BOESMANS: Wintermarchen.(Review)

BOESMANS: Wintermarchen [] Chilcott, Kallisch; Rolfe Johnson, Zednik, Duesing Dane, Selig; Aka Moon, Orchestre Symphonique et Choeurs de la Monnaie, Pappano. Text and translations. Deutsche Grammophon 469 559-2 (2)

Deutsche Grammophon continues its laudable 20/21 series with Wintermarchen, an adaptation, in German, of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, with music by Philippe Boesmans and libretto by Luc Bondy and Marie-Louise Bischofberger. The Winter's Tale is considered one of Shakespeare's "problem plays," as it toys with conventions of comedy, tragedy, plot and time. In the first part, Leontes, King of Sicilia, wrongfully accuses his queen, Hermione, of adultery with his best friend, Polixenes. This miscalculation results in the loss of his wife, the death of his son and the exile of his newborn daughter. The more pastoral second part takes place sixteen years later in Polixenes's kingdom of Bohemia, where his estranged son, Florizel, has fallen in love with Leontes's grown daughter, Perdita. The libretto has been nicely streamlined and reduced from five acts to four, with the greatest textual and musical departures in the Bohemian scenes. We lose Autolycus, who drives the action in this portion of the play, and the Bohemian clowns become a band of pickpockets, led by Florizel. Perdita is mute and played by a dancer. In order to establish the emotional and experiential distance between Florizel and his father, the pickpocket scenes are sung in English, and both Boesmans and the orchestra take a break, allowing much of the music to be improvised by the fusion band Aka Moon. This proves an effective musical gambit, and Boesmans's flexibility paves the way for a smooth segue into this hip, edgy, modern vision of rebellious youth.

Although the libretto simplifies Shakespeare's variety of mood and style, Boesmans's eclectic, post-modernist palette gives the opera the same effect on the musical level. He ranges stylistically from a deconstructed Straussian lyricism in the opening scenes, to the violent expressionism of Leontes's rage, to the Monteverdian exhortations of the courtiers, to a spare minimalism for Florizel's ...