13 Aug 2011
Théodore Gouvy’s Iphigénie en Tauride
Gounod you know, but how about Gouvy?
Recently in Reviews
Domingo Conducts Holdridge’s New Opera Dulce Rosa
Dulce Rosa, a brand new opera, had its world premiere Friday night, May 17, 2013 at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California. It was produced by Los Angeles Opera, but staged in the smaller theater.
Verdi’s Falstaff at Glyndebourne
Richard Jones’ 2009 production of Verdi’s Falstaff translates the action from the first Elizabethan age to the start of the second.
Gareth John, Wigmore Hall
Baritone Gareth John is rapidly accumulating a war-chest of honours. Winner of the 2013 Kathleen Ferrier Award, he recently won the Royal Academy of Music Patrons’ Award and was presented the Silver Medal by the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
La bohème at ENO
This second revival of Jonathan Miller’s La bohème was the first time I had caught the production.
Rolando Villazón: Verdi (International Opera Stars Series 2013)
It’s Verdi’s bicentenary year and Rolando Villazón has two new CDs to plug — titled somewhat confusingly, ‘Villazón: Verdi’ and ‘Villazón’s Verdi’, the latter a ‘personal selection’ of favourite numbers performed by stars of the past and present.
Brahms Third in San Francisco
Nicola Luisotti and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra climbed out of the War Memorial pit, braved the wind whipped bay and held spellbound an audience at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley.
Ariane et Barbe-Bleue on Blu-Ray
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
Glyndebourne: Ariadne auf Naxos
Utterly mad but absolutely right — Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not “about” Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made.
Wozzeck at ENO
“Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters.
Mulhouse: Rare Britten Well Done
National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave.
Frankfurt's Intriguing Idomeneo
Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera.
Rigoletto at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera.
Britten Sinfonia with Ian Bostridge
Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams.
Aida, Manitoba Opera
Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way.
Superlative singing: Don Carlo, Royal Opera House
Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music.
Sarah Connolly: French Song at Wigmore Hall
The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain.
Rare restoration: Handel’s Esther 1720
Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera.
The Damnation of Faust, London
Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all.
Elizabeth Connell Memorial Concert, St John's Smith Square
St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death.
Aida with all the Trimmings, Even a Blue Silk Elephant!
With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Reviews
According to the booklet essay in this CPO set of Théodore Gouvy’s Iphigénie en Tauride, the composer enjoyed wide respect in his lifetime (1819-1898), and this oratorio was his most successful work. Hearing it both explains the extent of his reputation during his life and why even Gouvy’s most successful work slipped into utter obscurity.
Herbert Schneider’s essay (translated by Nicholas Smith) also stipulates that Gouvy reviled Wagner and decried what was for Gouvy modern music’s “distancing” from “the ensembles, the finales, and melodic treatment of the voices.” Gouvy shows himself to be a master of choral writing in his score for this Iphigénie, with no fewer than 16 of this set’s 26 tracks listing “Choeur” participation. The Kantorie Saarlouis performs these sections beautifully, although they are not able to distinguish between the “Greeks,” “Furies” and “Scythians” the libretto depicts, for Gouvy’s great failing comes in characterization and drama. A blood-thirsty crowd calling for human sacrifice doesn’t sound all that more urgent than another group mourning in exile. Most of these passages are in minor keys, with simple but effective orchestral gestures. But that element of risk found in great art never appears in Gouvy’s work. Each section of the text is neatly compartmentalized, a tidiness that begins to feel routine very quickly. The very elegance and formal rigor that earned him such praise in his time fails him in ours, as his music only superficially captures the essence of the dark and blood-thirsty story of Iphigénie, who is forced to lead sacrifices and very nearly kills her own brother.
In the more dramatic exchanges between Iphigénie and Thoas, who compels her to perform the sacrifices, Gouvy does dare to have his Iphigénie shout out in distress, but those rare outbursts only heighten the disparity between most of the music’s professional sheen and the swirling passions of the text. Not helping matters is the unsteady vocalism of the Iphigénie, Christine Maschler. The body of the voice has a sour character, and she lunges precariously at high notes. Her male counterparts are more successful, with Benjamin Hulett in the tenor role of Orest’s friend Pylades showing a lot of promise, his voice sweet and yet powerful. Vinzenz Haab sings a stalwart Orest and Ekkehard Abele provides the expected bass aura of villainy very well as Thoas.
Conductor Joachim Fontaine and Le Grand Société Philharmonique deliver an enthusiastic reading, presenting ably the best of Gouvy’s music - some tasty orchestration, and a facility for pleasant, though not memorable, thematic material. For those who enjoy exploring rare repertoire, this CPO set will be a fine diversion. With a different soprano, this recording might even have earned Gouvy a new bunch of admirers, especially among those who agree that with Wagner, music lost that feel for “melodic treatment of the voices.” As the conclusion drags on and on, however, many more will be glad to have given Gouvy a chance, but feel that the judgment of music history was just and apt.
Chris Mullins