Young Vic Theatre
Lulu – Angel Blue
Clarence – Robert Winslade
Anderson
Dr Bloom – Donald Maxwell
Jimmy – Jonathan Stoughton
Eleanor – Jacqui Dankworth
Photographer, Young Man –
Paul Curievici
Athlete – Simon Wilding
Professor, Banker, Police
Commissioner – Paul Reeves
John Fulljames (director)
Magda Willi (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)
Finn Ross (video)
Carolyn Downing (sound)
London Sinfonietta
Gerry Cornelius (conductor)
 |
Images: Bregenzer Festspiele/Anja Köhler and Bregenzer Festspiele/Karl Forster
In the foreground: Jacqui Dankworth (Eleanor) and Angel Blue (Lulu); Simon Wilding (athlete) in background |
I was a little taken aback by
the reaction I received upon mentioning that I was looking forward to seeing American Lulu. One friend, perfectly reasonably,
said that he had not taken to it when he had seen it in Berlin; I wish I had
had the chance to press him more on why. However, he did suggest that the
staging – presumably at the Komische Oper premiere – may have been a
considerable part of the problem. Others, though, seemed to recoil at the very
idea. Who did Olga Neuwirth think she was, adapting Berg’s opera into her own?
For once, I almost felt myself the voice of reason, then stopped short when I
recalled that to have been the title of an especially nasty
right-wing newspaper column. At any rate, I had no a priori objection to what sounded as though it were simply the
continuation of practices that dated back as long as any conception of the
musical work, and indeed beyond. I have always preferred the Second Viennese
School arrangements of Johann Strauss to the ‘originals’; Mozart’s Handel
reworkings, whether in terms of arrangement or more thoroughgoing recomposition
have long fascinated me; and as for Bach, whether his rewriting of other music,
sometimes his own, sometimes that of others, or the multitude of rewritings, in
whatever form, offered by composers from Mozart to George Benjamin... They vary
wildly in quality, of course, and that seemed to me the only point; the
question was not whether Neuwirth had any ‘right’ to adapt Berg’s opera, but
whether it worked.
I think it did, or at least
much of it did. I cede to no one in my love for Lulu – save, perhaps to one of Neuwirth’s teachers, Luigi Nono, who
described it as one of the two greatest
operas of the twentieth century, the other being Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand. I know Berg’s score
– and Friedrich Cerha’s completion – pretty well, and found myself not annoyed,
but fascinated by the interplay between Berg and Neuwirth. In a work that lasts
about half the time of the original, Neuwirth adapts, including reorchestration,
the first two acts, and writes her own third act, both text and music. (English
translations, concerning which, I found some more convincing than others, were
provided by Richard Stokes and Catherine Kerkhoff-Saxon in the first two acts,
and Kerkhoff-Saxon alone in the third.) One might miss the gorgeous post-Romantic
labyrinthine depth of Berg, but to hear his music refracted as it was, pointed
in a different direction by a new(-ish) story held its own interest – just as,
say, Berio’s work on composers as different as Boccherini, Purcell, and
Schubert has. (If only he had lived to complete his realisation of L’incoronazione di Poppea...) And so,
with Berg’s – admittedly, selectively employed – jazz-influenced scoring in
mind, Neuwirth’s reorchestration and composition alike make their move to New
Orleans via a wind-dominated ensemble, Berg’s voluptuous strings put in their
place and perhaps now heard through Brecht-Weill. (No one, I hasten to add, is
saying that Berg is ‘improved upon’; that is not the point.) I was less sure
about the introduction of more popular music ‘proper’, especially Eleanor’s
blues music, into the score; its inclusion, presumably intentionally so, seemed
oddly uncritical, as if, in a curious inversion or at least evasion of Adorno,
Berg’s opera requires subjection to criticism but that of an allegedly purer
popular culture does not. And yet, as I shall come to describe, there is a
dialectical twist that would at least partially assist in that regard. The new
version of the film music – what a relief it was actually to see a film,
practically the only moment in present-day staging of opera where film seems to
be eschewed – is brought to us, like the ‘jazz band’ music via a recording of a Wonder Morton organ:
evocative, contemporaneous, and yet also, rightly for a new work, somewhat
oblique in its relationship to the ‘original’.
The third act of Lulu, which Neuwirth, wrongly to my mind
yet perhaps nevertheless fruitfully, regards as ‘unsatisfactory’ – ‘after great
trials and tribulations, two women are simply slaughtered by a serial killer;
and that is that’ – becomes instead ‘an unresolved murder case’, but more to
the point here, offers her own music, clearly flowing from that of Berg, still
more from that of Berg-Neuwirth, and yet which quite properly takes on a life
of its own: a twenty-first-century reimagination of post-expresssionist music.
There are vocal leaps; there is vocal seduction; there is a hard-edged, yet
sinuous quality, in line with Berg’s own. I should need to hear it again to say
much more; yet, to answer the earlier question, for the most part, and bearing
in mind my cavil concerning the blues music in particular, I think it worked.
I deliberately started with
the music but ought to say something briefly about the new setting. Instead of the Prologue, we start at the end,
in 1970s New York, when Clarence (Schigolch) asks Lulu why, when she is now so
wealthy, she is no more satisfied, prompting her to look back at her life,
beginning in 1950s New Orleans. A photographer with whom she is living is soon
supplanted by Dr Bloom, purchaser of the pictures; Lulu dances in Bloom’s club,
music written for her by his son, Jimmy. (I do not need in laboured fashion to
point out who is who with respect to Berg; it is perfectly clear, though some
of Berg’s intricate parallelism falls by the wayside as Neuwirth’s drama takes
on a different trajectory.) Initially I found the substitution of Eleanor, a
singer, for Geschwitz, something of a disappointment. The ‘otherness’ – if I am
honest, banality – of her music, however well sung by Jacqui Dankworth, seemed
too obvious, too lacking in integrative or indeed disintegrative power. However,
and I hope this was not merely a product of my fevered imagination, there is
criticism, if not so much of her music, then of the hippyish psycho-babble in
which her reproaches – she is by the third act a successful singer, though
still hurt by Lulu’s prior rejection – are couched. She too, it seems, is
capable of exploitative behaviour. As indeed are we all, and some of it, like
Neuwirth’s, may even be construed positively. We should not fall for bogus
notions of the ‘jargon of authenticity’. Meanwhile, all the while, the drama is
punctuated by reminders of the Civil Rights Movement: words from Dr King, and
sounds, in Eleanor’s final song, of ‘We shall overcome’. It is certainly not subtle, and it is perhaps
all too easy to say ‘that is the point,’ but its contribution was nevertheless
greater than to make us appreciate more fully the balancing-act between
existential and social – far too often tilted in favour of the former – in Berg’s
opera. (Should we consider American Lulu
in reference to Berg’s work, or as a work in itself? That depends, of course,
on who ‘we’ are. Either we know the original or we do not, but a question that
permits neither of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as a ‘straight’ answer is a good question for
Neuwirth to be asking
audiences, steeped in the self-righteous delusions of Werktreue.)
This was a co-production by
The Opera Group, the Young Vic, Scottish Opera, and the Bregenz Festival, in
association with the London Sinfonietta. The latter was on excellent form
throughout, splendidly guided, insofar as one could tell from an initial
hearing, by Gerry Cornelius. I was certainly as gripped by the orchestral
performance as by the puzzles and challenges of Neuwirth’s work itself. John
Fulljames makes a great deal from relatively little on the small stage of the
Young Vic. Video was used sparingly but to great effect, Finn Ross’s work
employing characters from the stage greatly appreciated, as mentioned above.
The uncomfortable voyeurism of having Lulu change on stage, taking her clothes
from a wardrobe and almost defying us not to watch, has one’s mind working, as
it should, in different directions: self-interrogation, heightened by the (Brechtian?)
presence onstage behind a see-through curtain of the orchestra. Construction of
reality, perception of what may or may not be epic, is not simply our own task,
but it is so at least in part, as in Lulu’s mind.
Angel Blue offered a
charismatic assumption of the title role. It is of course far shorter than Berg’s,
but has different challenges, the slipping between speech, parlando, and
glorious, if all-too-brief (deliberately so?), passages in which the voice may
truly soar a case of ongoing reinvention. Her stage presence, just as in ENO’s recent Bohème, was scintillating.
In this opera, more than Berg’s, the other cast members are lesser beings, but
there was much to enjoy from their various contributions. Paul Curievici, for
instance, furthered the strong impression he recently made in The Importance of Being Earnest, and Donald Maxwell continued to hold the
stage even at what must be approaching the twilight of his career.
Emma Woodvine, credited as ‘dialect
coach’ seemed to have done a good job. I still wonder about the practice,
though, of having assumed accents, be they from the South or elsewhere. It
seems curiously selective; for instance, when we have a performance of Carmen, whether in French or in
translation, we do not usually hear the dialogue – or, for that matter, the
vocal lines – delivered in the tones of Seville. Better, I think, to let
actors, including singing actors, act than to have them turn impressionists.
(That runs both ways, of course; those complaining, as sometimes they do, about
American or other accents in English dialogue should probably find better
things to do with their time.) No matter; it is a minor point, indeed more of a
question. And a great strength of this evening was the questioning that it
provoked.
