L’Enfant et
les Sortilèges occupied Ravel intermittently for some eight
years but was completed only just in time for its first performance
at Monte-Carlo in March 1925. The libretto is by Colette (1873-1954),
author of Gigi, a novel later adapted into the Lerner
and Lowe musical. It is an opera like no other. The title cannot
be satisfactorily translated. Naxos call it The Child and
the Spells, which is not bad, but the word sortilèges
implies witchcraft, incantation, charms, in short, too many
things, and those too subtle, to be able to be rendered into
snappy English as the title of an opera. The central character
is a child – the text tells us very early on that it’s a boy
– who, already in a bad mood and not wanting to do his homework,
responds to his mother’s scolding by trashing the room. The
objects around him – the armchair, a teapot and cup, even the
shepherds and shepherdesses painted on the wallpaper – come
to life and reproach him further. Later, in the garden, he finds
that even the animals have the power of speech and, once they
recognise him as the cruel little boy with the penknife, turn
against him. In the scuffle a squirrel is wounded, and when
the animals see the child bandage the injured paw they realise
that there is good in him after all. The opera closes with a
chorus of forgiveness and redemption, whereupon the child is
relieved to see his mother emerge from the house.
The premier recording
dates from 1947 and is conducted by Ernest Bour. There are others
conducted by Ansermet and Maazel, and at least two more recent
ones, from Previn and Dutoit, which I have not heard. Two new
readings now appear at the same time.
Rattle’s Berlin
performance boasts a star-studded case. When the Child’s voice
enters, after the ultra-refined oboe and solo double bass introduction,
it seems surprisingly close. It is also very beautiful, unsurprisingly
given that the singer is Magdalena Kožená. Sadly, however –
and here I must deal right away with the major reservation I
have about this performance – though she sings so beautifully,
and the voice itself is so glorious that one is almost seduced,
she could never be taken for a bored, truculent child. I fear
that the great Nathalie Stutzmann is miscast too. Her rich,
highly coloured voice is, in other repertoire, a joy, but here,
as a mother scolding her child for his laziness, the vibrato
gets seriously in the way of the character. Another great name
amongst the cast, and a marvellous singer of Ravel, is that
of José van Dam. He is suitably lugubrious as the Tree reproaching
the child for the wounds he has inflicted with his penknife,
but earlier on, as the Armchair, he is often too loud, louder
than the score asks for, and some exaggerated gestures bring
his portrayal perilously close to hamming. Annick Massis is
not totally at ease, despite Rattle’s fairly sedate tempo, in
the coloratura passages assigned to the Fire, but she is excellent
as the Princess. What a pity, though, that in this, one of the
most passionate moments in the opera, one is more than ever
disappointed by Kožená. The Child dreams of taking his sword
to save the Princess, having himself put her in peril by tearing
up the book in which she appears. With Kožená this could be
any operatic hero, as it also could in the exquisite lament
which follows, Toi, le coeur de la rose, featuring, in
this performance, with a couple of sentimental pauses. Admittedly,
this passage is, as the French say, délicat; it is difficult
to communicate the child’s sadness without adopting too adult
a tone. Nadine Sautereau, for Ernest Bour, succeeds perfectly
though, as she also does in the exchanges with the Princess,
where her excitement is very childlike and all the more touching
for that.
The smaller roles
are generally well taken. No children’s choir is named in the
booklet, but whoever they are they manage their arithmetic lesson
better than those on any other recording, and the main chorus,
trained by Simon Halsey, is superb, though so clear and so clearly
recorded that their animal noises in the garden are sadly lacking
in atmosphere and magic. The Berlin Philharmonic, predictably,
play like gods, but magic does seem to be lacking amidst the
sheen. I don’t feel much in the way of dramatic continuity either;
the work doesn’t really feel like a theatre piece in this performance,
all the more surprising given that the recordings were made
live. Rattle’s approach is highly, overtly expressive when so
often the music wants to be left alone to speak for itself.
That, and the interpretation of the title role are the two chief
reasons why, for this listener at least, this performance fails
to take wing.
If this list
of disappointments were not enough, the other element in short
supply is comedy. In one of my favourite scenes, the Teacup
and the Teapot dance a foxtrot. Their absurd spoken exchanges
before the dance – “How’s your mug?” asks the Wedgwood piece.
“Rotten!” replies his china partner – should be hilarious, but
the comic timing is fallible here. Once the singing starts,
Stutzmann is again disappointing and, presumably encouraged
by the conductor, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt overacts terribly, complete
with a horrible falsetto whine, fortissimo, near the
end. This is actually marked piano in the score, and
I wonder why these performers thought they knew better than
Ravel. I wish things were better on the Naxos disc, but sadly
they are not; what is more, the tempo is so slow and, surprisingly
for an American performance, the rhythm so flaccid, that one
wonders if the two could actually dance a foxtrot to it at all.
The brainless frog, near the end, should be funnier than this,
too. On the whole, though, I prefer the Naxos performance, even
if most of the voices would be better suited to Verdi or Puccini
than to Ravel’s intimate world. Julie Boulianne sounds no more
childlike than Kožená, her voice too big and mature, too round
and full, though she sings more simply and naturally like a
child than Kožená seems to want to do. The arithmetic lesson
is cautious indeed, in spite of a good response from the children,
at least in the early part of the scene. There are some excellent
things here, however. Geneviève Després is the only singer who
delivers Mother’s first words as the composer requests them,
affectionately. The Child’s arioso is sung with a simple tenderness,
expressing his wistful sadness in a way that makes one forget,
for a while, the too womanly voice. The scene with the Princess
rises to perhaps the most passionate climax of any version I
have heard, thrilling stuff. Cassandre Prévost, no more successful
than Rattle’s soloist as the Fire, and at an equally cautious
tempo, is stunning as the Nightingale in the garden scene. And
then there is the orchestra which, whilst never sounding exactly
French, does have that strange mixture of eloquence and quirky
personality that used to distinguish French orchestras. I much
prefer their sound to that of the Berlin Philharmonic in this
work, and Alastair Willis, a name new to me, takes the work
in a single breath, and that in spite of one or two questionable
speeds. He and his orchestra are particularly successful at
bringing out the extraordinary variety of noises Ravel manages
to include beneath the soaring, singing violin line in the oh,
so modern sounding Frogs’ Dance, perhaps the most original passage
in the whole work.
Simon Rattle’s
reading is accompanied by an altogether too knowing performance
of the complete Mother Goose ballet, refined and sophisticated
once again, but with little sense of wonder. The Naxos coupling
is another matter: it would be a pity to miss this outstanding
performance of Shéhérazade. Julie Boulianne’s voice
is ideally suited to these ravishing songs, and only a slight
tendency to spread on strong, held notes very occasionally disappoints.
The orchestral accompaniment is quite superb, meticulously detailed
and convincing, and sustained even in the daringly slow tempo
for the final song.
If the Berlin
performance is superbly sung and played, it remains, for me,
an imperfect realisation of the opera. The Nashville performance,
on the other hand, features less distinguished singers, but
there is more operatic atmosphere, and more magic, too. But
neither performance would qualify as a first choice for this
wonderful work. Neither would Ernest Bour’s marvellous reading,
currently available on Testament. The cast is almost exclusively
French, and recognisably so, both by the vocal timbre and by
the almost uncanny clarity of diction typical of French singers
of that period, alas, rapidly disappearing. Individual voices
stick out of the French Radio Choir like sore thumbs and the
orchestra sounds as if it is playing in the next room, but this
is a wonderful historical document, a perfect, indeed indispensable
supplement. I grew up with Ansermet (Decca, currently available
on Eloquence), and love it still. With hindsight one now hears
it as a little chaotic from time to time, though it is a lovely
theatrical experience and there are some marvellous individuals
in the cast. But it is Lorin Maazel (DG), of all people, who
most successfully evokes this very particular world, a world,
let it be said, which is not the world of real children, but
that of children seen through the fastidious and prism-like
eyes of Maurice Ravel. The part of the Child is taken by Françoise
Ogéas, and some might think she goes too far, in the opening
scene, in adopting the vocal manner of a child. Not I, though.
This is the one to have.
William Hedley
see also review
by Dominy Clements
Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle 
