An opera about Jacqueline du Pré, an exceptional cellist whose performing career was ended at the age of 26 by multiple sclerosis, is hardly surprising. The story of this shooting star of music, an extraordinary talent, has a very dramatic ring to it.
Her death in 1987 at the age of 42 was the musical equivalent of Diana’s for the British monarchy. Her celebrated relationship with pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim has been seen and perceived as a reincarnation of that between Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck. The difference is that Barenboim left du Pré after a few years of marriage to start a new life, something for which he was often criticized. To his credit, he accompanied Jacqueline in the last moments of her short life.
In any case, it should come as no surprise that this meteoric life has been adapted for the stage. Montrealer Luna Pearl Woolf has taken on this task, with the support of renowned librettist Royce Vavrek (JFK, presented in Montreal a few years ago). This is an almost entirely Canadian production, as Vavrek is Canadian and studied at Concordia University in Montreal. Jacqueline was commissioned for Toronto’s Tapestry Opera and premiered there in 2020, while the present recording was made at McGill’s Schulich School in Montreal. Only two artists are on stage: Matt Haimovitz from Montreal on cello and Marnie Breckenridge, the only non-Canadian (she’s American), a soprano.
This performance for two musicians represents as many faces of the famous British artist thrown in record time onto the world’s public stages, like a reality TV star before her time. Her cello, a character in its own right, is as much a part of her as a companion with whom she lives a passionate relationship, doomed to destruction by illness. It is this relationship, and above all its evolution, accentuated by Jacqueline’s inner voice (embodied by Breckenridge’s singing), that we follow through the opera’s four parts, Star Birth, Super Nova, Meteorite, Impact. The titles are evocative of the stratospheric (and ultimately crashing) trajectory of a musician who was already making headlines at the age of ten.
In these four parts, which are condensed versions of the four main stages in Jacqueline’s life (rise, ephemeral glory, onset of illness/quitting her career, death), Marnie Breckenridge and Matt Haimovitz (who is called upon to move and fully play his role as Jacqueline/Marnie’s vital partner) achieve a veritable 90-minute artistic tour de force in which the dramatic and psychological intensity required are almost unbearable. The scene in the third act (Meteorite) where Jacqueline explodes with anger and frustration at the disease, those ”Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, FUCKING DISEASE” is literally paroxysmal. The performers have reached this point after a long and sustained crescendo of emotions.
Woolf’s music is tonally expanded, but above all highly expressive and lyrical. The cello accompaniment is at times spiky, but in close and constant intimate dialogue with the soprano score. The shadow of Elgar’s Concerto looms over part of the score, of course. With her memorable, unrivalled recording of this work with the London Symphony Orchestra and John Barbirolli in 1965, du Pré single-handedly transformed a piece that had remained on the periphery into an essential pillar of the repertoire for cello and orchestra, played the world over.
The stage version must be remarkably impressive, if comments after the Toronto premiere are anything to go by. Marnie Breckenridge must contort her body athletically when Jacqueline is shown moving “like a crab” at the end of her life. Impossible to report here, of course, but we can confirm the total success of the musical interplay between the two performers, who seem carried along by a total, incandescent conviction and involvement.
Jacqueline is a powerful opera, easy to stage (at least in terms of numbers and equipment). For the two performers, you have to choose carefully!), which should encourage companies everywhere to program it. Good grief! How come Montreal hasn’t seen it yet? So many of the artists involved are linked to the city! Come on guys!
