Review

Years ago, when Toronto’s CJRT-FM still broadcast classical music, I had the distinct pleasure of producing a show, Opera Obscura, dedicated to forgotten or neglected parts of the repertoire. Even then, L’Aiglon escaped my attention. I wish I had known there existed a 1957, incomplete recording of this opera by Arthur Honegger and Jacques Ibert. Worry no more, L’Aiglon is back on disc and it is here to stay! The oddity of two composers working together on one opera is quickly overcome by the wonder of Ibert’s waltzes (recalling some of the best of Richard Strauss’ scores) and by the rhythmicity and uncanny sense of the dramatic, Honegger’s own calling card.

The story of L’Aiglon (The Eaglet), the erstwhile Napoleon II, quickly rebranded the Duke of Reichstadt and spirited away to Vienna after his father’s final defeat, is potent opera fodder. When presented in 1936, the work was permeated with French patriotism and Gallic pride. This was a no-go just four years later, under the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupation of France. What started as wartime suppression has become a sort of long exile. The story of a consumptive boy, dreaming of restoring his father’s empire and then crushed by the gears of the geopolitical machine may seem naïve in our cynical times, but nevertheless resonates at some level even in the hardest of hearts. This is the effect of the music, modern yet nostalgic, grandiose yet somehow restrained. The exciting performances that Kent Nagano gently coaxes out of Anne-Catherine Gillet, Marc Barrard, Etienne Dupuis and Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal make certain that this eagle has landed to uniform applause.