Lydia Steier runs with the wolf pack of directors who have been savaging opera in Germany and the rest of Continental Europe for a good half century now. Two years ago, she bowed at the Paris Opera’s uninviting Opéra Bastille with a dystopian Salome diabolically calculated to repel. Falling in with Steier’s sadistic fantasies, the South African soprano Elza van den Heever’s dancing princess eked out a personal triumph. It speaks volumes that the Norwegian superstar Lisa Davidsen, who led the revival, quietly negotiated modifications to the worst obscenities. Who else in the business would have had the clout to do so?
For Steier’s next act at the Bastille, she sank her fangs into Gaspare Spontini’s august yet incendiary La Vestale (1807). Dedicated to Napoléon’s Joséphine, the tale of the Roman priestess who lets the sacred flame go out set French opera on its course for blockbuster grandeur. Across decades, it worked its spell even on Richard Wagner, whose doomily suspenseful “Fate” motif in the “Ring” cycle is cut and pasted straight from Spontini’s masterpiece. Yet at the Paris Opera, the score lay gathering dust from 1854 until last June, when it was captured live on video. Once again, van den Heever presides, this time as Julia, the eponymous vestal virgin, tormented by her passion for the Roman general Licinius. But why shouldn’t she have feelings for him? Before the sisterhood claimed her, the two were officially betrothed.
Historically, a vestal who lapsed in her duties or yielded to temptation paid the price by being buried alive. In the Rome of this opera, we’re to understand that such a scenario enacted in real life would shake the state to its foundation. Steier instead posits a Gilead straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale, where the unthinkable plays out daily before a population hungry for horrors.
Losing no time, Steier superimposes on Spontini’s noble overture a series of blackouts showing Licinius nursing his Jack Daniels in some grim back alley. Goons in uniform patrol the streets, stringing up stray riffraff by the feet. Act One begins, and it gets worse.
Under the eye of the high priestess La Grande Vestale—glamorous in her cape and crown braid—a trembling female nobody is stripped, fondled, and spat upon before taking a bullet to the head. Next, the dominatrix in chief gets to work on Julia with a mean cat-o’-nine-tails.Why? Because Julia is seeking release from her vows. Ill-served by costumes and make-up, Julia variously evokes St. Sebastian and the laboring Hercules.
We’ve scarcely settled in our seat, but if we can stomach the brutality, bountiful rewards await. Under the baton of Bertrand de Billy, the orchestra revels in Spontini’s gorgeous instrumental palette, rich in golden brass and gleaming winds. The principals, too, do themselves proud. Van den Heever’s clear, cool soprano traces Julia’s flights with piercing eloquence. As Licinius, the baritenor phenomenon Michael Spyres melds heroism and anguish in stirring tones.
As La Grande Vestale, the towering, whippetlike Ève-Maud Hubeaux endows Steier’s grotesque Aunt Lydia pantomimes with unearned fascination, while Jean Teitgen’s charcoal bass lends the Supreme Pontiff the very note of implacable authority his pronouncements require.
La Vestale is available for streaming on OperaVision through March 6, 2025
Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii
