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Saariaho - L'Amour de Loin / Dawn Upshaw, Gerald Finley, Monica Groop, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Finnish National Opera, Helsinki
RRP: $29.98Our Price: $17.23 (subject to change)RISKY TO BUY; RENT IF IN DOUBTReview date: 2009-10-21 Rating: 10 out of 10The five stars might as easily be one. Having had no expectations from a Finnish composer of whom I had never heard, the opera had no standards of mine to meet. I took what came. Whatever ones taste, one can see objectively that there is a high degree of complementarity among scenic design, bodily movements, music and song. They fit closely. I cannot imagine how the production was perceived by the live audience so heavily was the action geared to the camera's eyes. Closeups were the order of the day, faces, features of faces, bodies, features of bodies filled the screen. In essence, I found the entire opera to be made up of a series of fixed images flowing one into another, with the camera lovingly embracing each gesture, each image of color, the few pieces of scenery, the light, the water onstage; at the same time, the music gives each image its nuance, its emphasis, its body. On the other hand, it is a ceremonial piece, living images flow slowly before us with almost stately or sacred quality, a sort of stream of static audio-visual snapshots.
Well, it wasn't Verdi or Puccini, it was moving but without much movement. Not at all to everyone's taste; perhaps, to the taste of only a few. That is why I suggest that before laying out whatever the price may be, you watch a generous sample, preferably the whole thing. There is more than an even chance that for the lover of Mozart or the Romantics this will fall flat on its face.
ReviewsINTELLECTUALLY AND EMOTIONALLY SATISFYING THEATREReview date: 2009-10-01 Rating: 8 out of 10Let's not beat about the bush. This is an opera in which practically nothing happens. In terms of action, the troubadour Rudel makes a sea voyage from Europe to Africa, gets ill on the way and dies almost as soon as he reaches his `distant love' and that's about it. And all of that happens in Acts 4 and 5. In musical terms, there is very little musical development of the few fragmentary themes, little in the way of obvious melody apart from what comes from Rudel himself in the 12th century and not that much rhythmic interest either.
And yet it can be a totally riveting piece.
It is the kaleidoscopic colours of the score that lie at the heart of the piece. Saariaho is a mistress of the orchestral palette, evoking deep rumblings, glittering flashes, turbulent storms and, at times, a heart-rending keening from both the vocal and instrumental lines. The vocal lines throughout, even if they lack some of the instant melodic memorability of some modern operas, also lack the seemingly arbitrary angularity of many others. They are almost always lyrical and, even when they lie high in the singers' registers, still fall happily on the voice. And the last scene of the opera, when the lovers finally meet and when, after Rudel's death, his `amour lointain' is left to sing her searing prayer (to God? to Eros? certainly to Love in all its guises) is an intensely moving liebstod - certainly as sung here by Dawn Upshaw.
With such a signal lack of action, any production has to work pretty hard to maintain the listener/viewer's concentration. This Peter Sellars production, taken from performances in the composer's native Finland, is certainly visually arresting. The set simply consists of two shining metal spiral staircases, one to the left and one to the right of the stage, representing the castles in France and North Africa respectively. Between them and all round their feet is a large expanse of water (real water, that is), broken only by the shape of the Pilgrim's boat. This makes things pretty tough for the singers playing Rudel and Clemence. For the first 3 Acts they have to do all their singing and acting within the confines of their respective stairways which is both confining and limiting. Then, with freedom, comes a soaking - by the end of the piece, poor Dawn Upshaw is soaked to the skin. For all that, it has to be admitted that the stage pictures are very beautiful. This is a production at the opposite extreme from the recent one at the London Coliseum where all the floating and flying and supernumerary players for the principals just became distracting.
Having said that, the performances of the principals themselves on this DVD are excellent. Gerald Finley who plays the troubadour, Jaufre Rudel, has always shown himself a fine actor and a fine vocal actor, too, colouring his voice and shaping phrases to give them individuality, character and meaning. So it is here. Constricted as he is by the production to spiral staircase, Pilgim's boat and deathbed, he still engages our interest, involves us and finally moves us as he goes from adumbrating his ideal unattainable distant love to actually embracing her. Monica Groop makes the sometimes thankless role of the Pilgrim into a real person as she moves back and forth across the water between the French staircase and the African staircase. And, when she gets to sing Jaufre's songs to Clemence, she makes the most of the most immediately memorable and beautiful melodic lines.
Dawn Upshaw is simply stunning as Clemence, the amour lointain of Jaufre's imagination. As the focus of the opera gradually moves from Rudel to Clemence, so Upshaw takes hold of the work and its music (and of us, the audience) and makes of the final scene a totally harrowing and moving piece of theatre. Her great ambiguous final hymn to Eros, Thanatos, God, probably all three, is one of the great moments in theatre, captured here on DVD.
Despite my caveats about the production and even about the static nature of the drama and the music, this is an important opera of the new century (just) and on this DVD proves itself a compelling and ultimately an intellectually and emotionally piece of theatre.Suprisingly melodicReview date: 2009-02-12 Rating: 8 out of 10Fear not,the vocal writing is no more difficult to listen to and just as lovely as Richard Strauss' Arabella. Believe me. It has a slight undertone of the medieval. For such a minimal plot things really heat up once the Pilgrim has returned to tell of the Countess response and our hero is distressed by the apparent failure of the Pilgrim's mission. The orchestral writing is subtle and mystical in support of the singers and when called for gets quite dramatic with the expected contemporary masses of sound. I would expect Wagner's music was like this to the ears of the public when his operas premiered. Plenty of people felt it wasn't music at all so give this a chance. There is no shreiking here, no ridiculously difficult tessitura, the vocal writing is all very comfortable. The libretto is suffused with a poetry of it's own in both words and action. All three singers are in terrific voice and sing gorgeously.Stunningly beautiful, visually and vocallyReview date: 2008-09-15 Rating: 10 out of 10Everyone is at the top of their game - singers, orchestra, conductor and composer, first and foremost. So glad I took a chance on this, having been recently "turned on" to Saariaho's amazing output. I can't stop watching it. If you're not fluent in French, be sure to turn on the subtitles/translations - at least once - to get the full effect. It is quite highly charged!Why aren't more contemporary operas this good?Review date: 2006-12-26 Rating: 10 out of 10Kaija Saariaho has been making a stellar reputation for herself as a force in contemporary music (thanks in part to the advocacy of her old school chum Esa-Pekka Salonen). After years of swearing she'd never write something as old school as an opera, she produced "L'amour de Loin," which more or less translates as "The Distant Love." It's a curiously undramatic plot: a poet, bored with his life of endless partying, falls in love with a woman he's never met. A traveling pilgrim conveys his poems to the woman, and she falls in love with him, or more, the idea of him. In an attempt to meet his idealized love, the poet crosses the sea, and becomes ill. The two "lovers" meet for the first time, only to have the poet die. But what remarkably passionate music Saariaho invests in this play of ideas, and how exquisitely Dawn Upshaw, Gerald Finley and Monica Groop sing it; the off-stage choral writing is also remarkably powerful. Moreover, for all it's beauty and passion, this score never ever sounds like a 19th century pastiche. Brava to the composer for demonstrating that it is possible to write music that is emotionally compelling without having to revive the vocabulary of Romanticism. Bravo, too, to DGG for bringing out the work on DVD: Dawn Upshaw's final scene is one of the most stunning moments of lyric theater I've ever seen.
Product Details/SpecificationsActor(s):
Gerald Finley
Peter Sellars
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Dawn Upshaw
Monica Groop
Recording label: Philips Manufacturer: PhilipsEAN: 0044007340264Binding: DVDNumber of items: 1Format: Classical, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Release date: 2005-09-13Universal product code (UPC): 044007340264Number of discs: 1Aspect ratio: 1.78:1Audience rating: NR (Not Rated)Region code: 1Running time: 139 minutesTheatrical release date: 2005Language: French (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Brand: Philips
saariaho - lamour de... More
saariaho - lamour de... More
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