David et Jonathas

[Pinchgut Opera's production of Charpentier's David et Jonathas opened last night. I have reviews in the pipeline for NZ Opera News and The Opera Critic, so in the meantime, some non-review thoughts. More on the performance itself in a few days.]

Sitting face to face with David et Jonathas for two and a half hours, I was struck, more than I had been in preliminary listening, by just how different a proposition a piece like this is to the baroque opera which is (slightly) more frequently offered in these parts: meaning Purcell and Handel. The operas of both those composers offer, in their different ways, a more obviously varied selection of musical pleasures (and, let's be honest, longueurs.) There are singable songs in Purcell and excerptable arias in Handel. You can shy away from the whole opera, but still find a hit or two (or three) to hang on to. 

With Charpentier, it's a different experience, and perhaps a more demanding one. To find gratification in this music — and there's much to be found — you need to enter into the spirit and style of it from the outset, and you need to be willing to stay the course. It would be difficult, at least on first hearing, to pick and choose favourite moments, and well nigh impossible to doze through the recitative and perk up for the arias, because the division is so slight — often non-existent — that chances are, you'd miss a lot in the process. A Handel opera will cleanly and clearly tick its various boxes: a lament, a love song, a mad scene, each aria set in distinct and characteristic style. David et Jonathas is far from monotonous, but its invention and variety are on a smaller, subtler scale, and changes come gradually rather than all at once. 

The result of this unity is a piece which de-emphasises the individual in favour of the cumulative power of a collective effort. Characters are delineated, voices and personalities distinguished from one another, contrasting musical ideas raised, but the shape (and ultimate appeal) of the opera emerges more clearly from the mingling and massing of these constituent parts than from the manner in which each expresses itself alone. That's as true of the drama as of the music — it is the underlying psychology of the story which takes primacy over the specific conflicts and personal dramas of the characters involved. In that respect, the self-contained fluency of this opera might actually put it at an advantage over its Handelian successors: the huge effort which directors often expend in drawing engaging, meaningful psychology out of a Handel opera isn't quite so necessary here, where the essential musical structure and style of the piece has already moved us into that realm, eschewing personality-driven vocal showcases and ensuring that what showcases there are are subservient to a musically and psychologically cohesive whole.

This could all just be euphemistic for sameishness, but that, while an understandable complaint, is not, I think, a particularly relevant one. I would not say, as one man I overheard during interval did, that the music is "very repetitive". My own sense was of a single musical entity rather than the repetition of smaller sections. Actually, I suspect that's probably what the man in question meant too, that the music feels as if it's all much of a muchness — the difference, I suppose, is in how, on a given night, you respond to that muchness, and even this man was evidently swayed by the sheer beauty of the sound, if not desperately inclined to bathe in it at such length. 

So yes, in a way, it is "the same" from start to finish, and at all points in between — but it's not "the same" in a grey, boring, repetitive sense. It's sameishness in the sense of a unified whole, a continuous flow which shifts and changes but doesn't stop and start. The structure of a Handel opera, with its clear contrasts and variety, certainly has its advantages, but it's also true — and no bad thing at that — that those arias could in many cases be swapped from one work to another with minimal disruption. David et Jonathas is different. You'd really need to take either the whole opera or nothing at all. Carving out a chunk at random would just leave both donor and recipient in an incoherent mess. 

Comments

[Michael]

French Baroque is a probably a more intellegent exercise and it is so different to the German/Italian hybrids of Handel. Handel had no sense of humour and no great feeling for the grotesque unlike Rameau and Lully (you need to see and hear something like Lully's "Perseus"). Charpentier is pretty plain stuff alonside Rameau or Lully but (as William Christie has shown in his recordings, and given the right singers) it can be profoundly tragic if somewhat declamatory. How was the Pythoneuse?

[Barbara]

You have to remember to tell which Charpentier.