Gaspare Spontini‘s opera owes much to two women: to the patronage of Empress Josephine, who got the opera on in the first place in 1807, and to Maria Callas in 1954, who revived it and gave it a new lease of life.
La Vestale, Spontini’s masterpiece, a huge success in its day and much admired by Berlioz and Wagner, is rarely revived these days, so, grab the opportunity whilst you can.
Lydia Steier’s dark and gloomy production, conducted by Bertrand de Billy, is set in a modern state of religious extremism where barbaric torture and public executions are the norm. The clamorous chorus plays a leading role.
Licinius and Julia are in love. He goes off to war; she is forced by her father to become a sacred vestal virgin. He returns victorious, having conquered Gaul. They are reunited when she is designated to put the crown on his head.
Julia is responsible for making certain the sacred flame of the Temple of Vesta does not go out, but she and Licinius are so sexually preoccupied with each other that the flame is extinguished. Vestal virgins who break their vows of chastity are condemned to death and buried alive.
Act 2 is musically, emotionally and dramatically Spontini’s high spot. Elza van den Heever, a big presence, a powerhouse of grief, dominates the stage as Julia. Michel Spyres is a passionate Licinius, especially when drunk and raging. Their joyous bliss on the sacred altar, when they frantically start undressing each other, is a bit on the comic side.
Ève‑Maud Hubeaux as the sadistic Grand Vestal, who loves whipping her girls, looks as evil as the Queen in Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She is machine-gunned off-stage.
The victory parade lacks the spectacular grandeur the initial Parisian audience would have expected. The ballets have been dropped, too; but not the ballet music The lengthy coda in mime, which follows Julia and Licinius’s final exit, is an anticlimax.
Julien Behr as Cinna starts off as the good guy, friend to Licinius, and in this production ends up as a tyrant emulating Napoleon Bonaparte and putting the crown on his head himself. The production closes with a quote by Voltaire: “fanaticism is a monster that dares to pretend it is a child of religion.”
Gaspare Spontini’s La Vestale can be watched free on the OperaVision channel.