Mystification and Adulation
Emmanuel Villaume, whose conducting was so restrained during the
Metropolitan Opera's muzak version of "Thais", let loose on Monday when
he led a massive orchestra through Ravel's untypically dainty Menuet
Antique followed by Debussy's la Mer, three symphonic sketches which
were as overwhelming as they were hypnotic. What followed was peculiar
as well as spectacular: the bizarre "L'enfant et les Sortileges", a
highly visual fantasy about a naughty child's rebellious dream in which
dancing tea cups and singing animals are enacted by by a large chorus
embedded in the orchestra. Its hallucinatory qualities might be
explained by the fact that Collette wrote the lyrics which were then set
to music by Ravel while he was in the middle of fighting in WW1. The
audience were mystified, then adulatory, and Emmanuel Villaume at last
seemed liberated.
Emmanuel Villaume, whose conducting was so restrained during the
Metropolitan Opera's muzak version of "Thais", let loose on Monday when
he led a massive orchestra through Ravel's untypically dainty Menuet
Antique followed by Debussy's la Mer, three symphonic sketches which
were as overwhelming as they were hypnotic. What followed was peculiar
as well as spectacular: the bizarre "L'enfant et les Sortileges", a
highly visual fantasy about a naughty child's rebellious dream in which
dancing tea cups and singing animals are enacted by by a large chorus
embedded in the orchestra. Its hallucinatory qualities might be
explained by the fact that Collette wrote the lyrics which were then set
to music by Ravel while he was in the middle of fighting in WW1. The
audience were mystified, then adulatory, and Emmanuel Villaume at last
seemed liberated.
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