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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Devils make the most
By David Blake
Mephisto, Egyptian-German Dance Festival; Choreography and chief dancers: Ismael Ivo, Marco Aurelio; Lighting: Andreas Behrens
Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 25 May
Old Red is back. In far away opera days red was for the devil -- Gounod's Faust on Saturday nights always a full house. Old Nick, carrying plenty of flesh, was in red satin tights. As things developed, and the male element in society grew really scary, Old Red Satin Satan became a send-up. Black became the devil's colour while the Red One went all the way to Robert DeNiro as godfather, and then finally went to the wall, like all legends.
But never fear, Red is back at the opera, in a really smart crimson Dracula coat and shamelessly shrinky under things. And he's nastier than ever; so slinky you might meet him daily at the office. And he's plausible. He's everywhere, in tight corners, light corners, on your bedroom ceiling, having sex with vestal virgins.
And the music plays on and on. From Dark Ages to Middle Ages to Charles Ives. This show lives up to its title of "dance theatre." Every aspect of media, scientific globalised techno, are put to maximum use.
It begins, quietly, with a quote from Gertrude Stein -- "Dr Faustus lights the lights" -- and all the lights on the opera stage and in the auditorium go black. Stygian black, but the Red One is soon back at work.
The company are put through every kind of movement: vertical, horizontal, or just plain bags, hanging by their necks from beautiful red ropes dangling from the ceiling. The effect of theatrical richesse is to dazzle. It never stops. Dancers Ismael Ivo (the devil in this production) and Marco Aurelio have imaginations that make use of the church and, beyond it, legend and fancy.
Goethe deals with the Promethean element of the theme like Karl Marx, who used Prometheus as a heroic element doing battle with a decadent elitist Church. In this Mephisto it is expanded into a libido sciendi, a Promethean Maximus.
Ismael Ivo's conception of Mephisto is so grim and gruesome it leaves little opportunity for Mephisto's black humour. Everything is ashes. Strangle your bluebirds of happiness and go drown in the menstrual flood. Don't go on the dance floor with this Mephisto, you come out of it giving birth to mixed vegetables.
This is fine Le Grande Macabre stuff. All symbols, myths, legends, get booted, like Gretchen, into a black eternity. A bit of damnation does everyone a lot of good. It levels things down to awful choices of good and evil. Choose. At one point in the ballet an old man and a sweet little dancing girl-child arrive in the Mephistophelean presence. From the lost classes of society they have come, trusting kindly, with the child clutching a nice practical pot containing a flourishing plant.
A breath of hope sweeps the audience. They are going to send us away with a hope -- a tree grows from the dung heap. They go up a steep flight of stairs. At the top, the fiend grabs the pot-plant and kicks the two of them into black eternity.
Then comes a unique piece of dance theatre -- what will the devil do with the last symbol left intact? The fiend, Ismael Ivo, has worked his dance out like a musical computation. Holding the pot-plant aloft, Mephisto dances down a dangerous stair railing high above the stage. It is perilous. His steps and body movements are provocative. Then suddenly from on high he insolently flings the pot-plant on the floor far beneath, where on landing with a horrible thud it cracks to pieces. The last hope is gone.
The Red Man glitters with erotic triumph, like a rattlesnake about to strike. He's horrible. In a smart snap-ending, it is made clear to us: devils do damage, but they never win.
La Voix Humaine, from a script by Jean Cocteau, music by Francis Poulenc; Cairo Opera Company, Cairo Opera Orchestra, conducted by Dominique Rouits; directed by Abdallah Saad; Cairo Opera House Small Hall, 26 May
Tuneful and astounding, the Devil rules
This mini-drama was written long ago, before the telephone hung like earrings around everyone's neck. It's a difficult work to present.
The telephone is a lethal instrument, like a scalpel, but there was still a shred of awe when Cocteau wrote this piece. The heroine stands or paces around, chained to the line of her telephone -- this is not done these days. Now the globe itself is hanging from your ear.
Telephones were used in extreme moments, for an event that could not wait for the much slower postal service. So this girl's drama has been diminished a bit by the arrival of the mobile.
Francis Poulenc enjoyed much fame half a century ago, and his Dialogue des Carmelites is a great opera. La Voix Humaine really needs the voice of instantaneous presence. There's not enough time, or space, for a singer of Aliaa Sellami's quality to make an impression.
She is sympathetic, sad, alone in her predicament. Her boyfriend and great love has jilted her. Maybe she nagged too much. It sounded this way. The production leaves her in the void -- something she's already in when the drama starts.
Galina Vishneveskaya, once a great Russian star of the Bolshoi Opera, used to be great in this brief slice of a wasted life. Being a famous Tosca, she knew how to strike twelve at one go. Sellami, however, lacks the sheer weight to suggest this.
It ended as a tragedy, when the poor little thing realises that no one knows or cares about her plight -- least of all the man on the other end of the line. Poulenc uses a running parlando for the music. He is famous for this style of writing and his songs to the poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, Eluard and Louise de Vilmorin, especially her song Le Garcon de Liege, are among the greatest of French songs. This parlando of La Voix Humaine needs colour and force, which it did not get with the rather blanched tone used by Aliaa Sellami. Her acting did not rise to the last part. "Je t'aime, je t'aime," she sings, as rather belatedly, she herself realises the important thing she has left unsaid. Maybe she forgot to tell him, or he would not have cared.
As with another Cocteau play, Les Enfants Terrible, it is too late anyhow, and no one will notice. The end came rather too quickly for the production. Like Elizabeth in Les Enfants, she stood rooted to the floor in terror at her own loneliness. Killing. The frisson did not take place, but Poulenc has so much music to explore, why stay always with Debussy and Faure.
