Dirty Duchess pays visit to Quebec
ROBERT LEPAGE CONNECTION explains the presence of Powder Her Face at capital city’s opera festival
It was surely just a coincidence that this particular library copy of the vocal score of Powder Her Face fell open so naturally at page 110.
“Mm, mm, mm,” sings (or hums) Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, the extremely promiscuous central title character of Thomas Adès’s chamber opera, one of two works to be presented in Quebec City in the coming weeks under the auspices of the Festival d’opéra de Québec.
Soon the vocalisms, over a plucking accompaniment, turn to a rocking semitone figure — rendered in relatively full voice by Jill Gomez in the EMI recording, despite the guttural appearance of the “ng-ugh” sounds called for by Philip Hensher’s libretto.
Then come three sassy falling chords in the orchestra, a fit of coughing and two bars of silence, as the Duchess lights a cigarette and tells the hotel waiter who was the other party in this party: “That will do. Take the money.”
Adès was not the first composer, and very far from the best, to represent a sexual climax in music. Check out rehearsal number 75 in Richard Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica to get a sense of how Mr. Strauss felt about Mrs. Strauss at the end of a long day.
But the context of the sex act in this piece is hotel-sleazy, not homestead-heroic. And the most noted scene in Powder Her Face is staged as well as sung and played, so it acquired quick notoriety on the première of the opera in Cheltenham, England, in 1995. “Contains explicit scenes,” notes an advisory on the festival website.
Whether this two-act opera lasting 115 minutes (not counting the intermission) really merits all the attention is still debated. It clearly attracts revivals, partly because of its trashy elements. Even the beginning is high camp, as the waiter/ electrician, in fur coat and heels, imitates the Duchess before her entry. On the other hand, the quirky score, with its fragmented musichall elements — the overture sounds like a tango after five martinis — is interesting enough to keep the purists guessing.
The chamber orchestra of 15 musicians includes only one percussionist, but this player is called on to play not only customary drums and cymbals, but such curiosities as a vibraslap, washboard, cabaça, whip, lion’s roar, popgun, scrap metal and electric bell. The harpist, accordionist and pianist, as well as the percussionist, are asked to “play” fishing reels, these implying the deranged mental state of the Duchess during her closely followed divorce case of 1963.
Powder Her Face obviously has its diversions, but there remains the larger question of what an 18-yearold opera in English by an English composer is doing in Quebec City. The answer has to do with native son Robert Lepage, who tried out a new production of The Tempest, an Adès opera based on Shake- speare, at the festival last summer before its fall run at the Metropolitan Opera.
While Lepage is not involved in Powder Her Face — conductor Jonathan Stockhammer and director
There remains the question of what an opera in English by an English composer is doing in Quebec City.
Jay Scheib, who worked on February performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, are the production principals — he does have his fingers firmly on the other Festival d’opéra de Québec offering: Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust.
This is the lavishly cinematic Metropolitan Opera version of 2008 that preceded Lepage’s notoriously costly and bug-ridden assault on Wagner’s Ring. “Working with the interactive video designer Holger Förterer, Mr. Lepage has created a staging in which eerily detailed video depictions of everything from a grassy field to a fiery hell shift and morphin response to the movements and singing of the cast and chorus,” wrote critic Anthony Tommasini in a generally commendatory review for The New York Times.
The Quebec City revival in the full-sized Salle Louis Fréchette in the Grand Théâtre de Québec (opening Thursday, with repeats on July 27, 29 and 31) incorporates the services of the Orchestre symphonique de Québec and its chorus under the Italian conductor Giuseppe Grazioli. The all-Canadian cast comprises Gordon Gietz in the title role, Julie Boulianne as Marguerite, John Relyea as Méphistophélès and Alexandre Sylvestre as Brander.
The import soloists in Powder Her Face are Allison Cook as the Duchess and Nili Riemer, William Ferguson and Matt Boehler as the hotel employees. The Adès opera (opening Aug. 1, with repeats on Aug. 3 and 5) is presented in Le Cap- itole de Québec, which is normally a setting for variety acts.
There are other events linked to the festival, many of them outdoors. Visit festivaloperaquebec.com for more information.