is too lightweight; everything bounces along agreeably, even vivaciously, but intensity and fervor and genuine emotion are lacking. Christie’s cast of singers is unremarkable if not unpleasant. There is not a major voice—or a major artist—in the lot (Jonathan is sung by a soprano, surely a miscalculation) and the listener is left with the distinct impression that the cast was assembled from a mid-level conservatory with a conspicuously-undistinguished vocal department.

Of the many Christie/Les Arts Florrisants recordings I own, “David et Jonathas” is the unmistakable loser (while Rameau’s Motets, on Erato, is the undisputed jewel, finer even than either of the Christie “Médée” recordings). [Perhaps I should note that I do not collect Christie outside French Baroque repertory.]

Listening to the recording of “David et Jonathas” was, of course, mere preparation: we caught the live performance of “David et Jonathas” in Paris a week ago Sunday. In the pit at Salle Favart were . . . Christie and Les Arts Florissants.

For us, “David et Jonathas” was not the prime attraction. For us, the attraction was an opportunity to see the interior of Salle Favart, and to experience a live performance in the fabled theater.

It was only in 2005 that the French government reassumed authority over Salle Favart, and restored the theater to its original purpose: the performance of high-quality (and heavily-subsidized) opera. The result: Salle Favart is back to its historic role, once again serving as a supplemental house to L'Opéra National de Paris and once again operating as L'Opéra Comique.

“David et Jonathas” was the only opera on the boards at L'Opéra Comique during the entire month of January, and we intended not to miss out—although we would have much preferred to catch next month’s production of “Ciboulette”, a neglected masterpiece by Reynaldo Hahn.

Salle Favart is a beautiful theater. A far cry from the overstated grandeur and excessive opulence that characterize Palais Garnier, Salle Favart is nonetheless striking and elegant in its own right (although its public spaces are cramped). The current Salle Favart opened in 1898 (the two previous theaters on the site had been destroyed by fires in, respectively, 1838 and 1887).

The theater is very intimate, and of ideal size: it accommodates 1250 patrons. Acoustics and sightlines are excellent; no seat is far from the stage.

The current structure witnessed the premieres of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” and Ravel’s “L’heure espagnole”, only two of many notable works that have received their first performances at the current Salle Favart. We found it a privilege to be in a theater that has witnessed the births of so many distinguished operas.

The Opéra-Comique stage presentation of “David et Jonathas” was a resolute disaster—although I grant there may be no way of staging “David et Jonathas” to satisfaction. The work probably should be performed in concert, and exclusively in concert; I doubt it can be made to work as a stage vehicle.

Although the work is a tragédie biblique, the Opéra-Comique staging had removed all traces of religion; “David et Jonathas” was presented as pure secular vehicle—or, more accurately, as pure romantic vehicle.

If there were intellectual underpinning to such treatment, it might be justified by noting that the original was an allegory. However, the program booklet dispensed of such niceties, focusing instead on “the unfailing friendship” of David and Jonathan and “the confrontation of communities”—and concluding that the plot of “David et Jonathas” was, fundamentally, no different than the storyline of “Romeo And Juliet” or “West Side Story”.

And such was precisely how the work was staged: as a gay “West Side Story”, set to French Baroque music—except that Sharks and Jets had been transformed into Arabs and Jews. (The director’s explanation for the latter: “the whole drama is transferred from the religious to the ethnic and intercommunity level”.)

We found it impossible not to laugh at the lunacy of it all. It was like being treated to a “Henry V” shorn of The War Of The Roses.

The stage designs and many of the stage tableaux for “David et Jonathas” had been inspired by 1940s American films, most particularly John Ford’s “The Grapes Of Wrath” and Michael Curtiz’s “Casablanca”, whole scenes of which were recreated down to the original lighting schemes, complete with shadows. (Arab characters even wore the “Casablanca” fez—helpful to the audience, since the fez was the only surefire way to distinguish Arab from Jew.)

A different Curtiz film received a striking hommage in one notable scene: a tableau in which a large group of women appeared, all wearing waitress uniforms identical to that worn by Joan Crawford while working her first waitress job (the one in which Eve Arden served as her supervisor) in “Mildred Pierce”.

Upon appearance of the waitresses, we started laughing uncontrollably. It became impossible for us to take anything seriously thereafter, and we became lost for the remainder of the performance. The “Mildred Pierce” reenactment positively sent us over the edge.

There are no female characters in the original “David et Jonathas”—but that consideration carried no weight with those who had devised this particular production. In fact, the Opéra-Comique “David et Jonathas” featured women all over the stage. One of the livelier characters in this “David et Jonathas” was David’s mother, a mime role. The actress miming the part chewed up the scenery relentlessly throughout all five acts, and might as well have been participating in some bumptious 1960s television game show, so over-the-top were her antics. She reminded me of Kaye Ballard.

Numerous mimes were in use throughout the entire performance. There was no dancing in the many instrumental dance numbers; all were used for the presentation of mime: elaborate mime, head-shaking mime, gruesome mime, all of it unintentionally hilarious.

To be blunt, I cannot imagine who approved this deplorable presentation in its planning stages. Charpentier’s serious and studied examination of friendship, devotion and loyalty—religious, political and personal—was turned into a catalog of mindless and tasteless present-day European clichés, including the requisite anti-Semitism now fashionable in European capitals.

One of Pauline Kael’s most memorable pithy dismissals was “Unfunny camp is contemptible”. Kael’s famous line might as well have been invented for what we saw at Salle Favart. The Paris “David et Jonathas” was nothing if not camp, and it was nothing if not unfunny—and it was indeed contemptible to its core.

This “David et Jonathas” production had premiered last summer at the Aix-En-Provence Festival, which explains much: camp, intentional or no, is generally the prevailing outcome of anything that has emerged from Aix-En-Provence for more than a decade.

The Aix-En-Provence “David et Jonathas” was a co-production with L'Opéra Comique and Théâtre de Caen (the latter is the home theater of Les Arts Florissants). The production has already traveled to the Edinburgh Festival and is due to be presented at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music in April. A DVD of the production is scheduled to be released in coming months.

Hearing Christie perform the score live only reinforced my earlier belief, acquired after acquainting myself with the old Christie recording: Christie is the wrong man for “David et Jonathas”. Even after the passage of a quarter-century, Christie still has not learned how to realize the work.

The score simply does not come alive in Christie’s hands. Under Christie’s leadership, “David et Jonathas” sounds vacuous, and uninteresting, and lifeless, and unserious, and lacking in spirituality.

If a musician cannot find spirituality in “David et Jonathas”, he probably should leave the score unperformed.

Christie, incomprehensibly, reordered the opera, inserting the Prologue between Acts III and IV. This was done, I believe, in order to get the second half off to a flying start. The Prologue features the Pythoness, the only scene-stealing role in the entire work, and veteran singer Dominique Visse, a vulgar and shameless old ham, made an absolute meal of the part—despite having no voice left. Visse was simultaneously riveting as well as embarrassing; he received the most genuine and sustained applause of the performance.

As in his recording, Christie used a female Jonathan, a reiteration of his misjudgment from 25 years ago. As in his recording, Christie’s singers were, without exception, not worth hearing “on the merits”. It was depressing, having to endure almost three hours of sub-par vocalism that would never be tolerated in El Paso.

Christie is a grossly-overrated figure. He was wise to stake a claim to repertory left untouched and unheard for three centuries, and to defend that repertory as his own personal property, tenaciously fending off all challengers and interlopers for more than three decades. Christie may have been blessed with only modest talent, but it cannot be denied that the man has made a series of very smart career moves.

The Harmonia Mundi disc shop on Avenue de l'Opéra is still open, which surprised me greatly; I would have thought it defunct by now, given the worldwide collapse in disc sales. Even FNAC has been forced to close its exceptional—and near-comprehensive—music store near L'Opéra Bastille. Yet the small Harmonia Mundi shop in central Paris doggedly and inexplicably hangs on—just like William Christie.