Philippe Boesmans - Wintermarchen (La Monnaie 1999) 

Dale Duesing (Leontes, König von Sizilien),
Susan Chilcott (Hermione),
Anthony Rolfe Johnson (Polixenes, König von Böhmen),
Franz-Joseph Selig (Camillo/ Stimme des Orakels),
Cornelia Kallisch (Paulina, Hermiones Dienerin),
Heinz Zednik (Green/ Die Zeit),
Juha Kotilainen (Antigonus),
Kris Dane (Florizel),
Johanne Saunier (Perdita, Tochter von Leontes und Hermione),
Arthur Debski (Mamillius),
Ismini Giannakis, Laurence Misonne, Djamilia Kamal Babaeva (Drei Hofdamen),
Lorenzo Carola, Jacques Does (Zwei Hofherren),
Lorenzo Carola, Juha Kotilainen (Taschendiebe),
Laurence Misonne, Djamilia Kamal Babaeva (Zwei Böhmische Mädchen),
Gerard Lavalle (Ein Böhmischer Soldat)
Aka Moon (Fabrizio Cassol, sax; Stéphane Galland, drums; Michel Hatzigeorgiou, bass),

Orchestre Symphonique et Choeurs de la Monnaie,
Antonio Pappano (music direction)

Belgian born in 1936, the name of Philippe Boesmans will be new to many British listeners although his previous stage work, Reigen, met with considerable acclaim following its Brussels premiere in 1993, subsequently being staged in France, Germany and Austria. Credit is therefore due to Deutsche Grammophon for showing the enterprise (not without risk) of putting Boesmans’ latest opera before a wider public, enterprise which it is to be hoped pays off for the work offers much to discover.

This live recording of the world premiere took place at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels on the 10th December 1999. Antonio Pappano has a fine cast under his direction and with a few relatively minor reservations they perform with impressive success. My initial doubts were concentrated around the libretto. Shakespeare’s dark tale of insane jealousy and ultimate reconciliation presents a major challenge to the librettists although Luc Bondy and Marie-Louise Bischofberger cleverly overcome this, largely through the part of Green (alias time) whose interventional commentary serves as the structurally binding thread running through the entire work (as does the theme heard in the opening bars on the accordion which Green plays as he stands outside the palace of Leontes in Sicily).

Act One deals with the onset of Leontes’ pathological jealousy, the result of his childhood friend Polixenes, the King of Bohemia, accepting the request of Leontes’ wife Hermione to stay on at the royal palace in Sicily following his initial refusal to Leontes himself. There is some fine atmosphere building here (track two) as the first doubts of his wife’s fidelity enter Leontes’ mind. As Leontes’ jealousy transforms into insanity the tension is skilfully intensified by Boesmans with a duet between Leontes and his servant Camillo as Leontes issues the order for Polixenes to be murdered. Act two sees the birth of Hermione’s daughter whom Leontes banishes to foreign shores. The subsequent trial of Hermione for treason, conspiracy and adultery is one of the undoubted highlights of the opera, as in the face of the death of his wife and son, Leontes realises the horror of what he has done. Dale Duesing is superb in the concluding bars of the act as Leontes mourns his loss.

Act three is marked by two significant changes in compositional tack. In scene four (track three) the language changes from German to English and Boesmans introduces AKA Moon, a jazz/funk combo whose brand of improvisatory fusion sounds strangely ill at ease and ultimately rather dated. This change to a kind of vernacular colloquialism is admirable in principle, designed as it is, to reflect the change of location to the “Bohemian coast” and the underworld existence of Florizel, the long lost son of Polixenes who has resorted to a life of pick-pocketing and petty crime. In reality I found it to unsettle the whole balance of the act. Fortunately however, it does not last for long and I was glad when Boesmans returned to his accustomed musical language in track six. The culmination of the work in Act four is well handled as Hermione is revealed imprisoned in a block of ice and emerges, the ice thawing and shattering around her, to the remorse of Leontes and his uneasiness that his insanity may return.

Boesmans’ language is by turns kaleidoscopically colourful and lyrical. His orchestration is finely detailed, the sometimes eclectic melodic and harmonic characteristics of his music accessible yet challenging. Many listeners will recognise the many fleeting references to Richard Strauss, Mozart and Berg which he readily uses (often not a direct quote but an unmistakable shadow). Certainly he has distanced himself from the avant-garde and there is little in this work which anyone with doubts as to the extent of their musical adventurousness need fear. Anyone who has enjoyed the operas of Britten for instance, is likely to feel at home with Boesmans’ sound world.

Given the limitations of the pit acoustic the sound is impressively vivid and Antonio Pappano conducts with the tautness that we have come to expect from him. The cast is on exceptional form and sing to the highest standard throughout although Dale Duesing, Susan Chilcott and Heinz Zednik are worthy of particular mention.

As with all of Deutsche Grammophon’s releases in their 20/21 series the packaging is beautifully put together and the booklet is highly comprehensive, complementing the libretto and synopsis with an interesting interview with the composer and an introductory essay by Alain Perroux. It completes a fine release that will give many opera lovers a good deal of pleasure. ---Christopher Thomas, musicweb-international.com

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CD1
1 	Ouverture 	1:34
2 	Prologue 	2:20
3 	Scène 1 	8:25
4 	Scène 2 	2:22
5 	Scène 3 	10:16
6 	Scène 4 	4:54
7 	Scène 5 	2:33
8 	Scène 6 	3:21
9 	Scène 7 	5:03
10 	Scène 8 	2:59
11 	Scène 9 	4:42
12 	Scène 10 	2:07
13 	Scène 11 	5:18
14 	Scène 12 	7:51
15 	Scène 13 	9:09

CD2
1 	Scène 14 	8:51
2 	Scène 15 	3:10
3 	Scène 16 	6:10
4 	Scène 17 	1:49
5 	Scène 18 	4:34
6 	Scène 19 	3:41
7 	Scène 20 	2:20
8 	Scène 21 	1:41
9 	Scène 22 	7:50
10 	Scène 23 	0:54
11 	Épilogue 	9:32

Le directeur de la troupe / premier escroc / deuxième meurtrier / le directeur de cirque - Stéphane Degout (baritone)
Le père / troisième meurtrier / le maître d’école - Vincent Le Texier (baritone)
Le pantin - Chloé Briot (soprano)
Deuxième escroc / le directeur de cabaret / le juge / premier meurtrier / le marchand d'ânes - Yann Beuron (tenor)
La chanteuse de cabaret / le mauvais élève - Julie Boulianne (mezzo-soprano)
La fée - Marie-Eve Munger (soprano)
Figurantes - Jilan Al Hassan, Charlène Girin, Camille Lucas, Garance Rivoal, Claudine Sarzier
Orchestre Symphonique De La Monnaie
Conductor – Patrick Davin 

On these discs we have Philippe Boesmans’ eighth opera Pinocchio, based on the famous tale by Carlo Collodi which was immortalised on celluloid by Walt Disney. It was chosen to open the restored Brussels opera house La Monnaie in late 2017; by all accounts it was a triumph. Over the years Cypres have lavished a great deal of attention upon Boesmans’ music; most of his operas and much of his instrumental music can be found on the label. Now in his 82nd year, this package also includes a DVD portrait of Boesmans who could justifiably be described as Belgium’s greatest living composer.

Looking at the images from the première reproduced in the booklet suggests that the production was a visual tour-de-force, involving ludicrously elongating noses and oversized fairies among other things. However I’m pleased to say the opera sounds superb on disc. It consists of an overture, a prologue, 23 scenes and an epilogue; the episodes are short and the pace is quick. It adopts a play-within-a-play structure, the events are connected by the linking narrative commentary provided by the director of a rag-tag theatrical troupe which is energetically spoken and sung by the baritone Stéphane Degout. His contribution to the success of the whole enterprise is enormous – apart from this hugely demanding role (this director is never absent from the action for too long) he adds three others. To be fair the depth of characterisation involved is not excessive – it’s simply not that kind of opera. But Degout has a lot to do over the two hours – he has a superb voice – his spoken narration is as vivid and multi-faceted as his singing.

It is hard to find fault with any of the main protagonists who sing with great commitment but the two sopranos are especially fine. Marie-Eve Munger is a Québécoise singer whose high coloratura has a bell-like clarity; her high-intensity vocal display as the Fairy steals every scene she’s in. On stage she totters about in an extraordinary giant dress which makes her performance even more impressive. Yet I was even more taken with Chloé Briot’s turn as the eponymous puppet. The title role at least carries a degree of complexity in its characterisation; Ms Briot’s Pinocchio is by turn irritating, charming, frustrating and moving. She superbly captures the transformation from wood to flesh, from anti-hero to hero.

Boesmans’ music is fluent and delightful. The nineteen piece ensemble in the pit is augmented by an onstage trio of saxophone, accordion and violin who form part of the troupe. Given these limited forces the composer clearly has an extensive musical vocabulary and seamlessly deploys techniques both vernacular and highbrow, and incorporating virtually everything in between. If the opening overture has a kind of neo-classical Stravinskian hue to it Boesmans has a taste for judiciously applied tuned percussion and piano textures which quickly confounds that impression. He maximises the colouristic opportunities afforded by his ensemble like a master; there are dark, ambiguous Bergian harmonies, jaunty episodes that evoke thoughts of Poulenc or Martinu. The on-stage trio produce sounds that owe something to gypsy music, the Hot Club de Paris, even early Rock’n’Roll. I’m sure there are an abundance of more literal allusions to operas from the past here which have thus far passed me by. As the puppet’s nose increases in size, we hear the upward glissandi of sirens seemingly abstracted from Varèse’s Amériques. Boesmans’ genius here is in combining all of these shards from musical history into a cogent, compelling and deeply entertaining whole. The grand (and long) ovation at Pinocchio’s conclusion is heartfelt.

This collaboration between composer and librettist exploits the moral ambiguities of Collodi’s story in a timely and provocative way which taps deeply into the current political and social zeitgeist. In a world where at times it seems impossible to distinguish between fact and fiction, Gepeto’s boy has found his moment. As Joel Pommerat says in the booklet “He is a construction, a pure fabrication like an artistic creation. He is himself a fiction, alive and artificial at the same time. Pinocchio is an utopia that aspires to become a reality” Remind you of any one? I do have one major beef about this otherwise eminently recommendable project; once more we have an example of lavish packaging which seems to omit essentials. I am not so pompous that I view English as the universal language but in a fast-moving work effectively consisting of 26 scenes I would argue that a synopsis in English at least is essential. There is no synopsis full stop. Moreover, why not take a leaf out of the Naxos or Brilliant Classics copybook and at least provide online access to an English translation of the full libretto on the Cyprès website? My French is inadequate for the purpose of completely unravelling the dialogue and repeated exposure to the Disney movie in childhood did not help (where’s Jiminy Cricket when you need him?) Many websites are charging upwards of 40 Euros for this set; I imagine some collectors who take a punt will feel somewhat short-changed.

Although none of that should take the shine off what is a truly enjoyable and absorbing new opera. Although it was recorded live the sound is vivid, detailed and clear. Time for me, I think, to try more of Boesmans’ work for the stage. ---Richard Hanlon, musicweb-international.com

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