PARIS — There is never anything quite normal about opera. After all, no other art form demands such an extreme suspension of disbelief. But after the disruptions caused by strikes and the Covid-19 pandemic, normalcy is the cherished goal of the Paris Opera, which this week unveiled its program for the 2022-23 season.
“The pandemic, an unwelcome guest in our lives, has reminded us how fleeting and fragile all life is,” Alexander Neef, the opera company’s director, wrote in a press release opening the season. “But by disrupting time and our certainties, it has made the same life more valuable.”
Quoting Falstaff in Verdi’s opera of the same name†tutto nel mondo è burla” (“the whole world is a farce”), he added: “I know of no better remedy for instability than to embrace life. And what better way to do that, in the opera, than by bringing meaning and poetry.”
One joy of opera is that a poetic libretto written a century or more ago can take on new meaning with each new production: the audience knows the storyline, but not how it will be interpreted.
For the upcoming season, which kicks off on September 3rd with a reprise of Pierre Audi’s production of “Tosca,” Mr. Neef has planned a rich array of operas, including new productions of Richard Strauss’ “Salomé”, starring South African soprano Elza van den Heever in the title role; Benjamin Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes’, with Deborah Warner making her directorial debut at the Paris Opera; and Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet, with the French baritone Ludovic Tézier as the Danish prince.
In a new production of Charles Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette”, Benjamin Bernheim, France’s new favorite tenor, will share the role of Roméo with Francesco Demuro, while Elsa Dreisig and Pretty Yende alternate as Juliette. This opera, scheduled for next summer, will provide an interesting contrast to ‘I Capuleti e I Montechhi’, Bellini’s version of the same story, albeit taken from a different source, which will be presented this fall.
The Bellini opera is just one of three to be directed by Canadian Robert Carsen next season. His acclaimed production of “Die Zauberflöte” returns in September, with powerful German bass René Pape sharing the roles of Sarastro with Brindley Sherratt and Mrs Yende, alternating with Christiane Karg as Pamina. Mr. Carsen, whose celebrated opera production of Handel’s 1999 “Alcina” returned here during the current season, will now also direct “Ariodante” by the same composer.
A production that the Bastille Opera revives with some regularity is Peter Sellars’ celebrated version of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” much of which is set against the backdrop of a powerful video by Bill Viola, featuring his signature images of water, fire and fire. and nudity. With Gustavo Dudamel, the new conductor of the Paris Opera, Mary Elizabeth Williams conducts Isolde of Tristan by Gwyn Hughes Jones.
The season will also mark two anniversaries. The 50th anniversary of President Nixon’s bridge-building trip to Beijing this year will be commemorated in a new Valentina Carrasco production of John Adams’ Nixon in China, with Thomas Hampson as the American leader and Renée Fleming as his wife, Pat.
The other production, ‘The Dante Project’, which premiered in London last October, is a ballet by Wayne McGregor to a score by contemporary opera composer Thomas Adès. It is inspired by the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante, the poet-author of the ‘Divine Comedy’, last year.
Just as Puccini will be present with both “La Bohème” and “Tosca”, Verdi is no less a must in any opera season, represented here by two revivals. “La Forza del Destino” is a sober production by Jean-Claude Auvray, with Anna Netrebko and Anna Pirozzi as Donna Leonora, Russell Thomas as her lover Don Alvaro and Mr. Tézier as her vengeful brother Don Carlo di Vargas. The second, “Il Trovatore”, another poignant tragedy, returns in a World War I production by Àlex Ollé of the Catalan company La Fura dels Baus.
The frantic pace of 24/7 news today is sure to put directors to the test who want to give a current edge to operas composed decades or centuries ago. But for Mr. Neef, when productions are inspired by the works of great authors, from Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde, there is something unchanging in the way they “all address human complexity, the subtleties of consciousness and the tensions between the sexes.” and generations.”
