The Judgment of Paris (2016)
Arne
Information
The Judgment of Paris (1742), a masque in one act
Music by Thomas Arne
Libretto by William Congreve
22-23 July 2016: The Deanery garden, Bampton
29 August 2016: The Orangery, Westonbirt School
13 September 2016: St John’s Smith Square, London
Cast
| Mercury (Hermes), messenger of the gods | Robert Anthony Gardiner |
| Paris, a shepherd | Christopher Turner |
| Juno (Saturnia, wife of Jupiter) | Barbara Cole Walton |
| Pallas (Athena) | Catherine Backhouse |
| Venus (Cytherea) | Aoife O'Sullivan |
The Orchestra of Bampton Classical Opera (Bampton, Westonbirt)
CHROMA (London)
| Repetiteur | Harry Sever |
| Movement director | Triona Adams |
| Conductor | Paul Wingfield |
| Director | Jeremy Gray |
Synopsis
The messenger god Mercury is sent by Jupiter to give a task to the shepherd Paris. He is to present a golden apple to the most beautiful of three goddesses – Juno, Pallas Athena and Venus. The goddesses battle it out in a celestial beauty contest and each tries to tempt Paris. Juno, wife of Jupiter, offers earthly power and kingship whilst Pallas offers wisdom and glory in war. Venus charms with cooing words of love: her sensuous tactics pay off, and Paris awards her the coveted prize.
Synopsis in detail
The action begins immediately as the messenger god Mercury (Hermes) approaches the Phrygian shepherd Paris with a divine task from Jupiter: From high Olympus, and the realms above, behold I come, the messenger of Jove. Paris is commanded to award a golden apple to one of three beautiful goddesses. In an accompanied recitative descending scales in the strings depict the descent of the goddesses: O ravishing delight! What mortal can support the sight?...Save me rom excess of joy! – Paris faints at the awful task, and in a sprightly Air, Mercury reassures him that he will be quite safe: Fear not, mortal, none shall harm thee; with my sacred rod, I’ll charm thee! Woodwind plays for the first time in an upbeat Duet: Happy I of human race, with no god I’d change my place.
By now the three goddesses have arrived. First to confront Paris is Juno: [Recitative: Saturnia, wife of thund’ring Jove am I, belov’d of him, and Empress of the sky!]; she is swiftly followed by Pallas: This way mortal, bend thy eyes, Pallas claims the golden prize, a virgin goddess free from stain and queen of arts and arms I reign. But Venus already steals attention by singing a voluptuous Air, with ‘cello solo: Gentle swain! Hither turn thee, let not Venus sue in vain.
In a brilliantly comic and insistent Trio, all three vie for attention: Hither turn thee, gentle swain, hither turn to me again, turn to me, for I am she! It’s hardly surprising that Paris is unable to choose: Air, Distracted I turn, but I cannot decide, so equal a title sure never was tried.
Juno returns to the fray with an encouraging Air, which runs into a Chorus: Let ambition fire thy mind, thou wert born o’er men to reign. Pallas retorts in a dramatic Accompanied recitative [Awake, awake, thy spirits raise, waste not thy youthful days, piping, toying, nymphs decoying], which leads into a martial Air, scored with oboes, trumpets and timpani [The glorious voice of war calls aloud, for arms prepare!]. The chorus assumes that the contest is won [O how glorious ‘tis to see, the godlike hero crown’d with victory] but Venus does not intend to give up. She exploits all her sensuous charm in an Accompanied recitative [Stay, lovely youth, delay thy choice, take heed lest empty names enthral thee], leading to a mellifluous Air with Chorus [One only joy mankind can know, and Love alone can that bestow]. Venus persists further in a second flattering Air: Nature fram’d thee sure for loving, thus adorned with ev’ry grace. It is all too much for a mere mortal and Paris is overcome, handing over the coveted apple: I yield, I yield, O take the prize!....Forbear, forbear, O goddess of desire, to fan the raging fire.
Two choral numbers conclude the opera and call on nature to celebrate Venus’ triumph: Hither all ye graces, all ye loves, hither all ye hours resort, billing sparrows, cooing doves, come all the train of Venus’ court! and, finally, Sing, sing, sing and spread the joyful news around! The Queen of Love is Queen of Beauty crowned!
The Judgment of Paris
Peter Lynan
The Judgment of Paris
In the summer of 1740, Thomas Arne’s masque Alfred was first performed, at Clivedon House, for the birthday celebrations of the infant Augusta, daughter of the Prince of Wales. Also performed on that same occasion was a companion piece, The Judgment of Paris, a setting by Giuseppe Sammartini (1695–1750), music master in the prince’s household, of the well-known story of godly rivalry that, in Greek mythology, had been one of the key events leading up to the Trojan War. Sammartini had chosen to set a text by William Congreve (1670–1729), one of the leading playwrights of the previous generation, and his masque seems to have been part of wider and renewed interest in Congreve’s work at this time. Sammartini’s piece evidently caught the attention of Arne, whose own setting of the same text was performed just two years later at the Drury Lane theatre, and perhaps also of Handel, whose oratorio Semele soon followed, in 1744. Semele put to good use the fine libretto originally written by Congreve for an earlier opera of the same title that had been composed by John Eccles but which, regrettably, had never been performed. If Handel’s Semele—albeit in the guise of a theatre oratorio, given without action—sought somehow to atone for Eccles’s ambitious but unrealized attempt to demonstrate the viability of full-length opera in English, then of Arne too it might be suggested that, in the face of the predominant enthusiasm among the concert-going public for Italian opera seria, he took inspiration for his Judgment of Paris from earlier efforts to establish all-sung native music drama.
Some forty years earlier, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the prospect for all-sung opera in English was bleak. So-called ‘semi-opera’, mixing music and spoken sections, had for various reasons—not the least of them financial constraints—been the only viable form of opera to achieve any real public success, but even this had stood on somewhat shaky ground, and the early death in 1695 of Henry Purcell, its greatest exponent, left a significant void. Imaginatively seizing the initiative, and not without some considerable belief in the worthiness of their aim, a group of aristocratic opera enthusiasts, led by Lord Halifax, set out to inspire the re-birth of English opera. Their bold idea was to hold a public competition for an all-sung dramatic work, offering prizes for the best compositions, and this they formally announced in March 1700. For a libretto, they had naturally looked to procure the work of a first-rate dramatist, and so it was that those musicians who sought further information, as directed by the notice which had been placed in the London Gazette, found themselves tasked with setting Congreve’s The Judgment of Paris, which had been written specially for the purpose. The plan was that the new compositions should be judged on merit, and the hope was that the enterprise would encourage others and thus help save English opera from its decrepit state. Four submissions were selected, by John Weldon (the eventual winner), Daniel Purcell, Gottfried Finger, and Eccles, and the subsequent contest—with each work performed first on separate occasions in the spring of 1701 and then, a few weeks later, all four of them together—was a celebrated affair that did indeed generate considerable interest even if it largely failed in its objective to kick-start any significant and lasting pursuit of English opera.
Quite how much of this would have been familiar to Arne is difficult to say, but it seems likely that those qualities of Congreve’s libretto which must have attracted the original competitors would also have appealed strongly to Arne, whose reputation as a leading theatre composer was by 1742 well on the way to being established. The contest between the goddesses Pallas, Juno, and Venus, to determine which of them is the fairest and thus the winner of the golden apple, was an apposite choice of subject for musical setting, for not only did it mirror the real-world musical contest of 1701 but it also supplied ample opportunity for deft and contrasting characterization, engendering various moods including the heroic, the sentimental, and the comedic. For a composer such as Arne, responsive to dramatic possibility and able to bring to it his expertise in that specifically English form of musical entertainment the masque, as well as his awareness of the latest Italian music, the draw of the libretto is clear.
The Judgment of Paris is a pastoral entertainment rather than a full-blown opera, and within its relatively short span there is little that could be construed as dramatic in the most obvious sense. The messenger god Mercury appears to the unwitting shepherd Paris and invites him to declare which of the three goddesses is the most beautiful. There follows a shameless display of conceit, bribery and allure as Juno, Pallas, and Venus jostle to outdo one another to win Paris’s nomination. What dramatic elements there are derive from the clever interplay between the characters, and in particular among the godly trio whose preening and one-upmanship are skilfully conveyed by Arne with subtlety and humour. Arne makes the most of the text-setting opportunities. While Juno tries to sway Paris with a guarantee of earthly kingship, Pallas promises him heroic success, yielding an injection of militaristic colour that is striking in the pastoral setting. Both are a telling foil for Venus’s more seductive (and ultimately irresistible) guarantee of love. Through an attractive sequence of recitative, air, and chorus, alluding to both the English bucolic and the Italian opera, Arne sensitively guides the contest to its inevitable conclusion.
As originally published about 1745, and only partially surviving in manuscript, Arne’s Judgment of Paris lacks its secco recitatives and most of the material to be sung by the chorus. In this performance, the modern edition published by Musica Britannica is used, incorporating reconstructions by Ian Spink of the missing music along lines intended to be faithful to the spirit of Arne’s enchanting setting.
...as delightful and diversely entertaining as eighteenth-century opera, in its more modest guises, was always intended to be.
TLS, 29 July 2016 TLS, 29 July 2016
Berlioz kept Gluck’s tragic operas in mind when conceiving of the raw emotional power he felt musical theatre should be able to draw on, and Gluck’s reputation as the composer of focused tragic emotion owes a good deal to Berlioz’s championing of him. One often forgets, however, that the majority of Gluck’s operas were often rather slight works that adhered faithfully to eighteenth-century norms.
One of these is Philemon and Baucis, written to celebrate the wedding of the young Duke Ferdinand in 1769. It’s a light but skilfully rendered pastoral based on Ovid’s tale of how a married couple’s faithful love and acceptance of their modest fate finds approval and reward from Jupiter. Gluck’s touch is gentle save for Baucis’s aria in praise of her husband, in which the flighty coloratura of the soprano part is set in relief by some fearsome string writing, backed up with oboes and horns and whose representation of composed femininity unravelling itself in a whirlwind of passion rather prefigures Béatrice’s “Il m’en souvient”.
Ovid’s lovers turn into yew trees which, in Swift’s poem on the subject, find themselves flourishing in an English country churchyard. Gluck’s rarely heard pastoral is performed among the flourishing yews of the garden of Bampton Deanery, with Swift’s avian name- sakes darting and diving around. If that sounds idyllic it’s because Bampton Classical Opera, founded in 1993 for the performance of rarely-heard eighteenth-century operas, remains both as true to its small-scale ambitions and as delightful as country opera can be.
Baucis and its partner piece, Arne’s masque setting of Congreve’s libretto, The Judgement of Paris (in the Musica Britannica edition with reconstructions by the late Ian Spink), are here updated to the environs of a budget airline (“Arne Air”) by the company’s co-founder Jeremy Gray. It works well enough for the Gluck, even better for the Arne, where the three goddesses are cabin crew. Pallas is dressed in Virgin red while Venus’s suit to win the golden apple (a limited edition iPod) is secured with a protracted visit to the mile-high club.
With some fine singing and exemplary comic acting by the soloists (notably Barbara Cole Walton’s Baucis/Juno, Aoife O’Sullivan’s Venus and Christopher Turner’s winning Jupiter/Paris), and sensitive, unfussy accompaniment from a scratch band, under the unflappable guiding baton of Paul Wingfield, the evening is as delightful and diversely entertaining as eighteenth-century opera, in its more modest guises, was always intended to be.
Guy Dammann
... refreshing and rewarding
Opera September 2016
It might seem risky staging an opera with a significant storm aria in a garden at the height of an English summer, and asking for trouble to set that opera in an airport arrivals terminal when RAF Brize Norton lies just a couple of kilometres to the north. But the sun shone over Bampton Classical Opera’s double bill of ‘divine comedies’ and a low-level flypast added to the ironic wit of the production.
As a long-term employee of the Habsburgs, Gluck was required to devise entertainments for festive occasions, and Philemon and Baucis formed part of the extensive celebrations for the wedding of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, and Maria Amalia, Archduchess of Austria in 1769. It tells the story of a shepherd and shepherdess who show great respect and care for Jupiter when he appears before them disguised as a pilgrim. In return, they are blessed by him with everlasting life and elevated to the status of demigods.
Shepherd and shepherdesses being in short supply these days, in Jeremy Gray’s production Jupiter was greeted at Phrygia airport’s immigration desk by Philemon (Catherine Backhouse) while Baucis (Barbara Cole Walton) cleaned up tourists’ debris. Weighed down by his guitar, irritated by disrespectful fellow passengers and disgruntled that Arne Airways (‘the low-cost airline – no frills, plenty of trills!’) hadn’t upgraded him from economy, the grungy Jupiter (Christopher Turner) was eventually placated by the dulcet duetting of Backhouse and Cole Walton – and tea and biscuits. Backhouses’s rich-toned mezzo blended well with the charming brightness of Cole Walton’s soprano, and the latter was stunning in her bravura coloratura aria, ‘You are my shepherd and lover’ (translation by Gilly French), which climbed higher and higher as if in search of a peak that would do justice to the intensity of her passion. I don’t know what pitch Cole Walton reached but she walked the stratospheric tightrope with astonishing ease.
Determined to officiate at the forthcoming nuptials, Jupiter revealed his true identity, donned a gold cloak and turned the multi-faith chapel into a ‘Templvm’. But the god’s good humour didn’t last long and Turner’s powerful aria di furia triggered a thunderous storm-sequence. Vigorous fanning and a fire-extinguisher eventually quelled Jupiter’s anger and as the tempest subsided the wedding guests ditched their brollies and pac-a-macs, and held a giant-Toblerone arch over the nuptial pair.
Turner found himself downgraded to mortality in Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris and commanded by Robert Anthony Gardiner’s authoritative Mercury – an Arne Air pilot – to serve as adjudicator of the divinities’ beauty contest and award a golden ‘apple’ to the victor. First performed in London in 1742, the masque was previously semi-staged by Bampton in 2010, and it formed a good companion piece to Gluck’s opera, taking us from the terminus to the aeroplane as Paris battled his way through security red-tape to enter heavenly realms. The airline safety instruction routine provided the three celestial air hostesses with an opportunity to catch their VIP passenger’s eye before each in turn displayed their vocal prowess. Following Cole Walton’s vivacious declaration of her pre-eminence as Juno, wife of Jupiter, the red-uniformed Pallas Athena (Backhouse) launched into a vigorous martial air, ‘The glorious voice of war calls’, which triggered stormy turbulence. The crew dragged down oxygen masks, Paris clutched a sick-bag while the Mechanic (Robert Gildon) guided the plane through the hurly-burley – but Pallas sang on. Backhouse’s vocal antics might have presumed to have triumphed but Aoife O’Sullivan’s Venus had other ideas: her suave aria lured Paris into the aircraft toilet and when she emerged she was clutching her prize – an iPhone.
The orchestra, conducted by Paul Wingfield, captured both the charming simplicity of these two scores and their expressive details – Gluck’s pizzicato dance, the elegant cello obbligato of Venus’s conquering ‘Gentle swain! Hither turn thee’.
Once again, Bampton Classical Opera showed real commitment to these little-known works, confirming that with invention and sincerity much can be made from fairly small musical and material beginnings. These two productions combined sweet romance and comic capers with a healthy dose or irreverent Classicism: the results were refreshing and rewarding.
Claire Seymour
...an ear for young voices
The Times 14 September 2016
In the early 1990s Jeremy Gray and Gilly French formed a company to perform 18th-century operas in their Oxfordshire village. Two dozen masques, serenatas and singspiels later, Bampton Classical Opera is thriving on a diet of pretty rarities and footnote works.
Shades of Scooch’s ill-fated 2007 Eurovision entry, Flying the Flag (For You), idled in a holding pattern over Gray’s thrifty double bill of Philemon and Baucis and The Judgment of Paris. Plastic walls, modular seating, an interfaith chapel and an advertisement for Arne Air (“No frills/Plenty of trills”) placed Gluck’s 1769 opera in a budget airline lounge.
Jupiter (Christopher Turner) was flying incognito, disguised as a backpacker. Philemon (Catherine Backhouse) was a passport control officer, and his beloved Baucis (Barbara Cole Walton) a cleaner. The rest of the company, including the scene-stealing Niamh Adams as a sulky tweenager, doubled as tourists and security staff.
French’s English translation mixes Georgian versification — including a chunk of Wesley — with cosy quips about duty-free. The score, played with ramshackle vivacity by Chroma under Paul Wingfield, is lemon-sweet; cushioned by pizzicato strings and giddy flutes, and gilded with stratospheric coloratura for Cole Walton’s helium-high soprano.
Backhouse’s cherry-bright mezzo showed immense promise, while Turner displayed a firm, juicy, stylish tenor in Jupiter’s tantrums and, later, in Paris’s O Ravishing Delight. Arne’s 1740 comedy of female vanity and male stupidity played out on a bumpy flight, with Venus (Aoife O’Sullivan), Juno (Cole Walton) and Pallas (Backhouse) as stewardesses, the last in Virgin red (ha ha). The golden apple was an iPod (ho ho).
O’Sullivan’s pregnant goddess smooched and smouldered irresistibly over a delicate cello obbligato in Hither turn thee, gentle Swain, claiming her prize of a knee-trembler with Paris in the loo. Production values are low, but Bampton understands the British sense of humour, and Gray and French have an ear for young voices.
Anna Picard
Rare operas given the knockabout comedy treatment
Evening Standard 14 September 2016
To say that Gluck’s Philemon and Baucis (dating from 1769) and Thomas Arne’s The Judgement of Paris (1742) are rare would be a gross understatement. Both operas last less than an hour, both relate an allegory from classical culture that would have made sense to an 18th-century audience but which barely resonates today.
Opting to present them as knockabout comedy, and using more or less the same set for each, Jeremy Gray’s production for Bampton Classical Opera located the Gluck in an airport terminal and the Arne on a budget airline flight.
The young, fresh voiced cast coped equally well with the taxing vocal lines and the broad humour, which centred on the incongruity of doing mundane modern things – stamping passports, duty-free shopping – while telling ancient stories about gods and mortals.
The star of the show was Christopher Turner, as an alternately wrathful and beneficent Jupiter in Gluck, and as Paris in the Arne, his golden apple a gilded iPod (Apple: geddit?).
Nick Kimberley
... a healthy dose of insouciance
Opera Today 15 September 2016
Bampton Classical Opera’s 2016 double-bill ‘touched down’ at St John’s Smith Square last night, following performances in The Deanery Garden at Bampton and The Orangery of Westonbirt School earlier this summer.
With characteristic ingenuity and wit, the company presented two little-known but musically rewarding operas, each under an hour in length, in which meetings between mortals and deities give rise to conflict and confusion but conclude, inevitably, with Love triumphant. Bampton director Jeremy Gray has treated these classical allegories with a healthy dose of insouciance. And, with so much to-ing and fro-ing between earthly and celestial realms, where better to set the action than a terrestrial portal - an airport arrivals lounge - and an airplane in transit to the heavens. At Bampton in July, RAF Brize Norton had contributed some all too realistic supplementary sound effects, but we were safe from unscheduled flypasts inside St John’s and the Corinthian columns of the nave provided an appropriately classical ambience.
Gluck composed Philémon e Baucis in 1769 for the extended festivities which accompanied the marriage of his long-term Hapsburg employer Ferdinand, Duke of Parma (who was the grandson of Louis XV of France) and Maria Amalia, Archduchess of Austria, the sister of Marie Antoinette. The myth tells of two young lovers, the eponymous shepherd and shepherdess, who show great respect and care for the god Jupiter when he appears before them disguised as a pilgrim. In return, the rustic couple are blessed by Jupiter with everlasting life and elevated to the status of demigods. At the same time, he curses their fellow Phrygians who had refused to help him.
In Gray’s neat and natty production, Philemon (mezzo Catherine Backhouse) and Baucis (soprano Barbara Cole Walton) have cast aside their shepherds’ smocks and crooks for an immigration officer’s uniform and cleaner’s mop respectively. Last through customs is a scruffy, irascible Jupiter (tenor Christopher Turner) who wastes no time in making clear his displeasure at having to travel in economy, and his disgruntlement with the failure of Arne Airways (‘the low-cost airline - no frills, plenty of trills!’) to offer him some complementary champagne.
Fortunately, the musical musings of the two lovers are sufficiently dulcet to sweeten the tetchy deity’s mood - he is even inspired by Philemon’s melodious strain to take up his guitar and strum a gentle accompaniment - and tea and biscuits prove an effective substitute for Dom Perignon.
Backhouse’s mezzo was rich and vibrant, full of character and expressively phrased. It’s a lovely clean sound and blended perfectly with Cole Walton’s crystalline soprano in the roulades of thirds and sixths which spun deliciously in their duets. Both singers acted well: their joyful smiles and affectionate teasing conveyed an innocent wonder that they had been so lucky in love. And, Cole Walton wowed in her florid coloratura aria, ‘You are my shepherd and lover’, by climbing to heights which I had thought were beyond the reach of human voice (top G?). She leapt and glided into dog whistle territory without the slightest hint of strain, as if propelled ever higher by infinite ardour and delight; the intonation was spot on and the tone pleasing as she slithered and curled back down again. Stunning!
Christopher Turner was fittingly snappish and petulant as the peeved god, but puffed up proudly with gilded self-importance when revealing his true identity to the lesser mortals. Turner’s tenor is a versatile instrument and his diction was excellent (though we were, helpfully, given a copy of Gilly French’s pithy translation).
Bampton’s trademark visual gags and irony were present in abundance. An air-traffic controller in high-vis vest semaphored the plane across the runway to the overture’s perky rhythms. A sign warned against sleeping in the multi-faith chapel before the latter was transformed by Jupiter into a ‘Templvm’; giant Toblerones grabbed from the duty-free shop by the returning travellers’ chorus (soprano Aoife O’Sullivan, tenor Robert Anthony Gardiner and baritone Robert Gildon) formed a perfect nuptial arch to frame the married couple. Turner’s impressively authoritative aria di furia prompted a clamorous storm sequence and both raging god and thunder were calmed only after extensive, robust fanning, umbrella twirling and a cooling spray from a fire-extinguisher. There was some minor ‘funny business’ and mime during the instrumental episodes which did not feel entirely natural or necessary, but I suppose there was a need to invent ‘activity’ to keep the visual drama running.
Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris, which Bampton first performed during the 2010-11 season was first performed in London on 12 March 1742, and it has been suggested that it may have been intended to upstage Sammartini, the protégé of Frederick the Prince of Wales, for the Italian’s own The Judgment of Paris had been performed at Cliveden in 1740 alongside Arne’s masque, Alfred.
William Congreve’s droll libretto relates the episode in which Paris, a shepherd, is obliged to choose the fairest among the three goddesses, Juno, Pallas and Venus. During the competition, Paris finds himself the subject of various enticements as the goddesses attempt to persuade him in turn to award them the symbol of victory, a golden apple. Far from displaying bucolic gaucheness, Paris demonstrates unanticipated wile in delaying his judgement for long enough to incite the impatient goddess into singing several arias and engaging in a degree of disrobing. Just how is a director to treat Paris’s line, ‘When each is undrest, I’ll judge of the best’?
Demoted from omniscience to mortality, Turner again impressed as the vacillating protagonist who - clearly a flying-phobic - was escorted through security by a smooth-voiced Mercury (Robert Anthony Gardiner), an Arne Air pilot, and charged with the task of deciding which of the three air hostesses deserved the prize - a golden i-Apple. The cast relished the easy melodiousness of Arne’s vocal lines and at St John’s I was able to appreciate even more than in the open-air acoustic at Bampton the instrumental invention evident in the accompaniments, which are often quite light in texture and make beguiling use of obliggato instruments. There was some fine playing by the members of CHROMA, by turns animated and expressive, always lucid. Paul Wingfield conducted with alertness and sensitivity - all the more impressive given that he couldn’t actually see his singers.
Soprano Aoife O’Sullivan was excellent as the lewd and lustful Venus. The fact that O’Sullivan is seven-months pregnant added a further dash of drollery; and it perhaps wasn’t fanciful to imagine that the hormones also furnished her wonderfully glossy soprano with even more shine. O’Sullivan produced an easy, full tone, and the high-lying lines were attractive of tone and purposefully shaped. When Venus’s charming aria, ‘Stay, lovely Youth’, enticed the bewildered Paris into the passenger toilet, the rival hostesses knew all was lost.
Movement director Triona Adams and Gray have crafted some waggish and witty routines. Who knew that aircraft safety paraphernalia - seat-belts, whistles, life jackets and the like - had such erotic potential? Paris’s air-sickness during the storm whipped up by Pallas’s musical call-to-arms suggested that perhaps he wasn’t cut out to be a hero after all.
Staging opera at St John’s Smith Square is a tricky business: audience sight-lines are not good, the acoustic can be unhelpful, and where does one put the orchestra and conductor? (Behind the set, in this case.) This duo of divine comedies was not disadvantaged by the limitations of space and dimension, though; after the charming open-air of the Bampton Deanery Garden, it seemed to me that the more compact stage area actually helped to intensify the focus, particularly of the Gluck which is dramatically rather slight, sharpen the pacing and make for slicker comic capers. The clashing complementaries of the pink/green lighting scheme were also more vivid, set against the sombre, darker interior.
The Judgment of Paris ends with the proclamation of Victory: ‘The Queen of Love, is Queen of Beauty crown’d.’ Bampton Classical Opera certainly deserved a laurel crown of their own for this impudent duo of ‘divine comedies’.
Claire Seymour
...unquestionably a company triumph
Boulezian 18 September 2016
We have a great deal for which to be grateful to Bampton Classical Opera, here making its annual staged visit to St John’s, Smith Square. Who else is interested in this country is interested in the broader hinterland of opera in, roughly, the second half of the eighteenth century? Gluck, by any standards, one of the most important composers in the history of opera, not just eighteenth-century opera, is all but ignored by our ‘major’, non-touring companies, although English Touring Opera offered a fine Iphigénie en Tauride earlier this year. (I also plan to report from the new staging in Paris in December.) If ‘reformist’ Gluck is so shamefully ignored, however, his earlier and concurrent ‘non-reformist’ self suffers a fate worse still.
And yet, the dividing lines are not nearly so distinct as one might suspect. Filemone e Bauci, here sung in Gilly French’s English translation as Philemon and Baucis, was actually written as one act of a festa teatrale, La feste d’Apollo – not unlike a Ramellian opéra-ballet – whose final act was a revised (shortened) version of Orfeo ed Euridice. Intended for the 1769 wedding of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, to Maria Theresa’s daughter, Maria Amalia, there was a rich, personal operatic past on which to draw, the Archduchess herself having sung in Viennese performances of two earlier Gluck operas, Il parnaso confuso (performed by Bampton forces in 2014) (as Apollo himself), and La corona. Gluck, moreover, for all the alleged purity of his operatic æsthetic, was far from averse to reusing music elsewhere, and there is some splendidly insane coloratura to be handled here too, no more banished to the dustbin of operatic history than a good number of other aspects of Metastasian opera seria. That La feste d’Apollo immediately followed Alceste – of the celebrated Preface – counsels us against parroting too readily all manner of supposed generalisations, turning points, and so forth, concerning operatic history. That said, whilst Bauci’s one aria offers us coloratura to make the Queen of the Night seem almost an amateur, the rest of Gluck’s style here is relatively simple. As so often, the truth is more interesting, more complicated, than received opinion would have us believe. We might know that in theory, of course, but we also need opportunities to experience that in performance, such as here.
It is not, perhaps, the most dramatic of works, certainly of libretti, but Giuseppe Maria Pagnini’s libretto, after Ovid, makes certain interesting modifications – I hesitate to say ‘metamorphoses’ – and Jeremy Gray’s production follows suit; both offer a setting for Gluck’s opera to shine forth, playing with the distance between antiquity, the eighteenth century and our time. Chez Pagnini, Philemon and Baucis – I shall now use the English forms – are not an elderly couple, but a pair of young lovers. They nevertheless show kindness beyond the call of duty towards the disguised Jupiter, and, following a storm of divine petulance, receive their priestly reward. Picking up on ideas of travel, disguise, and liminality, the action takes place – not didactically, but with an awareness of what a change of scene might do, to make us consider meaning – in the strange, modern world of the airport: not an uninteresting substitution for pastoral Phrygia. There can certainly be no doubting the helpfulness of these particular honest airline employees.
That is also the world, with different, yet related, designs for Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris, Arne Air (‘no frills, plenty of trills’) itself – perhaps – a disguised –version of something else. The work is a little earlier than many, though by no means all, of Bampton’s works. To begin with, I even thought that Arne’s 1742 setting of William Congreve’s competition-entry libretto (1701) might have the edge over Gluck’s. It was a splendid opportunity to hear such a rarity, of course, but, as time went on, and with no disrespect to Ian Spink’s excellent Musica Britannica reconstruction of the dry recitatives and chorus music, Arne’s music, superficially similar to Handel’s, became somewhat predictable and perhaps stood in need of the occasional cut to admit of dramatic flow: quite the opposite, then, to Gluck, whose virtues, as so often, quietly crept up upon us. The witty presentation of Paris making his judg(e)ment as a passenger upon divinely-conjured air hostesses again has the virtue of permitting reflection, without forcing it upon us. Jupiter may be absent in person, but his messenger, Mercury again offers another lightly worn connection between works.
The playing of CHROMA, under Paul Wingfield, proved excellent throughout. We may have come to expect that, but it is certainly not to be taken for granted. From the typically contrasting material – and its dramatic implications – of Gluck’s Overture to the final Arne chorus we were not only in safe, but colourful, harmonically aware hands, well capable of permitting the operatic action to ‘Sing, and spread the joyful News around’. Barbara Cole Walton proved every inch the star with that fiendish coloratura writing from Gluck. As Arne’s Juno, she took her part in an excellent team of competitors, her Juno complementing and contrasting with Catherine Backhouse’s wise, yet far from un-sensual Pallas, also a rich-toned, good-natured Philemon, and Aoife O’Sullivan’s spirited, highly characterful Venus. Christopher Turner’s Paris (and Jupiter) revealed to us a sensitive, agile tenor: many challenges here, met with formidable success. Robert Anthony Gardiner’s Mercury also impressed, with similar vocal virtues, and a keen sense of the stage. Members of the ensemble all made their mark. This was unquestionably a company triumph; the next Bampton opera(s) is or are eagerly awaited.
Mark Berry
...much interest
MusicOMH.com 15 September 2016
Now in its twenty-fourth year, Bampton Classical Opera specialises in bringing seldom, if ever, performed eighteenth century operas back to life. Last year it presented Salieri’s La grotta di Trofonio, a 1785 work that proved Mozart learnt as much from the older composer as vice versa, and since July 2016 it has been touring a double bill of rarities by Gluck and Arne under the title of Divine Comedies.
Director of productions, Jeremy Gray, very much believes that it is necessary to breathe new life into works such as these in order to justify their resurrection. In this instance, however, his decision on precisely how to update them was also dictated by one specific factor. While the final performance took place in St John’s, Smith Square, earlier ones were held outdoors where it was impossible to include the type of mechanisms needed to see Jupiter descend from the heavens, as the first opera requires. Setting the operas in an airport therefore enabled him to arrive from the skies without utilising a single wire, but this was not the only reason why such a location worked so well. Airports can carry an air of glamour and decadence on the one hand, in keeping with occasions in both operas when characters are pampered, but also reveal a cross-section of figures from cleaners to VIPs, thus enabling the hierarchies inherent in the plots to come to the fore.
Gluck’s Philemon and Baucis (1769) was written for the wedding of Duke Ferdinand, grandson of Louis XV, and Maria Amalia, sister of Marie Antoinette. It sees Jupiter descend from the heavens incognito, in order to test his subjects’ generosity and, after receiving selfless hospitality from two humble lovers, Philemon and Baucis, makes them custodians of his temple so that they may live among the demigods. The flimsy plot is quite typical of many short eighteenth century French operas (and ballets) where the aim was to provide courtly entertainment, but this presentation certainly handed the piece much interest. It was set in an airport arrival lounge and, although the performance was technically semi-staged, it featured full costumes and a substantial set that stood in front of the orchestra.
The Overture featured an air traffic controller on the runway signalling in time to the beautiful music. This not only added visual interest, but made us appreciate the poetry in the movement of his arms as they carried out what would normally be a functional activity. Then in the opera we were introduced to a whole cross-section of society as Philemon became a customs official and Baucis a cleaner, and stewardesses, tourists and travellers (who wheeled their suitcases in choreographed movements) appeared. There were also a host of lovely touches so that when Philemon and Baucis, in their eagerness to serve, offered Jupiter refreshment they directed him towards the Duty Free.
The plot feels quite weak, because the point is that Jupiter has roamed Phrygia encountering selfish people before coming across Philemon and Baucis, but he only reports his treatment at others’ hands so that this pair are the first humans that we really see him come across. As a result, it is hard for us to hook onto the idea that they are the exception to what he has seen, and, by the same token, this makes his subsequent anger at the rest of the community feel strange because to us he seems to suddenly and arbitrarily snap into a rage. In spite of this, however, atmosphere was maintained through effective alterations in lighting, as well as by the costumes and, of course, music.
While Philemon and Baucis featured a translation from Gilly French, Thomas Arne’s The Judgment of Paris (1742), which describes the contest in which the shepherd judges Venus to be the most beautiful goddess, was in English to begin with. Arne set this second opera to a pre-existing libretto by William Congreve, and, as staged, the two together told of the journey from the airport’s arrivals area through Duty Free and the departure lounge to a plane in the sky. Thus The Judgment of Paris began at departures, and saw Mercury as a pilot inviting Paris to present the golden apple (here an Apple iPhone!) to whoever he judged to be the fairest. After feeling petrified at the prospect, Paris signalled his decision to accept the challenge by plucking up the courage to pass through the metal detector, thus enabling him to board the plane where the contest was to take place.
Once in the air, Paris was tended to and treated like a VIP by the three goddesses – Juno, Pallas and Venus – who were dressed as stewardesses, and who wooed him while acting out the standard safety procedures with their arms. When Pallas sang everyone strapped themselves into their seats as if the plane was encountering some turbulent weather, in keeping with her cry of ‘the glorious voice of War’ and the related ‘stormy’ music. When Paris finally selected Venus they found just a little privacy in the plane’s toilet cubicle!
Paul Wingfield conducted the chamber ensemble CHROMA superbly while the cast, which included Robert Anthony Gardiner and Robert Gildon, was extremely strong. Special accolades should go to Barbara Cole Walton who demonstrated some exceptionally clean, skilful and sensitive coloratura as Baucis, Catherine Backhouse who displayed a rich mezzo-soprano as Philemon, Aoife O’Sullivan who was beautifully voiced and seductive as Venus, and Christopher Turner who revealed a very strong tenor and excellent presence as Jupiter and Paris.
Sam Smith
…a delightful evening – fun, inventive, with great ensemble singing and playing
Planet Hugill 15 September 2016
Bampton Classical Opera is known for its country-house performances of eighteenth-century rarities in Oxfordshire. This was the London outing (13 September 2016) of this summer’s offering and a rare chance to see a staged performance at St John’s Smith Square.
This evening paired two short works: first was Gluck’s Philemon and Baucis of 1767, set to a "somewhat undramatic" (according to the programme note) text by scholar Giuseppe Maria Pagnini, adapted and translated by Gilly French. For the second half we had Arne’s The Judgement of Paris, written around 1745 and set to a lively text by William Congreve. Performed by Catherine Backhouse, Barbara Cole Walton, Christopher Turner, Robert Anthony Gardiner and Aoife O’Sullivan in productions directed by Jeremy Gray. Paul Wingfield conducted the instrumental ensemble Chroma.
We were given a great deal of background in the programme booklet and in Jeremy Gray’s talk. It reminded us just how much energy and thought – and goodwill – goes into any opera performance. We also got a printed copy of the libretto – but in print too small to be read in good lighting, let alone in the dark at St John’s. Nevertheless the performance spoke for itself.
Both works are characterised by mythological settings and earthly dilemmas. Gray set them around a theme of air travel, which conveniently solved the problem of the deus ex machina. Where magical effects can’t be flown from above, we had a multi-faith chapel and a tiny plane loo. The set consisted of a series of flats on the diagonal: a local airport for the Gluck and the inside of a plane for the Arne. The 21-piece band, CHROMA, were behind, almost out of sight, and depended on a large monitor halfway down the audience seating (which I must say felt quite risky, though it worked out mostly OK).
The setting also gave a context for the dances and extended arias. Both works are somewhat slim plot-wise, but in both cases the music provides for rich characterisation: Gluck packs so much of what was to come later in his writing into his short piece, while very little of Arne’s work survives so we have no real way of knowing how it fits into the rest of his output.
Philemon and Baucis are living a simple life in Phrygia, working contentedly at the airport (ARNE AIR!), when in flies the spoilt god Jupiter. Grateful that the lovers were nice to him, he offers all sorts of riches that they turn down in favour of the status quo. Catherine Backhouse’s Philemon had some of the best lines – including rhyming “chocolate biscuit” with “I wouldn’t risk it” and diction generally was excellent (at least from the front seats). Barbara Cole Walton as Baucis had the show-stopping aria “You are my shepherd and lover” complete with spectacular top G’s (G in alt!) that seemed to cost her nothing. Jupiter was a far-flung role with high coloratura and going down into a baritone register. As well as the small chorus, there were some non-singing parts for push & pull, dances with wheeled suitcases as partners, and providing a sweet flower-girl charade in the final wedding scene.
It was very engaging and there were some clever solutions to the problems of staging the work. It felt like an after-dinner entertainment, though I was glad to have seen it inside rather than outside in daylight.
The Arne was an even more energetic affair, musically and staging-wise. The airport was turned into the inside of a plane and VIP traveller Paris had to choose between three goddesses, aka cabin crew in talons-out competition for the god’s attentions. Here Aoife O’Sullivan as Venus wove sinuously around Arne’s vocal line and Christopher Turner as Paris had an easier ride than with the Gluck (musically speaking; there was plenty of turbulence in the plane…). Mercury was Robert Anthony Gardiner, upstaged in his aria by Paris trying to get through the security arch without setting off the alarm, taking selfies and generally horsing around. Musically this felt safer: Arne’s muscular English rhythms must have been easier to hold together in these circumstances than Gluck’s distinctive moving blocks of sound.
All in all this was a delightful evening – fun, inventive, with great ensemble singing and playing from a hugely talented and well-matched team who seemed to be having as much fun as we were.
Ruth Hansford
