Céphale et Procris 2023 Reviews

​★★★★
THE STAGE
Claire Seymour
'Eloquent - Musical and dramatic integrity spiced with invention'

The death of Jean-Baptiste Lully in 1687 must have liberated many an aspiring French composer to try their hand at tragédie lyrique – the genre over which the absolutist musical director of Louis XIV’s royal court had had a stranglehold in the preceding decades. Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729) was the only woman among them, though.

Descended from an old Parisian family of master instrument builders, singers and instrumentalists, Jacquet de la Guerre was a child prodigy. At the age of 12 she gave her first performance at the royal court, prompting the Mercure Galant to remark that “she sings at sight the most difficult music” and “accompanies herself at the harpsichord, which she plays in a manner that cannot be imitated”.

Around this time Louis XIV took Jacquet into his court. Esteemed as a virtuoso harpsichordist and composer, she later established her own private musical salons. On March 17, 1694, she became the first woman to have a work, Céphale et Procris, staged at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris.

Now Ensemble OrQuesta presents the UK premiere of Jacquet’s opera. The libretto, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, offers a familiar mix of human frailties and divine interventions. The eponymous lovers are fated to be kept apart by the jealousy and cruelty of mortals – Borée, Prince of Thrace, is Céphale’s rival for Procris’ love – and gods, particularly L’Aurore, who wants Céphale for herself. Tenderness, anguish and anger alternate in a sequence of recitatives and often extensive airs de cour, interspersed with choruses both grand and petit, instrumental overtures, preludes, ritournelles and dances.

There’s none of the rococo splendour of Louis XIV’s Versailles at the Cockpit, just a bare black stage with tapering ribbons, imaginatively lit to reflect the score’s frequently changing moods. Yet multitasking stage and music director Marcio da Silva creates an idiomatic decorum – movement and music are stylised but never mannered – and generates tension by throwing a few modernities into the mix. Gender is fluid, Lully makes an unscripted appearance, and the customary veneration of the Sun King in the prologue subsequently takes a revolutionary turn.

Jacquet de la Guerre’s music, stylistically indebted to Lully but often harmonically inventive, is beautifully sung. Their white crinolines set against the cast’s prevailing black, Poppy Shotts and Kieran White convey, respectively, Procris’ purity and Céphale’s earnestness. Helen May’s vivid, flexible soprano captures L’Aurore’s fluctuating rage and compassion. Anna-Luise Wagner (Dorine, Procris’ confidante), Jack Lawrence Jones (Borée), Tara Venkatesan (Flore) and Lydia Ward (Iphis) sing with vocal sensitivity and dramatic conviction. The superb seven-piece instrumental ensemble play with dynamism and elan.

The work ends not with the customary choral divertissement but with silence – yet, even here, it is full of interest.

Claire Seymour, The Stage, 08/02/23

​★★★★
PLAY TO SEE
Tim Hochstrasser
​

'a thoroughly engrossing and absorbing evening'

Ensemble OrQuesta continue their original exploration of the repertory of Baroque opera with something of a coup – the premiere in this country of the one opera by Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, a leading figure in the last decades of the reign of Louis XIV. In the usual learned programme note available on their website, Marcio da Silva, conductor and director of the production, gives us a fascinating introduction to this neglected harpsichordist and composer, who made important contributions to many musical genres after the death of Jean-Baptiste Lully, while demonstrating in her own highly successful career that there were real opportunities for women at the court of the Sun King and in the theatres and salon of Paris.

This production foregrounds a new edition of this work from 1694 that showcases an elaborate sequence of recitatives, plangent and emotionally restrained ‘airs de cours’, larger choruses and a gallery of instrumental interludes that cover every mood. The cast are accompanied by an excellent seven-piece orchestra of individual and collective panache, and Da Silva himself not only conducts and directs, but plays several instruments from the podium and takes a supporting role in the drama. It is a thoroughly engrossing and absorbing evening.

The main plot is very simple, though somewhat over-complicated by diversionary sub-plots and a standard prologue in praise of Louis XIV that might perhaps have been omitted for modern audiences. Procris and Céphale are lovers destined for one another, but in the customary manner of Greek mythology, are thwarted by the random actions of the Gods, in this case, by Aurora, who has developed a passion of her own for Céphale. Through a sequence of misfortunes Procris is assigned to another lover, Borée, before dying an accidental death even though by this stage Aurora has relented.

As this summary might suggest, much of the most powerful music is in a register of anguish and lament, and both Kieran White and Poppy Shotts, in the lead roles, excel in putting this across to the audience, with a depth and restrained dignity of emotion that is entirely in keeping with this aesthetic where symbolism and allegory frame and structure the pain in a way similar to the achievement of Poussin in narrative painting. There is also a disconcertingly modern aspect to the rawness of the writing for Aurora, whose own inflicting of suffering stems from her own pain, eloquently projected here by Helen May.

But it is one of the great merits of this production that the emotional and visual palette is made as diverse as possible. There are genuine moments of comedy and satire too, elegant choreography to ensure that there is always some visual stimulus and variety to the action, and careful consideration of costume, with a basic black outfit for the majority of the characters varied with some intriguing use of crinolines. The minimalist design of the Cockpit theatre assists the production here with the four entrances at the corners of the layout allowing for great flexibility in the setting and a seamless flow from one short scene into another.

A short review cannot do justice to all the singing roles, but beyond the excellent main leads there was excellent work from Anna-Luise Wagner as Dorine, a confidante of Procris, Jack Lawrence-Jones, in the powerful, if ungrateful role of Borée, and Lydia Ward, a somewhat sceptical attendant of Aurora. The cast as a whole punched above their weight as the chorus, and there was a particularly characterful trio of demons who could have been devised by Matthew Bourne, even down to the red marigolds….

An elaborate web of symbolism was created throughout the piece, entirely in keeping with the way myth and contemporary court life were interfused in this era. Not all of it was immediately accessible (for example the streamers hanging from the ceiling, torn down piecemeal by the cast as the action progressed remained opaque to this viewer. It is a work that doubtless repays more than one viewing. The translated surtitles were projected onto an uneven brick wall at the back of the theatre which made them very hard to read for most of the audience. In a very wordy opera this was unfortunate, though the clear diction projected by a majority of the cast meant it was not hard to follow the action.

With a fine production of ‘Phaedra’ opening at the National Theatre as well, this production gives us a rare and welcome chance to savour the relatively unfamiliar but affecting world of the French Baroque at a fine level of accomplishment. And this is also a very welcome re-introduction to the work of a significant female composer. May it return again soon!

Tim Hochstrasser, Plays to See, 13/02/23