BEMF
In Review
PSYCHE PRESS EXCERPTS
Excerpted from Fit for a King: A Lully Opera in Period Style
Heidi Waleson
The Wall Street Journal
June 20, 2007
The centerpiece of the biennial Boston Early Music Festival is always an opera, performed and staged in period style. This year’s project was an outstanding production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s “Psyché” (1678), receiving its North American premiere…This “Psyché” makes its audience feel like members of a 17th-century French royal court, experiencing its art as an immediate, living creation. There is nothing modern about it, which is what makes it special. The opera is a sumptuous pageant that deftly combines singing and dance; its story is not really a drama, but a vehicle for a salute to King Louis XIV. Written in a prologue and five acts, the piece, which ran 3 ½ hours with one intermission, demands that the audience relax into its pacing and formality while enjoying its extravagant visual and musical pleasures
.Set designer Caleb Wertenbaker and lighting designer Lenore Doxsee made the relatively simple set—a blue floor beautifully painted with stars, tall green hedges on the sides, and an elegant fence across the front that was opened and closed to signal the beginning and the end of each act—look rich. It was a fine frame for Anna Watkins’s gorgeous 17th-century costumes for the enormous cast of singers and dancers. In this context, the flying effects—Venus descends in a “machine,” Cupid via wires, and Psyché is whisked into the flies—were a charming surprise, and one forgot to be jaded by the more elaborate wonders of modern stage technology.
Director Gilbert Blin, choreographer Lucy Graham and musical directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs balanced text, singing, dancing and staging to create an unusually organic and vivid performance. The engine was the large and splendid period-instrument orchestra, led by violinist Robert Mealy…BEMF also fielded a solid cast of singers, many of them quite young. Carolyn Sampson brought a gentle delicacy to the role of Psyché; Karina Gauvin made a forceful and vindictive Venus. The two struck sparks in their confrontations, which were all the more special for being rare. Everyone else played multiple roles: Standouts included Teresa Wakim, Amanda Forsythe and Yulia Van Doren. Zachary Wilder, Jason McStoots and Olivier Laquerre were ferociously funny as Furies wearing 17th-century drag in the Underworld…
It added up to an exquisite and vibrant realization of something that would otherwise be lost in the past. Some smart presenter should grab it and bring it to New York, Paris and beyond.
Excerpted from Opera News
Wayman Chin
September 2007
The North American premiere of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Psyché—the centerpiece of the fourteenth Boston Early Music Festival—was a resounding success in terms of sheer beauty of stagecraft, choreography, set design, costuming and singing…The BEMF production team opted for a look that was quintessentially seventeenth-century French—lavish, elegant, full of detail, never forced or excessive, always in good taste. Stage director Gilbert Blin, set designer Caleb Wertenbaker and choreographer Lucy Graham understood that “formality” need not be synonymous with stuffy artificiality…Anna Watkins’s costumes were also gorgeous, giving off the translucence of Sèvres porcelain.
For the most part, the large cast and chorus sang with razor-sharp clarity and stellar musicianship…Karina Gauvin was an exceptional Venus. An actress of real temperament, Gauvin spins ornamentation with rich detail, and the silken cream of her tone made her seem all the more dangerous…As always, the BEMF orchestra played with spirit, heart and energy. Artistic directors Stephen Stubbs and Paul O’Dette, along with the superb harpsichordists Kristian Bezuidenhout and Peter Sykes, provided continuo that generated drama, urgency and light
Excerpted from Singing! Dancing! Tragedy! Comedy! Resurrecting a 1600s Operatic Spectacle
Anne Midgette
The New York Times
June 16, 2007
Baroque opera was the Busby Berkeley extravaganza of its day. It focused on spectacle and pageantry, and with composers like Jean-Baptiste Lully cranking out an opera a year, it was eminently disposable. That aspect can be lost in the haze of scholarly seriousness around informed reconstructions of period works. So it was nice that the Boston Early Music Festival’s production of Lully’s “Psyché”…captured some of the antic excess of the era…
New old music is the perennial concern of this fine festival. Held every two years, it is a hub of the American early-music world, at once a trade convention and a cornucopia of concerts built around the performance of a neglected opera…in [“Psyché”], choreography, voices and instruments were balanced as if on a jeweler’s scale…
For all the pomp, and the Baroque stage machinery suspending gods and demons from the flies, the real engine of the evening was the orchestra, its members facing one another around a kind of library table, playing with the warm, chewy tautness of original instruments…the continuo, which included Mr. Stubbs and Mr. O’Dette, was particularly fine…Works like these occupy such different dramatic territory from that we are used to today that there is no sense in presenting them in anything other than a fine period production like this.
Excerpted from Strolling in a garden of the ancient gods
Jeremy Eichler
The Boston Globe
June 14, 2007
Operas, too, like cities and their monuments, get buried in the rubble of history. Excavation requires years of digging. The Boston Early Music Festival has made a cherished tradition of unearthing forgotten works, dusting them off, and trying to restore their original vibrant colors. There is much to admire in the most recent feat of excavation, Lully’s 1678 opera “Psyché.”…It is a picturesque wedding of music and dance wrapped around a mythical story, and a meditation on the joys and perils of love and attachment. The writer Romain Rolland once compared Lully’s art to “classic tragedy and the noble garden of Versailles” and indeed, with its beautiful vistas and slow pacing over the course of nearly 3 ½ hours, experiencing “Psyché” is akin to taking a very leisurely stroll in an exquisitely tended royal garden…
BEMF artistic directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs meticulously reconstructed the score of “Psyché” from several surviving editions, and though the resulting music may not cast dramatic new light on Lully or the French Baroque, it is generous in melody, rhythmically vital, and full of assured and beautiful vocal writing. The performance of BEMF’s superb period instrument orchestra on Tuesday night was a pleasure to hear—precise in detail despite the absence of a conductor, and buzzing with energy thanks to vigorous string playing and enjoyably clangorous percussion, but also due to the unflappable continuo group anchored by O’Dette and Stubbs.
The veteran production team, headed by stage director Gilbert Blin, sought an elusive wedding of modern vitality and period accuracy. They largely succeeded despite a libretto that might have easily steered the production toward static pageantry…the sparkling choreography of Lucy Graham rendered traditional forms with freshness and grace…so were the dazzling costumes of Anna Watkins, who produced enough eye-catching apparel to clothe a small village…
The British soprano Carolyn Sampson gave a radiant and pure-voiced performance as Psyché singing fluidly with a well-supported tone that conveyed her character’s innocence and vulnerability. Karina Gauvin was vocally commanding and dramatically persuasive as Venus, and a fine group of mostly younger singers covered many of the smaller roles…[“Psyché”] is a work by the great artists of Louis XIV’s France, reimagining the ancient gods in the fantasies and formats of their own era. Here, we have contemporary artists reimagining their reimagining. This team does so eloquently, and its collective efforts have allowed us to contemplate a previously uncharted expanse of Lully’s musical world, distant perhaps, yet still pulsating.
Excerpted from Financial Times
George Loomis
June 28, 2007
Though inhabited by mythological personages, the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully are a glittering reflection of the court of Louis XIV…At the biennial Boston Early Music Festival a neglected baroque opera formed the centrepiece of a smorgasbord of Baroque music-making. This year’s sumptuous, musically inspired staging of Psyché, a tragédie en musique from 1678 with a libretto by Thomas Corneille (replacing the disgraced Quinault), did not shirk from the opera’s pomp.
In relating the story of Psyché, the world’s most beautiful woman, who predictably incurs the jealousy of Venus, Gilbert Blin’s production, with inventive choreography by Lucy Graham, elaborate costumes by Anna Watkins and a streamlined set by Caleb Wertenbaker, aimed for baroque stylisation yet was alert to modern sensibilities. In baroque fashion, stage machinery allowed for easy transport between heavens and earth, while amusing touches included a crew of Cyclops working at anvils and juvenile representations of Cupids…The approach here was simply to present it as stylishly as possible in a new edition by festival directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, who were also mainstays of the excellent continuo group. Carolyn Sampson’s lovely singing underscored the poignancy of Psyché’s plight, and Karina Gauvin brought out the venom of Venus’s dramatic recitatives…The orchestra played superlatively.
Excerpted from ‘Psyche” dazzle, evokes 17th century
Geraldine Freedman
The Sunday Gazette
June 24, 2007
Boston Early Music Festival’s production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s 1678 opera “Psyche” is the kind of spectacle we 21st-century mortals rarely, if ever, see. It should not be missed…BEMF’s effort was an ambitious one. Without a workable score, music directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, who both played in the superb 32-piece Baroque orchestra, created one to make this the North American premiere…Leading the parade of sopranos was Karina Gauvin as Venus, who electrified with a richly hued voice, and intense acting and who dominated the stage in all her scenes. Carolyn Sampson as Psyche sang her enormous number of arias with a clear, agile voice that never tired over the exceptionally long phrases…The prize, however, went to the surroundings: the 150 scrumptious and sumptuous costumes Anna Watkins designed; Lenore Doxsee’s colorful lighting; Caleb Wertenbakers set with the cleverly painted floor in tessellated tiles or blue stars and circles, the marvelous wrought iron-like 15-foot-tall gate and the fabulous contraptions that allowed the singers to fly.
Excerpted from Music from the heavens
Andrew L. Pincus
The Berkshire Eagle
June 26, 2007
If the rest of the Berkshires’ summer of opera comes up to the standard set by the opening event, Lully’s “Psyché,” the gods of song will have no complaint. Gods, lavishly costumed and led by Jupiter into the paths of love, filled the stage of the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center over the weekend in the Boston Early Music Festival production of Lully’s “tragédie lyrique.” But the commanding figure was a mortal, Psyché, dressed in virginal white amid the riot of color, dance and song. Carolyn Sampson, a British soprano with a voice of countless colors, easily convinced you that she was not only the most beautiful woman in the world, but also the most charmingly naïve…If memory is to be trusted, this was the most sumptuous—also the most seamless—of the biennials festival’s six Berkshire productions of forgotten baroque operas. One of the simplest yet most breathtaking staging coups was Cupid’s transformation from a boy god into the mortal L’Amour…Everything about the production seemed honed to perfection: Gilbert Blin’s staging, Lucy Graham’s choreography, Anna Watkins’ costumes (oh, a bit over the top) and the splendid period-instrument festival orchestra stylishly led by concertmaster Robert Mealy.
Excerpted from Voices from the Past
Deborah Jowitt
The Village Voice
July 2, 2007
In the splendidly staged Boston Early Music Festival production of this proto-opera, you can appreciate the entrancing ways in which singing and dancing complement each other to hymn the power of love…[the story] is revealed in ravishing songs, instrumental passages, and dances. Lully’s harmonies could break your heart…In the end, this charming, living relic of another century sails into our hearts, borne not only by the beautiful music, but by the timeless truth about human nature.
Excerpted from Send in the clowns
Lloyd Schwartz
The Berkshire Phoenix
June 19, 2007
The biennial Boston Early Music Festival week brings together a worldwide contingent of artists, instrument makers, and enthusiasts. As opposed to BEMF’s tradition of concentrating on a particular national culture, this year the focus was on a theme, “Feast of the Gods,” which combined mythology and images of feasting. The centerpiece opera was probably the festival’s most ambitious and professional effort since it began in 1980: the North American premiere of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s elaborate 1678 tragédie lyrique, Psyché. The audience ate it up—especially the several ascents and landings of one or another deus ex machine and the dazzling costumes by Anna Watkins. Thanks to soprano Carolyn Sampson, in the title role of the beautiful princess who is rewarded for her irritating curiosity and vanity by being made immortal, and an exciting, biting performance by Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin (the heroine of BEMF’s resurrection of Conradi’s Ariadne in 2003) as the vengeful Venus who feels threatened by Psyché’s beauty…The musical values were impressive. Music directors Stephen Stubbs and Paul O’Dette assembled an orchestra filled with early-music superstars.
Excerpted from Lully’s ‘Psyché’ triumphs at the Mahaiwe
John Paul Keeler
The Register-Star
June 28, 2007
Jean-Baptiste Lully’s (1632-1687) Tragedie en Musique “Psyché” had a triumphant performance Sunday at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington. The production of the Boston Early Music Festival was a marvel…Lully created in his opera a perfect integration of ballet and opera and spectacular staging. The spirit of the dance threaded the production (after all, Lully was himself a famous dancer) thrillingly, with immense flow and grace. One does not know how to praise the stage director, Gilbert Blin, the choreographer, Lucy Graham, the set designer, Caleb Wartenbaker [sic], and the costume designer, Anna Watkins. The sets were gorgeously Versaillean and the acting ensemble of the singers, dancers and chorus has a natural flow unusual in any theatrical production…All the singers were splendid…The orchestra sound and sweep was magnificent. The surprise of the day was the radiant sound of the continuo…Perfection in all the arts is often elusive but, with “Psyché,” the Boston Early Music Festival artists achieved it.
Excerpted from Performers are impeccable in ‘Psyche’ opera
Joseph Dalton
The Albany Times Union
June 24, 2007
The fruitfulness of love was on vivid display Friday night in the Boston Early Music Festival’s staging of Lully’s “Psyche,” a grand operatic spectacle that included an orchestra of period instruments, extensive dance numbers and a cast of more than 40. In the biennial festival’s return to the renovated Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, the production gave the theater a workout, with deities and angels regularly flying on and off stage…Along with beautifully detailed costumes and impeccable musical execution, the festival’s opera productions have always been characterized by a feeling of pride and enjoyment. This is especially true from the orchestra, led by music directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs. The players sit as if at a feast, facing each other in two long rows before the stage, as they tuck into the score.
Excerpted from Opera fests’s ‘Psyche’ will blow your mind
Keith Powers
The Boston Herald
June 14, 2007
In the Boston opera world, the Boston Lyric Opera usually does a fine job exploring the standard repertory, while Gil Rose’s Opera Boston spiritedly undertakes less well-known works. But assuredly the highlight of local opera presentations comes every two years when the Boston Early Music Festival unearths rare gems from the Baroque repertory and presents them in bravura fashion…“Psyche” has it all: drama, luxuriant costumes, compelling sets, great dancing and blocking and great music by Lully (1632-1687), the founder of French opera…The cast was outstanding, with the women generally leading the way. Carolyn Sampson, in the title role, was a vision of beauty in her glittering white costume. There were gasps when she made her entrance, and her singing matched her looks. Her voice is effortless and lyric, perfectly complementing her role as the apparently doomed heroine. Karina Gauvin, a Boston favorite, was perfectly cast as the vengeful Venus, her powerful instrument nearly at a shout as she spewed forth her venomous thoughts…The BEMF chorus, with some of the finest freelancers in the early-music world, always sounds robust. The orchestra, led by festival co-artistic directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, produced a sound that was consistently precise and forceful.
Excerpted from ‘Psyché’ has timeless quality
Diana Kenney
The Cape Cod Times
June 15, 2007
You could have heard a pin drop in the balcony during Tuesday night’s performance of “Psyché,” such was the devoted, close attention paid by the audience in the sold-out Emerson Majestic Theater in Boston. It may seem unlikely that a 1678 opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully, court composer to King Louis XIV off France, would be so poplar in 2007. Au contraire! The music of the 1400s-1800s has an international and extremely passionate following today, and every two years the faithful descend on Boston for what has become the must-go event: the Boston Early Music Festival…The BEMF production of “Psyché” is a heady mixture of courtly formality, brilliance of expression, and a thematic dedication to peace and love that, in today’s entertainment world, is all too rare. In this opera, it’s not the singers who are the stars, it’s the people in the orchestra pit. Under the meticulous guidance of musical directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, “Psyché” is played with loving care on period instruments, including violins, recorders, and guitars that have the delicate timbres of hand-shaped wood.
Excerpted from Lully’s Psyché at Boston Early Music Festival
John Yohalem
Opera Today
June 21, 2007
There’s not much point in presenting Lully’s Psyché (in its North American premiere no less) unless you’re going to give it something vaguely like the grandeur Louis IXV could command in 1678. In a down-home way, Boston’s biennial Early Music Festival achieved this to a remarkable extent: instrumentalists and singers from the front ranks of antique performing practice led by BEMF’s longtime opera conductors, Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, the staging glamorous but basic, with elaborate dance interludes that were always a significant part of (often the principal excuse for) opera in France, costumes worthy of a costume ball at Versailles, and elaborate stage machinery—there’s a whole lot of flying going on , and entrances are made from above as often as from the wings...Among the singers, as was only proper, the finest had the largest parts: Carolyn Sampson, the pretty Psyché, who sang and acted her long role with conviction and sweet, untiring tone, and Karina Gauvin, as Venus, the opera’s heavy, a role she acquitted with great verve.
