With massive choruses, high-flying solos and a story of secrets, sex and bitter religious rivalries, Fromental Halévy’s La Juive is a masterpiece of grand opera.
But despite its enormous popularity in the decades after its premiere, it’s been rarely performed in recent years.
Constantine Costi, the revival director responsible for bringing French director Olivier Py’s production of La Juive to Sydney, sees its rareness as a great advantage, and believes audiences are in for an enormous treat – especially if they’re experiencing this opera for the first time.
We asked him about his work on the opera.
Opera Australia: What excites you about working on La Juive?
Constantine Costi: It’s always super exciting to work on a rarely staged opera, because the audiences are going into it completely fresh. It’s not like La Bohème, which some people have seen fifty times. So there’s always an added excitement when I know that the audience will be following along beat by beat without knowing what will happen next.
OA: As it’s not super well-known by audiences, could you explain to us briefly what La Juive is about?
CC: It’s set in Constance, which is in the South of Germany. The original setting is in the Middle Ages, but we’re doing an updated setting, which is just pre-World War II.
Effectively it’s about a Jewish jeweller, Eléazar, and his daughter, Rachel. They’re living in a very hostile town that’s cracking down on Judaism and Jewish people. She falls in love with a guy she thinks is Jewish, but is actually Christian. Not only is he Christian, but he’s the son of the Emperor.
He eventually outs himself as being Christian, and Eléazar and Rachel are arrested and are sentenced to death. The only way they can get out of it is if Eleazar can convince Rachel to denounce her faith.
OA: It’s clear there’s a lot of drama and high stakes. What are some of the main conflicts in the piece?
CC: It’s really about the eternal societal grappling between the persecuted and the persecutor. And we’ve seen that happen in many different guises throughout human history, and it’s kind of a constant.
It’s always interesting to hold up a mirror to where we are now.
While we’re not living through World War II in Europe, there are parallels to the rise of right wing authoritarianism and the treatment of outsiders that make this work really worth seeing on a political level.
OA: For people who aren’t in the opera world, could you tell us about your role? What does a revival director do?
CC: This production first opened in Lyon in 2016. My job is to take the existing set and costumes and lighting states, and to redirect it with a new cast. That means being faithful to the original spirit and feeling and shape of the original production.
However, when you’re working with singers with different ideas and ways of conveying the characters, you want to find something that’s crisp, fresh and exciting, and not just a carbon copy of what happened in France six years ago.
OA: The cast is largely Australian, and all new to this production. What are they like to work with?
CC: I love an Australian cast. It’s so good to see the top quality of singers and actors that we have in this country.
The fact that I’m not working with singers who are like, “this is my 200th performance of Rachel”, means that we’re constantly discovering and growing this thing together.
We’re developing a really strong ensemble feeling with everybody. It’s been very electric in the rehearsal room.
OA: Can you tell us a little about this production? As you said, it’s been updated to 1930s France. Why this setting? What does it speak to?
CC: Obviously it’s across all of Europe, but France in particular has had a very interesting relationship with their Jewish population. You can see it with things like the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 1800s, and the treatment of Jewish people in Vichy France, and even before.
We’re setting it just before the rise of nazism, where there’s this powder keg feeling that something is about to explode.
There’s all this tension throughout the community. There’s an incredible sense of forboding, and it’s absolutely bristling with drama.
OA: The music would also be unfamiliar to most audiences. How would you describe Fromental Halévy’s score?
CC: There’s a reason why this was one of the most popular operas of its time. The music is just sensational. There are so many crackers in there that are overwhelmingly beautiful and inventive. It really keeps you guessing musically.
It’s a brilliant showcase for the chorus. I’ve never really heard them sound like this, and it’s magical to hear the range and variety of sound that can be produced by these incredible artists.
OA: It’s an opera in the tradition of French grand opera, and the premiere production was apparently absolutely enormous with hundreds of extras and two design teams. This production obviously won’t be the same as that, but do you think it will have that same sort of ‘wow’ impact?
CC: Absolutely. Originally there would’ve been a fleet of horses, and a hundred kings waltzing on in golden cloaks. We don’t have that, but what gives it the wow factor and makes it grand is the music.
It comes over you in this tidal wave of feeling and immerses you.
It’s big, larger than life, and then balanced by some beautifully tender moments. There’s a long section when the chorus and singers are singing acapella and unaccompanied. It’s a treat for the ears in every way.
And of course, there’s still a big set. It’s a big, tectonic set with these really surprising shifts in scenography that I think does service to the grand style. There are big, theatrical gestures that are really surprising and fun to see.
La Juive is at the Sydney Opera House from 9 March 2022.
Opera Australia
PO Box 291, Strawberry Hills NSW 2012, Australia
Website: https://opera.org.au/
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