CD Review | Etienne Dupuis in Massenet’s Hérodiade

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Massenet : Hérodiade

Nicole Car, soprano; Clémentine Margaine, mezzo-soprano; Etienne Dupuis, baritone; Matthew Polenzani, tenor; Orchestra and Chorus of Deutsche Oper Berlin; Enrique Mazzola, conductor

Naxos, 2024

In 1881, more than 20 years before Richard Strauss, Jules Massenet wrote an opera starring the biblical heroine Salomé, but the work was named after her mother, Hérodiade. At the time, Massenet was still considered a young composer, having achieved good success with Le roi de Lahore (1877), but his first big success, Manon (1884), was still to come.

Commentators criticized the libretto of Hérodiade for being too disparate and cluttered, mixing up several issues: a love triangle, a family drama, as well as political and religious intrigue. But the sheer scale of the story should not put off a 21st-century audience used to following far more complicated stories on Netflix! There’s something very cinematic about the work, which inevitably brings to mind the great Hollywood religious epics of the 1950s, such as The Ten Commandments.

The generous score is captivating from start to finish, thanks to its imaginative and colourful orchestration. It brims with large, lively ensembles led by magnificent choruses, in a wide variety of moods ranging from a Babylonian dance to a holy march, as well as arias offering heady melody. Some of these have remained fairly well known, such as “Il est doux, il est bon,” sometimes still sung by sopranos, or “Vision fugitive,” with its flattering lines for baritones.

The orchestra, as always with Massenet, shines with a thousand lights and colours, so that the ear is constantly charmed, not least by the highly sensual saxophone solos. This live recording, made at Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2023, echoes a concert version given in Paris the previous year. It benefits from the very strong presence of Canadian baritone Etienne Dupuis (as Hérode), with his powerful voice and, above all, his dazzlingly clear diction, which gives the right weight to every syllable.

His operatic wife, the French mezzo Clémentine Margaine (as Hérodiade), occasionally misplaces a few consonants in the mellowness of her timbre, while his real-life wife, the Australian Nicole Car (as Salomé), sings such pure French that you’d think she was born in Île-de-France rather than the suburbs of Melbourne. The American tenor Matthew Polenzani, as the prophet John the Baptist, also graces us with very clear diction. All four perform their roles with great conviction. A work to discover, a composer to re-evaluate, performers to cherish!

Translation: Gianmarco Segato

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