Strauss : Daphne
Men's Chorus of La Monnaie
Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie
Lothar Koenig
Every Strauss lover worth his or her salt will know the last ten minutes of this opera, one of Strauss's most beautiful paeans for soprano and orchestra, but as for the rest of it...? That is the advantage of these centenary celebrations (or 150th, in Strauss's case), that the rarer works get exhumed and, if you're lucky, get the sort of outing that makes you wonder why you don't get to hear the rest of it more often. At any rate, when I realised that timing permitted an opportunity to hear Daphne on a passage through Brussels, I jumped at it, and it was well worth the effort.
Guy Joosten's production is a bit strange, on the surface, although the setting is extremely striking. A large central staircase splits to right and left at 1st floor height, but through the structure at the rear grows an enormous tree, kind of an Yggdrasil, perched in which we see Daphne for the first time, apparently, at initial glance, your original tree-hugging hippy. Shortly thereafter, however, as the floor area fills with grey suits, and stock market figures dance across the background, she comes across more as an emo grunge teenager, against everything her (admittedly dipsomaniac) parents stand for just as a matter of principle, never mind genuine conviction.
It's a little hard to reconcile the Dionysiac/Apollonian argument that remains central to this opera with this setting, but Daphne's sense of betrayal as first her childhood friend Leukippos, and then the enthralling stranger Apollo attempt to seduce her, when she does not feel remotely ready, much less inclined, for that kind of interaction, still comes across extremely clearly. In the end, rather than transforming into her own tree, Daphne becomes one with the world-tree, as it burns and then re-flowers, and however much of a trendy eco-drama the production leans towards, nothing in it ultimately detracts from the ecstatic lyricism of the score.
The level of satisfaction might have been seriously weakened had the musical qualities been less sterling, but we were royally served tonight. The company's male chorus was strong and alert, the secondary roles sound. Gaea (Daphne's mother) is one of the rare true contralto roles in opera, and was reliably sung by Birgit Remmert, while her husband Peneios was given a sonorous performance by Iain Paterson.
It's maybe apocryphal, but Strauss was supposedly not a fan of the tenor voice, yet there are two here, both very important, and who need to be distinctly identifiable from each other. Leukippos, the childhood friend hoping to become something more, is the higher, sharper voice, tonight sung by the Danish tenor Peter Lodahl. I found him a bit petulant in his first scene, but in the confrontation with Apollo he came into his own.
Apollo, on the other hand, is a helden, like Bacchus in Ariadne, and it was a real pleasure to hear Eric Cutler's bright, confident, ringing tone here, never strained. His voice has evolved very considerably over the years, and it's good to find him so sure in an area where reliable tenors can be a bit of a rarity. Sally Matthews sang the title role with equal surety, a little vibrato-heavy to begin with, but it became less obtrusive very quickly. Her voice is more dramatic than ethereal, but never too heavy or cumbersome for the part, and the Verwandlung was as magical as could be desired at the end.
However, Daphne relies extremely heavily on the orchestral component. For those who don't know, La Monnaie was Antonio Pappano's fief before he came to Covent Garden, and it's high time the company put some effort into finding another Music Director of comparable quality. With all due respect to Lothar Koenig (who is not the current MD, and who did a remarkable job, let's be clear about that), the orchestra has several decidedly rough edges; split horn notes, some sour tuning from the winds right at the start, and that final shimmer of twittering strings not completely together. Hearing Koenig able to draw the enchantment he did from the material to hand, it makes you long for what could have been achieved had the orchestra been better conditioned even before he got his hands on it for these performances. La Monnaie remains one of Europe's most innovative and interesting opera companies, and the chorus is clearly in excellent shape, but it deserves an orchestra to support such good work. Nevertheless, this was an enthralling performance, with Cutler and Matthews vocally giving their all, and admirably supported by Koenig.
[Next : 4th October]
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