L'heure espagnole

The title, L'Heure Espagnole, is difficult to translate. It can mean The Spanish Hour or Spanish Time. Ravel was a jazz fan so I hope he would have approved of my title. Ravel's sound-world is well-suited to ballet and to orchestral pieces but is more problematical when it comes to opera. In this, one of Ravel's two, brief forays into the form, the vocal line seems to sit uneasily on the impressionistic orchestral accompaniment.

Ravel is not well-served by his libretto. In 1911 Paris it may have seemed the height of daring and chic but today it appears to be just a sordid, sexist farce that seems as dated as a Benny Hill sketch. The plot concerns a randy wife, Concepcion, who has just one hour a week to liaise with her lovers on the afternoon that her clockmaker husband has to wind all the town clocks. Failing to get satisfaction with two potential suitors she finally settles for a muscular deliveryman who happens to be in the vicinity.The story may be after Boccaccio but that does not make it any more attractive.

Sophie Koch does her best with the unsympathetic role of the nympho wife, None of her three lovers can make much of their cardboard cutout parts. I did enjoy Jean-Paul Fouchécourt as the cuckolded clockmaker, Torquemada, he has a striking tenor voice. Sorry about that. Torquemada is rather obsessional about his clocks so it distressed me to see all the clocks on the stage showing a different time. Surely he would have set them correctly.

The piece does not even work well on its own terms since it has none of the motivational imperative of a good farce. Men keep on hiding in grandfather clocks but for no apparent reason, just because they are there. Still, all is not lost if you have bought this DVD since it comes in a double bill with an excellent version of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.

L'Heure Espagnole is not one of my favourite operas and I don't think it ever will be. The music has its moments, and it certainly has Ravel's style all over it, but I've never found the score particularly memorable on the whole. The story while short always did feel rather static and I am not entirely sure whether it holds up well by today's standards. And the characters are rather cardboard for my tastes, that is particularly true with Gonzalve. But even if I am not a fan of the opera, I'd still see a production as I do love opera general regardless of the production or what my perception of the opera is. And I wouldn't go as far to say that this 2004 Paris production is bad, it isn't. It's just that it doesn't do very much on the whole to change my perception of the opera. The staging does what it can to make the story interesting but it comes across as too busy and at times confusing. The settings seemed rather cluttered with various objects and seemed very stark in colour, very little authenticity here. Yann Beuron has a lovely voice but although his character Gonzalve is not very interesting to begin with he is very bland on the whole. The rest of the cast fare best. Of the male singers, the best is Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, I do like the ring to his voice and he at least brings some energy to Torquemada. Allain Vernhes has a very sonorous basso as well as a very communicative face. Frank Ferrari has an appealing cheeky charm to him also, but the best of the cast is the vocally thrilling and dramatically riveting Concepcion of Sophie Koch. Other pluses here are the pleasantly summery costumes, especially Koch's, the beautifully balanced orchestral playing and authoritative conducting from Seiiji Ozawa. Of the Paris productions I've seen overall, which is a fair few, this L'Heure Espagnole has some of the best video directing, picture and sound quality. Overall, don't care all that much for the opera and was not totally enamoured with the production, but it does have some undeniably good things so it shouldn't be dismissed entirely. 6/10 Bethany Cox