 |
Cherubini: Médée - Lila Dufy, Joyce El-Khoury in Act One - Opéra Comique (Photo: Stefan Brion) |
Cherubini: Médée; Joyce El-Khoury, Julien Behr, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Lila Dufy, Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, director: Marie-Ève Signeyrole, Insula Orchestra, conductor: Laurence Equilbey; Opéra Comique
Reviewed 8 February 2025
A powerful performance in the title role from Joyce El-Khoury in a production that adhered to Cherubini's original vision, including sung French and spoken dialogue, yet gave a nuanced, modern take on the story.
Medea is the ultimate bad girl of opera, causing havoc, completely unrepentant and, in Lully, Handel and Mayr at least, escaping in a chariot drawn by dragons. The general view of Cherubini's Médée is no different, she appears in Act One crying for vengeance and by Act Three, well, tragedy on a large scale.
Giving the original French version of the opera a rare outing, complete with spoken dialogue, at the Opéra Comique on Saturday 8 February 2025, conductor Laurence Equilbey and her ensembles Accentus and Insula Orchestra, and director Marie-Ève Signeyrole refocused the opera somewhat, giving Médée's actions a more nuanced context. Médée was played by Joyce El-Khoury with Julien Behr as Jason, Edwin Crossley-Mercer as Créon, Lila Dufy as Dircé and Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur as Néris. Stage design was by Fabien Teigné with costumes by Yashi, lighting by Philippe Berthomé and video from Céline Baril and Artis Dzērve. The dramaturg was Louis Geisler.
Before we consider the production we should think about what we were hearing and why. Cherubini was long-lived, as the programme book pointed out, he was born four years after Mozart and died four years before Mendelssohn. His major operas were all relatively early works, Médée dates from 1797. It was was written as opera comique, though the combination of form and content was not uncontroversial at the time and the work was premiered not at the Opéra Comique but by another company at the Theatre Feydeau. Cherubini seems not to have been fond of the fully sung French opera, rarely writing them.
 |
Cherubini: Médée - Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, Caroline Frossard, Joyce El-Khoury in Act Two - Opéra Comique (Photo: Stefan Brion) |
For him, Médée always had dialogue, even when performing it in Berlin and Vienna in German. In 1809 he produced a shortened version, in German, for Vienna (losing some 500 bars of music but keeping the spoken dialogue). Then in 1855, Franz Lachner produced this version in Frankfurt, replacing the spoken dialogue with his own recitatives. In 1909, this version was translated into Italian for the work's Italian premiere at La Scala, Milan and it was this version that Callas sang.
We tend to favour this mongrel Italian version because, well, Callas. But consider that Médée was written just six years after Mozart's Die Zauberflöte; would anyone nowadays consider performing Il flauto magico in Italian complete with sung recitatives?