MASSENET Thaïs (Hussain)
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Genre:
Opera
Label: Unitel Classics
Magazine Review Date: 12/2021
Media Format: Digital Versatile Disc
Media Runtime: 111
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 804908
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Thaïs |
Jules (Emile Frédéric) Massenet, Composer
(Arnold) Schoenberg Choir Carolina Lippo, Crobyle, Soprano Günes Gürle, Palémon, Bass-baritone Josef Wagner, Athanaël, Bass-baritone Leo Hussain, Conductor Nicole Chevalier, Thaïs, Soprano ORF Symphony Orchestra Vienna Roberto Saccà, Nicias, Tenor Samuel Wegleitner, La Charmeuse, Treble Sofia Vinnik, Albine; Myrtale, Mezzo soprano |
Author: Mark Pullinger
Despite its luscious music, Massenet’s Thaïs doesn’t get many stagings, probably because directors have a hard time taking the plot – Cenobite monk Athanaël attempts to convert the courtesan Thaïs but ends up lusting after her instead – entirely seriously. There has always been a scent of scandal about it. You can go down the kitsch route, such as John Cox’s lavish Lyric Opera of Chicago production, which played at the Metropolitan Opera in 2008 with Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson, reviving their partnership from the outstanding Decca audio recording (11/00). Or you can do what Peter Konwitschny did earlier this year at the Theater an der Wien and treat it slightly ironically. Filmed in January, while Vienna was still in lockdown, and shown on Austrian television in April, it now appears on DVD and Blu ray.
Konwitschny is very good at paring down operatic drama to its essentials, here the ideological struggle between monk and courtesan. Johannes Leiacker’s designs are suitably stark, the Cenobite monks gathering around an orange mound of earth within a tent-like drape. Everyone wears giant angel wings – black for the monks, colourful for Thaïs and her attendants, Crobyle and Myrtale, à la cabaret showgirls. Thaïs’s little statue of Eros in the libretto becomes a mohicaned boy Cupid who Athanaël dispatches with a bullet in Act 2.
The director’s tongue-in-cheek touches include the scene where Athanaël challenges Thaïs to give up her way of life. ‘Leve-toi!’ he sings (‘Rise up!’) … while thrusting himself between Thaïs’s legs, drawing her ecstatic response ‘How I thrill and pulsate with its charm!’ as she straddles him. But post-coital encounter, their wings are symbolically removed by the chorus of party guests during the famous Méditation (sinuously played by Maighréad McCrann, concertmaster of the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien) and the characters then seem to explore their inner feelings.
Act 3’s desert takes the form of a wasteland, backcloth now crumpled on the floor, strewn with the banknotes that the nobleman Nicias has scattered at the end of the previous scene. It’s here that Konwitschny gets to the heart of the matter as Athanaël realises he loves the dying Thaïs. Musically, though, the last two scenes are butchered, losing about 15 minutes of Massenet’s score (the Act 2 divertissement is also cut).
The performances are convincing, even if the leads can’t really challenge the sumptuous singing of Fleming and Hampson at the Met. Nicole Chevalier is a superb actress and camps up the glamourpuss courtesan well. Vocally, she tackles the role – which Massenet composed for the Californian soprano Sybil Sanderson – admirably, although the final notes of her ‘mirror aria’ ‘Dis-moi que je suis belle’ are a bit of a scream. Austrian bass-baritone Josef Wagner is a very good Athanaël, full of zealous fire, firmly sung, while tenor Roberto Saccà husbands his dry tenor well as Nicias. Leo Hussain shapes the score persuasively in the pit and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir make the most of their limited choral opportunities. If Konwitschny’s production appeals, this is definitely worth exploring.
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