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Samuel Barber – Medea’s Dance of Vengeance
Berlioz – The Death of Cleopatra
Beethoven – Symphony No.3 in E-flat major (‘Eroica’)
‘If you don’t “enjoy” these works, I hope you will deeply relish them!’ announced Edward Gardner, the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s dynamic Principal Conductor at the start of their ‘Moments Remembered’ series, before embarking on Samuel Barber’s adapted ballet score Media’s Dance of Vengeance, and two cantatas by Hector Berlioz – The Death of Cleopatra and Meditation – sung by the legendary American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato.
Media’s Dance of Vengeance, which originally concluded a ballet commissioned from Barber in 1946 by the American choreographer Martha Graham, sets to music the intense emotional journey of the legendary Medea who, betrayed by her adulterous husband Jason, exacts a terrible revenge by killing their children. Neither Barber nor Graham wished us to take Euripides’s tale literally, but in the words of the composer, used these mythical figures ‘to project psychological states of jealousy and vengeance which are timeless’. Medea’s transformation from grief to anger and then to a state of murderous derangement is captured in a cinematic score of Hitchcockian intensity. From the first mysterious notes of the piano and xylophone, the LPO’s plangent woods, pinpoint percussion, and interjecting strings made the most of Barber’s sharp Latin rhythms and dissonant jazz-infused harmonies, ramping up the heroine’s inner turmoil as she slowly unravelled. Barber and the composer Leonard Bernstein knew and respected each other, and one could detect some unmistakeable stylistic and melodic passages in Medea’s frenzied dance which are echoed in the dramatic confrontation between Sharks and Jets in Bernstein’s West Side Story, written eleven years later.
We then moved from maternal filicide in ancient Greece to regal suicide in ancient Egypt and Cleopatra’s tragic encounter with an asp. The programme could have continued with more Barber, offering for instance an extract from his last – but little heard – opera Anthony and Cleopatra. Instead, it featured two works by Hector Berlioz, his cantata La Mort de Cléopâtre paired with the aria Méditation. Berlioz, whose vocal works reflect his obsessions with death and sexual longing, was inevitably drawn to the story of the Egyptian monarch who lost her lover Mark Anthony. Unable to seduce the conquering Octavius Caesar, haunted by a sense of failure, and fearful of the judgment of her ancestors, she decides to commit suicide by snake bite.
Berlioz wrote La mort while studying in Paris and in 1829 entered it for the coveted Prix de Rome prize. Its audacious expressions of love and passion failed to win over the jury, and it was not performed again publicly in his lifetime. In compositions which demand operatic virtuosity and richly textured orchestration such as these, DiDonato and the players of the LPO were perfectly matched. Magnificent in voice, noble in bearing, and evocatively swathed in folds of gold satin, this great diva was in all respects a queen. DiDonato combines a supple, expansive voice – warm and luxuriant in her lower register, shining and pure in her upper range – and demonstrates astonishing flexibility in between. After an ominous instrumental introduction in which disjointed strings, dark-hued winds and a downward spiral of trombones led us to Cleopatra’s burial vault, came the first recitative, ‘C’en est donc fait! ma honte est assurée’. (‘So, it is done! My fate is beyond doubt’). The line was delivered with such dramatic intensity that the audience was held spellbound for the next thirty-five minutes. During that time, DiDonato took us on a constantly shifting emotional journey. Passages such as ‘Mes pleurs même ont coulé sur ses mains répandus’ (‘My very tears have run flowing down his hands’) in which the Queen laments the humiliation she suffered at the hands of Caesar, were movingly sung. Particularly memorable was the moment when ‘the vile reptile’ injected his poison into the royal wrist; delivered with an appropriately dramatic bite. Berlioz specifically instructed that as Cleopatra’s life ebbed away ‘the voice should grow weaker, scarcely articulating the words’. Those final incantations, accompanied by weakening heartbeats from the double basses, were delivered in a floating pianissimo, and were indeed moments to be remembered.
In the concert’s second half, themes of tragedy and submission were followed by optimism and triumph. Berlioz greatly admired Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 (‘Eroica’) which he considered to be a revolutionary masterpiece. It was written between 1803 and 1805, shortly after his Heiligenstadt Testament – a letter to his brothers Carl and Johann in which he revealed deep anxiety about his encroaching deafness. Thoughts of suicide were overcome in this heroic work as evidenced by a fresh and lively reading by Gardner and his band. The first movement Allegro was taken at a vigorous pace, and the second movement’s customary gloom was dispelled by an uncommonly brisk Marcia funebre. A trio of velvet smooth horns introduced the lively Scherzo, and a high-voltage, precision-played Finale brought a singularly life-enhancing performance and a memorable evening to an end. History might have worked out very differently if the despairing Cleopatra had the opportunity to meet Beethoven.
Chris Sallon
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