Linbury Studio Theatre,
Royal Opera House
Woman (Eurydice)/Medea –
Elizabeth Atherton
Man (Orpheus)/Jason, Aeson –
Mark Padmore
Martin Duncan (director)
Alison Chitty (designs)Paul Pyant (lighting)
Michael Popper (choreography)
Outstanding in pretty much
every way – just what an opera house should be doing, in this case in
collaboration with Aldeburgh and the London Sinfonietta. Although The Corridor was premiered in 2009, with
the same cast, this was my first encounter; and The Cure had been given its first performance but a few days
earlier, again in Aldeburgh. The two chamber operas could clearly work
separately, and I hope that they will, in conjunction with any number of other
works; in tandem, however, there are all manner of connections one may make,
whether as performer, director, or audience. Agency, not least female agency,
is but the most obvious, although that is not to minimise its importance.
Identical instrumentation (violin, viola, cello, harp, flute, clarinet) and, in
this case, an identical cast, served to strengthen unity, but also to allow us
to consider what is different.
The
Corridor takes us, once
again, to that foundational musical myth so beloved of Birtwistle, that of
Orpheus. But a moment – his turning back, wondering why Eurydice is not by his
side – and then a lifetime’s reaction. David Harsent and his composer have us
ask whether Eurydice in fact ever really wanted to leave Hades. She was lagging
behind and Orpheus wonders where she has gone, turning around involuntarily. Love
and tragedy are expressed in their laments following the event, but did they
ever have a chance, second time around? She interacts with the players in
Martin Duncan’s straightforward, powerful staging, not unlike one of those
increasingly popular stagings of Bach’s Passions. Birtwistle’s score steers a
fascinating path between tight rhythmic cellular writing and something more capable
of subdivision, even perhaps rubato (or at least homage to Monteverdian
freedom?) Stravinsky versus Schoenberg, we still might say. Or rather, Stravinsky
and Schoenberg.
Birtwistle’s love of antique
wildness exhibits itself once again: a reinvented antique wildness, not born
from our paltry knowledge of ancient music, but something far more powerful.
But there is no sense that we have heard this all before, for we have not. Fourths
and fifths seem to speak to us from the age of organum – and beyond. The harp –
what writing he has always offered for that instrument! – is no stranger to
calamity, to catastrophic caesura. Vocal lines, in impassioned performances by
Mark Padmore and Elizabeth Atherton, speak again of the invention that comes
with longstanding assurance. Everything draws in – and makes us rethink what we
thought we knew.
The
Cure was conceived
explicitly as a companion piece. Here, in the words of the excellent conductor,
Geoffrey Paterson, the six solo instrumentalists of a work that had come close
to ‘secular oratorio, for much of its duration’ coalesce ‘into a mini orchestra
whose endlessly varied colouristic possibilities are at the service of a
viscerally operatic scenario’. As ostinato builds up climactically, but never
predictably, we reach the (again surprising) climax of a tale adapted by
Harsent from John Gower, who in turn had adapted it from Ovid. Medea and Jason
having returned to Colchis with the Golden Fleece, Jason offers to give ten of
his years, that his father, Aeson, might regain some youth. Medea uses her
magic instead, but did Aeson, partially transformed, actually want to be
rejuvenated?
Again, then, we are made to
think, and rethink. Birtwistle’s ritualistic response to Harsent’s ritual
spells screws up tension – both conventionally and unconventionally. Duncan’s
staging, with Alison Chitty’s typically primæval yet modern designs, again
draws us in to a work that seems to take its cue perhaps more from the
Birtwistle of The
Minotaur than the composer of The
Mask of Orpheus. Circles, numbers, and their properties: verbally,
musically, scenically, they have us recall Gawain,
yet also remind us that this is a different myth, a different response. The
performances from all concerned seemed to me beyond reproach. Padmore and
Atherton had us forget they had even appeared on stage before; Padmore even had
me wonder whether it was indeed he singing both Jason and Aeson, so
differentiated were his responses. Atherton's wild dignity struck just the right note. in every respect.
My immediate reaction was to want to hear
both works again. Then, doubtless, like the works themselves with respect to
earlier tellings of their myths, my responses would both deepen and change.
These are both chamber operas we shall need to hear again and again.
