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We were advised Cecilia Bartoli was suffering from a cold but would perform. Phew! Cold aside, the soprano gave an exquisite performance in Barrie Kosky’s three-hour pasticcio, Hotel Metamorphosis. Her performance was central to the success of this show that braids Vivaldi’s arias and music with famous selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
The scenes enabled Bartoli to demonstrate her ability to sing with pathos and lanquid emotion in her voice, thrill with baroque fireworks and then delight with hilarity. These varying styles are all contained in a surprisingly coherent pasticcio, sewn together in a conceit is elegant in its simplicity: refashion some of Vivaldi’s most potent arias into five episodes. Their linking theme are the mythic transformations Ovid penned. We started with Orpheus in rhe hotelroom and ended with Eurydice’s anquish in the underworld.
Along the way the dramatic arc travels from pastoral idylls to mythic shock, all anchored by a narration in German by Angela Winkler that keeps the storytelling buoyant and accessible.
Kosky’s dramaturgy leant on teansforming mythology into recognizable archetypes: Pygmalion’s self-fashioning and desire, Arachne’s defiant loom-work and punishment for her hubris, Myrrha’s dangerous longing and sexual fulfilment, Echo and Narcissus, leading to Eurydice in the underworld. The spoken text provides a brisk, engaging through-line, while the arias—carefully categorized by mood—delivered Vivaldi’s characteristic colour and drama. The selected musical vocabulary used timbres and instrumental textures to evoke emotional states: delicious oboe for pastoral scenes, traverse flute for sleep, bustling strings and brass for martial tensions, and rapid coloratura for rage or longing. The arias’ texts were used by Kosky to enable a modern, theatrical language without sacrificing Baroque elegance.
Philippe Jaroussky
Michael Levine’s staging was intelligent and methodical with each story told in the same modern hotel room. The hotel chamber was at times elevated to enable characters to be revealed in the underworld. The descent from one world to the other was usually through the room’s large bed.
Nadezhda Karyazina and Cecilia Bartoli
The Salzburg audience righty embraced Lea Desandre as Echo, a bright-eyed, young trilling and laughing nymph, in love with Narcissus who was of course in love with himself. She sang with an effortless clarity and vast charm. She also mastered the difficulty role of Myrrha with her incestuous encounter with her father (main image).
Narcissus was sung with great presence by Philipe Jaroussky, who also delighted as a swaggering Pygmalion, a dapper everyman who transmuted the hotel suite into a strange, intimate boudoir with his love creation also sung by Desandre.
Philippe Jaroussky
Nadezhda Karyazina was fabulous as a proud Minerva and also Juno, both roles sang with power and beauty by the rich mezzo.
Bartoli’s Eurydice delivers that final commanding presence in the underworld, her vocal authority and stage charisma undiminished despite that cold. The moment of Eurydice’s aria, set against a stark, black substage inhabited by skeletal figures, is one of the production’s most striking visual and sonic climaxes.
In this performance as Eurydice and Arache, Bartoli demonstrated she remains a formidable stage presence and technical force. Her compelling bravura remained compelling.
Jaroussky sang with great beauty of tone and there was also signs of maturity in his voice in some of the demands for a character’s youthful agility.
Karyazina in particular never failed to deliver with fervour and attack.
The orchestra, Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco under Gianluca Capuano, performed with a period-informed sensibility: crisp articulation, vivid textures, and a deft balance. The solo playing was mesmerising.
Kosky never lacks ambition, for better or worse, and here it worked with technical virtuosity and engaging theatricality. This was enhanced with athletic, playful ballet moments and plenty of theatrical kitsch and modern-stage devices.
The production moved with cinematic verve, and dramaturgical instinct with consummate vocal and musical virtuosity.
Images: Monika Ritterhaus
https://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/en/p/hotel-metamorphosis
