Early 19th Century French Grand Opera is rarely seen in Australia – but Opera Australia’s performance of Halevy’s La Juive (1835) rectifies that deficiency and allows us to experience the slow build of its structure and its endemic grandeur.
In its exploration of religious enmities, between French Catholics and Jews, the five-act structure builds cumulative strength. Though originally set in the 15th century, in Constance, this production by Oliver Py is updated to 1930s France, reflecting neatly on that decades’ waves of bigotry and political upheavals.
The crude mechanics of the original finale - the Jews boiled alive for their transgression - was thus translated into a slow walk in a sombre forest, onward to execution. The shoes and baggage of dispossessed 1930s refugees was starkly enacted - when they fell from on high and crashed to the stage floor. The directorial team managed to transport this work to a more approachable 20th century timescape and generally trusted in the opera’s strengths and classical five act structure.
The work seeks to explore prejudice, hatred, and revenge. We watch these poisons at work, as both the hater and the hated embed a sustaining cycle of misunderstanding, fear, and punishment. The final words of the work are shocking "It is done, and we are avenged on the Jews!"
Halevy and his librettist Eugene Scribe ensure that this matrix is populated with people who are starkly flawed with richly patterned emotions.
As Rachel, Natalie Arroyan sang the title role with deep commitment. Her voice is large and dark, in some ways is more suited to the Verdi canon. Her French was somewhat muddy. Her voice was unable to instantiate some of the lighter sounds that Halevy and the French language demands. Her lower register was richly voiced. The original Rachel was the famous Cornêlie Falcon – who reportedly had a strong lower register and lighter upper register: “a silvery voice with a brilliant timbre (incisive) but pure” with a “dark and mystic style”.
Arroyan’s Act 2 aria, as she waits for her treacherous lover (the Christian Prince Leopold) saw staging, acting, and singing combine to lift the temperature and our interest. Dressed in black, with long dark hair, and imprisoned within in a dark wooden screen that formed a Star of David, she summoned forth some powerful music theatre. Less endearing was her constant flicking and stroking of her black wig: a gesture of despair that seemed falsely applied and made Arroyan look like a self-regarding, silent movie star.
Her character’s steadfastness was fully etched. The dark fulsome voice and surging emotions were clearly modulated across the unsettling trajectory of the role. Her love of her father (stepfather) was well registered, as was her pride and anger when scorned by the man she loves. Her inability to quell her feelings in Act 3 highlighted the deadly nature of the religious and class issues that haunt this work. This ensured an effecting fulmination within Act 3, as though she had imbibed some of her father’s powerful thirst for revenge. And if the French declamation was less than pinpoint, the dark voice and its emotional intent made her assumption memorable: unaware of her antecedents, but aware of her agency and drawing on the strength of her emotional intelligence. In this production Rachel receives a gestural benediction from her two fathers. She is, indeed, the source of the work’s power.
Diego Torre was steadfast as the patriarch Eleazar, the father/stepfather of Rachel. This a great role for a dramatic tenor who can act. The largescale emotion his role demands - the deep piety, the deep anger that is fed by the unending conflict between religion and love - were coloured by voice and acting. His shining tenor rang out across the orchestra. His pure intonation led the Passover rituals (held in secret inside his sealed house) with rapt attention to rhythm and poesy.
His famous Act 4 scene, “Rachel, Quand du Seigneur”, was expertly paced by orchestra and singer, revealing both the pain and beauty of his world: the love for his adopted daughter (born a Christian but raised a Jew), the loss of his own children. Pride and anger swells within, feeding his deep hunger for that one triumph when the man who had his sons executed will suffer the unending torment of parental loss.
This is no sanctified Jew, but an older man shaped by hate, beaten into stifled defiance: a non-citizen, the outsider who plots both his survival and revenge. He takes delight in mocking the Christian faith and in abusing the rich pockets of Princess Eudoxia.
The hate between Christian and Jew is vividly realised in Act 1 with its large- scale choral forces that attack the Jew - he who works on a festive day. The violence of the townsfolk’s words and their insistent crescendos was startlingly effective. The voiced pogrom that intrudes as off-stage vocal exclamation in Act 4 delivered another such startling intervention, one that dramatically shifts Eleazer from the possibility of forgiveness and its truth, postponing forever his revenge. The cries of hate shock him back into an implacable and almost unhinged hatred. Dramatically, psychologically, and vocally this scene is deeply impressive.
The unworthy object of Rachel’s affections is the warrior Prince Leopold – calling himself “Samuel” when he courts her. He is a very French character – eros incarnate with his obsessive high tenor flourishes. He is motivated by self-love, even though his words sometimes express regret at the damage he inflicts on his loved ones. Francisco Brito cut a dashing figure of a boy fixated with the idea of love and constantly actioning his lust. He is not very principled and lies excessively - almost presenting a prefiguring of Verdi’s Duke of Mantua. His character - and our interest in him - peters out after the bristling proclamation that ends Act 3, with its grave anathema that finally condemns him for his rash moral and legal transgressions. It helped that Brito has much Rossini singing under his belt, but even he was taxed by Halevy’s flashes of vocal altitude that appear from nowhere, almost as shafts of naked desire.
His wife, the Princess Eudoxie was sung by Esther Song – whose bright and clear voice arrested our attention whenever she appeared. The role is a mixture of joyous coloratura, dramatic outrage, and deep lyrical pleading. Her skittish nature, as she almost waltzed through the sombre Passover scene in Eleazar’s house, was nicely judged, as was the languor of the scene with her husband in Act 2. Her growth as a character emerged through the sharp denouement of the Act 3 finale when the truth of her husband’s philandering is revealed - and with a Jewess! This is crime that demands his exile or execution. Her pleas for his life with the jailed Rachel in their Act 4 duet was another high point in her performance. Arroyan and Song paced its heartfelt ironies with clarity and pathos: one imploring magnanimity; one in agreement but bedded on a deep resignation and quiet contempt for the sobbing Christian.
This opera presents larger than life characters – who edge towards the unbelievable – always groping in the dark so to speak and not finding the peace or happiness they yearn for. Halevy, in his elegant way, graces each person’s position with a perceptible humanity. This is a drama built on deep misunderstandings.
The man who caused the judicial murder of Eleazar’s sons - for the simple heresy of being Jewish - is the biological father of Rachel. Cardinal de Brogni is a complex character – implacable in his opposition to miscegenation (Jew and Catholic cannot be wed/lovers) and yet also wanting to bring some humanity and order to this stark structural and power divide of class and religion. He seeks forgiveness from Eleazar. David Parkin was an imposing figure – tall and hunky: an impressive Prince of the church. His dark voice was ample but taxed by the incessant coloratura that Halevy demands – particularly in the deepest registers and resonances, which sometime made him sound like an animal bleating.
His engagement with Eleazar in Act 4, where de Brogni learns that his long-lost daughter is still alive, was plotted with dramatic dexterity: revenge and compassion sparking vocal shards off each other. His Act 4 interaction with Rachel was also emotionally charged and gravely beautiful.
The slow burn of Act 1 was reinforced by the staging (Pierre Andre Weitz), with the placement of massive steps and a clustering of placard waiving Christians thirsting for a bit of jew-baiting. The blocks of choral sound were impressive – but somewhat static in dramatic terms. It took the unfolding of the protagonists’ worlds views and experiences in Act 2, to increase dramatic tension and the variety of vocal means.
Costuming (Pierre-Andre Weitz) was generally muted for the populace and the Jews – and did give a sense of the heaviness of interwar European dress. Rachel was demure in black, Eudoxie encrusted with diamantes, the latter showing off the sheen of her legs in a high split slinky gown worthy of 1930s Jean Harlow film.
The decimated forest that appeared as the background panorama seemed like the remains of a Great War battlefield and was beautifully lit at times (Bertrand Killy/John Rayment), recurring like the afterburn from the war to end all wars that haunted Europe in the interwar setting of this production.
Con Costi was the revival director for this outing assisted by Emma Muir-Smith – both ensured its complex and sometimes preposterous narrative was approachable. Carlo Montanaro was the conductor and lead the Opera Australia orchestra with authority and elan, making sure the elegance of the music was not lost in the dramatic tumult of the opera’s narrative demands.
Very French, indeed.
Opera Australia, Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney, March 22, 2022
Gar Jones
In its exploration of religious enmities, between French Catholics and Jews, the five-act structure builds cumulative strength. Though originally set in the 15th century, in Constance, this production by Oliver Py is updated to 1930s France, reflecting neatly on that decades’ waves of bigotry and political upheavals.
The crude mechanics of the original finale - the Jews boiled alive for their transgression - was thus translated into a slow walk in a sombre forest, onward to execution. The shoes and baggage of dispossessed 1930s refugees was starkly enacted - when they fell from on high and crashed to the stage floor. The directorial team managed to transport this work to a more approachable 20th century timescape and generally trusted in the opera’s strengths and classical five act structure.
The work seeks to explore prejudice, hatred, and revenge. We watch these poisons at work, as both the hater and the hated embed a sustaining cycle of misunderstanding, fear, and punishment. The final words of the work are shocking "It is done, and we are avenged on the Jews!"
Halevy and his librettist Eugene Scribe ensure that this matrix is populated with people who are starkly flawed with richly patterned emotions.
As Rachel, Natalie Arroyan sang the title role with deep commitment. Her voice is large and dark, in some ways is more suited to the Verdi canon. Her French was somewhat muddy. Her voice was unable to instantiate some of the lighter sounds that Halevy and the French language demands. Her lower register was richly voiced. The original Rachel was the famous Cornêlie Falcon – who reportedly had a strong lower register and lighter upper register: “a silvery voice with a brilliant timbre (incisive) but pure” with a “dark and mystic style”.
Arroyan’s Act 2 aria, as she waits for her treacherous lover (the Christian Prince Leopold) saw staging, acting, and singing combine to lift the temperature and our interest. Dressed in black, with long dark hair, and imprisoned within in a dark wooden screen that formed a Star of David, she summoned forth some powerful music theatre. Less endearing was her constant flicking and stroking of her black wig: a gesture of despair that seemed falsely applied and made Arroyan look like a self-regarding, silent movie star.
Her character’s steadfastness was fully etched. The dark fulsome voice and surging emotions were clearly modulated across the unsettling trajectory of the role. Her love of her father (stepfather) was well registered, as was her pride and anger when scorned by the man she loves. Her inability to quell her feelings in Act 3 highlighted the deadly nature of the religious and class issues that haunt this work. This ensured an effecting fulmination within Act 3, as though she had imbibed some of her father’s powerful thirst for revenge. And if the French declamation was less than pinpoint, the dark voice and its emotional intent made her assumption memorable: unaware of her antecedents, but aware of her agency and drawing on the strength of her emotional intelligence. In this production Rachel receives a gestural benediction from her two fathers. She is, indeed, the source of the work’s power.
Diego Torre was steadfast as the patriarch Eleazar, the father/stepfather of Rachel. This a great role for a dramatic tenor who can act. The largescale emotion his role demands - the deep piety, the deep anger that is fed by the unending conflict between religion and love - were coloured by voice and acting. His shining tenor rang out across the orchestra. His pure intonation led the Passover rituals (held in secret inside his sealed house) with rapt attention to rhythm and poesy.
His famous Act 4 scene, “Rachel, Quand du Seigneur”, was expertly paced by orchestra and singer, revealing both the pain and beauty of his world: the love for his adopted daughter (born a Christian but raised a Jew), the loss of his own children. Pride and anger swells within, feeding his deep hunger for that one triumph when the man who had his sons executed will suffer the unending torment of parental loss.
This is no sanctified Jew, but an older man shaped by hate, beaten into stifled defiance: a non-citizen, the outsider who plots both his survival and revenge. He takes delight in mocking the Christian faith and in abusing the rich pockets of Princess Eudoxia.
The hate between Christian and Jew is vividly realised in Act 1 with its large- scale choral forces that attack the Jew - he who works on a festive day. The violence of the townsfolk’s words and their insistent crescendos was startlingly effective. The voiced pogrom that intrudes as off-stage vocal exclamation in Act 4 delivered another such startling intervention, one that dramatically shifts Eleazer from the possibility of forgiveness and its truth, postponing forever his revenge. The cries of hate shock him back into an implacable and almost unhinged hatred. Dramatically, psychologically, and vocally this scene is deeply impressive.
The unworthy object of Rachel’s affections is the warrior Prince Leopold – calling himself “Samuel” when he courts her. He is a very French character – eros incarnate with his obsessive high tenor flourishes. He is motivated by self-love, even though his words sometimes express regret at the damage he inflicts on his loved ones. Francisco Brito cut a dashing figure of a boy fixated with the idea of love and constantly actioning his lust. He is not very principled and lies excessively - almost presenting a prefiguring of Verdi’s Duke of Mantua. His character - and our interest in him - peters out after the bristling proclamation that ends Act 3, with its grave anathema that finally condemns him for his rash moral and legal transgressions. It helped that Brito has much Rossini singing under his belt, but even he was taxed by Halevy’s flashes of vocal altitude that appear from nowhere, almost as shafts of naked desire.
His wife, the Princess Eudoxie was sung by Esther Song – whose bright and clear voice arrested our attention whenever she appeared. The role is a mixture of joyous coloratura, dramatic outrage, and deep lyrical pleading. Her skittish nature, as she almost waltzed through the sombre Passover scene in Eleazar’s house, was nicely judged, as was the languor of the scene with her husband in Act 2. Her growth as a character emerged through the sharp denouement of the Act 3 finale when the truth of her husband’s philandering is revealed - and with a Jewess! This is crime that demands his exile or execution. Her pleas for his life with the jailed Rachel in their Act 4 duet was another high point in her performance. Arroyan and Song paced its heartfelt ironies with clarity and pathos: one imploring magnanimity; one in agreement but bedded on a deep resignation and quiet contempt for the sobbing Christian.
This opera presents larger than life characters – who edge towards the unbelievable – always groping in the dark so to speak and not finding the peace or happiness they yearn for. Halevy, in his elegant way, graces each person’s position with a perceptible humanity. This is a drama built on deep misunderstandings.
The man who caused the judicial murder of Eleazar’s sons - for the simple heresy of being Jewish - is the biological father of Rachel. Cardinal de Brogni is a complex character – implacable in his opposition to miscegenation (Jew and Catholic cannot be wed/lovers) and yet also wanting to bring some humanity and order to this stark structural and power divide of class and religion. He seeks forgiveness from Eleazar. David Parkin was an imposing figure – tall and hunky: an impressive Prince of the church. His dark voice was ample but taxed by the incessant coloratura that Halevy demands – particularly in the deepest registers and resonances, which sometime made him sound like an animal bleating.
His engagement with Eleazar in Act 4, where de Brogni learns that his long-lost daughter is still alive, was plotted with dramatic dexterity: revenge and compassion sparking vocal shards off each other. His Act 4 interaction with Rachel was also emotionally charged and gravely beautiful.
The slow burn of Act 1 was reinforced by the staging (Pierre Andre Weitz), with the placement of massive steps and a clustering of placard waiving Christians thirsting for a bit of jew-baiting. The blocks of choral sound were impressive – but somewhat static in dramatic terms. It took the unfolding of the protagonists’ worlds views and experiences in Act 2, to increase dramatic tension and the variety of vocal means.
Costuming (Pierre-Andre Weitz) was generally muted for the populace and the Jews – and did give a sense of the heaviness of interwar European dress. Rachel was demure in black, Eudoxie encrusted with diamantes, the latter showing off the sheen of her legs in a high split slinky gown worthy of 1930s Jean Harlow film.
The decimated forest that appeared as the background panorama seemed like the remains of a Great War battlefield and was beautifully lit at times (Bertrand Killy/John Rayment), recurring like the afterburn from the war to end all wars that haunted Europe in the interwar setting of this production.
Con Costi was the revival director for this outing assisted by Emma Muir-Smith – both ensured its complex and sometimes preposterous narrative was approachable. Carlo Montanaro was the conductor and lead the Opera Australia orchestra with authority and elan, making sure the elegance of the music was not lost in the dramatic tumult of the opera’s narrative demands.
Very French, indeed.
Opera Australia, Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney, March 22, 2022
Gar Jones
