What a great idea of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen to program this fascinating theatrical music in its entirety. Popular passages such as Morning Mood and the sorrowful Ase's Death easily make the top list of beloved melodies, but the piece as a whole is hardly known.
Appealing to as many people as possible was certainly the main motive behind providing Henrik Ibsen's drama with a "new narrative text". This task was entrusted to Tom Goossens, meanwhile a well-known collaborator at OBV. In 2019 I was particularly delighted with his adaptation of Verdi's Macbeth into the family production Banquet. With his direction of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, he made clear that an apparently artless story can conceal deeper human traits. With this fairy-tale-like story of Peer Gynt, a sort of "Bildungsroman", Goossens goes about it in much the same way. His inspiration is undoubtedly original, if only to create a genuine theatrical event with a single character carrying the story. That character is played by Tania Van der Sanden, who as Peer's mother strings together his life phases. Goossens finds the perfect actress to make the entire action seem natural and spontaneous. She wanders, steps, walks back and forth around the musicians as if she is experiencing everything on the spot. It comes across simply naturally, sometimes almost naively, what she tells us. And therefore very believable. She adapts her voice and accent to the passage being performed, sometimes in dialect or with a distorted voice as in the passage with the Button Maker (a ladle!). In short, a fantastic performance. It is, however, a regrettable note that Tom Goossens occasionally lets himself be carried away too much by the concern of making the story appeal to the general public. His relativization of the tragic nature of Peer Gynt regularly borders on (or crosses over into) the ridiculous, and then the "pleasant" comes across as simplistic and at the same time inappropriate. As a linguist, however, he deserves admiration for the way he repeatedly provides the text with rhyme and gives the fairy-tale quality a surrealist touch. But the search "for a soul" as the often bizarre multifaceted life story of Peer Gynt is called in the program notes, sometimes takes on the character of an ambiguous quest.
Of course, there is also the music. Only praise for that. The young conductor, James Hendry, displayed enormous dynamism and managed to take the orchestra along in the adventurous as well as the emotional moments of Peer Gynt. The magic of the forests, the exotic nature of the adventures in Morocco and Egypt, each scene gets the right atmosphere in the orchestra.
The smaller vocal roles of Anitra and Ingrid are performed by excellent singers from the choir, which by the way does a fantastic job. In the role of Solveig, Lore Binon fits as if the part was written for her. Fragile and sensual, she slips into the character of Solveig, subtly performing her melancholy and longing with heavenly altitude and flawless legato.
Despite the shortcomings, decidedly a special performance that was cheered by the audience of the Koningin Elisabethzaal.