Georges Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles is not an easy opera to stage in 2021, with its awkward libretto, its cast of knife-biting fakirs and veiled virgin priestesses, not to mention a legacy of blackface productions hanging uneasily in the air. The Grand Théâtre de Genève’s revival of Lotte de Beer’s 2014 Theater an der Wien production initially does an excellent job of leaning into the weirdness of a post-colonial staging of this “exotic” opera par excellence, with an affecting pre-curtain set piece featuring a Western director and camera team paying off the locals, setting up fake palm trees, and cleaning away the rubbish of real Sri Lankan lives in order to create a picture-perfect Oriental scene.
The sharpness of this tendency, however, softens as the opera progresses, and de Beer’s direction is sidetracked by a weird desire to make this a Geneva-centric production, overcomplicating the already preposterous “reality TV” staging with background vignettes of a television audience (played with obvious pleasure by the Grand Théâtre chorus) and, far more jarringly, a series of cringeworthy faux-vox pop interviews projected in between Acts 2 and 3. (“Should the lovers live or die?” etc.) The idea of examining our cultural addiction to these staged “live” stories may be an intriguing one – or at least, it would have been in their heyday twenty years ago – but between the early-noughties graphics, the Geneva ice hockey team scarves and the traditional Ceylonese costumes, there’s simply too much going on at once.
The original plot is itself a rather fragile skeleton, an assemblage of coincidences and changes of heart on which to hang a very pretty string of duets – and the central cast did a wonderful job of bringing these to life. Frédéric Antoun was a compelling Nadir, with lots of 19th-century swagger, and a masterful tenor voice that blended wonderfully with Audun Iversen’s rich baritone. Both played their roles absolutely straight, with lots of head-clutching and shirt-rending, as if utterly unaffected by de Beer's staging. Charming, spry Michael Mofidian sounded fantastic as Nourabad, and brought lightness and good humour to every scene he was in. But the real jewel of the production was Kristina Mkhitaryan, who gave a nuanced and playful performance as Leïla. From her first “Je le jure!” to her tremendous “va, cruel”, the Russian soprano moved from a lovely flute-like tone at the top of her tessitura to gutsy vibrato and warmth in her mid-range. Her feisty, wilful Leïla, she made clear, was not some hapless object of male admiration, but a woman with her own desires and flaws, in charge of her own destiny.
Under David Reiland’s direction, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande did its best to give Bizet's under-appreciated score a chance, from the lovely orchestral prelude (taken at a gentle pace) to the stormy drama of the final scenes, but came across as a little muted overall. That being said, solo melodies (oboe, harp, horn duet) were clearly articulated and given space to shine. The chorus' performance was also a little uneven, given their central role: the lynch mob scene in the Act 2 finale, for instance, felt subdued, although the final chorus of “Divin Brahma!” sounded fantastic.
In the end, it’s hard to decide what this production is trying to be. Is this a jolly, light staging enjoying a bit of wink-wink kitschy camp? (Most of the audience, I confess, loved the silliness, from the videos to the hockey scarves.) Is it too-schmaltzy Regietheater, or ironic, self-conscious romance? Is de Beer giving in too fully to the original libretto’s ridiculousness or trying too hard to do something new? Nineteenth-century critic Benoît Jouvin tartly observed that there were “neither fishers in the libretto nor pearls in the music”. In attempting to overcompensate for the opera's perceived insufficiencies, this staging sets itself a series of challenges that it ultimately fails to fulfil.
