Toronto-based Opera Atelier is among the privileged few. The baroque opera-ballet company is the only arts group from North America invited to mount works at Versailles.
In 2022, OA (aka co-artistic directors Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg) created an international sensation with their staging of Charpentier’s David and Jonathan (1688).
The good news is that OA has brought their award-winning production to Toronto, and now the hometown crowd can see what all the buzz was about. In fact, this French Baroque masterpiece begins its run at Koerner Hall on April 9.
What follows is a transcript of my lively zoom conversation with the co-artistic directors where the talk revolved around, not surprisingly, all things David and Jonathan. (To avoid fragmentation, I’ve combined the commentary of Pynkoski and Lajeunesse Zingg into one single OA voice.)
Atelier’s production of Charpentier’s David and Jonathan (Photo: Bruce Zinger)
Opera Atelier: Q&A
I’ve noticed that there’s currently a David and Jonathan industry going on with all kinds of performance, videos and DVDs. Why the abundance of interest after 300 years?
Interest in the French Baroque never really died out in France. The revival is happening elsewhere, particularly with the works of Lully and Charpentier. It’s taken awhile for David and Jonathan to catch on because at one time, it was not necessarily considered a very performable piece.
Why was that?
It is a liturgical subject, so people thought it’s probably not interesting. Also, the performances took place at a Jesuit school — Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris — and was written for the students. However, people didn’t realize that this was not just an amateur school show. Young aristocrats were trained in every respect with lessons in fencing, dancing, singing, and playing an instrument, so the production standards were incredibly high. In fact, Louis-le-Grand put on performances twice a year, and they became a big part of the social calendar.
Why a Jesuit college? Was Charpentier not writing for the court?
Charpentier had been held at bay by Lully, who had a monopoly on operas at this time. Charpentier literally couldn’t produce in a royal theatre, so when he had this opportunity to create something, even though it was for a school, he jumped at the chance, and he didn’t hold anything back. You can just hear the drama and the theatricality pouring out of him. In many respects, dramatically in particular, he is superior to Lully. Charpentier was an extraordinary talent.
So how did David and Jonathan become a current darling?
It took some time for people to think, all right, we’ve explored all of Charpentier’s and Lully’s major repertoire so what’s left? They discovered David and Jonathan, and to their amazement realized that it was an extraordinarily dramatic piece. Another point of attraction was the relationship between David and Jonathan being so ambiguous.
The homosexual aspect, you mean.
And the potential is there without a question. It may not be overt, but the very fact that it is ambiguous instantly made people interested to look at it more closely and examine it through the lens of our 21st century mores. It would have been unthinkable earlier to speak of David and Jonathan as lovers, but it’s not unthinkable now. And it gives you a huge scope to examine the possibilities between a platonic affair, a love affair, and everything that else is in between.
I was surprised by the fact that the original Jonathan was played by a boy soprano.
Well, first of all, young people matured in a different way at that time. People were being married at 12 and 13 years old. Marie Antoinette was 12.
In your production, Jonathan is performed by soprano Mireille Asselin. Could a boy soprano do the role today?
People are biologically different now. Boys’ voices change earlier, so, the potential of having a boy soprano sing the role of Jonathan is almost impossible. You’d never be able to trust that the voice would be there. And would a boy of today have the dramatic potential to take on that role? Young boys had that dramatic potential in the 17th century.
There’s a third major character in the opera — Jonathan’s father Saul.
We joke and say the opera should really be called Saul, not David and Jonathan. The opera’s big, powerful, tragic journey is Saul’s more than anyone else. In a way, the relationship of David and Jonathan takes second place to the relationship that Saul has with his son and with David.
Can you elaborate on that?
The opera is a love story, but it’s a love story between three people, Saul, David, and Jonathan. And it’s a tragic love story, incredibly tragic, because love can turn into so many different things if emotionally, it gets out of control.
Saul is the one who is consumed by a dangerous passion.
Saul is someone whose emotions have become so extreme that, although what he feels for David and for his son begins as love, it turns into obsession, then into jealousy, and finally into a violent hatred.
The love between David and Jonathan is a sidebar, because there’s a much bigger, overarching story about what love is, what it can become, in its best sense, and what it becomes at its worst. Love drives the entire story.
What about Jonathan who is caught in the middle?
Torn between wanting to be dutiful to his father and loving David, he is in an impossible situation. That comes through very wonderfully in the opera, really sensitively. There’s no question that Jonathan has to die. He’s being crushed between two gigantic personalities.
And David?
There is no happy ending for anyone in the opera, even for David. He is crowned king of Israel but look at the sinister way it all came about. Who had to be thrown under the bus for him to become king?
I read through the synopsis with five long acts and many scene changes. How do you put something this complex on the stage?
It simplifies itself after a certain point. It’s like staging Shakespeare because it can be broken down into very, very broad strokes. You could spend millions of dollars creating every scene and costume change, but it would add nothing to the production.
To recreate the opera is not necessary because there’s a broader stroke that it’s painted with, and we go with that. We let the text, which is superb, and the music, which supports it wonderfully, and the dancing tell the story for us.
And the dancing is huge, interestingly enough.
It sounds like there is more choreography than usual.
When Charpentier was commissioned by the Jesuits to do this opera, they wanted it to have a life after Louis-le-Grand, so they asked him to include plenty of dancing, because that always guaranteed the popularity of a French opera at the time, and he did indeed. The score has a rigaudon, a bourrée, and a chaconne along with many different dance forms.
Jonathan (Photo: Bruce Zinger)
David and Jonathan is a tragic opera. Where do the dances fit in?
Characters are clearly named like shepherds, warriors, captives, demons, the followers of Jonathan and so forth, and the dances are for them. They are the people. For example, a song and dance about the desire for peace is performed to the chaconne.
It was actually quite easy to integrate the dancing in this way. The dancers play real characters and then those characters dance because there’s a reason to dance. They’re never there as a divertissement. They’re furthering the action or participating in the action.
What about the chorus?
We have an on-stage ensemble of eight singers, and an off-stage choir of 20. This arrangement was quite frequently the case in French Baroque opera.
At times the ensemble sings as a group, but occasionally there is a solo, a duet, a trio, but in the big dramatic moments, the ensemble is joined by the entire choir and it’s an incredible sort of sonic event.
The ensemble singers are all soloist quality, and we were very fortunate to cast people whom we love and who love us. Every one of them is doing us a favor by agreeing to be in the ensemble.
Is there a reason for the performance venue being switched from your usual Elgin Theatre to Koerner Hall?
We knew that the original production probably didn’t happen in a theatre and was most likely performed in a large reception room. In Versailles our venue was the Royal Chapel which is also not a proscenium theatre.
Therefore, in Toronto we wanted specifically to be in a non-conventional space because that’s where the production was in Versailles, and we thought the only way that we could be true to that production was to find a non-conventional space.
You have completely new sets and costumes in Toronto. Why didn’t you bring the originals?
Just two weeks after Toronto, David and Jonathan opens in Versailles. There simply wasn’t enough time to do the transfer.
So how do you transform Koerner Hall into a unique space?
First of all, we must acknowledge philanthropists Jerry and Joan Lozinski who gave us the gift that allows us to do this.
Set designer Gerard Gauci has jokingly called the transformation a gigantic, extravagant Lego set. He has designed a series of flexible staircases, pillars and towers that you can take apart and put together in different ways. So, pieces that are made for David and Jonathan will also show up in Pelléas and Mélisande next season.
And for costumes?
We have Michael Gianfrancesco, one of Canada’s great designers, who really understands the needs of the project. He’s an extremely sensitive designer, and we’re thrilled to have him.
Are there changes to the staging and choreography as well?
The staging and choreography will be very, very similar but some things have to change.
The Koerner Hall stage is larger, it’s wider in particular, and also slightly deeper, so there are certain things that we just have to rethink if we want to create the sort of relationships on stage that we had in Versailles. So, the moment that happens, the patterns change, things shift.
Because of the larger stage, we added four dancers. We had eight in Versailles and now 12 in Toronto. But the larger stage means that people are farther away from each other. We have to find a middle ground.
I’m curious. Will the aesthetic change?
It will feel very, very different, simply because we have a different aesthetic in North America. There’s an intensity, perhaps more of a dramatic thrust to some of what we do here.
In Versailles, for want of a better word, it’s a classical production. It has tremendous sort of form and polish and it’s a gorgeous thing for that. At the same time, in Toronto we enjoy seeing things getting messed up a bit and being a little rougher around the edges at times.
Do you have any final thoughts on the production?
We don’t like to get overly political but it’s wonderful that we’re performing at this particular time when there is so much negativity about Israel, something that that we personally find very upsetting.
We’re really proud of the fact that we are producing an important foundation story of Jewish history, and we hope that this sort of thing can engender better understanding among different cultures. And more positivity toward Israel.
Are you looking to promote an event? Have a news tip? Need to know the best events happening this weekend? Send us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the daily arts news straight to your inbox.
Sign up for the Ludwig Van Toronto e-Blast! — local classical music and opera news straight to your inbox HERE.
