San Francisco Classical Voice

Modern companies, lacking the resources of Louis XIV, find production of "comedy-ballets" created for the Sun King's court daunting and beyond their reach but William Christie, the American-born Baroque specialist now offers a new approach. Getting there is another thing. In climbing the mountain, the semi-staged performance of Molière and Lully's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme by Christie's acclaimed French ensemble Les Arts Florissants at U.C.Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall last Friday went semi-distance to the prize.

The most celebrated of the "comedy-ballets," Le Bourgeois gentilhomme ("The Would-Be Gentleman") is a remarkable collaboration dating from 1670 by two of the greatest creative minds of 17th-century France, the playwright Molière and the composer Lully. The eclectic royal divertissement featured spoken dialogue, colorful buffoonery, courtly airs, and of course dancing---lots and lots of dancing. The multiple stage forces required, plus its overlong duration, tend to put complete performances beyond the reach of most modern companies: its vocal and acting needs make it difficult for ballet companies to mount, and opera companies resist its demand for top- notch comic speaking actors and dancers trained in the style of baroque courtly dance.

Thus in modern times the work has remained largely a piece for theater companies, who omit the dancing and singing almost entirely, leaving us with an amusing "straight" play about the nouveau-riche upstart Monsieur Jourdain and his bungling efforts at using his huge wealth to buy respectability and a place in the ranks of high society. (Those who were privileged to see William Ball's magical production of the play at American Conservatory Theater years ago learned how well the spoken dialogue works all on its own). But Lully's finely crafted music is rarely heard in live performance.

Christie, in collaboration with Spanish director-choreographer Ana Yepes, finds a solution to getting the music heard in its proper context. Most of the dialogue is dropped, and the little that remains is combined with narration, adapted into English by Jeremy Sams and delivered with entertaining archness by actress Satara Lester. She also took all the female speaking roles. Patrick Cremin who acted all the male roles, employed a lower-class British accent to portray the wealthy social climber Monsieur Jourdain. His Jourdain however, comes across a little too self-assured and insufficiently loutish to make an effective butt of all the joking at his expense.

The French dance ensemble Les Fragments Réunis, frequent collaborators with Christie, provided effortless expertise for the stylishly choreographed set pieces and the pantomimed clowning. Unfortunately the actors, singers, and dancers were clothed all in black evening dress, unequipped with even a few hats, props, and costume accessories that might have aided the audience's highly taxed imaginations. When Jourdain supposedly has himself decked out in ostentatious new clothes of preposterously bad taste, the dancers portraying his tailors simply removed his black tuxedo and trousers---and ceremoniously put them back on again!

The only appearance of headgear was in the amusing Turkish gag (in which Jourdain is duped into thinking he's being ennobled as a "Mamamoushi"), as dancers donned fezzes and droopy mustaches to accompany some delightfully goofy wobbly-kneed slithering. Black evening attire also had to suffice for the Spanish, Italian, and French entrees in the well-executed concluding celebration entitled the "Ballet of the Nations." (This occurs after Jourdain has been put in his place for all his folly, and a triple wedding has been concluded for his daughter, his maid, and his intended mistress). The final divertissement began with some rather unfunny silliness about passing out the program booklets, but with some real props at last!

The nine singers ranged in expertise from barely passable to first rate. The clear standout was tenor Rodrigo Del Pozo, whose sweetly sung solo Sé que me muero in the Spanish portion of the Ballet of the Nations made one wonder why we had heard so little of him earlier in the evening.

The real star of the show was the "petite bande" of seventeen period instrumentalists, led by Christie from the harpsichord (oddly positioned with his back to most of the players). This crack ensemble performs with impressive precision, nuance, and dexterity, communicating a sense of having thoroughly absorbed the French baroque style in all its refinement and tasteful reticence.

As a sum of its various parts, this version of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme comes across as a rather academic exercise, the evening made worthwhile by the virtuosity of Christie's musicians and the opportunity to hear Lully's complete score in its proper setting.

(Clifford (Kip) Cranna is Musical Administrator of the San Francisco Opera, Program Advisor for the Carmel Bach Festival, and a frequent lecturer on music appreciation.)

©1999 Clifford Cranna, all rights reserved