The fates of unfortunate Queen Dido and the hero Gilgamesh will be combined in the joint performance of works by Henry Purcell and Bohuslav Martinů. The Janáček Opera is preparing the combination of the Baroque opera with music of the 20th century as the last premiere of the season. We talk to Václav Luks, a renowned interpreter of early music, the founder and conductor of Collegium 1704, mainly about the Baroque part of the performance.
Dido and Aeneas is one of the most frequently performed titles, at least among Baroque operas. How do you explain its popularity?
Interestingly, it is not an ideal work for full-length production because it is very short. But the shortening conceals a unique charm and the genius of the opera also lies in it. Dido and Aeneas takes a little over 45 minutes which is short compared with the great Italian opera seria. However, Purcell managed to use this small segment to perfectly portray the characteristics of characters, attribute development to them and build up a dramatic line. It contains everything that can be expected from a proper opera in a compressed form. The chorus, which is actually the most important actor – it takes up more time than the lead characters – plays the central and an attractive role in the opera. And it creates a certain rhythm because it amplifies every scene dealing with certain emotions, closes it and continues. That makes it a multilayered, in a way perfect work. And a sort of minimal Baroque music.
Or Baroque verism... You mentioned the powerful role of the choir, which should make it an ideal work for Janáček Opera...
The choir of the Janáček Opera is truly outstanding, but I was very pleased with the orchestra as well. It is very open, flexible, and there is a friendly and creative atmosphere in it. But since you mentioned verism – the genre of this work is also specific in that it is not a typical opera seria. It's a kind of semi-opera or mask, but Purcell mainly follows the Shakespearean realism, the English theatrical tradition. And this type of theatre is still very communicative, lively and attractive for the audience today. Its short length is attractive for the production team in that it can be – or even must be – combined with other works. In this case, it is music of the 20th century, and I believe that the combination is good.
Aeneas leaves Dido to fulfil the will of the gods; a conflict between feelings and obligations is an old mythic and operatic theme. What does such a story tell about the people of today?
The conflict between what we want and what we have to do is still current today – whether it is the will of the gods or the tax administration. Fulfilling one's ethical commitment and a task that is in conflict with one's own wishes is something that has accompanied people throughout history.
And could the relationship of the Baroque to the present time be characterised in general terms? Baroque opera has been experiencing a great wave of interest in the last forty years and before then it was practically not played at all for 150 years...
In the past, Baroque operas had a reputation of a rigid genre due to the artificial libretti but it was a big mistake. When you read a brief story of a Baroque opera, it may actually seem trivial and unrefined. However, that is not its charm. The charm of Baroque opera is based on situations that the storyline offers. And Metastasio or other librettists managed to use it masterfully. In a simple story, there are deep emotional conflicts and contradictions, internal processes that are quite topical for contemporary man. Because the times have changed, but people have not changed much.
In addition, there is the main attribute of opera – music. The attractiveness of Baroque music lies in the fact that the art of Baroque masters met the requirement – or their own ambition – for a high artistic level as well as absolute communicativeness. Baroque music does not need an explanation, and yet it is not suggestive. It is refined, artistic. Those are huge goals, which are very difficult to combine, and Baroque music succeeded one hundred percent. I believe that it succeeded like never before and never after in the history of music.
Along with Purcell's opera, oratorio The Epic of Gilgamesh by Bohuslav Martinů staged by Marko Ivanović will be performed the same night. Do you discuss it together somehow or are these two completely separate parts?
We rehearse completely separately and the only connecting element is director Jiří Heřman. His scenic speech is very specific and characteristic, and I believe he will be able to link the two works thanks to his expressiveness. There are many parallels between the two works at the spiritual level.
Could you find some purely musical connection between Purcell and Martinů?
There is a similar dimension of the two works. Then the function of the choir, which is even more significant in Martinů's work – after all, it is an oratorio. These are the basic parallels from a musical standpoint. With Martinů, there is obviously inspiration with an archaic theme and his love for pre-Romantic music. His music actually has the same crystalline purity as Purcell's. Both works can very easily stand side by side.
You produce the opera with the orchestra of the Janáček Opera. What do you bring to it based on your experience with early music?
We have a reduced cast which is given by the score. Basso continuo players and one violinist from my Collegium 1704 joined us. The handling of string instruments is radically different in Baroque music and it is better demonstrated by an experienced player than by me, originally a keyboardist and a wind player. Therefore, Jana Chytilová is in the assistant role and she is an inspiration for others. In addition, she is from Kroměříž and studied in Brno, so she found many former friends and colleagues in the orchestra. The orchestra quickly accepted the fact that they play with minimal vibrato, there is articulation, and the rhythmic side of things is essential. It adopted the method of performing in which the player's own speech is formed by the hand with a bow. With a ban on vibrato, conventional orchestras lose a basic means of expression, suddenly everything sounds somewhat artificially, and it takes a long time until the colour of the sound finds a new shape. We managed to overcome this almost immediately.
You spoke about a flexible and rapidly responding orchestra. How are the singers?
We have a very flexible ensemble, largely composed of singers who work in the theatre. Exceptions are Markéta Cukrová, who sings one of two alternations of Dido, Kateřina Kněžíková as Belinda, Václav Čížek in the role of a sailor and Polish counter-tenor Karol Bartosiński. It was a necessity if we wanted to place a counter-tenor or altus in the role of the Spirit. Bartosiński also portrays the second witch. However, all singers approach the work very openly.
Basso continuo is played by musicians from your Collegium 1704. What does continuo actually create in Baroque music?
It partially has a solo function because it accompanies solo recitatives and ariosos. It is interesting that in Purcell all characters are accompanied only by continuo in solos – except for the final lament of Dido and the scene with the wizard in the middle. Otherwise, the orchestra only accompanies the choir. In connection with the orchestra, a harmonic and rhythmic structure comes out of the continuo. Baroque music is built so that it is based on the bass. Not for nothing, German theorist Hugo Riemann called the entire era until Beethoven the "era of general bass". It is not just about the practical realization of harmony, but it is the base for thoughts of the composers. They based it on the bass and the musical execution was also supposed to be based on the bass. Because from where an idea of the composer comes, from there we, artists, should come.
When you were doing Mysliveček's opera L’Olimpiade in Prague, I was impressed by the carefully and vividly rehearsed recitatives. It is probably expected for a person specialising in early music but otherwise I would say that there is a tendency to make a terrible deletion in them. What is the purpose of the many words between the beautiful songs?
Here we return to what we were talking about at the beginning. Baroque opera seria and even Mozart's contains the "beautiful songs" as an artificial element. And the implementer lets them be drawn to them because it is the easiest way. Opera seria hides amazing scenes and the psychological development of characters which is hidden in the recitatives. The aria generally illustrates what happened in the recitative. All happens and is underlined in it and the actual conflict and drama take place in the recitatives. We know that Shakespeare's or Molière's dramas were accompanied by music and there were also ballets. If we took such a production, cross out the entire Shakespeare, leaving only musical numbers, we would certainly be left with nice music but the drama would not happen. When someone deletes and shortens recitatives, they steal the actual drama from the audience. The work is then crippled. It is very hard for singers brought up with the opera of the 19th century. As soon as the music does not have a beautiful melodic line and an arc, on which they would show their beautiful voices, and they are supposed to recite instead, they are not at ease.
How does a person, who does not actively speak the language, in which they sing, feel when working with the recitative?
If they are informed well and speak at least the basics of the language, they will handle it. However, in-depth knowledge of the language is also important because of the pronunciation. And the emotional relationship to each word is also very important. Without knowledge of the language, it is much more difficult work.
The opera Dido and Aeneas was first performed at a dance school. Who played it there and what did it possibly look like?
It was an all-girl ensemble but we do not have much information about the actual course of the performance. The work became popular very quickly and there are several reworked versions from the 18th century. There are versions where the Wizard sings bass, and due to the fact that there are no original performing materials, it is difficult to get to the original version.
Let's at least speculate about the level of execution. Do we have exaggerated illusions about the abilities of the artists at the time or was excellent interpretation not taken into account then?
It is important to be inspired by the ideal vision of the composer and ideally by the possibilities of that time. We can say that under certain circumstances they did not have the ideal staff, they had to deal with various problems and make compromises. Bach often complains about poor musicians, Händel is mad at singers, there were operational problems like today. I am convinced, however, that the level of performance was incredibly high in opera hotspots like London, the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, Venice and Dresden. The rehearsal often went very fast and the works also disappeared quickly. But there are also reports that when there was time and money, composers and the performers liked to take a long time to rehearse. Our goal should be the implementation of music in ideal conditions. We cannot say that it is historically correct to compromise just because Bach mentions them.
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) / Henry Purcell (1659–1695)
