Thérèse Raquin, based on the famous novel by Emile Zola, is the subject of Tobias Picker’s third opera. The story, fashioned into a libretto by Gene Scheer, tells of Thérèse and Laurent, an adulterous couple who murder Camille (Thérèse’s husband and Laurent’s best friend) in a staged “boating accident”. Eleven months later Camille’s friends convince his grieving mother, Madame Lisette, to give her blessing to Thérèse’s marriage to Laurent, but soon after the wedding Lisette is visited by Camille’s ghost, and upon learning the truth about her son’s death she suffers a paralyzing stroke. Their secret now safe, the guilt-stricken couple nonetheless realizes they can never be truly free, and their increasingly neurotic and demoralized state inevitably leads to their gruesome destruction.
As with his highly successful first opera, Emmeline, Picker convincingly gives life to his characters through his vivid and dramatic compositional style. He’s especially good at torrid emotional scenes, such as Thérèse and Laurent’s illicit Act 1 love duet, and Madame Lisette’s horrifying discovery in Act 2. The earlier work also created dramatic tension by juxtaposing tuneful tonal passages with harsh atonal ones, but for Thérèse Raquin Picker departs sharply from this approach by dividing modalities between the opera’s two acts. Thus, Act 1 is primarily tonal up until its climactic ending with Camille’s murder, while Act 2 utilizes a mostly atonal language to illustrate Thérèse and Laurent’s newly morbid existence.
Perhaps this seemed clever on paper, but in practice it comes across as obvious and gimmicky–plus it really doesn’t follow logically as there are morbidly sinister elements in Act 1 and tender loving moments in Act 2. Not only does the melodic line become far less suited for the voice, but the musical layout actually diminishes the impact of the tragic ending because the mood already has been dismal for the entire second act. (And besides, having to endure an hour of atonal singing after the enjoyably quasi-tonal first act is like being forced to eat your turnips after you’ve had your dessert.)
The singers all give believable accounts of their roles, with Sara Fulgoni’s Thérèse, Diana Soviero’s Madame Lisette, and Richard Bernstein’s Laurent being particularly memorable. Conductor Graeme Jenkins leads the Dallas Opera Orchestra with energy and conviction. The recording, made during a live performance in Dallas, is not up to the usual Chandos standard. The sound is somewhat murky and distant, with the voices suitably audible but not always intelligible–quite the opposite of the fine live recording of Emmeline, which remains the essential Tobias Picker opera to have in your collection. Still, fans of the composer and the novel shouldn’t hesitate to investigate this new recording, provided they’re mindful of its limitations.
