Royal Opera
House
King – Stéphane Degout
Gaveston, Stranger – Gyula
Orendt
Isabel – Barbara Hannigan
Mortimer – Peter Hoare
Boy, Young King – Samuel Boden
Girl – Ocean Barrington-Cook
Witness 1, Singer 1, Woman 1 –
Jennifer France
Witness 2, Singer 2, Woman 2 –
Krisztina
Witness 3, Madman – Andri Björn
Róbertsson
Katie Mitchell (director)
Vicki Mortimer (designs)
James Farncombe (lighting)
Joseph Alford (movement,
associate director)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
George Benjamin (conductor)
 |
| Girl (Ocean Barrington-Cook), Isabel (Barbara Hannigan), King (Stéphane Degout), Boy (Samuel Boden) Images: © ROH 2018/Stephen Cummiskey |
If Harrison Birtwistle remains acknowledged as England’s greatest musical dramatist since Purcell, then Lessons in Love and Violence may well come to be seen as the work
with which George Benjamin mounted his challenge. There is no reason, of
course, why such matters should be adversarial, and such is hardly Benjamin’s
style, whatever the grisly subject matter of his third opera. He is more someone to knock on the door, enter and delight us with what
he brings to the party, without any need to elbow anyone aside. Let us instead rejoice
in the creation of another masterpiece, darker and perhaps deeper still than Written
on Skin. (Not, of course, that we should forget Benjamin’s first opera
either: the wonderful Into
the Little Hill.)
As you will doubtless know by
now, Benjamin has been reunited with Martin Crimp for this, Crimp’s third
libretto, and Katie Mitchell, who directed the excellent first staging of Written on Skin, and who has also worked
with Crimp on his other theatrical works, has rejoined the team too. This
seems, almost a priori, to have given
rise to a degree of ennui in certain
quarters. (I have tried to avoid hearing what others have thought about the
work, but have not been entirely successful.) One objection seems to have been ‘more
of the same’, more or less. I can only presume that the same people would have
regretted Mozart’s decision to ‘pursue a collaboration’ with Lorenzo da Ponte
after Don Giovanni, perhaps even
after Figaro. After all, one often
hears the most ridiculous nonsense spoken of Così fan tutte. But there is no reason to be defensive here; I only
mention the matter since, for better or worse, it is being spoken of already.
Upon leaving the theatre, I hastily typed an ‘instant reaction’ tweet, even,
for once, remembering to use the ‘hashtag’: ‘#ROHLessons
is a towering masterpiece, its intellectual brilliance and sensual wonders
matched, at the very least, by its emotionally overwhelming dramatic path.
Drained and satisfied as if by Wozzeck
or Katya Kabanova; or, the work that
increasingly came to mind, Boris Godunov.’
I have no argument with that almost a day later, and shall try to explain why.
Are such comparisons less odious
than ridiculous? Perhaps. Not entirely, though, since I think this is how we
often approach new works, not least in so repertory-bound a genre as opera,
perhaps especially with a house and company such as the Royal Opera (House). They
are far from exact and the tragic trajectory is not the same; here, in the
story of Edward II, it is nicely doubled at the end. Essentially we see (and
hear) here Edward’s (never, I think named as such) inability to say no to his
lover, Gaveston, resulting in the banishment of the clever, unscrupulous
politician, Mortimer, who returns, having manipulated the people to his end, to
restore himself in something equivalent to a queen’s coup, ridding the court
and realm first of Gaveston and then of the king. But the young king, again not
named as Edward III, having watched, with his sister, everything unfold,
including that violence which is often yet not always subtly hinted at or
stylised, turns upon the usurpers and truly becomes king himself.
 |
| Boy, Girl, Isabel |
Tragedy or restoration? That
rightly does not quite seem to be the question, just as that bald outline omits
the mess of motivations that characterises this horrible, political world. Much
is hinted at, there for one to join the dots, but much is portrayed too. The audience
member is, rightly or wrongly, treated as an intelligent human being, a
participant, not a consumer of Verdi or other tedious kitsch. It is certainly
not so straightforward as portraying a situation in which no one is
sympathetic. Rather, as in ‘real life’ – and what, alas, could be more real
than our present, not so different high or low ‘political’ life? – motivations are
complex, contradictory, and, between characters at least, irreconcilable. Such
is surely not the least of the lessons of love and violence that unfold –
whether one does not believe in love, as Mortimer, or in violence, as the
younger young king does not, yet must. Mortimer, after all, schools him, too,
perhaps better than he intended. Likewise, Isabel seems – perhaps is – wronged at
the start; we can understand why she, a mother and a wife as well as a queen,
acts as she does. Yet she is far from white to start with; in her aestheticism –
her love of music and her chilling dissolution of a pearl in acid, a pearl that
would have given houses to petitioning subjects – she actually seems a good, or
rather deadly, match to her husband, as well as a potential rival to Gaveston.
There is horror, too, in her children turning upon her, however deserved that
turnaround might be.
But we must return to music, so
beloved of these unpleasant people, yet puritanically or sadistically
prohibited by the Young King. (Or so he claims: we never quite know the truth
of many claims, for who is narrating? We almost seem to know better in the play
within a play, that of David and Jonathan, in which Isabel almost literally
begins to call the shots, and in the non-musical reprise of such ‘entertainment’
which is threatened, and yet which turns out to be ‘real’, a tortured Mortimer
about to be shot dead by the Young King’s sister.) Yes, we must, that too
lengthy parenthesis notwithstanding. For it is music that seems – apparently or
otherwise – to structure the words and the drama, or perhaps to re-structure
them. It is music that creates them, in many ways, regardless of empirical
priority. It also creates, and is created by, the situation: its colour, its
tensions, its possibilities. ‘It’, whatever it may be, is always, ultimately,
about the music; for when the music stops, so does the opera. Perhaps that has
always been Isabel’s fear: the fall of the curtain. Mitchell certainly seems to
hint at that, but so do Benjamin and Crimp – and, of course, the outstanding
cast and orchestra.
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| Madman (Andri Björn Róbertsson) restrained, Queen, Girl, Boy, Mortimer (Peter Hoare) |
Benjamin’s ability to create a
sound world has always been one of his hallmarks; in that sense I could not
help but think of Janáček and Mussorgsky, both in general and in particular, as
mentioned above. Yet, as with those composers, it is certainly not a matter of
simply providing atmosphere, a setting, although that certainly is created.
Just as Vicki Mortimer’s plush, power-dressing – dressing itself becomes, in
true royal fashion, almost a ritual in itself – claustrophobic designs, both
for sets and costumes, provide a framework, both to contain and to be broken by
the action, so do timbres, often in combination, and harmonies, likewise. There
is almost infinite variegation within. The old problem, almost yet not quite
Schoenbergian, of reconciling musical antimonies between freedom and
determinism, gains new clothes – aural and visual. And the inevitability of the
action, at least viewed from the close, of what has happened, takes upon itself
an almost Bergian thrust, not least through the characters of and connections
between particular scenes. The orchestra follows Benjamin, whether as composer
or conductor; or rather, it leads the action with all the confidence and, more
to the point, understanding it might once have shown Bernard Haitink in Wagner.
And, as with Wagner, still more so with the Debussy of Pelléas, so much action, so much of the truest, wordless action,
occurs in the interludes, the transformations between scenes. It is perhaps in
those, as in Pelléas, that the
stature of Benjamin as a musical dramatist is most immediately manifest.
Or does it? Does the orchestra
lead? Do not the singers? Yes, they do too. There is much leadership: too much
in the plot, just enough in performance. For song, or at least singing, is
crucial to this opera; it is certainly not to be defined as a ravishing, horrifying
symphonic poem with voices, although it is perhaps partly that. Benjamin and
his co-creators and co-performers refuse the either-or that many of us, seeking
for a way in to account for our reactions, would seek to foist upon him. There
is drama in melisma: what could be more traditionally operatic than that? There
is drama in the entwining and the opposition of melisma? Again, what could take
us back more closely to that first zenith of the genre, to Monteverdi? Perhaps
the encounter between Isabel and Gaveston, in which she verbally bids him come
closer to her, that she might also come closer to the King (who remains distant
on stage), is most instructive of all here, for it expresses and creates a
musico-dramatic situation more complex than, and still more deadly than, the
duet of two baritones so full of sensual delight between the king himself and
his lover. Both, and other duets and ensembles, are necessary of course, in the
structuring of the drama, just as in the still sorely misunderstood Così. Post-Mozartian Harmoniemusik occasionally seemed to
make that point, at least to me; likewise the haunting death rattle avant la lettre emanating from harps and
cimbalom, as the Stranger took the King’s life in his cell. The King thought this
stranger was Gaveston; so did we, even though he told us he was not, and
Gaveston was dead. One could hardly fail to think of the careful, meaningful
symmetries of Lulu.
 |
| Isabel and Mortimer |
And, as with Mozart, although
whether through design or through the sheer excellence of these artists on
stage, one had the sense that the roles had been written with them in mind.
They were, of course, for Mozart, but here, who knows? We are not so much concerned
with process, as with each artist having inhabited his or her role. Stéphane
Degout’s velvet tones cloaked the impetuous, arbitrary deeds of a weak tyrant,
who was also a wronged and wronging man. One made no distinction between role
and performance; he simply was the King. So too, and increasingly so, as her
role came into focus, was Barbara Hannigan, as his consort. That she played so
well in the initial background speaks just as well of her as the display of
that extraordinary ability we all know and love – think, for instance, of her
Ligeti – to encompass so many modes of vocal delivery within a single line that
remains spun from the same silk. Gyula Orendt’s seductive, nasty, manipulative
way with Gaveston mirrored and contested the politician’s path of Peter Hoare’s
clever, calculating, just as (in)human Mortimer. Not the least of the evening’s
performances was the coming of age through politico-emotional stunting of
Samuel Boden’s Boy and Young King. Dressed like a boy, he acted unerringly like
one too: almost a Prince William, whilst Diana was still around, or shortly
after. Ably assisted by his sister, Ocean Barrington-Cook (a mute role), the
crown was, again if only in retrospect, his for the taking – once he had
learned his deathly lessons. Smaller roles were all very well taken, by Jennifer
France, Krisztina Szabó, and Andri
Björn Róbertsson: suggestive of a greater number of voices and faces than was
actually present, drawn, as it were, as if from an imaginary chorus.
 |
| Isabel, King, Gaveston (Gyula Orendt) |
For, as in Boris, we observed and felt the people’s grief, feared equally for
what we knew to be their largely hopeless future. As the Third Witness had
accused the Queen, in a shocking intrusion, orchestrated by Mortimer, into her
chamber, the poor had no choice, unlike the decadent rich, to sleep three to a
bed. The miracle here was that fury, both external and internal to the drama of
princes and nobles, manifested itself through three single voices, an
orchestra, and, not least, an endlessly inventive, supportive, and questioning
production. Mitchell too did the work the necessary honour of treating it as a
mature drama, as she had in Written in
Skin; this was not something to be introduced, hesitantly, but to be
directed with the critical modernity she would bring to any other work. This
may be a quiet operatic manifesto; such, as discussed, is Benjamin’s way. It
may even be a manifesto without intention to be a manifesto. Perhaps that makes
it all the more convincing, all the more accomplished.
