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Saariaho: L'Amour de Loin (DVD)
World Premiere Recording
Composer: Kaija Saariaho
Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen
Performers:
· Clémence, Countess de Tripoli: Dawn Upshaw
· Jaufré Rudel, Prince de Blaye: Gerald Finley
· Pilgrim: Monica Groop
· Finnish National Opera Orchestra and Chorus,
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Philips / DG DVD B0004721-09
DVD Release Date: September 13, 2005
Run Time: 139 minutes
ASIN: B0009K1ZI2
What the critics say
The New York Times
“Best New Work of the Year 2000”
Saariaho’s haunting and beautifully colored score, while nodding to Debussy and Messiaen, is deeply personal and utterly accomplished”
Arlo McKinnon, Opera News, March 2006, vol 70 , no.9
L’Amour de Loin (The Distant Love), the first opera of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, had its premiere in 2000 at the Salzburg Festival. The text of this tragic story is based on the life and songs of the twelfth-century troubadour/crusader Jaufré Rudel. Rudel (Gerald Finley), jaded from years of revelrous debauchery, has become despondent. His spirits are revived by a Pilgrim (Monica Groop) who tells the troubadour about Clémence, the Countess of Tripoli (Dawn Upshaw), who becomes for Rudel an unseen ideal of beauty, nobility and purity. In the spirit of medieval verse, he composes songs in her honor, assuming he shall never meet his paragon. In turn, the Princess learns of Jaufré, and she too savors the dream of an idealized love.
The main source of disappointment in this production lies in Peter Sellars’s stage direction and design. Throughout five acts, the stage floor is immersed in ankle-deep water, with most action occurring on one or another of two spiral staircases — one for Rudel’s castle, one for Clémence’s. Between these is a boat. While the Pilgrim is in the water or the boat, the other two principals are mostly stranded on their respective staircases, creating an oppressively static atmosphere for this inward-looking, abstract opera.
Kaija Saariaho is a tremendously gifted composer, and the music she has created for the opera is wonderful. A student of the late and lamented Gerard Grisey, Saariaho has incorporated elements of the spectral school of music, a style which emphasizes timbres created by manipulations of higher frequencies in the harmonic series via computer analysis. This results in gorgeous melodic lines that often outline unusual inversions of seventh and ninth chords, creating a seductive, almost modal effect within a complex harmonic palette. Her mastery is most evident in her synthesis of Rudel’s musical idiom and Moorish music elements. The libretto, by Amin Maalouf, an eminent Lebanese writer, is less successful. In English translation, Maalouf’s first libretto has moments of poetry and charm but is plagued by frequent swerves toward the prosaic. The listener eventually tires of Jaufré’s complaining to the point of losing sympathy at the protagonist’s demise.
The high quality of the music itself, the occasional eloquence of the libretto and the sensational performances by all involved suggest that opera-lovers might be better advised to buy the audio recording. One hopes that L’Amour de Loin will receive a more effective and sympathetic staging at a later date, but it would be a pity to be deprived of this music.
