Gustavo Dudamel in Paris: A lot of vanilla, but not top notch

What good is Gustavo Dudamel as an opera conductor? The question was already raised when the forty-year-old Venezuelan was appointed the new musical director of the Opéra national de Paris in April. With good reason: The long-time chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic - which he should remain until at least 2026, parallel to his obligations in Paris - is primarily at home on the concert podium, not in the orchestra pit. Unlike his predecessor Philippe Jordan, who began his career as Kapellmeister at the Ulm Theater and switched to the Vienna State Opera as musical director in September 2020. Dudamel's official résumé refers to the “more than thirty scenic, semi-scenic and concert productions on the world's major stages” that he directed.But his repertoire consists mainly of major works by Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, plus “Fidelio”, “L'Elisir d'amore”, “Tannhäuser”, “Carmen”, “Cavalleria rusticana” and “Pagliacci”, “L'Enfant” et les sortilèges ”as well as musical theater by John Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Oliver Knussen and Stephen Sondheim. Nothing baroque, nothing Russian, no Strauss, Janáček, Berg - not to mention von Stockhausen, Holliger and Sciarrino, not to mention Rihm, Furrer and George Benjamin.Not to mention Furrer and George Benjamin.Not to mention Furrer and George Benjamin.

Of course: it works without such a wealth of experience; and the coordination problems between choir and orchestra, which were unmistakable for the moment at the premiere of “Turandot”, should be solved by an accomplished craftsman like Dudamel in the course of the next performances. Giacomo Puccini's last opera suits his temperament: the three-act act requires a flexible, wide-awake beat technique, a sense of color and (in the masked scenes) here sedate, there tumbling rhythm. Everything sounds clean and transparent, the tempo changes seem organic, the balance, both within the trench and - with small cutbacks - between it and the stage, is satisfied. But does Dudamel also have something to say about "Turandot" - preferably something of his own? Certainly not as a commentator: The quotes printed in the program are,formulated in a friendly manner, of sobering simplicity.

But even as an interpreter, the conductor remains non-binding. He neither arches a large dramatic arc nor delves into hedonistic detailed work, as Zubin Mehta and Herbert von Karajan demonstrated in a famous and notorious studio recording. And Dudamel also tends to level out the modernity of the work, its dissonances, oblique layers and breaks, such as those made by Bertrand de Billy and above all Riccardo Chailly at performances around the turn of the millennium. Opposing voices and the intricacies of the instrumentation are audible in his work - also thanks to the once more outstanding playing culture of the Paris Opera Orchestra - but appear leveled instead of three-dimensional contours. They sound, but they don't speak.

It already begins on the second page of the score. Puccini puts pulsed C sharp major chords of the strings and trumpets over sustained D minor chords of the deep woodwinds, which are to be played “dry”. But Dudamel allows it to be cushioned, which robs the brief introduction of its archaic strangeness. At the end of the act, Calaf's aria "Non piangere, Liù!" The saccharine content of the tenor cantilena, however, is counterpointed (and counteracted) by Puccini with instrumental finesse such as the tremolously rising broken chords of the strings at the beginning and shortly afterwards a two-way descending three-tone sequence played by flute, xylophone, celesta, harps and violas - sour yuzu juice creamy-sweet vanilla cream. In the absence of a concise design, these passages also remain bland. One final example:After Turandot's third riddle in the second act, the princess tries to upset her suitor by provocation because her spiritual fortress is beginning to crumble. Second violins and violas double the question motif that Turandot almost shouted out over three bars, shifted down by a diminished fifth or minor seventh and resolved into rapid, chromatically ascending four-tone groups. That sounds not only painfully harsh, but also nightmarishly threatening - if you don't scurry over it like Dudamel.Second violins and violas double the question motif that Turandot almost shouted out over three bars, shifted down by a diminished fifth or minor seventh and resolved into rapid, chromatically ascending four-tone groups. That sounds not only painfully harsh, but also nightmarishly threatening - if you don't scurry over it like Dudamel.Second violins and violas double the question motif that Turandot almost shouted out over three bars, shifted down by a diminished fifth or minor seventh and resolved into rapid, chromatically ascending four-tone groups. That sounds not only painfully harsh, but also nightmarishly threatening - if you don't scurry over it like Dudamel.

Certainly the production would have gained more relief if the soloist ensemble had not just been cast homogeneously and reliably. And if someone other than Robert Wilson had directed it - who dresses Turandot in red, where the libretto permanently associates it with ice, marble and lilies, and an opera set in imaginary China actually with samurai armor and Shinto priests - Robes (from Japan) decorated! The standing applause from the whole Bastille Hall at the end is kindly welcomed as an advance from the Parisian opera audience for future higher-quality performances by the new

grasp.

Dudamel's debut has revealed a lot of potential for improvement and deepening over the next six years - we look forward to being able to critically monitor the progress made.