Philharmonic Making No Mistakes as Tourist

PARIS —  The Los Angeles Philharmonic is midway through a monthlong residency in Paris, where it has come to participate in a Stravinsky festival at the Cha^telet Theater. It inaugurated the festival with a new production of “The Rake’s Progress,” directed by Peter Sellars and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, that is one of the major operatic events of the European fall season.

The orchestra itself is on full display as well. Last week, it gave concerts conducted by Salonen and Pierre Boulez, and individual members also performed in a lunchtime chamber music concert. Over the weekend, the New Music Group was featured in two programs. And this week, Salonen conducts more performances of the “Rake” along with two all-Stravinsky programs of works the composer wrote during the ‘40s and ‘50s when he lived in Los Angeles.

As L.A. cultural exports, the Philharmonic, Salonen and Sellars are making a strong mark.

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The production of the “Rake” has brought with it some of the underbelly of Los Angeles life, and the orchestra has been given a sample of Paris’ in return. Sellars has updated the opera’s libretto from the demimonde of 18th century London to modern-day California prison life. To some, this has seemed the defacing of a masterpiece, and Parisians have been busy doing the same to the event’s clean white posters trimmed in red. Many in the Metro stations are now covered with graffiti. Moreover, a couple of members of the orchestra and their entourage have learned the hard way about Paris’ pickpockets and purse-snatchers.

The moral of W.H. Auden’s witty, ironic libretto for the “Rake” is that the lascivious life is the route to madness and that redemption can only come through love, but Sellars’ interpretation of it is bitter. In the California of “three strikes, you’re out,” his view of prison is of a redemptionless madhouse. And the reaction to the production in this most political of cities follows political lines.

Conservative papers complained that there is no progress in this “Rake”; liberal ones found it illuminating. But politics have actually gotten less in the way than might be expected, since audience and critics alike have proven unified in their admiration for the performance of cast, conductor and orchestra.

The right-wing newspaper Figaro, for instance, found the whole thing “irritating and fascinating,” saying Sellars’ production “posed an incontestable lyrical force” even if it had nothing to do with the original work. The critic also praised Sellars’ direction of the actors as impeccable and called the musical interpretation “absolutely sensational.”

The liberal Le Monde was, of course, less ambivalent. It emphasized the sheer theatricality of the production, using it as a stick to beat an “insignificant” new production of “Rigoletto” for the Paris Opera at the Bastille.

Likewise, the International Herald Tribune suspected that while Stravinsky’s intellectual property may have been hijacked, what Sellars put on stage was “put there meticulously” and that musically it “would be hard to imagine anything surpassing what is delivered by a superb cast of singing actors as well as Salonen and his orchestra.” Even the cranky Financial Times, which complained that in this production the “urbane prose of Auden’s libretto might as well have come from Mars,” credited Sellars’ “Rake” as “brilliantly executed” and called the performance “a musical feast.”

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The Philharmonic received tremendous advance press for its Cha^telet residency. Both glossy French music monthlies, Diapason and Le Monde de la Musique, put Salonen on the cover of their September issues, and the headline for Diapason was “Esa-Pekka Salonen Reinvents the Orchestra.”

But most of the attention in Paris goes to opera, and the two state-supported orchestras in the French capital, the Orchestra of Paris and the National Orchestra of France, have reputations as scrappy ensembles. The idea of an orchestra, especially a privately funded one like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, being so versatile as to perform new music, chamber music and opera, and to engage in educational programs, is of great fascination for the French, whose musical life is highly segmented.

Still, this has not enticed the press to actually come to the orchestra programs. Salonen’s opening concert, which concluded with a wildly applauded, supercharged performance of “The Rite of Spring,” got but a short and solitary notice in Figaro, which called the playing elegant. There are seven dailies in Paris. The Rome newspaper La Repubblica happened to send a critic, who found the Philharmonic’s playing under Boulez to be “not inferior” to the greatest orchestras in the world.

Despite the lack of reviews, crowds have been large, attentive and very enthusiastic. Every program has ended with rhythmic foot stomping, which makes a particularly satisfying sound on the old wooden floors of the Cha^telet. This was true even of the two new music concerts over the weekend. In both cases Salonen was called back time and again for bows--on Saturday night after conducting Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony and on Sunday after conducting John Adams’ Chamber Symphony.

The ovation for Adams’ work was particularly notable. When the composer conducted the symphony’s Paris premiere three years ago with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, he generated a huge controversy. Two ensemble members even resigned in protest, complaining that Adams’ music besmirched the high mission of the ensemble.

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When orchestras tour, morale is always high. Programs are well-rehearsed, adrenaline flows, and members often have the opportunity to hear themselves in superior acoustic settings.

Such has been the case for the Philharmonic in Paris, and this time a group of patrons and board members also has been on hand to witness the results. The revelation, many of the patrons have said, has been just how exciting the orchestra sounds in a vivid acoustic like that of the Cha^telet.

Orchestra members have used this as an opportunity to lobby hard for Disney Hall. As a result, players, patrons and management are sounding newly optimistic about the troubled hall, for which $150 million must be raised (a third of that by June 1). With this residency, one Philharmonic supporter announced, ice cream bar in hand during an intermission, everything is changed.