Aix-En-Provence.(France's oldest music festival )

In the past four years, France's oldest music festival has looked its youngest. When Stephane Lissner took over as managing director in 1998, a long-established star-oriented system was thrown out and replaced by a new one that prefers promising youngsters to big-name draws. The average age of the musicians in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the festival's unofficial orchestra in residence, is twenty-nine. Their conductor, Daniel Harding, formerly assistant to Simon Rattle and Claudio Abbado, is only twenty-six. The singers and instrumentalists in the European Academy of Music, Lissner's pet project, are even younger. Many are students who find in Aix their first chance to prepare a professional production for a knowledgeable (if indulgent) audience. The advantages of this policy are obvious. Since nine out of ten operas in the repertoire are old warhorses, an injection of young blood is a welcome tonic to revive the tired animals--all the more so as the blood-donors are willing to work for modest fees. But there is a snag: despite the freshness and bubbling enthusiasm, one sometimes wonders whether one is attending the final examination at the Conservatoire de Paris, rather than one of France's most prestigious musical events.

To direct two of this year's three new productions, Lissner hired two young ladies who had made their careers in the theater but had virtually no experience in the opera house--Irina Brook and Julie Brochen. Brook is the daughter of the formidable Peter Brook, who inaugurated the Lissner era four years ago with Don Giovanni. His production, having traveled all over Europe and to Japan, returned to the courtyard of the Archbishop's Palace this summer. It is an old man's Don, a bone-dry affair cut down to the essentials, a sketch, not a painting. Like father, like daughter. Irina's Eugene Onegin contented itself with an almost bare stage. Only a bench told us that we were in the garden of the Larin country estate. Only a table with a couple of bottles and glasses gave us a hint that the Larins were throwing a big party. In the ballroom of the St. Petersburg mansion where Onegin under stands his love for Tatyana, there wasn't even a table--and the polonaise was stripped of its choreography, reduced to a mere orchestra hit. The dancing that we did get to see had nothing to do with what Tchaikovsky had in mind, unless we assume that he secretly dreamed of aerobics at Club Med. Need one mention that there was not a uniform in sight? Pushkin's subtle shades of Russian society, the peasants, the landed aristocracy and the capital's upper crust, got lost in a sea of tropical leisure wear.

A minimalist approach of this kind puts the burden squarely on the shoulders of the singers. If they are brilliant actors, they will overcome the parsimonious staging. Alas, this was not the case. Vocally, Peter Mattei (Onegin) was competent enough, but he failed miserably in his attempts to imbue his role with life. Instead of a multifaceted, Byronic character, we got a wooden cynic with a frozen smirk. Olga Guryakova, as Tatyana, also sang well, and her acting was far more successful. Daniil Shtoda (Lensky) has a promising voice, but technically he proved not quite ready. Martin Snell sang Gremin's aria smoothly, though without the organ-like sonority of Russian basses. The best singing came from Ekaterina Semenchuk, as Olga. Her sumptuous mezzo has been, until now, a well-kept secret in St. Petersburg. No longer. In the pit, Daniel Harding was vivid as ever, alert to every nuance in the score, and better in control of his tendency to rush than in the past. The only trouble was the small size of the orchestra. Slimness can be a virtue. But Tchaikovsky asks for a BMW, not a motorbike.

...