At the Grand Théâtre de Genève is given until March 7 The return of Ulysses to his homeland by Claudio Monteverdi. Nicolas Blanmont was there and tells you regarding it.
The Antwerp collective FC Bergman had signed in 2018 at the Flemish Opera a staging of pearl divers of Bizet whose key idea – to transfer the action to a seniority – had not entirely convinced. We find them in Geneva for an equally unexpected but this time more convincing reading ofThe return of Ulysses to his homelandthe second of Monteverdi’s surviving operas.
Returning from his Odyssey, Ulysses (moving Mark Padmore) is in transit at an airport. On the luggage carousel his luggage parades endlessly: the eye of the Cyclops, an immense golden apple from the Hesperides or the wooden head of the Trojan horse. Only Eumée (excellent Mark Milhofer), the shepherd accompanied by his goats (real goats! in the airport!) recognized him. Penelope (overwhelming Sara Mingardo) seems lost in the waiting room, accompanied by Melanto (the very fresh Julieth Lozano) and besieged by suitors: the three from the libretto, of course, but also regarding fifteen extras, all in modern costumes (the other characters are in mythological clothes), surrounding him, oppressing him. There are a little schoolboy gags (Neptune represented by a water fountain and Jupiter by an electrical box), the hemoglobin squirts like in Tarantino when Ulysses massacres the suitors, but all this does not prevent real poetry in the key scenes from the opera.
Purists are scandalized by the multiple cuts made in the score, but Fabio Biondi’s musical direction is also poetic and eminently theatrical.
