Oedipus Opera in Paris: It was his own fault

Wajdi Mouawad is one of the overrated directors who have made a respectable career in France. Since 2016, the fifty-two-year-old Lebanese-Canadian citizen has headed the Parisian Théâtre de la Colline, one of the six national theaters in the country, which in the shape of Alain Françon and Stéphane Braunschweig have already presided over a completely different caliber. As a playwright, he likes to plow the intersection of the topics of “family secrets” and “historical trauma”, which has earned him the reputation of a sensitive diagnostician of the times. But productions like the tetralogy “Le Sang des promesses”, launched between 1997 and 2009, were one thing above all: embarrassingly simple and painfully shrill.

Perhaps because as an author he likes to borrow from Greek tragedy poets, certainly also because he has already staged the seven extant plays by Sophocles, Mouawad has now been entrusted with performing George Enescu's “Oedipe” (1936) at the Paris National Opera. The director precedes the prologue of the four-act act with a pantomime prelude to which an off-voice provides the explanations. In it, the story is traced back to Adam and Eve or to Zeus and Europe: A god incarnate kidnaps a virgin; her brother founds the city of Thebes in search of the stolen woman; A great-grandson of the two assaults a boy in exile, is condemned to be killed by his future son if he does not remain childless, but becomes pregnant, having become King of Thebes,nevertheless his wife - this is where the opera begins.

Decal after decal

Mouawad dutifully brings all of this onto the stage, the maiden, the bull-headed god, the violated boy who hangs himself out of shame, and he also shows the delivery of the queen in the prologue in an almost naturalistic way, including a caesarean section by the priest's hand. In this prologue, which consists largely of chants of homage to the newborn by three ethnic groups, a first problem now comes to light. The choir wears masks according to the regulations, but these tarnish the diction and disguise the spatial presence. It's the only flaw of the evening that none of the participants can help, but a choral opera like “Oedipe” inevitably suffers more from the mask requirement than other musical theaters. In addition, Mouawad knows little what to do with all the appearances of shepherds, maidens, warriors and old men;the conventionally arranged crowd scenes work mainly thanks to the costumes by Emmanuelle Thomas.

There is nothing to be seen in the soloists either as a personal tour that betrayed their own view of the figures.

Mouawad does not sharpen profiles, nor does he allow symbols to speak, rather he moves along the text, lined up decal after decal.

This sometimes produces aesthetic tableaus, as at the beginning of the second act: Oedipe, the son of the damned boy molester, grew up in a distant city due to a child swap with foster parents, indulging in Baudelaire's whimsy as a youth, surrounded by hetaera and ephebe in antique cocktail robes , against the background of a giant video with flock of birds.

But the picture doesn't reveal anything, it just illustrates the Corinthian Dolce Vita, which the choir is singing about anyway.

The orchestra carries the evening

In the following scene, Mouawad even makes a tangible nonsense. Instead of Oedipe killing his biological father and his two followers in a disguised self-defense reflex, as the stage directions clearly state, he commits a triple murder, apparently in cold blood, successively using the club, knife and bow and arrow. The tragic hero is no longer guilty of guilt - which is what the whole opera is based on!

It is not easy for the singers under these circumstances. Only Clémentine Margaine in the by far most grateful role of the Sphinx - a kind of feminine exalted Fafner - stands out; even Anne Sofie von Otter (as foster mother Mérope) and Laurent Naouri (as high priest) find it difficult to keep silent about the competent Christopher Maltman in the title part. This is due to the libretto, which allows a number of characters only one appearance, and the score, which is seldom too precise and is often more reminiscent of an oratorio.

The evening is supported by the conductor and the orchestra, which shows the stupendous playing culture it has achieved thanks to the development work of its music director Philippe Jordan, who recently moved to Vienna.

Ingo Metzmacher dampens the penetrating pathos of the score, which is particularly good for the third act, and works out everything that flows, dissolves and oscillates in the unstable state of suspension.

A smooth, sensitive coloristic reading.