Customer Reviews

Cherubini: Medea

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although highly esteemed by Classical and Romantic composers such as Beethoven and Brahms (the latter's summing-up: "what we musicians recognize as the height of dramatic music"), Cherubini's setting of Euripides, first heard in 1797 in French, all but vanished over the course of the 19th century. Today it would be as obscure as the Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier's operatic treatment of the same material were it not for the title role's emergence in the 1950s as one of Maria Callas's signature roles. The finest of her Giasones, Jon Vickers, averred that Cherubini's vengeful sorceress, not Bellini's Norma or Verdi's Violetta, was Callas's greatest portrayal. In the post-Callas period, the work again became a rarity, although it did receive one commercial recording per decade in the 1960s and 1970s, both sets conducted by Lamberto Gardelli. Gwyneth Jones and Sylvia Sass, respectively, coped with the title role.

The opera's neglect, especially in the theater, is puzzling. The part of Medea is a difficult one to sing, yes, but equally or more demanding music is all over the core soprano repertoire. I believe MEDEA's obscurity can best be accounted for on two grounds. First, 19th-century operatic theaters and audiences alike were ill at ease with a work in which the central figure was a powerful and also malevolent woman. The darkest such characters in Verdi, e.g., NABUCCO'S Abigaille, were never more than co-principals, and the likes of Strauss's Salome did not begin to appear until the 20th. Bellini's Norma -- a Medea-like figure who has a warmer relationship with her romantic rival, and *considers* but ultimately does not commit a double child murder -- was and is easier to take. Second, the work may have been too musically advanced for its own good, with its prefigurations of Rossini and Bellini and beyond. Today, it does not seem strong in period charm for the late 18th century, yet is at a disadvantage in competing for attention with operas that, 30 to 50 years later, built on its achievements.

A new production (sung, of course, in Italian and with recitatives rather than spoken dialogue) by Hugo de Ana was unveiled on 5 October 2008 at the Teatro Regio di Torino. This DVD appears to preserve a single performance, rather than a composite edited together from several. The action has been updated to a period that I suppose from the clothing is either the 1910s or the 1920s (de Ana also designed the costumes -- "Gatsbywear," one might say, with Neris sporting the most eccentric getup). The opening scene of Glauce's idyll is set on a beach, and once that scene has concluded, a low-hanging screen lifts to reveal a ship, which will remain on stage for most of the opera (Medea sleeps on board). De Ana makes some dramatic points a trifle bluntly (Medea always wears black, Glauce virginal white), but he limns the drama with efficiency and intelligence. Creonte, Glauce and their subjects are treated with great refinement; they represent the "polite society" Giasone hopes to enter as he closes the book on his past. Into this world, Medea pursues him almost as an elemental force. In the banquet she disrupts with her first, veiled appearance, the director makes an interesting choice: everyone, including Giasone, remains seated for a long time, and this is key within the production, for a display of passivity is their method of dealing with Medea. In a sense, they just hope this violating element will wear itself out and go away. When, later in that scene, Medea desperately throws herself at Giasone, he does not roughly shove her away in the usual manner for an Italian tenor (think of Turiddu in CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA); he responds to the unwanted advance merely by keeping his arms at his sides and *not* catching her as she slides down his body to the floor -- a telling moment in de Ana's passive-versus-active mise-en-scène. In several scenes, Medea is conspicuously surrounded by steamer trunks, suitcases, and boxes full of things from, presumably, happier times (at one point, singing of the children, she makes an appeal to Giasone's sentiment by showing him a photo album): the lady literally comes with a lot of baggage. Throughout, the production impresses as a thoughtful and handsome piece of work on what I assume was a modest budget. In that sense, it is close to a model of its kind.

The stage is populated with good musicians who, as a bonus, make an attractive appearance. The beautiful Anna Caterina Antonacci is not as vocally well suited to Medea as to lower-lying parts she has previously essayed (Bizet's Carmen; Mozart's Donna Elvira; Verdi's Meg Page; Berlioz's Cassandre). Her singing is well controlled for the most part, but the top is less than one could desire, and a beat intrudes on held notes (to this last, one might reasonably counter that both Callas and Jones had oft-rebellious voices, but they also brought more power and reach to it). Antonacci's remains a commendable performance of a role that does not present us with a wide array of contemporary choices on DVD. Singing in her native language, the Italian really savors the words. Giuseppe Filianoti is a sweeter-sounding, more lyrical Giasone than the usual (again...to the degree that one can speak of "the usual" in an opera so rarely given). Of the rest, Sara Mingardo is the standout: a firm and confident yet warm-toned Neris. Giovanni Battista Parodi makes an agreeable fellow out of Creonte. To his daughter, Glauce, Cinzia Forte brings an acceptable comprimario tone and a good enough technique for her aria. The orchestra and chorus, under the direction of Evelino Pidò and Roberto Gabbiani respectively, thoroughly exceed expectations -- Pidò, in particular, gets outstanding work from his players, and deserved the night's most generous ovation.

Except for one instance of haphazard, arrhythmic editing (Medea goes into one of her cases for an item and we get a jumble of illogically sequenced cuts that could be a "what not to do" primer in some filmmaking class), this meets a high standard technically. The theater's stage is not especially large, and two cameras placed to the extreme right and left expose the limits of the painted backdrop but also give us a nicely atmospheric "smoky" effect of dust against lights. The English subtitles are generous enough in quantity but poor in quality, with awkward line breaks and many errors of punctuation and spelling ("godess" for "goddess," "heals" for "heels"), suggesting transcription by someone with limited fluency in the language. The narrative remains comprehensible, in any case. Judging from the length of time it took me to acquire this DVD, and also from its status at this writing as available only at a high price from a single Amazon Marketplace seller, there seems to be a distribution issue -- one hopes this corrects itself, for in most respects it is a release to be received gratefully.

... about the 21st Century, for me so far, is the possibility of hearing and watching dozens of fine productions of operas on a wall-sized HDTV with a high-tech sound system! What other, equal thrills the millennium may hold, I can't venture to guess. It seems worth considering whether the apocalyptic "Rapture" hasn't already taken place, with the Chosen 144,000 scarcely missed and the rest of us left behind to wallow in such sinful pleasures as Opera Seria. On such terms, it would be ungrateful to give any halfway decent DVD opera less than a five-star rating, so I'm mildly surprised to find that several earlier reviewers have railed against Anna Caterina Antonacci for the misdeed of not being Maria Callas. Let me declare immediately that Antonacci is superb in the role of Medea, both as an actress and as a musician. Her mad-eyed haggard beauty is utterly compelling, and her portrayal of the conflicts in Medea's heaving breast is utterly human, so deftly nuanced that one can truly take Medea's side, pity Medea's fate, particularly when Jason (Giasone) is artfully portrayed as a shifty 'pretty faced' opportunist, a guy who could never have become a Hero without Medea's passion. And Antonacci is a Musician, not just a can-bellow singer; she brings subtle inflections to her role that were beyond the musical language of opera companies in the era of Maria Callas. If she were recording the role for a studio CD, she might well sing some parts differently, with more emphasis on timbre, but on stage, when she NEEDS to sing beautifully, as in her great duet with Giasone, she has all the voice in the world.

Brief synopsis: Jason has abandoned Medea and their two children in order to marry Glauce, the daughter of Cleon of Corinth. Medea pursues him desperately. He rejects her and Cleon orders her to leave Corinth. Medea takes revenge by poisoning Glauce and slaughtering hers and Jason's two children. Not a cheerful story, and in no way a mixed-genre tragicomedy. It could hardly be darker, but in our sorry lifetimes we've read enough about mothers murdering their children to find it strangely realistic.

And what a feast of anachronism! An ancient Greek myth, in a theatrical genre 'invented' by Italian humanists of the 16th C to recreate Athenian theater, in the theatrical manner of the French dramatists like Racine in the 17th C, in a musical language closely derived from that of the German 18th C operatist Gluck, finally fully realized in an Opera Seria composed at the beginning of the 19th C for performance in France! This staging by the Teatro Regio Torino, likewise, is deliciously heterodox. The setting is a beach in pre-modern Greece, upon which a sailing galley is grounded. There are touches of modern Greece about the action -- the presence of an Eastern orthodox priest, for instance -- but the costumes are clearly circa 1900 small-city Western Europe. The numinous myth is transfigured into a tale of modern passions, something straight out of an early Antonioni film. For me, the synthesis of levels works perfectly; the drama is both mythic and realistic.

Cherubini's Medea itself is a marvelous synthesis of the musical splendor of 18th C opera with the dramaturgical intensity of 19th C opera. One might say it's the best of both. Medea is a very great opera, in my opinion. It might be worth recalling that Beethoven thought so also; he declared that Cherubini -- not Mozart, Salieri, or Paisiello -- was the finest opera composer of the era. (Though I have to suspect that Ludwig had never heard Don Giovanni on stage.) The immortal moments in Medea, to my ears, are the afore-mentioned duet and the extended aria with bassoon obbligato in Act 2, sung by Medea's servant Neris, in this production the musically exquisite contralto Sara Mingardo. Mingardo is worth five stars all by herself. I've already said that soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci fills her musical and dramatic role to the brim. Tenor Giuseppe Filianotti is equally effective, a pretty voice behind a pretty face, yet capable of poignant vocal expressivity when it's wanted. Giovanni Battista Parodi is powerful in the smaller role of Creonte, both a small-town mayor and a Hellenic King. The only slight weakness in this cast is Cinzia Forte in the role of Glauce; she has a tad too much vibrato and swoop amid this context of historically informed agile 'white' voices.

Orchestra good, sound quality good, film editing good and not distracting. What's not to like?

Anna Caterina Antonacci is a fabulous, generous singer and actress~!
This is one of her many powerful roles on dvd---we are lucky to have them.
She was excellent as "Carmen", mesmerizing in "Rodelinda" and
a wonderful, spurned "Donna Elvira" in "Don Giovanni"!
I am surprised at the other insulting review of her performance here.
I believe Callas would admire Antonacci's work!

"dosemer" rated this DVD a 1; ravennamoon gave it a 5. That averages to 3, which I consider the right number! Antonacci definitely doesn't deserve "dosmer"'s disdain, though I also disagree with ravennamoon - Callas wouldn't have approved Antonacci's utter lack of demonic fury. Overall, the singing of the ensemble is quite adequate for a regional opera house; Antonacci, though a bit weak at the top, succeeds in portraying Medea's unhappiness, but shows nothing of her violent passions. The single set is dramatic & eye-catching, with the Argo in the background reminding us of the events that preceded the opera. The blocking of the singers is also effective, & I would have rated this production a 4 if not for the bewildering costuming of the singers in what looks like 19th century Italian village garb, turning King Creon, for instance, into a small-town mayor rather than a powerful king. Instead, the whole affair becomes a local, small-scale domestic soap-opera, vitiating the drama's mythical resonance.

If you go to YouTube and watch the clips of Maria Callas singing Medea with stage photographs from her portrayal, you see what a staggering and towering Medea she was. What a shame there is no full length video of her as Medea (or as Norma for that matter). People who saw her Medea speak of it as legendary, and you see why in those YouTube clips. Even the audio cds that capture her Medea (a studio one and many pirates) help us understand why the role is linked to her and all other sopranos have to contend with her "ghost."

Anna Caterina Antonacci does a decent job attempting to sing "her" Medea, and she does okay. However, I can't help but wish that her lower register were stronger or her temperament were more fiery. She has some fire, just not a Callas-like fire. I suppose she is the best Medea around right now, because I can not think of one single soprano who would do any better. However, Medea is wilder than most operatic heroines, because she kills her own children. I think this is why viewers and listeners want a more savage Medea, although Antonacci is probably singing the role more in line with what 1797 audiences might have heard (just a guess). Antonacci does help us see a very sad woman, which is also part of the role.

Since this is the only dvd version of Medea I would recommend it, because I enjoyed seeing how the opera plays on the stage. I have never had a chance to see it live and only know it from audio recordings, so I was glad to see that a dvd was coming out.

Cinzia Forte, who I saw as a good Violetta, sang Glauce with a little too much vibrato for my taste. Giuseppe Filianoti seemed to be a lightweight Giasone, although maybe that is only because I am used to hearing more robust tenors in the role on audio cds. Sara Mingardo is a good Neris. I saw Mingardo in Santa Fe and thought she was superb. I wonder why she is not more known.

We don't buy a Medea recording for the supporting casting, however. So your decision whether to buy this rests on whether you want to see a "decent" Medea with a soprano who sings a more sad Medea than furious one. Since Medea videos and productions do not grow on trees, I personally enjoyed this.

We are fortunate to have a dvd of this opera at all. To have a superb version is even better. The opera opens on a boat hauled up on a beach with incredible lighting and realism, something reminiscent of a Fellini film. As the opera progresses, we are treated to superb casting and singing by Cinzia Forte as Glauce and Giuseppe Filianoti as Giasone. But the star of the drama, and who really holds it together and makes it work is Anna. She can do things writhing around on the sand with a bit of fish net, or examining a photo album with Jason that make us aware and grateful for her being a physical actress. Just her pained expression conveys more in a moment than many actresses can suggest running all over the stage. Finally, I'm aware of her powerful, sultry, voice. I loved her in Carmen. My fondness and appreciation grows with this Medea. I'm inclined to purchase everything she does. She has so much depth and continues to grow as an artist. Finally, the opera itself has more depth and complexity than I had expected. There's a solo with voice and bassoon background that I found worth the price of admission. Overall, an absorbing and fulfilling experience.

Anna Caterina Antonacci is a fiercely intelligent, fiercely independent artist. Whereas her other signature roles have a slightly lower tessatura (She is the definitive Carmen of our time) her is Medea as well sung, in her own manner, as any Callas performance. Callas fans will rage, but Antonacci has made her own choices about the role and the character and presents us with a dangerously implosive Medea. From her entrance to her last final bloody gesture she is coiled like a snake, ready to strike. She maintains this introspective intensity throughout the performance. She does not bark, rage or scream, as did Callas (whose performances I adore, especially the Dallas performances) but Antonacci makes radically different choices about who her Medea is: grief stricken, she knows from her entrance that infanticide is her purpose, she is defeated from the beginning. Her great first Act scene,
"Dei tuoi figli" is less assertive than that of Callas: Antonacci's Medea knows she will not convince Giasone, and her singing is drenched in grief, not anger.

To take on a Callas signature role takes a tremendous amount of courage, and Antonacci has always had the Callas ghost haunting her, for Antonacci, like Callas, never makes a wrong move on stage. Her theatricality is absolutely dead on perfect in every role, Medea included. She makes the intelligent choice to NOT present us with the Medea of Callas. What would that have proven? It would have been easy to simply accept the choices that Callas made about the role and re-presented them to us. Instead, Antonacci goes deeper in her analysis of the character and finds a woman, so grief stricken, so determined, that she has no emotional energy to waste on superficial anger, she is a woman with a mission. In an interview Antonacci has said about Medea "Callas? I really never thought of her". In Antonacci we have an authentic artist making her own choices, an artist who has had to shake off the ghost of Callas for decades, and if one can find the occasional "un-focused" note, let's remember the many great artists of which the same can be said, Callas included, and not get bogged down in the details such as the occasional "ugly" note.

Antonacci is the most interesting singer in Opera today and presents us with a most valid Medea, un-influenced by Callas, chilling in her grief stricken resolve: her snake like emotional "stillness" is riveting: she is the only singer currently equipped to sing this role and if one wants to see Medea, this is the DVD, punto e basta.

This opera is a masterpiece and this particular production is so surprisingly creative that we are flabbergasted by every little twist and warp in the plot line, not that this production invents those twists and warps but because it uses them fully that are in the music or the singing.

The general setting is amazing. Some kind of rocky seaside coast with the sea in the back. On that coast the Argo is brought in the middle of the first act to stay. This ship will be the very symbol of the Argonauts, hence all the context behind the plot, but also the locale of the drama. From a boat bringing the Golden Fleece back from Colchis it will become the heart of the drama in the second act since it will be the living though abandoned witness of the love affair and marriage between Jason and Medea, a Medea who is abandoned just like the ship is and both by Jason. In the third act it will be the seat of a tempest at the beginning and then of the furious eruption of hellish fire and the supernatural descent into hell. At the end the ship is hanging over the stage in mid air.

This visualization of the plot is great. It also chooses to set the action in some kind of bourgeois late 19th century society. That is in a way funny, though slightly distorting or anachronic. The two women at the beginning are two simple servants, no more than anonymous women. Here they become some kind of second rank bourgeois women. The servants themselves have uniforms. But this is secondary, though I find this opening scene too explicit as for that time reference. It becomes a lot lighter and timeless later.

The composition in general is systematically elaborate and rich from beginning to end. No recitatives. The dramatic nature of the language is systematically embodied in couples or at most triads of people singing at the same time. Are they singing together? When it is Jason and Glauce in the first act, yes though Glauce is expressing a great fear and Jason is trying to reassure her that he will be faithful. But all the other couples or triads are systematically confrontations but these confrontations can be of two types: real confrontational dialogues that are more arguments than duets, or parallel monologues that sound like duets but are not. They sing either against each other or one on top of the other or one under the other or inverting the order constantly backward and forward; upward and downward. This very brutal confrontational style corresponds of course to the situation.

Brutal it has to be between Jason and Medea in the first act, and again, though shorter in the second act, and yet in that case he nearly got tricked by Medea, and of course savagely brutal at the end of the third act. Brutal it has to be when it is Medea who confronts Cleon about a one day delay and the children, and she is such a good liar that he yields. In the third act when Medea is with the children and Neris the brutal confrontation is between the two sides of Medea, the mother and her natural maternal love on one side and the vengeful betrayed wife on the other side. Neris in this scene is just some kind of protection for the children and sinister messenger at the very end to announce the death of the children.

One exception to this confrontational style is the long extremely sad monologue of Neris in the second act where she compares her fate as a slave who has no real personal home to go to and the fate of an exile who has to go everywhere and stop nowhere. This long monologue is not an aria. It is a deeply mournful dirge that reflects the time when this opera was composed, 1797 in Paris. The slaves can always rebel, they will never be able to get free and Medea is a foreigner, is a barbarous non-Greek person and hence is an ethnic slave just as Neris who is also from Colchis is a social slave. Slaves from all over the world unite! A beautiful dream that ends in blood.

And yet there is a lot more in this production. They have tried to center it on normal people, hence they have materialize the magic or dramatic elements and they even demonstrate the opening of the knife and it is caressed by Medea as if it were some pet. That acting gives to the characters a tremendous humanity, perverted humanity maybe yet humanity all the same, so that the final crime that is so revolting in many ways and is duly punished by the damnation of Medea and later Jason who will meet on the bank of the Styx makes the barbaric act the result of passion, love, betrayal, male chauvinism and female vengefulness. In a way it becomes human and it is a simple ordinary familiar act like all those we can see in the press everyday about a father killing his wife and all his children and either killing himself last or disappearing into thin air.

That play, that opera, that acting, that production are the absolute demonstration that man is not good originally and by principle, but ambiguous, ambivalent and that circumstances might make him or her lean towards good or towards evil. There is nothing divine or satanic in that, just plain human nature. Ronald Lafayette Hubbard can proclaim "The basic nature of Man ... is discovered to be good." (Dianetics, page 11), he is wrong. The basic nature of man is animal, entirely leaning towards survival, by absolutely any means available, with no ethical consideration, because ethics come later as Hubbard says too "with observation, education and viewpoint" (idem, page 23).

I think this opera by Cherubini is definitely modern in tone and intention and that is visible in the various alterations performed in the story by the librettist that took Medea quite a long way away from Euripides, and even more Senecca, not to speak of Pierre Corneille or Thomas Corneille, though this last one was saved by Marc-Antoine Charpentier's music.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Well, how about a medea without a medea? Antonacci is awful. Small voice, inexpressive, short on top, no chest tones, pallid middle, monotonous in delivery, no passion, no fury, just a good stage presence that helps her get through the ordeal. Without a strong protagonist it's pointless to comment on the other aspects of this dismal dvd.