Five-star feminist reimagining of Pelléas et Mélisande at Aix-en-Provence festival

After the men had their say in Aix-en-Provence’s first two premieres this year, it was the women’s turn. Katie Mitchell’s 2016 production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande read at the time as a vehicle for star soprano Barbara Hannigan. This year’s revival boasts a new cast and a new conductor, and seems to have gained breadth and balance as a result.

Conductor Susanna Mälkki brings a selfless musicality and vision to the podium that recalls Bernard Haitink — control without ego, and a combination of lush fluidity with structural rigour that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Hers is unquestionably the finest opera conducting of this year’s festival, and the orchestra of the Lyon Opera plays ravishingly well for her. By telling the story as Mélisande’s dream, Mitchell gives the lost princess a second chance; at the end, when we return to the post-wedding hotel room into which she has locked herself, she has her suitcase packed for an escape.

Clever use of body doubles and Lizzie Clachan’s eloquent, shape-shifting sets add to the Jungian fever-dream of Pelléas and his dysfunctional family. Chiara Skerath, replacing Julia Bullock at comparatively short notice as Mélisande, delivers a flawless performance of glassy clarity and beautiful ambiguity; Laurent Naouri is still the definitive Golaud of our time, all dark threat and half-repressed violence. Huw Montague Rendall’s Pelléas is a wounded anti-hero, but his final impassioned declarations of love are all the more powerful as a consequence. Emma Fekete makes a surprising Yniold, here a gangly teenaged girl traumatised by her disordered upbringing; when Golaud becomes her abuser, it rings hideously true.

★★★★★

Puccini is one of festival director Pierre Audi’s innovations, having never featured here before he took the helm. So Madama Butterfly was a double premiere — both the first performance of German director Andrea Breth’s sober new staging and the opera’s first outing in Aix.

What would the feminist director have to say about this perfumed piece of submissive orientalism? In her essay for the programme, Breth comments on the notion of the outsider’s view. Puccini had never been to Japan; neither has she. The libretto, based on John Luther Long’s 1898 short story, tells of 15-year-old geisha Cio-Cio-San (“Butterfly”) who is sold off to American lieutenant Pinkerton in a sham wedding; for three years, she faithfully awaits his return, killing herself when he arrives with his American wife to reclaim their child. Butterfly is a caricature — a servile child-woman who gratefully renounces everything for her sacrificial, deluded love. Puccini milks her context for exoticism and pathos. What will Breth, master of detail and subversion, make of this?

By the interval, Breth has built up a startlingly conventional world of kimonos, sliding doors and moon-faced masks. Generally known for her refrigerators, slag-heaps, parallel narratives and abstraction, she surely has something drastic up her sleeve for the second half.

Except that she doesn’t. Breth’s staging in aggregate is a work of mediocre conservatism, with some unanswerable questions. Why is Butterfly’s child, traditionally played by a three-year-old actor, replaced with a cheap-looking baby doll, its thatch of blonde hair recalling the mummified mother in Psycho? Is this allegorical? Where is the much-vaunted reflection on the outsider’s gaze?

Ermonela Jaho gives her all to an overwrought account of the title role. She has the vocal range and technique to hit all the notes, but hers is not the kind of dramatic voice that is generally expected in this role. This is a pity, given she has to do most of the evening’s singing. Mihoko Fujimura gives an empathetic account of Suzuki, Butterfly’s loyal maid, while Adam Smith looks handsome but sounds strained as the dastardly Pinkerton. Conductor Daniele Rustioni keeps the pace brisk and unsentimental; under the circumstances, this is merciful.

Breth’s production fails where Mitchell’s succeeds, as a feminist reimagining of a classic work. To be fair, Mitchell had better material. Pelléas et Mélisande has layer upon layer of enigma; Madama Butterfly has none. A festival should be where risks are taken, and risks bring the chance of failure. Andrea Breth could have made a brilliant Butterfly. Perhaps one day she will. Until then, we have Mitchell and Mälkki to show us what is possible.

★★☆☆☆

festival-aix.com