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Thaïs

Photo courtesy of

http://ofthekosmos.blogspot.com/2007/04/renee-fleming-and-gerald-finley-in.html

“Gerald Finley quickly displayed magnificent powers to be a strong Athanaël...” Altamusica

“Finley... succeeds in translating the agonies of this ambiguous character with a rare acuteness…” Forumopera

“He uses his warm character baritone with expression and intelligence…” Merker

Photo courtesy of http://ofthekosmos.blogspot.com/2007/04/renee-fleming-and-gerald-finley-in.html

What the critics say

Merker Nr. 205 (May 2007) (Wilhelm Guschlbauer)

Translated by Ursula Turecek

Massenet: Thais (concert version) Theatre du Chatelet 19. 4.

Many, many years ago I saw “Thaïs” in Chicago, with Leontyine [sic] Price and Michel Roux, and remembered a rather corny opera with a somewhat implausible content. The remark “In Massenet’s Manon quite a mass is not by Massenet”, ascribed to Hellmesberger seemed particularly relevant here. To hear the work of Charpentier’s teacher, premiered in 1894, after many years again is interesting because you gathered distance and experience. To be sure, Massenet helped himself from every musical bread basket of his time, from Grand Opéra via Offenbach and Wagner to Puccini, and he did so with talent. For the composer from Saint Etienne was a great expert, a master of melody and orchestration, not in the least stricken by any modernism or avant-gardism. Many passages are very sentimental, in fact kitschy, particulary the second act’s violin interlude Méditation, a tearjerker that comes again and again, worthy of an André Rieu. The libretto by Louis Gallet after the novel by Anatole France is bathed in the orientalism towards the end of the 19th century with a big dose of mysticism and the beginning of psychiatry that had been introduced by Charcot in his pioneering studies on hysteria, and continued by his pupil Freud. Thaïs’s hysterical fit in the 1st and 3rd acts is almost a clinical record. But Thaïs’s conversion is also a study on manipulation.

“Thaïs” stands or falls with the two main parts. Renée Fleming has dug out this showpiece role again and tours Europe with it. Her gorgeous, dazzling voice with its powerful outbursts, the breathed piano and the subtle heights is ideal for the role of the high-class Egyptian whore who converts to the strict Christianity of the cenobites in the desert of Thebais. At the banquet in the second scene she came across as a little mannered which was also helped by Christian Dior’s tulip dress that was not too appropriate. Sadly her French diction is not particularly good. But her musicality and her superior control of the nuances in the conversion scene and in the walk through the desert are captivating. Her partner as Athanaël, a particularly obstinate bloke, was the Canadian Gerald Finley. He uses his warm character baritone with expression and intelligence. The unusually balanced voice never comes across as stereotypic or boring. Finley succeeded in giving Athanaël, who represents a particularly fanatical type of early Christianism but is tortured by carnal lust, a very believable and expressive performance. The role is written in a particularly high tessitura and the singer is on stage nearly permanently – a real show of strength. The sybarite Nicias, Athanaël’s friend of youth who got completely into debt to afford Thaïs’s charms for one week, was sung by Fabrice Dalis standing in for Barry Banks who had fallen ill, and therefore was allowed to be the only one to sing with a score. His very high and flexible tenor was suitable for the role of the rich bon vivant although the voice is not very resonant. Nicolas Courjal sang the cenobites’ abbot with pleasant bass and repeated the motto several times: “Ne nous mêlons jamais aux gens du siècle”. Among the grisettes around Nicias, Marie Devellereau (Crobyle) and Nora Sourouzian (Myrtale) stood out with nice voices and Rebecca Bottone’s Charmeuse who sings only vocalises. Caitlin Hulcup as abbess Albine and Laurent Alvaro as Nicias’s rough servant completed the cast.

The male singers of the Kammerchor Accentus under Larence Equilbey’s conducting sang the brothers of the monk community solo, the ladies the sisters of Albine’s monastery. The Orchestre de Paris that is at home more with Romanticism and the great symphonic literature, basked in big formation under the conducting of its chief Christoph Eschenbach in Massenet’s sentimental music. The concertmaster Philippe Aïche played the Méditation with tolerable corniness. – Triumphant applause for Fleming and Finley.

Gérard Mannoni, Altamusica.com, 16 April 2007
http://www.altamusica.com/concerts/document.php?action=MoreDocument&DocRef=3384&DossierRef=3021

Translated by Jane Garratt

A solid gold Thaïs

Sumptuous in an haute-couture siren's dress, magisterial in her approach to a role as mythical as it is dangerous, Renée Fleming enthralled the Parisian public by singing Thaïs at the side of Gerald Finley's powerful Athanaël. A great lyrical evening, led by the inspired baton of Christoph Eschenbach at the head of the Orchestra of Paris.

No-one could doubt that she possesses one of the most beautiful lyric voices in the world today. But it came as a surprise to many people that Renée Fleming could be capable of changing so profoundly the conception of a role at the same time so well known and also so misunderstood as that of Thaïs. Tightly hugged inside an incredible dress which seemed to be made of pieces of gold, perfectly symbolising the world which the courtesan embodies at the beginning of the piece; the American soprano moved effortlessly through the whole production to portray, with infinite intelligence, the mythical heroine of Anatole France who inspired Massenet.

Starting as a seductress, perfectly sure of herself, without arrogance even when provoked, supported by the simple radiance of a professional beauty who is obviously supreme, the heroine becomes, after her meeting with Athanaël, a soul eaten away by doubt and anguish. In the famous aria "Dis moi que je suis belle" she is a woman overcome by the brutal certainty that her beauty is ephemeral, futile, useless, absurd, and is on the edge of tears, almost stamping with despair and impatience. At the same time a spoiled child and a woman on the edge of a fit of hysterics as she implores Venus to answer her. But she already knows the reply.

And this transformation is made resolutely, generally treated bravely, as a supreme affirmation of pride and her surety, an expression of the unbearable certainty of the absolute superficiality of her life. It requires a great artist to express this so strongly and so implacably. The stately duo with Athanaël follows on naturally, all seeming to justify the monk's initial intuition. One understands that he detected at once how close Thaïs is to conversion without admitting or even knowing it, and the whole work thus finds an internal logic which it lacks if this aria is not sung with such fervour and such dramatic intensity.

Afterwards, everything follows its course, with great vocal beauty, more and more soothed down, and it's, as it were, Athanaël who finds release from the emotion. The expression a little stiff, the voice a little too straight and perhaps pushed a little sharp at the start of the evening, Gerald Finley quickly displayed magnificent powers to be a strong Athanaël, as moving in the strength of his mysticism as in the revelation of his impossible love. One thinks fatally of the death pact between the Prior in Dialogues des Carmélites and Blanche de la Force, Athanaël having taken on the sin of Thaïs to communicate to her her own sanctity. With the interpretation of this quenching everything becomes clear. A cast of high flyers, elsewhere, with the praiseworthy Nicias of Fabrice Dalis, the perfect Palémon of Nicolas Courjal, lovely voices well in place, beautiful singing well controlled, with all the others, including the four walk-on women.

Christoph Eschenbach conducted the ensemble with a sense of balance for the dramatic evolution, finding good accents at good moments, without excessive emphasis, but with enough theatricality to compensate for the lack of spectacle. The Orchestra of Paris also played admirably as if they knew how to do it when they decided to invest themselves deeply in the project, and they understood that, in such circumstances, they were there to support the challenge thrown by the singers.

Then, the question being asked by many people at the end of the evening was "Why isn't Thaïs staged more often?". For many reasons without doubt. The score is not without pitfalls, incontestably, and therefore does not support any mediocrity or approximation of execution. And then, the title role is formidable, in its tessitura, in its demanding physical qualities and in its psychological complexity, if one wants to make something of the sound.

Playing a metaphysical courtesan is not easy, even less the mystique of love. It goes without saying, only the very great singers are allowed to approach an understanding of these characters. We came to hold the conviction that one less often sees a good production of Thaïs than a bad one. A maxim which could well be applied to other pages of the repertoire.

Christian Peter, Forumopera.com, 21 April 2007

http://www.forumopera.com/concerts/thais_fleming_chatelet07.html

Translated by Janet Woodall

Created in 1894 at the Palais Garnier, Thais was given there regularly until 1956 before disappearing completely from the Parisian scene except however for a series of representations in the Favart rooms in 1988. It is according to which point that the three concerts proposed by the Châtelet Theatre - which played to a packed house - had the appearance of an event, the more so as they marked the return in Paris of Renee Fleming in a complete work.

An opera star, impossible to get away from during the era of Gall, the American opera singer embodied there Donna Anna, Marguerite, Manon, Marschallin, Rusalka and Alcina, but one has not seen her again on our first national stage since Capriccio, the final production of the predecessor of Gerard Mortier.

Today it is Thais which Renee Fleming has decided to champion at the theatre, ten years after having authoritatively recorded it in the studio for Decca: She will give it in Vienna, London and Barcelona in the coming months. One can only rejoice in this choice, the more so as she is currently without rival in this role. Her [vocal] means remain intact and even the high D’s, a tiny bit strained in comparison to the CD, hardly betray the passing of time.

The performance on the other hand won in depth: The Thais of Fleming is already in the grip of doubt even before the visit of Athanaël. So, in the grand aria of the two, it is not a courtesan of triumphant beauty that one hears but a woman terrorized by aging who bitterly detects the vacuity of her existence, which makes her rapid conversion all the more plausible.

This complete concept doubtless deprives the heroine of the exacerbated sensuality which the other singers confer her, but is not less convincing in as far as the timbre of the opera singer, sumptuous and rich in harmonics, is ideally suited to this character of the penitent sinner. In this respect, the final scene is particularly overwhelming: totally hallucinating, this Thais is dying in ecstatic half-tones to great effect.

At her side Gerald Finley in no less esteem. This eminent Mozartian, who also excels at the baroque repertory and the world of song, has already happily approached French opera with his interpretation of Golaud. However, the role of Athanaël demands quite another magnitude of voice and high notes resonant with authority which are somewhat lacking in the Canadian baritone. However, conscious of his limitations and without ever forcing his means, Finley, served by a remarkable French diction, succeeds in translating the agonies of this ambiguous character with a rare acuteness and delivers the third act in a way that completely removes the sticking points.

Little to say about the Nicias of Fabrice Dalis, the replacement at a moment’s notice for the initially planned Barry Banks, except that he has the merit to have saved this series of concerts.

A beautiful performance on the other hand by Nicolas Courjal in the minor but no less important role of Palémon.

The female supporting roles turn out accurately with the exception of La Charmeuse with very shrill high notes. Special mention for the simple Albine of Caitlin Hulcup.

Christoph Eschenbach conducts with precision and rigour this luxuriant score, the wealth and the variety of which he sometimes emphasizes with too much exaggeration but always in context. It is an almost complete version of the work that is proposed to us, the rare cuts concerning essentially the ballets. Let us salute finally the sensitive and stripped bare interpretation of the famous Meditation by Philippe Aïche warmly applauded by the public

The triumph which welcomed the artists in the end was amply deserved and we shall only regret not having been entitled to a theatrical performance of the work. 

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