Too rarely is this masterpiece performed. It has a considerable length (usually between 4 and 5 hours) but the plot is well constructed and the music has practically no drops in tension, Meyerbeer creating a vivid intuition of dramatic situations and varied orchestral colours. The production by Andreas Kriegenburg is visually very pleasing, the cube structure fills the stage but feels very sterile, the moving stage allows to see what happens in two different places at the same time, the costumes are also beautiful. But choreography wise it is a bit boring. In Kriegenburg’s production the singers are often motionless, which is the antithesis of grand opera with its dramatic plot and finales and its amount of characters including the masses, who play a huge role. Also, it is not clear why the action should play in 2064. Does he want to say this tragedy can happen anytime? Would this be the only reason? Mariotti conducts well. At least much better than in Berlin. And although i wished a more dramatic rendering of the gloomy and sinister atmospheres (and i also had hoped in some grandiloquence) I still enjoyed his interpretation. Pity for some of the cuts in music. Although Meyerbeer himself didn’t mind and even proposed some of them, as comparison I can say that for the same amount of time, Minkowsky in Brussels proposed an almost complete score).
Jaho as Valentine has a beautiful, luminous voice. In the higher register that is, but it sounds a bit empty the lower she goes and her low notes are insufficient for her duet with Marcel and the one with Raoul. Nicolas Testé misses the extreme low notes but sings overall very well. Yosep Kang has all my appreciation for having stepped in last minute. His voice has a nice timbre in the middle register, his French is good, and he fills the huge Bastille room, but the role is heavy and this is audible at the high notes where he pushes the voice to its limits. Excellent Lisette Oropesa (who also steps in last minute replacing Diana Damrau) but has no problems whatsoever, she runs up and down the pentagram with no problems, her voice equal over the whole range, she delivers a credible performance and gets a long and deserved applause after her 2nd act aria. I never quite understood why Karine Deshayes is so praised in her home country. I heard her in Rossini and was disappointed. Meyerbeer suits her much better. I also thought Florian Sempey was very good as Nevers. Overall this Huguentos were not as excellent as the Brussels production (I keep coming back to this one, but except for the ballet everything was perfect, from Minkowsky’s stylistically impeccable conducting, over Py’s dramatic direction to the second cast led by a superb John Osborne with Henriette Bonde-Hansen and Ingela Brimberg) but still a very enjoyable evening. And what a wonderful music!!
Conductor-Michele Mariotti, Director-Andreas Kriegenburg, Set design-Harald B. Thor, Costume design-Tanja Hofmann, Lighting design-Andreas Grüter, Choreography-Zenta Haerter, Marguerite de Valois-Lisette Oropesa, Raoul de Nangis-Yosep Kang, Valentine-Ermonela Jaho, Urbain-Karine Deshayes, Marcel-Nicolas Testé, Le Comte de Saint-Bris-Paul Gay, La dame d’honneur-Julie Robard‑Gendre, Une bohémienne-Julie Robard‑Gendre, Cossé, un étudiant catholique-François Rougie, Le Comte de Nevers-Florian Sempey, Tavannes, premier moine-Cyrille Dubois, Méru, deuxième moine-Michal Partyka, Thoré, Maurevert-Patrick Bolleire, Retz, troisième moine-Tomislav Lavoie, Coryphée, une jeune fille catholique, une bohémienne-Élodie Hache, Bois-Rosé, valet-Philippe Do, Un archer du guet-Olivier Ayault, Quatre seigneurs-John Bernard, Cyrille Lovighi, Bernard Arrieta, Fabio Bellenghi, 4/10/18, photos de https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/season-18-19/opera/les-huguenots#gallery
Snegurochka was Korsakov’s favourite opera and for its composition he moved to a country house close to Louga to listen to nature’s voices, as he mentioned in his autobiography (“…an abundance of field flowers, continuous chirping of the birds, all this harmonized particularly with my pantheistic state of mind then, and my enthusiasm for the subject of Snegouochka. Some trunks of trees, large and twisted, or covered with moss, appeared to me like spirits of the woods…”). The opera was heard first in Saint Petersburg in 1885 and in 1893 in Moscow.
Tcherniakov sets the prologue in a dance school and all the rest in the forest. The Berendays live in caravans and dress colourfully (a mix of flower power, pagan sect, Russian traditions and camping outfit). The “tsar” is the leader of the pack. Nonetheless Tcherniakov makes them inhabitants of the 21st century (the sneakers, the photo flashes of mobile phones…) maybe to point at the universality of the plot. The sets are beautifully designed, well lit, and the costumes gorgeous. Snegurochka was not only Korsakov’s favourite opera but one Tcherniakov always wanted to do, he claims. Funnily enough I feel the inspiration was not the highest, the masses were not moved with such elegance and power as, say, in Borodin’s Prince Igor. Beautiful was the set change from the school to the forest, and the circling trees.