July Notebook
In this edition of the Notebook: The Alice Munro Pearl Clutching-Industrial Complex; Scotiabank’s Giller troubles; Catherine Breillat’s latest film about a middle-aged woman having an affair with her underage stepson. But first:
Les Arts Florissants & Purcell
I’ve never seen Koerner Hall fuller than on Thursday; you had to elbow your way through the hallway across the lobby to your seat. Les Arts Florissants opened the Toronto Summer Music Festival with The Fairy-Queen, a production propelled by the energy of the talented dancers who didn’t stop moving for two hours. Under the direction and mise-en-scene of the choreographer Mourad Merzouki, they even danced in the songs of sleep, though they did end up seated during the show-stopping “O let me weep”, Jardin des Voix soloist Juliette Mey joined by the concertmaster Emmanuel Resche-Caserta on the violin. I found this clip from an earlier performance, and it went something like this:
Without the dancers and the singer-dancer integration, the Queen would have been something of a concert/revue. (Full cast here.) The shenanigans take place in the wood among the fairies, but there isn’t a story to speak of: the spirits play with each other, sing of love, go wild then rest, celebrate the sun and the change of seasons, make fun of the corpulent baritone among them (the excellent Hugo Herman-Wilson) who is also in one scene the god of marriage, Hymen, deep in slumber and no help at all.
Some of the numbers in the Queen have become popular all on their own - “One charming night”, for example, which has a long history of performance in other contexts. Here, it was sung by tenor Ilja Aksionov with the two woodwind players of Les Arts Flo joining him on stage.
My favourite rendition, by the way, must be this all-too-efficient version on modern instruments (the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra!) with contralto Maureen Forrester. The word ‘chthonic’ doesn’t begin to describe her timbre. See which one you prefer.
The Arts Flo percussion lady, Marie-Ange Petit, often impressive in timpani solos, did not have much to do, alas. But here she is with Les Arts as a protagonist of "Forêts paisibles" from Rameau’s opera Les Indes galantes’, the part about the arrival of the French in North America.
William Christie wore his signature red socks with the black suit and moved very little - mostly observing what is going on, conducting the stage more often than the orchestra and mouthing the words. As in the clip above, there isn’t much that he does with a well prepared orchestra of veterans who know this repertoire inside out. Most of the work is already done.
The Arts Flo take the Queen onwards to Joiliette, Caramoor, Tanglewood and London (UK).