Since its creation at the Paris Opera in 1931, Albéric Magnard’s masterpiece has never been performed again on a French stage. It is a pure gem that the Strasbourg Opera is resurrecting.
Living, isn’t that Guercœur’s obsession? Insensitive to the serenity that reigns in paradise, the hero implores the divinities Truth, Goodness, Beauty and Suffering to return him to his beloved Giselle, to his friend Heurtal, to his people whom he has freed from tyranny. Having tried in vain to make him listen to reason, the deities bowed. Guercœur wakes up on the land he left two years earlier, impatient to find everyone he loves. What does he discover? Giselle, who had sworn eternal loyalty to him, became Heurtal’s mistress and the latter, having denied their common ideals, will have himself proclaimed dictator. Murdered while trying to reason with the crowd, Gercœur is back in the celestial abode. Now stripped of its illusions, its shadow can rest in peace. “Pride has fled your soul,” Truth tells him. May hope remain there. One day, in the homeland and throughout the earth, the dream of your life must come true. »
Misunderstood idealism
Albéric Magnard’s lyrical tragedy, completed in 1894 but not performed until 1931, is a masterpiece of idealism. A self-portrait, a summary of his ideas, if not a hymn to hope. Acts I and III, more static and allegorical, are more delicate to stage than II, where earthly passions flare up. “Dream landscape”, notes Magnard for the stay of “chosen souls”? An eternal prison in the eyes of Christof Loy, materialized by a black and bare turntable. A scattered bouquet of plastic flowers and poor bistro chairs on which haggard silhouettes sit, when they are not trampling. As if frozen at the moment of their death, their outfits (military uniforms, bourgeois suit or simple dress, three-piece suit, etc.) place the intrigue between Magnard’s time and ours.
In II, we discover on the other side of the black wall, a white wall. And, between the two, a narrow corridor lined with a timeless rural landscape, which only passes through. The world before? Mystery. In front of the white wall, chairs lined up but not an accessory: Giselle and Heurtal copulate on the floor, she in a nightgown, he fully dressed. As for the people, who are agitated and struggling on the other side of the wall, they resemble like a brother to the wandering shadows, whose scenery they share. So life and death become one? Making the individuals killed by Heurtal’s henchmen stand up annihilates the bloody nature of this painting. It is not for nothing that Magnard accentuates its brutality and vulgarity (the rhyming chorus celebrating the despot’s victory is not far from aping Gustave Charpentier). In short, the show will hardly help the neophyte to penetrate the mysteries of the libretto. Was it the best choice for an almost unknown work?
A hero in his own right
The score, fortunately, does not lack assets to touch and convince. Especially when it is served, as here, by first-rate performers. In the overwhelming role of Guercœur, Stéphane Degout amazes us, once again, by the intensity and magnetism of the incarnation (his awakening in II, full of emotional sweetness, reconnects with that of the creator Endrèze!). The slightly scratchy shine of the timbre, the breath, the chiseledness of the word dig into every corner of the character: candor, doubt, pain, revolt, humility, resignation, appeasement, everything is there.
The pretty, slightly lunar soprano ofAntoinette Dennefeld embraces what makes Giselle’s character: her somewhat bland freshness, her artificial joys as if devitalized by guilt. D’Heurtal, the tenor Julien Henric has haughty bravery, vocal bite, and an imposing physical presence. Adriana Bignani Lescaa dark and scathing mezzo, depicts a Suffering of which the arrogance is an illusion: it will reveal itself as human as Goodness, to which Eugenie Joneau lends a warmer and softer mezzo, more immediately seductive. Like the character, again.
Temperaments and fever
Truth can count on the Wagnerian temperament of Catherine Hunold, who possesses the matriarchal authority of the first deity. Even if the line tends to break in the high register, the soprano delivers a magnificent prophecy in III: Magnard addresses us as if to demand from us an additional step, an effort towards good. Around Marie Lenormandtouching Shadow of a Woman, revolve two young artists from the Studio of the Opéra national du Rhin, Alysia Hanshaw And Glen Cunninghamwhich give presence and glamor to the Shadow of a Virgin and the Shadow of a Poet.
Much in demand in the opening acts, the Choir of the Opéra national du Rhin attests to its good health. Sometimes having him sing from the hearth exaggerates the distant effect and makes it quite frustrating. Ingo Metzmacher and the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, who carry this almost symphonic blaze at arm’s length, are not the last heroes of the evening. When Michel Plasson, on the record (Warner), languid or thickened the sound here and there out of greed, the German conductor spurs, sharpens, scathing when necessary, often throwing a bright light. He returns to Guercoeur of Magnard the fever of his idealism. And life.
Guercoeur by Magnard. Strasbourg, Opera, April 30. Performances until May 7. Then, at La Filature in Mulhouse, on May 26 and 28.
