"Les Troyens" at the Bavarian State Opera: Endgame with a booing hurricane

Created: 05/10/2022Updated: 05/10/2022 15:36

By: Markus Thiel

Unfortunately, there are only pictures as composed in the first two acts: scene with Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Cassandre) and Stéphane Degout (Chorèbe).

© Wilfried Hösl

An evening that begins strongly and fades away just as strongly: Christophe Honoré stages “Les Troyens” for the Bavarian State Opera, conductor Daniele Rustioni puts the Berlioz score under pressure.

And some premiere guests lose their composure because of homoerotic videos.

Good tracks speak for themselves.

And maybe Christophe Honoré was lucky that his directing concept came about years before the bombs on Odessa: Burning topicality is communicated even without looking at the burning Ukraine - especially since "Les Troyens" by Hector Berlioz tell much more, more general stories.

Certainly from the subjugation of foreign peoples, from bigotry, fanaticism, but above all from the war, which the guys always see as fate, the love for it as dispensable.

So where everything needs to be specified, Honoré takes three steps back – at least for the first one and a half of the five hours.

On a cracked, destroyed concrete surface, an apocalyptic game begins that exudes suggestive power through calm (stage: Katrin Lea Tag).

The archaic force in Troy about the admonishing Cassandre is answered with images that appear to have been composed.

In its symbolic corporeality, in its tension through distance, also in its abstraction, this borders on the ritual - the fateful steed of the Greeks therefore only shines as the lettering "The Horse".

Homoerotic videos meet with strong rejection

Honoré knows: You can't get any further with the characters by psychologizing them - they aren't people, they're legendary figures.

Even the choir in black oratorio formation is okay.

Honoré not only saves himself directing, he gives the opportunity for precise singing (which the State Opera Choir makes excellent use of) - and is thus reminiscent of the commenting collective of ancient dramas.

The two acts are the best of this premiere evening in the Bavarian State Opera.

It starts strong and ends in a boo hurricane.

The latter because Honoré, actually a filmmaker, lets the Trojan society, which is encrusted in its (good) faith, meet the nudist and flower power permissiveness of Carthage.

Shortly after Enée and the pilgrim fighters have appeared at Didon's court, videos of the instrumental piece of the "Royal Hunt" and the ballet music are shown on two screens.

Naked men who leave women, preferring to do it among themselves.

What happens when the juices of the soldiery go haywire in times of war, when the union of bodies also gives birth to something dark.

Sultry, bloody fantasies à la Pasolini or Warhol.

Nothing bad, but too long, too penetrating, the message is shared after two and a half minutes.

It is,

The more this performance turns towards naturalism and towards the present, the more it harps on the contrast between Troy and Carthage, the flatter and more irrelevant everything becomes.

Until the brave staff is left with only the stereotypical gesture.

This can be seen especially in Ekaterina Semenchuk.

She only came in late as a stand-in and draws a Didon of exuberant pathos.

This is excellently sung with a lush, resilient mezzo, but no more than the good old school of opera repertoire.

Marie-Nicole Lemieux was more comfortable with Honoré's concept.

She gives a Cassandre of harsh, not necessarily ingratiating tones.

But of that legendary, over-present form that suits the Troy part of the play.

An outstanding stylist is Stéphane Degout, who vehemently lets his Chorèbe shine in gray tones.

Lindsay Ammann (Anna) and Eve-Maud Hubeaux (Ascagne) are more lyrically socialized and follow at a distance.

A phenomenon: 68-year-old Gregory Kunde as Enée.

© Wilfried Hösl

However, no one catches up with Gregory Kunde.

At the age of 68, he creates an amazing enée: sovereign and without tricking in the tricky situations, enormously intensive in the big aria, with an almost perfectly channeled tenor, which easily plows through the orchestra.

His hero is an aging desperado, a tired warrior in search of peace, someone who has seen and experienced everything and senses his last chance, the founding of Italy - what could a finely drawn director have made of it.

Daniele Rustioni as entertainer and connoisseur

Daniele Rustioni has also thrown himself completely into the work.

The new first guest conductor of the State Opera gets his first chance for a premiere with Berlioz.

He puts the score, which is played here almost unabridged, under pressure.

Animator and gourmet is the Italian.

Someone who can inspire, but also likes to accept offers from the orchestra (which he acknowledges with a quick kiss).

At the same time, a craftsman from the old Kapellmeister school is active there.

The Bavarian State Orchestra makes Berlioz sparkle and slaloms through the score.

The later the evening, the more poles tumble – which Rustioni skilfully compensates for.

He brings the sound constructions that overlap and penetrate one another closer, the pointed, but also the sweet perfume that Berlioz dribbles over the love scenes,

For Berlioz, who knitted at work all his life, “Les Troyens” remained a piece of pain.

Something similar is happening at the Bavarian State Opera.

By the second break at the latest, some are already going to the cloakroom.

And the shock of the gay soft porn apparently runs deep: when Honoré and his team enter the stage, a storm of rejection rises – and, at least in the auditorium, repulsive homophobic murmurs in places.

For some scenes in the play, this direction may have been a black evening.

For parts of the Munich audience, it is too.