Igor Stravinsky - Le Rossignol

When I borrowed this from the library I hadn’t read the backcover very well. Therefore, I thought this video would belong to the category of more or less traditional theatre performances; an approach we’ve all come to expect from operas.

Wel, it’s not a theatre performance. It’s a real movie. When that became clear to me, and before I played it in my standalone, I had some fears it might have been watered down to a Hollywood fairy-tale, you know the kind - lots of blood, no humour, and the music mangled by synthesizers.

I was wrong. Rest assured, the entire opera score is present. Nathalie Dessay performs perfectly as a warbling nightingale, and the fisherman, the Japanese Chamberlain and his Emperor do very well too. It is said Le Rossignol would be one of Stravinsky’s lesser works. Hm. Wait till you see this…opera? This movie? This - now, what is it, exactly?

This is what it is: a downright sensation!

“The opera received eye-popping special effects”, critics said. Indeed: computer generated images and real-life singers are blended to a fantastic spectacle which will leave you breathless. A veritable torrent of creative Wonderland images, poetic still-lives, futuristic novelties, magic tricks and dadaesque absurdity is launched at you, urging your ears and eyes to give it all. Yes, every now and then I hit the pause button and went through scenes one frame at a time, just in order to take it all in – there are so many marvels to be seen. To mention a few: you’ll see an emperor caught in a lampoon, floating through the air in a hall full of colourful pc screens; a nightingale hopping out of a gsm; black-gloved hands playing triangles and trombones against a clouded sky, imagery worthy of surrealist Magritte; teapots functioning as buildings, and buildings as teapots – I could go on for hours. Hundreds of screenshots on these pages will not suffice to give you the right impression of this piece, which, I am sure, Stravinsky himself would have enjoyed immensely.
Director Christian Chaudet’s artistic imagination goes sky-high here. It probably needed an army of whizzkids with limitless digital skills to realize his inventive ideas…but they pulled it off magnificently.

Have fun! And if you still prefer a more traditional approach of opera, give it to your children – they’ll know how to appreciate it.

Performers:

Orchestre & Coeurs de L’Opera National de Paris – James Conlon
Chorus Master – David Levi

Cast:

Nightingale – Natalie Dessay
Child – Hugo Simcic
Cook – Mary McLaughlin
Death – Violetta Urmana
Fisherman – Vsevolod Grivnov
Emperor – Albert Schagidullin
Chamberlain – Laurent Naouri
Bonze – Maxime Mikhailov

Director – Christian Chaudet.