CD Review: Deutsche Grammophon’s ‘Adriana Mater’

By Joe Cadagin

Eighteen years is far too long to go without recording an opera like Kaija Saariaho’s “Adriana Mater.” The Finnish composer’s 2006 follow-up to “L’Amour de loinis a work of both hypnotic allure and harrowing immediacy. While it’s good of Deutsche Grammophon to put out this digital-only release, it’s a rather half-hearted tribute to the late Saariaho. There isn’t even a PDF booklet included in the purchase—the libretto has to be download from the composer’s website.

At least the Recording Academy recognized the quality of both the work itself and this superb live performance, mounted by the San Francisco Symphony in a semi-staged production less than a week after Saariaho passed away in 2023. It’s a contender for both Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best Opera Recording at the Grammys on Sunday.

L’Amour de loin,” while exquisite, was stymied by its lack of action—the long-distance relationship between a troubadour and his lady-love doesn’t exactly make for gripping theater. “Adriana Mater,” by contrast, is a disturbingly claustrophobic family drama.

The French-language libretto by playwright Amin Maalouf, who also wrote the text for “L’Amour de loin,” sets up an intense crucible with his ostensibly simple tale.

The titular Adriana (“mater” is a maternal label, not her last name) lives with her sister Refka in an unnamed village. When war breaks out, the town drunkard Tsargo takes advantage of the conflict, rising to become a local chief. Flexing his newfound power, he rapes Adriana, who gives birth to a son. Seventeen years later, the boy—Yonas—has an opportunity to confront his father and exact revenge. During their showdown, Yonas discovers that Tsargo has been reduced to a blind and broken man. To Adriana’s relief, her son ends the circle of violence and spares his father.

The story is slightly reminiscent of gritty verismo melodramas like “Suor Angelica or “Jenůfa,” in which women suffer for their unintentional pregnancies. But there’s a key distinction. Maalouf’s libretto is consciously anti-naturalistic. Critics will inevitably draw comparisons between the plot of “Adriana Materand the war-torn history of Maalouf’s homeland, Lebanon. But the details of the setting are left purposefully unspecified—this is the universalizing Anytime and Anywhere of myth that allows the audience to personalize the story.

Moreover, for a work that deals with such uncomfortable, all-too-real subject matter, the narrative is highly stylized. Dream sequences are interspersed throughout, and it’s impossible to tell whether some scenes actually happen or simply occur in the minds of the protagonists. The final tableau, especially, seems to take place in a psychological nether-region where the characters individually reflect on their regrets. The opera is less about the traumatic events themselves than the emotional toll they take on those involved.

This ambiguous approach to storytelling is ideally suited to Saariaho’s compositional language. Her score is continuously suspended in a dreamlike haze. Under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the San Francisco Symphony conjures orchestral sonorities that are simultaneously intoxicating and ominous. Complex spectral harmonies in the strings throb and undulate. Out of this vaporous texture rise languid melodies on solo trumpet, violin, flute, or clarinet, laden with drooping glissandi and extended trills. Tinkling metallic percussion, supplemented with glass and shell chimes, heighten the phantasmagorical atmosphere and signal transitions into the dreamworld. The luxurious voices of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are often incorporated as “instruments,” intoning vocalise syllables like “a,” “tsa,” or “ka” that are derived from the characters’ names.

Yet the opera doesn’t completely unfold in a somnolent stupor. Saariaho tears away the veil of illusion when she needs to make the greatest impact, confronting the audience with the terrible crime committed against Ariana. Not since Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” has sexual violence been illustrated so graphically through music. Savage brass and thumping timpani build up to repeated screams of “Non!” from the chorus. The most disturbing portion is the passage of sudden quiet, filled only with the choir’s queasy moaning. The whole episode lasts only a minute-and-a-half, but it leaves an indelible mark.

This reviewer isn’t typically one to listen through the lens of gender—music transcends such human superficialities. Yet “Adriana Materis an opera that could only have been composed by a woman. And, more specifically, by a mother who carried a child herself. The reason lies in a little two-note motive that pervades the entire opera: a descending half-step on a short-long rhythm.

Its significance becomes clear during the scene in which a pregnant Adriana notices a second heartbeat next to hers. The motive is passed around to different instruments playing it at different speeds. But it’s the rapid little fetus’ pulse, represented by the piccolo, that stands out. Saariaho herself encountered this biological “polyrhythm” first-hand when she was expecting her first child. In fact, the prenatal sensation of two hearts beating served as the starting point for the opera—the composer requested that Maalouf work this experience into his libretto.

As the drama progresses, Saariaho’s cardial leitmotif develops into a powerful symbol for Adriana’s anxieties about her son. Both her own blood and the blood of a monster pump through Yonas’ veins—but which will prevail? The boy’s act of mercy is a victory for Adriana, who is finally convinced that she has raised an Abel, and not a Cain.

In the title role, Fleur Barron exhibits a mezzo of rich mahogany during Ariana’s opening folksong, sung with sensual self-assurance. More importantly, she captures the character’s smoldering, controlled passion. Never once does she submit to the temptation to “go big” that must come with playing a part like this. There’s a moment in her performance that perfectly sums up the character’s essence. Yonas has gone to meet his father, and Adriana simply repeats the same mantra-like phrase: “If he’s meant to kill him, then he’ll kill him.” Barron’s grounded low notes convey, not hopeless resignation, but a sense of deliberate resolve—a mother’s miraculous ability to tap into the calm at the center of her being in the midst of a storm.

Refka, by contrast, is cast as high-strung with her wide leaps. Yet soprano Axelle Fanyo navigates her ever-rising vocal line with lyricism and flexibility. She possesses a strange yet captivating timbre, almost like that of a countertenor or even a Chinese-opera singer. Refka’s extended dream monologue, like much of the libretto, is a tad too wordy. But Fanyo executes this passage with astounding virtuosity, traversing the full vocal spectrum from speech to Sprechgesang to singing.

Bass-baritone Christopher Purves offers a fascinating character study, tracing Tsargo’s drastic transformation over the course of the opera. After bumbling and slurring his way through Tsargo’s drunken dialogue, he becomes a terrifying presence once the war begins. Purves’ delivery takes on a threatening edge at this point: snarling, snakelike, sadistic. During his exchange with Yonas, he endows Tsargo with genuine pathos, donning an air of exhausted self-loathing. If this portrayal doesn’t excuse the character’s vile deed, it at least raises the difficult moral question of whether Tsargo is capable of atonement.

Rounding out this ideal assembly of soloists is Tenor Nicholas Phan as Yonas. His impetuous line is regularly interrupted by erratic jumps up to high B-flat. While these are supposed to simulate pubescent voice cracks, Phan renders them more like enraged outbursts—his is a robust, bugle-toned instrument that’s hard to pass off as adolescent. That being said, when Yonas reunites with Adriana in the final scene, Phan exposes the most fragile areas of his head voice. It’s a rare glimpse of childlike vulnerability from his hotheaded character—a pure expression of filial devotion in an opera that so sensitively depicts the bond between mother and son.

Categories

DVD and CD ReviewsReviews