Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, review: 'cosmopolitan'

Despite being hit by strikes, 2014's Aix-en-Provence music festival got off to a strong start with Handel’s Ariodante, says John Allison

Richard Jones's production of Handel's Ariodante at Festival d'Aix-en-Provence Credit: Photo: Pascal Victor

There’s trouble in paradise. Aix-en-Provence may be the greatest festival city of them all, but even it has been hit by the strikes that have affected performances all over France this summer. Protesting arts workers disrupted the opening weekend of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, going as far as cancelling the first night of a new production of Rossini’s Il turco in Italia.

The situation gives every indication of calming down, but for a few days Aix was, in the words of the festival’s director Bernard Foccroulle, “en état de siège”. It all felt very French, despite the cosmopolitan outlook of the festival. Foccroulle has worked hard to position Aix as spiritually Mediterranean, connecting with the south as well as looking over its shoulder more traditionally towards Paris.

A strong British artistic presence this year is felt especially in the new staging of Handel’s Ariodante, directed by Richard Jones with Sarah Connolly in the title role. Taking his cue from the opera’s original Edinburgh setting, which sees the knight Ariodante betrothed to Ginevra, daughter of the King of Scotland, Jones moves Ariosto’s chivalric story to a remote Scottish outpost peopled by a clan of Seventies fishermen.

This scenario gives Jones, working with the designer, Ultz, a chance to indulge his penchant for patterned wallpapers, adding tartan and bouffant hair to his regular arsenal of retro hideousness. The chorus, here the excellent English Voices, won’t be too grateful for all their knitwear as they work late into the balmy Aix nights (performances here end around 1.30am). Their small vocal role is augmented by silent appearances in formation (another Jonesian tic), and they also manipulate the marionettes introduced alongside some Highland dancing in the ballets that close each act.

For all this, Jones gets to the heart of this opera’s distinctive melancholia. He stops short of honouring its Happy End, though, and during the rejoicing of the finale, we see Ginevra packing her bags and hitchhiking away. Only Polinesso comes close to caricature: Jones transforms this scheming duke into a creepy Presbyterian minister, a part-time one at that who dresses like a biker under his cassock.

As a butch-looking Ariodante, Connolly gives the performance of the evening, her mezzo smooth and brightly focused. The intensity she brings to “Scherza infida” is underlined by detailed accompaniments from the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, conducted with style by Andrea Marcon.

Patricia Petibon, the Ginevra, is a star in France, but her un-Handelian singing sounds mannered. The vocal and verbal immediacy of Sandrine Piau as her lady-in-waiting, Dalinda, makes a refreshing contrast. Sonia Prina’s spitfire coloratura and slightly squawky mezzo suited her brilliantly acted Polinesso, and Luca Tittolo uses his focused bass to create a sympathetically deep portrait of the King’s predicament.

Another festival highlight is the multimedia production of Winterreise, devised by the renowned South African artist William Kentridge in partnership with the baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Markus Hinterhäuser. Schubert’s song cycle, a bleak meditation of loss and loneliness, has been staged before, and once again it seems doubtful whether any mise en scène – even responses as unfailingly musical as Kentridge’s – can truly add to the work.

The 24 short animated films – one for each song – projected onto Kentridge’s self-designed installation come from his familiar repertoire of “drawings for projection”. His visual leitmotifs – such as palimpsest mine ledgers and maps of Johannesburg, sketches of industrial wastelands, African birds and trees and astronomical instruments – are all hypnotically revisited, but almost inevitably they distract from Goerne’s wonderfully natural and unforced singing.

The stark musical branches of this wintry masterpiece are perhaps best left bare.

Until July 24. Tickets: 0033 434 08 02 17 festival-aix.com