Scorned and seething since 431 B.C.E., Medea has raged across the centuries as an empathetic emblem of the human consequence of paternalistic betrayal — by a man for whom a Golden Fleece was just not enough — and a terrifying murderess capable of letting her agony morph into the ultimate shock of matricide. As actresses have sunk their teeth into her rage, her unfiltered agony, audiences have never been able to look away.
And when actual humans have followed a similar trajectory, and some have, her name has always come up.
In the Euripides play that bears her name, Medea shows up at the start, wailing that her life has no purpose in the face of her mistreatment by Jason, after making one sacrifice after another, and she comes with a chorus of nervous sycophants. But the 1797 opera by Luigi Cherubini, which has a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman and is also derived from the Pierre Corneille dramatic adaptation, events begin with Glauce, the younger, naturally, and better-connected woman whom Jason has chosen in his freeze-out of his first partner.
In director David McVicar’s unnerving production, now at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Elena Villalón is seen at a bouffant, rococo nuptial, her guests in celebrity Franco-Italinate attire but with ominous, glowing red eyes. She sings with fragility of her joy with Giasone (Matthew Polenzani), a happiness she worries will be short-lived. Soon, the doors of a vault-like apparatus close, Glauce and her crew are entombed and Sondra Radvanovsky’s Medea crawls into view, as if from the gutter.
But Radvanovsky’s Medea is no snipe. She is a roaring force from the underworld, existing vocally, as Medea must, at the intersection of pain, pleading and panic at the strength and thus the potential consequences of her own emotions. For one who feels such agony at betrayal must feel the dangerous power of love herself.
What a performance from Radvanovsky!
At times, one swears one hears otherworldly sounds, even if Cherubini’s opportunistic music hardly is traditionally expressionistic. At others, her interpretation veers towards conversational reality. “Well, then,” she sings (in translation from the Italian), as she makes her argument, and let’s remember that she who blew her life up for her man with one sacrifice after another always comes with a very good argument.
Heck, all he offered in return was an entree to this smug, snobbish place of his birth. An asset to the arrogant Corinthian men, worthless to Medea once Jason walks.
Radvanovsky’s performance is great because she understands that Medea actually is experiencing chaos in real time, a rush of confusing passion of which she herself never before has known the like. She sings the role in the moment, as if nothing is pre-determined. She sings her as if the train headed toward her horrific and self-destructive ending is gathering steam with every note and Medea both knows she must fight against it and that there may well be nothing she can do to halt its trajectory.
Ergo, tragic inevitability, writ operatic.
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
There’s another side to Medea, too. She burns with sexual passion as Radvanovsky makes all too clear. Oh, does she ever! It’s not always clear where Polenzani’s Giasone stands, and that’s really the one flaw in McVicar’s production. Polenzani has a glorious tenor but there is occasionally a goofiness, or at least a reticence, where flames should smolder. I suspect McVicar was understandably focused on making Giasone a man of his milieu, and Polenzani has that down cold. Indeed, that contrast makes Radvanovsky all the more striking and Villalón all the more isolated, so one can see the benefit of all that. But Giasone also has to be a kind of Achilles, the yin to Medea’s yang, if only so we can see how these two have had this date with each from the beginning, God help their kids.
Alfred Walker, who plays Creonte, makes clear his character sees this, as does the terrific Zoie Reams, who plays Neris, Medea’s one ally where there once was a chorus of women. Reams turns her role into the moral conscience of the work, even as Walker explores the weakness of overly pragmatic leaders who would rather confusing passions would just go away.
McVicar’s design for “Medea,” which was produced at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 2022, is a textbook example of the value of directors forging their own sets.
The main drop is a Edvard Munch-like depiction of Medea’s visage, making clear who is the protagonist. Further within lie great doors evoking the Theatre of Dionysus. Therein, the inner sanctum is backed by a colossal, slanted mirror, allowing McVicar to paint vertical pictures of a horizontal reality, first of the human rabbits scurrying nervously around a doomed wedding banquet and then, once Medea’s passions penetrate, to paint a tableau of consequential death.
It is as if we were in a gallery, or maybe peering down from the heavens upon those who know not what they do. (Well, all but one, anyway.) It’s gorgeously lit by Paule Constable (the original designer) and with costumes from Doey Lüthi that both take risks and let Medea’s sensual humanity actually peek through. Exquisitely rendered, the concluding tableau of innocence destroyed is not easy to shake even the morning after. Truly, the design alone is reason to attend.
But then there is Radvanovsky, in a role long associated with Maria Callas, not that Radvanovsky ever allows that to come to mind.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Medea” (4 stars)
When: Through Oct. 26
Where: Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N. Wacker Drive
Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Tickets: $67-$404 at 312-827-5600 and lyricopera.org
