Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

 

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/25-reasons-to-remain-confined-18118783683d

 

      Don’t believe you have to go to Paris, to the Old Opéra Garnier, to meet this Phantom. You can meet him in your living room, or even your kitchen, why not your bathroom. You can even be that phantom in your own home, but you have to bring the opera in your sitting room, drawing room, withdrawing room, or parlor, with cookies and tea, coffee, and brandy. Be aware that Detective William Murphy from Toronto finds coffee a lit bit bitter.

 

Two years ago, everyone would have told you it was impossible. What is supposed to be evanescent on a stage cannot and must not be watched over and over again in five or ten or even twenty various productions from all around the world “The evanescent has to remain evanescent,” the effete members of the cultivated jungle used to say, and strangely enough they still effetely say so. Once an effete Tarzoon, always an effete Tarzoon, though once a knight is enough.

 

It only took eighteen months of a pandemic for people to realize that they could have at the tip of their fingers on their remote control all the operas they wanted for something like 10% of an economical (vision poor and hearing so-so) ticket in the main opera houses in the world. And what’s more, you could have the DVD  for maybe 15% of the best seats in the main opera houses in the world, maybe even less (€22.50 versus €150), and for the same price you could watch it ten times if you wanted, or at least two or three times over two or three months and with a choice of five languages for the subtitles, or none.

 

You can thus get up in the morning with Georges Bizet’s Carmen, have breakfast with Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, go to work to all the arias of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Figaro’s Wedding, work all day singing The Nose by Dmitri Shostakovich in your head, go back home with the medieval Ludus Danielis, have supper accompanied by Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, spend the evening with some Fliegende Holländer by Richard Wagner, and finally go to bed rocked to sleep by Benjamin Britten’s Death in Venice, or if you prefer Quadrophenia by The Who.

 

The opera used to be a popular art in the simple forms of such shows up to the 18^th century, maybe slightly before. But opera houses started being built at the end of the 17^th century everywhere in the world, at least the western world, and many seats became very expensive, though the orchestra in the plain theater tradition remained without any seats at all, just standing all along and it meant cheap tickets, but even so, as soon as these big opera houses were built with the rich technological equipment for rigging and lights (even before electricity of course), prices went up. No danger for that type of misguided inflation with streaming or mechanical media that can provide the best digital sound and images.

 

So! Thanks, COVID-19, for this capital progress: the opera can become popular with everyone who has the means to receive the signal or read the mechanical digitalized media, meaning first of all electricity. The Sri Lankan government has just announced that by the end of the year every home should be able to have electricity. That will not kill live performances, but that will require live performances to really provide something original, dense, intense, and highly mesmerizing if not addicting.

 

But just as the radio, the record, the CD, and now streaming have not killed music concerts, far from it, the same means applied to theater and opera will not kill the Theater and the Opera, and at least it will enable millions of people who cannot go to the opera (too expensive or too far) or who want to see and listen to what was produced live a long time ago to have access to these forms of art that were always limited to very narrow audiences before streaming and the DVD, with only CDs and, before, records available.

 

I have collected here twenty-five documents on twenty-four operas. You will find first the twenty-five reviews in English with only the front sleeve pictures, and then the same twenty-five reviews in French with pictures from the shows themselves. The original language was English and despite all the care you can provide, the translation might have kept some imperfections. Please excuse the Artificial Intelligence that helped me translate and the translator himself who might have not seen all the necessary corrections, because an AI translating machine is far, very far, very immensely far from doing a good job, just average, not more than average. It requires a lot of proofreading. True enough translating 1,500 words with an AI translating machine will take about one hour (exclusively proofreading and correcting) instead of three or four hours from scratch. In fact, it might even be slightly faster than translating without the help of a machine to just plain write the review in the second language without translating, hence for scratch since it takes about one hour to write 1,500 words. Enjoy the trip.

 

Jacques COULARDEAU

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

1-         HANDEL – WIEN OPERNHAUS – AGRIPPINA – 2016-2018

2-         ALBAN BERG – LULU – MARC ALBRECHT – PATRICIA PETIBON – SALZBURG FESTIVAL – 2010

3-         PHILIP GLASS – THE PERFECT AMERICAN – TEATRO REAL MADRID – 2013

4-         CHRISTOPHER GLUCK – JOHN ELIOT GARDINER – ALCESTE – (1776)-2000-2002

5-         GLUCK – JOHN ELIOT GARDINER – ORFEO AND EURIDICE – (1774)-2000-2008

6-         GLUCK – MARK MINKOWSKI – IPHIGÉNIE EN AULIDE – (1774)-2011

7-         GLUCK – MARK MINKOWSKI – IPHIGÉNIE EN TAURIDE – (1779)-2011

8-         PHILIPPE JAROUSSKY  GLUCK: ORFEO ED EURIDICE (2CD)

9-         LEOS JANACEK – GLYNDEBOURNE – THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN – 2012-2013

10-       CLAUDE DE BUSSY – PIERRE BOULEZ – PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE – 1992-2002

11-       DEBUSSY – LAURENT PELLY – PELL2AS ET M2LISANDE – 2009

12-       JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU – LES PALADINS – WILLIAM CHRISTIE – (1757)-2004

13-       JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU – LES INDES GALANTES – WILLIAM CHRISTIE – (1735)-2005

14-       JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU – LES BORÉADES – WILLIAM CHRISTIE – (1763, never performed then)-2004.

15-       JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU – CASTOR ET POLLUX – CHRISTOPHE ROUSSET – (1737)-2008

16-       JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU – ZOROASTRE – CHRISTOPHE ROUSSET – (1749)-2007

17-       JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU – IN CONVERTENDO + HARPSICHORD MUSIC + DOCUMENTARY – WILLIAM CHRISTIE – (1710-1714/1751)-2006

18-       FRANZ SCHREKER – DIE GEZEICHNETEN – SALZBURGER FESTSPIELE – 2005

19-       SHOSTAKOVICH – LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK – GRAN TEATRE DEL LICEU – 2004

20-       ROYAL OPERA HOUSE – GIUSEPPE VERDI – SIMON BOCCANEGRA – PLACIDO DOMINGO – 2010

21-       XIAN XINGHAI – GUANG WEIRAN – YELLOW RIVER CANTATA – SHANGHAI PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA AND CHORUS - 1993

22-       BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMANN – DIE SOLDATEN – SALZBURGER FESTSPIELE – 2012

23-       MARCEL CAMUS – BLACK ORFEO – ORFEU NEGRO – 1959

24-       OLD TESTAMENT OF THE BIBLE, BOOK OF DANIEL 5: 1-5 & 25-29 WRITING ON THE WALL

25-       ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI - IL MARTIRIO DI SANTA TEODOSIA - APARTEMUSIC.COM – 2020

 

https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/25-reasons-to-remain-confined-18118783683d