A Baroque Drama of Biblical Proportions: Opera Atelier’s David and Jonathan

The artists of Atelier Ballet in Opera Atelier's production of Charpentier's David and Jonathan. (Photo: Bruce Zinger.)

Opera Atelier’s 40th anniversary staging of Charpentier’s David and Jonathan at Koerner Hall is not just a local milestone but an international event, rooted in the Canadian company’s acclaimed presentation at Versailles’ Opéra Royal—a version that returns to Versailles this May, underscoring its global prestige and resonance.

Presented earlier in April, Opera Atelier’s current staging is a reimagining of the work first unveiled by Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg three years ago in the Royal Chapel at Versailles, a space revered as the pinnacle of French 17th-century architecture. The original was hailed for its Baroque splendour, with opulent sets and costumes, and garnered international accolades, including award-winning CD and DVD releases. Its return to Versailles this spring is a rare honour, confirming Opera Atelier’s stature among the world’s leading interpreters of French Baroque opera.

For the Toronto engagement, Gerard Gauci’s newly designed sets and Michael Gianfrancesco’s jewel-toned costumes offered a fresh visual palette, heightening the sense of spectacle while remaining true to the work’s Baroque roots.

Yet for all its visual and musical allure, I found the first act of David and Jonathan bewildering. Fully grasping the plot requires a solid grounding in the Old Testament saga of Saul, David and Jonathan—a story only briefly outlined in the program’s précis, which itself reads like a condensed Bible studies course. The opera’s structure, with its prologue and episodic scenes, assumes the audience arrives with this background knowledge. Without it, the opening feels like a swirl of unfamiliar names, allegiances and supernatural interventions (including a witch conjuring a ghost), making suspension of disbelief a tall order. You’re left adrift, unable to invest emotionally because you simply don’t know what’s going on.

However, after intermission, the threads begin to pull together. The narrative’s central arc—the political intrigue, the coup and the drive for revenge—emerges with clarity. Most importantly, the subtlety and intensity of the male love relationship at the opera’s core becomes unmistakable, lending the production a depth and poignancy that linger.

The performances, especially from Colin Ainsworth (David) and Mireille Asselin (Jonathan), make the emotional stakes palpable, while the music and choreography merge into a compelling whole. David Witczak, as Saul, brings a tortured intensity to the role—at first almost grating in its volatility, but ultimately revealing the depths of his character’s unraveling mind. It’s this willingness to confront such emotional complexity that makes Opera Atelier’s programming choice for this celebratory season so striking.

David and Jonathan—with its tragic ending and absence of “tra-la-las” or happy-ever-afters—is a bold, even provocative, move for a 40th anniversary show. But on reflection, it’s a declaration of artistic faith. Pynkoski and Zingg seem to believe that, after four decades, Canadian audiences are ready for the complexity and arcane sophistication of Baroque opera at its most challenging. They have elevated the standard, and we now respectfully follow their lead, trusting their vision even when the journey is demanding.

– Deirdre Kelly is a Toronto-based journalist, author and internationally recognized dance critic and style writer on staff at The Globe and Mail newspaper from 1985 to 2017. She writes for Dance Magazine in New York, the Dance Gazette in London, and NUVO in Vancouver, and is a contributor to the International Dictionary of Ballet and AWOL: Tales for Travel-Inspired Minds. The best-selling author of Paris Times Eight and Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, she is a two-time recipient (2020 and 2014) of Canada’s Nathan Cohen Prize for outstanding critical writing. In 2017, she joined York University as Editor of the award-winning The York University Magazine where she is also the publication’s principal writer. In 2023, she published her latest book, Fashioning The Beatles: The Looks That Shook The World.