Marcello tries to fix the electrical equipment while Rodolfo types up his log (projected over the window) and at this stage it seems they are reminiscing (more than actually hallucinating) to keep their spirits up in the face of cold and deprivation. There is a door, and a spare space suit hangs against the rear wall. At the back, through a wide, round-cornered window, in act one we see we are nearing a reddish planet in act two we will be close enough to see the rocky surface approaching. On the left is a large, ribbed, cylindrical tank or reactor. The ship's interior is mostly white (more so than in Tarkovsky’s film, though the aesthetic is vaguely 70s) and the lighting, usually stark, nevertheless changes subtly depending on the action. A downward slant of the “Cinemascope”-format space from left to right is emphasised by white strip-lighting above and below. The first two acts take place inside the spaceship. It isn’t always clear who’s real and who isn’t, who’s alive or who’s already dead - Benoît for example, is the already gamey corpse, in a body-bag, of a colleague they play with in a particularly macabre instance of light-headed tomfoolery.
As they lose contact with Earth, run out of food, power and oxygen and face slow but inevitable death, they slip deeper and deeper into hallucinatory, part-phantasmagorical flashbacks of their former lives. Four astronauts struggle to maintain an ailing spaceship with spitting, sparking electricals. In its place, Guth ingeniously and skilfully meshed the opera plot with Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Solaris*.
The new production thankfully chucked out the usual dismal garret with its dirty windows - though some people must like gloomy attics and or grimy glass, as the initial reception was mixed. This rich year also ended on a high note with Claus Guth’s La Bohème at the Paris Opera. The only thing I left at the interval last year was a flat Il barbiere, directed by Laurent Pelly (the flatness wasn't all his fault) at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées a few weeks ago. Best of all was probably Ginastera's Bomarzo in Madrid, a magnificent production by Pierre Audi, brilliantly performed, of a bizarrely neglected opera. Highlights were discovering Snegurochka (and Aida Garifullina) in Tcherniakov's production Bieito's very sound Carmen with Anita Rachvelishvili in the title role and Hymel as José Warlikowski's Don Carlos with Kaufmann, Yoncheva, Garanca and Tézier the late Patrice Chéreau's From The House Of The Dead. Prompted by an exchange with internet chronicler Rowna Sutin, I took a look back over my 2017 schedule this weekend and decided it had been a good year. Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine, Choeur d’enfants de l’Opéra national de Paris.
Orchestra and Choruss of the Opéra National de Paris. Un venditore ambulante: Fernando Velasquez.
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