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Music Review

Drama Onstage and Off

Thomas Oliemans in “The Magic Flute,” at the Grand Théâtre de Provence, part of the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France.Credit...Boris Horvat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France — Impassioned pleas, angry remonstrations and intrigue marked the first two nights of the Aix-en-Provence Festival. There was opera, too — Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” on Wednesday, and Handel’s “Ariodante” on Thursday — but it was sometimes drowned out by the clamor of demonstrations outside the theaters. 

Festivals across France this summer have been threatened with cancellations by striking workers who are protesting changes in their benefit structure. Although most of the Aix employees voted against a strike, some threatened to disrupt individual performances.

The protests played out very differently at the two opening productions. Each featured a German orchestra (the excellent Freiburg Baroque Orchestra), an international cast of fine singers and British stage directors: Simon McBurney for “Flute,” and Richard Jones for “Ariodante.” But the fate of the performances lay in the hands of the French crews of the two theaters that presented them, the Grand Théâtre de Provence and the Théâtre de l’Archevêché.

On Thursday, the entire first act of “Ariodante” was accompanied by a steady din of shouts and whistles from the adjoining square, and only part of the lighting system had been rigged because some of the technical crew were striking. When a fire alarm went off at the beginning of the second act, many in the audience suspected foul play. 

By contrast, at Wednesday’s “Flute,” the protest was elegantly handled by Mr. McBurney, who addressed the audience in French before the show. “Tonight we perform,” he said in a statement of solidarity with the workers, because “it expresses, better than strikes and demonstrations, the urgency to get out of ignorance, preconceived ideas and individualism. The characters of ‘The Magic Flute’ are tested, led through trials to rethinking, respect and the creation of an enlightened government.” Most performers onstage and in the pit, in a show of support, wore red fabric squares pinned to their clothes. 

As it happens, interdependence and pride in manual work are central to Mr. McBurney’s inventive and touching production. (A collaboration with English National Opera and Dutch National Opera, it received its premiere in Amsterdam in 2012.) Parts of the orchestra, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, are positioned on bleachers, creating a continuum between stage and pit and transforming the musicians from accompanists to participants. When Sarastro first enters, they rise as one. The flutist Anne Parisot ascends the stage as Tamino’s ally; for taming the wild animals by playing the celesta, Sebastian Wienand gets a pat on the head from Papageno.

Silent actors from Mr. McBurney’s theater company, Complicite, dressed in workmanlike black, slip in and out of multiple guises as props and witnesses. In laboratories on each side of the stage, they cook up sounds — with wind sheets and bottles — and visual effects that are magnified and projected onstage.

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The French tenor Staníslas de Barbeyrac and the Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen in “The Magic Flute,” directed by the Briton Simon McBurney, who expressed solidarity with local workers.Credit...Boris Horvat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The set itself consists of a single suspended platform, sometimes tilted precariously, often swaying under the weight and movement of the performers on it. In Mr. McBurney’s “Flute,” Tamino’s quest for enlightenment is also a universal quest for balance between the corporate, rational world of Sarastro and the passionate excesses of the Queen of the Night (Kathryn Lewek), which have taken a physical toll. When she sings — and nails — “Der Hölle Rache” in a wheelchair that she furiously pushes about, the sense of impotence and rage is both fierce and poignant.

As Tamino and Pamina, the French tenor Staníslas de Barbeyrac and the Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen were luminous and poised. The bass Christof Fischesser, as Sarastro, could have used more weight in the bottom of his register, but he projected charisma and authority. With his fine sense of physical comedy and communicative singing style, the baritone Thomas Oliemans was a fine Papageno and the well-deserved audience darling of the show.

There was lovely fluidity in the transitions from spoken theater to recitative and aria both onstage and in the pit, where Mr. Heras-Casado offered a streamlined and colorful reading of the score. The music was sometimes muscled aside by the physicality of the production, which makes heavy use of not only manual sound effects but also digitally sampled ones. In Tamino and Pamina’s series of trials, these effects were impressive but ultimately counterproductive, not only to the musical storytelling but also to the poetic framework of Mr. McBurney’s theatrical world.

In “Ariodante,” the acoustic disturbances during the first act were so severe, and the lighting so hapless, that it would be unfair to judge Mr. Jones’s production by its premiere. But if the open courtyard was vulnerable to sonic sabotage, it also offered moments of unexpected delights, such as when the French soprano Patricia Petibon, in her first aria as Princess Ginevra, let loose a volley of ecstatic high notes that drew a startled response from a flight of swallows overhead.

When the protesters disbanded, and the fire alarm had been disabled, a welcome sense of calm settled just in time for Ariodante’s most heart-wrenching lament, “Scherza infida.” The British mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, in superb vocal form, delivered a memorable performance in the role.

Mr. Jones sets Ariosto’s chivalric tale amid a clan of Scottish fishermen on a remote island. The era seems to be the early 1970s, judging from the bleached denims the creepy vicar Polinesso wears under his cassock, but time clearly has stood still for the rest of the community, clad in kilts and tweeds. While the rigidity of this honor-based society came through, not every aspect of the staging was convincing — especially the improbably sophisticated marionette shows and the Highland dances.

But musically and psychologically, the cast delved deeply into Handel’s treasury of riches, aided by the Freiburg members, who, under the direction of Andrea Marcon, played a great part in fleshing out the inner drama of the characters.

As Dalinda, Ginevra’s servant who unwittingly brings dishonor on her mistress, the French soprano Sandrine Piau was sweet-voiced and nimble. The contralto Sonia Prina has the tart lower register to match the part of Polinesso (created as a trouser role by Handel), and if her coloratura was sometimes a bit wooden, it fit her Machiavellian character well. The bass Luca Tittoto was a multidimensional King of Scotland; the American tenor David Portillo gradually warmed to the part of Lurcanio.

The English Voices, whose members had shone in “Flute,” showed an impressive command of dance steps and marionette manipulation. They spent so much time mute onstage that when they did sing, it sounded somewhat tentative. But as the opera concluded, to gusts of the mistral and a few drops of rain at 1:30 a.m., the very fact that it had been performed at all was impressive.

The Aix-en-Provence Festival runs through July 24; festival-aix.com.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Drama Onstage and Off. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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