Present and past merge at the Aix-en-Provence Festival

Contemporary creation remains a fundamental part of the Aix-en-Provence Festival's programming. This year, the show "The Nine Jewelled Deer" is included, led by the restless environmentalist Peter Sellars. He is joined by Israeli-American composer Sivan Eldar (1985) and American singer Ganavya Doraiswamy (1991), a poet of Indian tradition. Other essential names include writer Lauren Groff, visual artist Julie Mehretu, Carnatic singer Aruna Sairam, who sings alongside Ganavya, and solo instruments with percussion, violin/viola, clarinet, and saxophone enriched with electronics. All of them are central players because "The Nine Jewelled Deer" has a choral consistency in its creative process and in its compact result. The performances take place at Luma Arles, a center dominated by one of Frank O. Gehry's iconic towers, surrounded by a park of renovated workshops that form an experimental center that questions the relationships between art, culture, the environment, and education.

The space is deliberate, as 'The Nine Jeweled Deer' is set inside a nave with a low platform serving as a stage for the musicians. It is bordered at the rear and center by a superposition of vertical panels that illuminate with different colors, project images, shadows, and transparencies. Sellars has created a complex, yet seemingly immediate, work, seamlessly weaving together the eight scenes presented through the reading of texts. 'The Nine Jeweled Deer' interweaves legendary, biographical, and spiritual elements with three origins: the Jatakas, or traditional Indian tales in the Pali language that evoke the past lives of Buddha and his various animal and human incarnations; an immersion in the life of Doraiswamy, whose grandmother welcomed disabled, destitute, or marginalized people into her home and comforted them with music; and the Vimalakīrti sutra, which is the only one that collects the teachings of the only lay disciple of Buddha, with a life experience that spans the world. The final legend tells the story of a thief whom a doe saves from drowning. Sought in exchange for a large reward, it leads him to feel tempted to betray his benefactor. There is talk of the creation of an opera, perhaps because of its narrative purpose and the alternation of various musical numbers. The definition is, in any case, a mere claim for a distinct and unique show.

The final coherence is determined by the presence of Sellars, who defines the constant and almost imperceptible narrative flow with changes in atmosphere, just as the successive musical interventions that are inserted explain the formidable quality of a group of performers willing to fuse diverse genres and styles, from traditional Hindu music to jazz, the contemporary work of Sivan Eldar, and its electronic consequences. The result is a visual and aural challenge, without apparent limits, that demands an active attitude from the spectator, and whose spiritual purpose acquires hypnotic consequences: Aruna Sairam's singing echoing in the instruments, for example; the instrumental displays, particularly those of percussionist Rajna Swaminathan and violinist Nurit Stark; the slow and measured reading of the text and its idyllic consistency. 'The Nine Jewelled Deer' is a project that also penetrates the socially integrative purpose of a festival located at a critical point in the European migration zone.

Likewise, the contemporary scenic reconstruction of Baroque opera, that is, the gesture of historical reminiscences, is a substantial part of the Aix Festival. The current edition features a staging of Francesco Cavalli's "La Calisto," an opera that has become increasingly established in the repertoire since its revival in 1970 by conductor Raymond Leppard. Here, it takes on a remarkable dimension thanks to the approach designed by musical director Sébastian Daucé and Dutch stage director Jetske Mijnssen, responsible for the staging that has served in recent years to represent the Tudor trilogy at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia.

The apparent Rococo aristocracy of the Aix show has a very different profile from that essentially Calvinist work. There is something exuberant but also contradictory about it, within the walls of the great hall built in the Théâtre de l'Archevêché, whose imperfect state is detected in the faded and bare decoration, barely completed with several candelabras, and the contrast with the sumptuous richness of Hannah Clark's costumes. The hierarchical world of classical divinities is once again shattered. Mijssen represents this by very cleverly recreating the scenic complexity with which 'La Calisto' was presented at the Sant'Appolinare Theater in Venice in 1651, through a central revolving table that serves to make the scenery and characters appear and disappear, also subject to the subtle labyrinth formed by the different doors of the main room. The evident elegance of the process, the effectiveness of the trick, and the impeccable placement of the characters are all immediately evident, moving with agility and subject to a gestural quality not without immediate tics. The audience's laughter is inevitable at some of Dustin Klein's choreography.

Musical director Sébastian Daucé has rightly said that the contemporary reconstruction of the Baroque repertoire requires a skillful blend of science and art. This is evident in the staging area, but it is less clear in the musical, where the technical aspects are less transparent to the audience. The Correspondance group forms a period "orchestra" that convinces "with great pleasure," in Calisto's own words, without leaving one suspecting that their performance is a trompe l'oeil. The six instrumentalists who participated in the Venetian premiere are now transformed into a larger group, which facilitates a much richer timbral interplay with sound effects that amplify the gesture and penetrate a more complex performance. The version is gentle, subtle, very French in its finish: a worthy endorsement of Mijssen's stagecraft. The end of the work remains in the memory, dissolved in a moving abandonment that still sighs in the final major chord and sounds as subtle as Giunone's aria, "Racconsolata e paga," sung with extreme detail by Anna Bonitatibus. The ensemble spirit is a very well-achieved intention by Daucé and his musicians, just as the ambiguous nature of the work can be summed up in the character of Jupiter, disguised as Diana, and which Californian Alex Rosen fantastically defends in his gestures and vocals, switching between his natural bass range and falsetto voice.

Combined with the work of Daucé and Mijssen, the result has a sense of intimacy that is easily assimilable to a small-scale stage genre that was still a novelty when Francesco Cavalli presented "La Calisto." Add several contemporary keys, ranging from the metaphorical sense with which the director interprets many of the transformations indicated in the libretto, the execution of the comic elements and the development of the more serious ones, and the intimate manner with which the performers present the work, and the resulting production is a production whose "admirable forms" are indisputable. Lauranne Oliva, a French-Catalan soprano, perfectly embodies Calisto and her many expressive facets. Giuseppina Bridelli gives Diana sensuality and grace. Countertenor Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian becomes indispensable for his comic encore and because the melancholic sense that defines Endimione acquires true credibility. The cast is large and truly substantial. It reflects the excellence of stagecraft by Jetske Mijnssen, under the skillful musical judgment of Sébastian Daucé. The final consistency is light, straightforward, definitively poetic, and, as in "The Nine Jeweled Deer," profoundly conciliatory.