Powder her Face
Thomas Adès & Philip Hensher

Set & Costumes..........................Conor Murphy
Light design........Peter van Praet / Paul Keogan
Choreography....................................Tom Baert
Conductor..................Luca Pfaff, Tim Redmond
première: 28 November 2002, de Singel, Antwerp
company: de Vlaamse Opera, Belgium

1st revival: 11 June 2008, The Royal Opera, London
2nd revival: 26 April 2010, The Royal Opera, London

Reviews

Carlos Wagner's outstanding production plays outrageously on our voyeuristic self-righteousness in matters of morality. The judge's summing up at the Duchess's humiliating divorce trial is delivered in a mounting frenzy of sexual excitement, in turn shared by those in the public gallery armed with flasks of tea and binoculars. --- The look of the show is fantastic. A steep white staircase fans out from a single doorway. The action is entirely, and precariously, played out on these steps, suggesting the Duchess's imminent tumble from grace and favour. Outsize reproductions of her cosmetics are strewn about like Pop Art sculptures. And in the key moment of that fellatio, a naked Adonis emerges from between the legs of her "headless man" as if to highlight the distinction between sexual fantasy and base reality.
The best of Powder Her Face comes in the final scene where Joan Rodgers' riveting Duchess clings in vain to her pride while Adès attempts to imbue her with an almost Straussian dignity. There's a wicked reference to Der Rosenkavalier as a society journalist presents her with a silver rose. Is this the mad scene the Marschallin never had?

The Independent

Betrayals of the heart
---In the new Flanders Opera production of Powder her Face, the duchess does indeed perform fellatio on the waiter but not in a way calculated to arouse the audience's moral indignation. The only thing this lonely, insecure woman wants is a bit of love, comfort, understanding; and sex is the means by which she has learnt, Lulu-like, to earn it. But instead of a quick slice of human warmth, all she gets here is another selfish man who forces her to perform a degrading sexual act. And the only way she can get through is by fantasising about an ideal male torso, which miraculously appears, naked and erect, beside her.
It is easily the most impressive image in Carlos Wagner's staging - not just for its faintly comical directness but because it encapsulates an unexpectedly sympathetic interpretation of the Duchess's story. She emerges throughout this performance as maligned, misunderstood and generally mucked about - a tragic anti heroine, a victim to rank alongside Poulenc's La voix humaine whose plight is recalled in the telephone exchanges of Scene Four. She is the only character with a soul. Everyone else behaves like a cold hearted pervert. It's not the Duchess who, to quote the judge in his indictment of her, "is a beast to an exceptional degree, insatiable, unnatural and altogether fairly appalling". No - it's society --- Powder her Face emerges even stronger from this courageous show.

The Financial Times

"Powder", the smutty gives way to the truly moving
The direction in the design and the costumes of Conor Murphy, is signed: Carlos Wagner, young artist from Venezuela based in London who has already been invited by the Opera Studio and music theatre company Transparant. Here one rediscovers his sharp sense for "global concepts", concise, expressive, and once again very successful on a visual level --- a staircase like the Jacob's ladder leads to the door of illusions, paradise or hell, to the side an immense powder compact, venus shell and ivory tower at once, luxury bed for the duchess. Everything under the expert lighting of Peter van Praet, contributing as much to the structure of the set as to the psychological mood of the scenes - and the fine choreography of Tom Baert.
Contrastingly in the second act, where the duchess begins her descent into hell, the smutty gives way to the truly moving, the opera grows in intensity. Particularly in the Austrian singer Ingrid Habermann --- A beautiful presence of the other three singers, in their multiple roles...

La Libre Belgique

It is the intelligence of the staging above all, envisaged like a morbid ballet that is in total osmosis with the music, that one remembers. All a long the performance, not one single gesture contradicts one single note, with as only place of action, an immense staircase in the middle of which a huge powder compact is placed, simultaneously bed and oyster shell in which the duchess plays the pearl. Provoking more than sincere, Carlos Wagner has taken the option of not hiding anything, which in itself is a risky undertaking. Even more remarkable to us, his capacity never to shock. The famous fellatio scene is shown several times without the least ambiguity yet without us feeling at ny moment offended or uneasy. Remarkable also, the way in which each role is characterized. Anonymous on paper, the maid, the judge, the hotel manager, the journalist, even though represented by the same actors, succeed in finding their own individuality on stage. A tour de force that gives credit to the artists, completely invested in their roles to the point of committing their whole person even to the ridiculous.

Forum Opéra

I'm still not sure the opera has a heart (does it even aspire to one?), but such a vastly sophisticated, piquant entertainment can only be relished, and Carlos Wagner's vivacious staging (first seen in Antwerp) presents the sordid sex episodes with bravado.
Its biggest asset, however, is Conor Murphy's magnificent surreal set - a vast pink staircase, suggestive of both a grand-hotel foyer and the swift passage from heaven to hell, on which are scattered outsized items from the Duchess' dressing table, with the lady herself emerging like a parody of Botticelli's Venus from a giant conch-like powder compact.
Joan Rodgers sang absolutely gloriously as the Duchess, presenting the character with a dignity and sympathy which perhaps she doesn't altogether merit, and there is first rate-support from Iain Paton, Rebecca Bottone and Alan Ewing, all resourcefully assuming a variety of roles.

Daily Telegraph

There is a scene in Carlos Wagner’s daring production, here receiving its first revival, that scales the heights of stylish symbolism. The humiliation of the Duchess (Joan Rodgers) is made flesh as she crumples gracefully atop a soaring staircase and falls to its distant foot. Appalled though the lady would be by such a vulgarism, it’s a proper wow moment. ---Wagner occasionally tries too hard, and a few slapslick moments fall flat, but as a feat of imaginative stagecraft this production will take some beating. The designer, Conor Murphy, certainly makes life difficult for the singers with his treacherous set: there isn’t a flat surface in sight, and those stairs are a killer. Yet the performers, all of whom are returning to roles they played in the production’s 2008 incarnation, negotiate its perils with fluent ease.

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