La Juive (The Jewess)

A Jew and Christian in love seems a rather trivial affair on which to build three hours of gloriously dark, grandiloquent opera. Fromental Halévy’s 1835 work, set centuries earlier in Constance, stirs up thunderous choral and soaring solos from the lovers and their two feuding religious communities. 

This OA/Opera National de Lyon co-production matches most modern versions by updating these old bigotries into the racial horrors of the 20^th Century – when the Nazis shot such lovers.

Atop a huge wide staircase, designer Pierre-Andre Weitz creates a revolving jumble of scaffolding, hulking blocks, ladders and libraries of old texts, and beyond, a forest of birches, soon blackened by destruction. While cluttered and distracting, his set richly evokes the ghettos and future Holocaust, the planks outlining both Christian and Jewish icons.  

This is 1930’s France, the Christians in light overcoats baying for blood, the Jews dressed dark for Passover. Director Olivier Py’s sharp eye adds great dramatic detail to the singers in action, and is unrepentant in imaging the Holocaust to come – especially when old shoes clatter down from the sky.

Tenor Diego Torre excels as the orthodox Jew Eleazar, swearing revenge for past abuses by   Cardinal Brogni (here dressed white as the Pope). His presumed daughter Rachel (the beautifully expressive Natalie Aroyan) loves an artist but he’s really the Christian Prince Leopold in disguise (tenor Francisco Brito maybe as a cad, but with a transportive upper range).  

His real wife, Princess Eudoxia (Esther Song, who takes this coloratura to yet higher trills) sings superbly throughout, but of nothing but her love for the Prince. Her persistency even convinces Rachel to deny his association with the Jewess.

Meanwhile, bass David Parkin deeply articulates the Cardinal’s mix of judicial authority and anguished empathy for Rachel. There’s a big secret here, as she’s called to burn for not also renouncing her Jehovah.  

One review I saw bemoaned the OA’s programming of this enthralling opera as an unfortunate and too dark an experience for us currently COVID/disaster depressives. With conductor Carlo Montanaro, La Juive, on the contrary, reached deep into human pathos and hurled you to the gods. See it.  

Martin Portus

Photographer: Prudence Upton.