Boston Camerata’s artistic director Anne Azéma. Robert Torres photograph
Douce Dame Jolie: Guillaume de Machaut’s Last Affair
Boston
Boston Camerata
5/7/22
Pandemic. Quarantine and isolation. Lovers separated, with grievous outcomes.
The 14th century was awful.
The Boston Camerata, led by artistic director Anne Azéma and founder Joel Cohen, staged the anguished tale of the unlikely love affair between composer Guillaume de Machaut and poet Pérrone d’Armentières during the Black Death, at First Church in Boston’s Back Bay on May 7.
The premise of Douce Dame Jolie: Guillaume de Machaut’s Last Affair—an old man aspiring for the love of a young woman—typically serves as the bedrock for comedy, from the classics to the present. Not here.
This tale of improbable love—“transgressive,” Cohen called it—upends expectations. Using Machaut’s music and words, Cohen authored an epistolary narrative worthy of the great Ars Nova composer himself. Machaut’s real-life verse novel, Le Voir Dit (The True Tale), served as principal source.
The more Machaut doubts Pérrone’s love, the more she insists. They finally meet, share each other’s thoughts and bodies, but then are separated forever by enforced isolation. While Machaut’s romantic enthusiasms drew some laughter in Cohen’s antic narration—he boasts mock-heroically “I bathed in water” when his prospects are looking up—this setting was a love-affirming tragedy. The aging composer and the young artist are made real, their personalities challenging the conventions of any age.
Azéma directed. Cohen first created Douce Dame Jolie for the 2011 Reims Festival, then celebrating the 800th anniversary of the cathedral where Machaut was an appointed clergy.
Baritone Craig Juricka, tenor Michael Barrett, mezzo Clare McNamara and soprano Camila Parias joined instrumentalists Shira Kammen (vielle, harp), Christa Patton (oboes, harp) and Liza Malamut (brass) to accompany the estimable Azéma and Cohen. In a dozen scenes, the ensemble vivified the arc of the heady love affair between the frail and famous composer, and the talented, precocious—and discretely passionate—Pérrone.
Rondeaux, motets, chant, laments—as well as excerpts from Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame and other works—were transformed into hearty solos, duets and trios. The narrators—Cohen as Machaut, Azéma as Pérrone—were as musical as the rest. Their duet, “Dix et sept, trese, quatorse et quinse” evolved into a scat rondeau, alternately swinging then stately.
Juricka sang with force: his opening solo, “Comment qu’a moy lonteinne,” as the players processed onstage, set the emotional bar; his later lament, “Mon cuer, ma suer,” was only one of the outstanding solos exploring the volatility of the romance.
Machaut’s music sat beautifully in the expressive instruments of McNamara, Barrett and Parias. Barrett singing the higher part above McNamara in the angular motet “Dame je suis cils” created its own sound-world, unique as the characters themselves. The instrumental accompaniment—a stalwart blend of horn, strings and winds—had its own unique qualities, expertly explored.
Machaut epitomizes the sophistication of the almost-Renaissance, assuming distance from traditions of courtly love but not abandoning them. Cohen himself, sampling Machaut to create his own contemporary relevance, mimicked and added to the tradition.
The season-closing program allowed the Camerata board to announce Azéma’s recent recognition by the French government as an Officier des Arts et des Lettres, and to sing a Machaut-styled Happy 80th Birthday to Cohen, whose leadership of the Camerata dates to the 1950s.
Douce Dame Jolie: Guillaume de Machaut’s Last Affair will be streamed beginning May 20 at bostoncamerata.org. —Keith Powers