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We'll always have Paris
French songs at Academy of Vocal Arts
Steve Cohen
No production encapsulated so many of the goals of Philadelphia's International Festival of the Arts as did the Academy of Vocal Arts' French evenings.
"It was the age of Picasso, Chagall, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Matisse, Paris from 1910 to 1920," the Festival's website title page proclaims. These poster boys"“ and more"“ were indeed represented with art, musical impressions and personal reminiscences. The AVA utilized paintings, drawings and photographs, plus documentary film, live animals, diaries, essays and music, not to mention the serving of complimentary glasses of Pernod and absinthe at intermission. Compositions by Francis Poulenc, Jacques Ibert, Arthur Honegger, Louis Durey, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric and Eric Satie were illustrated with projections of artwork provided by the Art Museum.
The program's best part was a brilliantly staged performance of Durey's catchy Le bestiaire ou Cortège d'Orphée, introduced by a representative of the Philadelphia Zoo who sauntered down the aisle with a large and fluttering owl. Durey's composition is a setting of pithy poems about animals by Guillaume Apollinaire, published in 1911 with illustrations by Raoul Dufy. Concertgoers familiar with Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals would do well to make the acquaintance of Durey's even-better composition with the same subject.
(Saint-Saëns, incidentally, was still alive during the period and he composed the score for a motion picture that featured actors of the Comédie Française. If time allowed, I would have liked to see and hear that as well.)
Slithering snake
Each song was interpreted by AVA singers who dressed in fantastic costumes and moved as if they were the animals being portrayed. (Mezzo-soprano Cynthia Cook, as a snake, slithered on her belly across the stage.) The presentation was worthy of comparison with Julie Taymor's best work in The Lion King.
Simultaneously, Dufy's illustrations of the animals were projected behind the singers. The most vivid appearances were those of Alexandra Maximova as a caterpillar, Olivia Vote as a carp, Michelle Johnson as a peacock and Zachary Nelson as an ox.
The first part of the evening, which dwelled at length on Jean Cocteau, crowded in too much of a good thing. The writer/artist/filmmaker deserves an honored place, of course, if only because he spearheaded the avant garde movement of his time and his circle embraced all of the creative names mentioned above. Cocteau chronicled his period in writing and with film, some of which he narrated himself, leaving us an abundance of material by and about him. It should have been drastically edited.
Songs about painters
The program also presented Le travail du peintre, a song cycle by Poulenc about the painters Picasso, Chagall, Braque, Gris, Klee and MirÓ³, based on books of poetry by Paul Éluard. Some of Éluard's subjects reciprocated with illustrations that were projected on the stage. Poulenc's quirky music reflected his personal impressions of those subjects, rather then his interpretation of specific paintings.
The program also included songs by Satie and Auric and a beautiful evocation of Monte Carlo by Poulenc, romantically sung by soprano Chloe Moore.
A problem arose with the decision by the pianist and vocal coach Laurent Philippe and Duane Kight, a professor at Haverford College, to present spoken narration in French, much of it without English translation. It's a pleasure to hear the sound of that beautiful language, but some audience members were hard put to understand it— even those who speak French. Not until the evening's last section, for Le bestiaire, were the French texts projected to the left of the stage so that we could read them during the singing, while English translations appeared to the right— a solution that worked nicely.
The singing by AVA's resident singing artists was so skillful and idiomatic, that the school should consider presenting more French operas. I recall only Manon and Faust during the past decade, and that's not sufficient.
*
"It was the age of Picasso, Chagall, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Matisse, Paris from 1910 to 1920," the Festival's website title page proclaims. These poster boys"“ and more"“ were indeed represented with art, musical impressions and personal reminiscences. The AVA utilized paintings, drawings and photographs, plus documentary film, live animals, diaries, essays and music, not to mention the serving of complimentary glasses of Pernod and absinthe at intermission. Compositions by Francis Poulenc, Jacques Ibert, Arthur Honegger, Louis Durey, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric and Eric Satie were illustrated with projections of artwork provided by the Art Museum.
The program's best part was a brilliantly staged performance of Durey's catchy Le bestiaire ou Cortège d'Orphée, introduced by a representative of the Philadelphia Zoo who sauntered down the aisle with a large and fluttering owl. Durey's composition is a setting of pithy poems about animals by Guillaume Apollinaire, published in 1911 with illustrations by Raoul Dufy. Concertgoers familiar with Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals would do well to make the acquaintance of Durey's even-better composition with the same subject.
(Saint-Saëns, incidentally, was still alive during the period and he composed the score for a motion picture that featured actors of the Comédie Française. If time allowed, I would have liked to see and hear that as well.)
Slithering snake
Each song was interpreted by AVA singers who dressed in fantastic costumes and moved as if they were the animals being portrayed. (Mezzo-soprano Cynthia Cook, as a snake, slithered on her belly across the stage.) The presentation was worthy of comparison with Julie Taymor's best work in The Lion King.
Simultaneously, Dufy's illustrations of the animals were projected behind the singers. The most vivid appearances were those of Alexandra Maximova as a caterpillar, Olivia Vote as a carp, Michelle Johnson as a peacock and Zachary Nelson as an ox.
The first part of the evening, which dwelled at length on Jean Cocteau, crowded in too much of a good thing. The writer/artist/filmmaker deserves an honored place, of course, if only because he spearheaded the avant garde movement of his time and his circle embraced all of the creative names mentioned above. Cocteau chronicled his period in writing and with film, some of which he narrated himself, leaving us an abundance of material by and about him. It should have been drastically edited.
Songs about painters
The program also presented Le travail du peintre, a song cycle by Poulenc about the painters Picasso, Chagall, Braque, Gris, Klee and MirÓ³, based on books of poetry by Paul Éluard. Some of Éluard's subjects reciprocated with illustrations that were projected on the stage. Poulenc's quirky music reflected his personal impressions of those subjects, rather then his interpretation of specific paintings.
The program also included songs by Satie and Auric and a beautiful evocation of Monte Carlo by Poulenc, romantically sung by soprano Chloe Moore.
A problem arose with the decision by the pianist and vocal coach Laurent Philippe and Duane Kight, a professor at Haverford College, to present spoken narration in French, much of it without English translation. It's a pleasure to hear the sound of that beautiful language, but some audience members were hard put to understand it— even those who speak French. Not until the evening's last section, for Le bestiaire, were the French texts projected to the left of the stage so that we could read them during the singing, while English translations appeared to the right— a solution that worked nicely.
The singing by AVA's resident singing artists was so skillful and idiomatic, that the school should consider presenting more French operas. I recall only Manon and Faust during the past decade, and that's not sufficient.
*
What, When, Where
“Artistes, Auteurs, et Autres Animaux (Artists, authors and other animals): An Evening of French Chanson.†April 12-13, 2011, at Helen Corning Warden Theater, Academy of Vocal Arts, 1920 Spruce St. www.avaopera.org.
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