Janos Gereben:

>Though I saw the final performance of the first run (is it possible
>this wonderful and oh so French opera (ok, he's Czech, and apparently
>wrote it in Czech, from a French play, and it premiered in Prague in
>1938, but it's sooooooo French) has never heretofore been produced
>at the French Opera???  They say it is now "in the repertoire", so
>with luck others will have the opportunity to see this production.
>A gem, overlooked, and ready to be rediscovered, say I.

Definitely.  The Czech version is available on CD and sounds great.
Georges Neveux's original play (1930) was in French, of course, and
Martinu translated it as he went along, with the author's consent.

I also saw the Paris production.  First and foremost was the music
itself from the orchestra pit, rich, detailed and beautiful, permeating
the action, or discreetly creating the background to the action.  I admit
to making it my 'foreground'...  Alexia Cousin's Juliet was perfect - I
can quibble about others, especially in comparison to my Supraphon disc,
but I won't because all was fine - except, at least in my opinion and
I'm sorry, except what Janos so much admired - the staging, the set and
the costumes.  'De gustibus'...  once again.

The idea, I imagine, was for sets and costumes to be in shades of grey
in the limbo of wishful dreams and forgetfulness, the unreal world between
dream and reality that Michel, the 'hero', wanted to integrate to be
with his Juliet, knowing that if he did so he would no longer have any
grasp on the notion of the real and the unreal, or even on his own and
Juliet's very existence, and no control over the floating, elusive
relationship between them...  Prosaically, however, the producer and
designer seem to have forgotten about the symbols of the port and the
sails and the voyage, forgotten about the longing and the illusory, and,
maybe as the play is French (they are not), they have shut this strange
world inside the cliche of a piano-accordion, playing on its exterior,
keys, buttons and all (noteless), for the questing-Michel scenes, and
its interior for Martinu's beautiful, moving second act.  The different
views of the accordion created as praticable scenery and front/ back-drops
were hideously (sorry!) real, marble grey, and boring, all corners and
squat, far from the very notion of dream and surrealism...  or even
surrealistic bureaucracy...  (imha).

I am still so glad I saw it...  for the music and for the experience.
I wonder what Janos or others thought of the hall-lights coming on after
the action but during the music at the end of the second act, and also
during the third act apparently to symbolise Michel's hesitations...
Sorry.  I'm about to be critical again...  ;-)

Regards,

Christine Labroche