Västerbotten Son PO Enquist aged 80 years and Capital of Culture year in Umeå is investing in an opera in his novel The Story of Blanche and Marie. It has already been said and written a lot about Mats Larsson Gothe’s opera, but now it’s time for the review. Per Feltzin was the first performance at the Norrland Opera in Umeå this weekend.
I’ve really been looking forward to this show. How can be able to transform Enquist remarkable troublesome and messy and stringy, contradictory lyrical novel into a full-evening opera for large orchestra, chorus and soloists? So nothing poetic chamber play without a tangible narrative. How?
The story is about so much. Paris at the turn of the century.
Scientific takes up the dangerous and beneficial radioactive radiation. Marie Curie’s two Nobel Prizes.
social policy – the male gaze and the male determination of the women – hysteria cows. The women who wanted to be free subjugated by medical means.
Love-wise – lust, bondage, prohibited acts, hypocrisy, lust.
The story is so real, here are amputated limbs and a box instead of a wheelchair. Here are ovariepressen, ie a device with an extremely heavy pressure on the ovaries would cure hysteria. What’s in the book and on the stage.
Mats Larsson Gothe’s music roots a bit in tonsättarlådan from this time , it’s a really delicious sound pattern that flashes by Puccini and Offenbach and yet contemporary Swedish art music. The conductor Niklas Willén can thus allow the Norrland Opera Orchestra dazzle us with a musical picture of Paris and still show the harsh, calm, gentle Swedish.
The main roles are unreservedly by Charlotta Larsson and Susanna Levonen. We also see, among others, Gabriel Souvanen that Professor Charcot, who led the experiments with the hysterical women. Everything goes up – text, tone, spectacle.
Maria Sundqvist’s libretto is also a cleverly crafted version of the novel. It is not easy to engage the scientific litanies of chemical or achievements of mental patients’ medical needs, but the lines have to be there, to contexts should be done. It is this love then flowers. The sullen, the impossible, the grief-lined.
The director Elizabeth Ljungar has also made it easy for us to keep up with all the abrupt shifts in time. Once we are in 1913, sometimes in 1898, then 1903 … But in the center there are these people’s fates.
And it affects subconsciously. During urpremiärens first act there were two people in the audience who collapsed and got medical help at the break of paramedics.
So – Larsson Gothe’s opera is … how was it now I said about the novel … tedious and messy, lyrical and contradictory. But it lives on in me.
Additional Info:
Swedish Radio P2 Live sends the opera on Saturday 18 October 2014
Culture documentary on Monday 6 October by Kerstin Berggren was about Blanche and Marie.
P2s opera program benched with Ella Saturday, October 11 also raised the opera.
Follow the links below.
ARTISTIC TEAM: Composers Mats Larsson Gothe, Libretto Maria Sundqvist, Conductor Niklas Willén, Director Elizabeth Ljungar, Costume Design Annsofie Östbergh Nyberg, Lighting Design Thorsten Dahn, Set Design Jan Lundberg, Choreographer Ambra Succi, Mask Design Gunilla Pettersson.
soloists: Marie Curie Susanna Levonen, Blanche Wittman Charlotta Larsson, Jean Martin Charcot Gabriel Suovanen, Jane Avril Miriam Treichl, Paul Langevin Kosma Ranuer, Pierre Curie Karl Rombo, Eusapia Palladino / Jeanne Langevin Maria Streijffert, Gilles de la Tourette / Svante Arrhenius Ulrik Qvale, Joseph Babinski Jacob Hogstrom.
NorrlandsOperan Symphony Orchestra NorrlandsOperans Run
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