BEMF’s chamber opera series returns with Charpentier double bill

OPERA REVIEW

November 29, 2011|By Jeremy Eichler, Globe Staff

Aaron Sheehan as Orphe in the production of Charpentiers La Descente dOrphe… (andré costantini )

BOSTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL Charpentier”s “La Couronne de Fleurs”” and “La Descente d”Orphée aux Enfers””

At: Jordan Hall, Sunday afternoon

Baroque chamber opera on a weekend of Black Friday hangovers and leftover turkey? It’s an improbable scenario, and Kathleen Fay, who runs the Boston Early Music Festival, was warned by local colleagues to think twice before scheduling ambitious staged performances in the otherwise concert-light weekend immediately following Thanksgiving. Fay apparently did think twice, and then went for it anyway.

Her bold move has paid off. Over the course of just four seasons, BEMF’s annual post-Thanksgiving chamber opera series in Jordan Hall has become a popular tradition among local early music fans. It has proved a sensible way to expand the company’s theatrical ambitions beyond its biennial festival, and it’s enabled BEMF to extend its reach well beyond Boston, as these chamber stagings have gone on to tour as far afield as Vancouver and Seattle.

This year back in Jordan Hall, BEMF returned to French Baroque terrain with a double bill of works by Charpentier: “La Couronne de Fleurs’’ and “La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers,’’ two pastoral operas written for the court of Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise. The first, with a libretto adapted from Moliere, convenes a musical-poetic contest among shepherds and shepherdesses singing in praise of Louis XIV before the flower goddess Flore; the latter work is Charpentier’s moving operatic telling of the Orpheus myth, left incomplete after two acts, for reasons unknown.

BEMF’s resident stage director Gilbert Blin came up with a clever theatrical conceit to unite the double bill by presenting one inside the other; that is, here “La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers’’ unfolds as part of the contest described by “La Couronne de Fleurs.’’ Blin even fashioned a period explanation for why the Orpheus opera would be cut short before its culmination: the King’s composer Lully held exclusive rights over official performances of opera. In this staging, the cast of “La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers’’ is served something like a cease and desist order - conveniently arriving just where Charpentier’s score goes blank.