Coliseum
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| Images: (c) Alastair Muir, 2019 |
Orpheus the Man – Peter Hoare
Orpheus the Myth, Hades –
Daniel Norman
Orpheus the Hero – Matthew Smith
Eurydice the Woman – Marta Fontanals-Simmons
Eurydice the Myth, Persephone –
Claire Barnett-Jones
Eurydice the Hero – Alfa Marks
Aristaeus the Man – James Cleverton
Aristaeus the Myth, Charon –
Simon Bailey
Aristaeus the Hero – Leo Hedman
The Oracle of the Dead, Hecate –
Claron McFadden
The Caller – Robert Hayward
First Priest, Judge of the Dead
– William Morgan
Second Priest, Judge of the Dead
– David Ireland
Third Priest, Judge of the Dead
– Simon Wilding
First Woman, Fury 1 – Charlotte
Straw
Second Woman, Fury 2 – Katie Coventry
Third Woman, Fury 3 – Katie
Stevenson
Dancers – Joan Aguila-Cuevas,
Sam Ford, Ripp Greatbatch, Stefano de Luca
Daniel Kramer (director)
Lizzie Clachan (set designs)
Daniel Lismore (costumes)
Peter Mumford (lighting, video)
Barnaby Booth (choreography)
Ian Dearden (sound design)
Chorus of the English National
Opera (chorus masters: James Henshaw, Mark Biggins)
Orchestra of the English
National Opera
Martyn Brabbins, James Henshaw
(conductors)
‘All opera is Orpheus,’ Adorno
once declared – although, typically, what he meant by that was rather more
complicated than mere quotation would suggest. Perhaps, in some sense, all
music in the Western tradition is too – again, so long as we take care, as
Harrison Birtwistle always has, never to confuse starkness with
over-simplification. In the beginning, then,
was Orpheus, his myth repeated, elaborated upon, throughout Western musical
tradition, and especially throughout Western operatic tradition. It is surely
no coincidence that it was with this monumental work that Birtwistle sought his
most radical extension yet of that line. He wanted, he said, ‘to invent [my italics] a formalism which
does not rely on tradition in the way that Punch and Judy, my first opera, relied
on tradition. There I used forms such as the chorale, toccata and gavotte. I
injected them into my work just as Berg injected formal ideas into Wozzeck. In The Mask of Orpheus, I didn’t want to hark back any more; I wanted to
create a formal world that was utterly new.’
Expectations
could not have been higher. For some, yours truly included, this was a moment
for which we had been waiting the whole of our musical lives. From a career
strewn with masterpieces, here came at last a second staging of Birtwistle’s Mask of Orpheus: heard only once
complete, in concert, since its 1986 premiere, and never since seen in the
theatre. I had previously only managed to hear a single
act, in concert, at the Proms: an unforgettable experience that only
increased my hunger to hear – and to see – more. Present at that first, ENO
performance, Alfred Brendel extolled The
Mask of Orpheus as the first English musical masterpiece since Purcell. Many
will find that view a touch harsh on some
music and composers – even assuming Handel’s exclusion – intervening. Be
that as it may, no one with any serious interest in music or opera, indeed no
one with a passing interest, yet possessed of half an ear and a little
curiosity, would deny the work’s stature.
Musical values were high, as
they would have to be: there is no more point putting on Birtwistle with
musicians unequal to its challenges than there is Stockhausen. That excellence
we heard from ENO forces should nevertheless not be taken for granted. The
conflict between rational and irrational, between what Orpheus must do to win
back Eurydice and what his urge to act as a human being, a conflict as old as that
between Apollo and Dionysus and in many respects to be identified therewith, lies
at the heart of this work. The climax to the second act, indeed the whole of
that extraordinary structure of recollective arches, not only retains its
enormous, truly post-Wagnerian power; it seems to increase with every hearing.
This proved no exception. One was truly left reeling then – and not only then –
at least insofar as one could separate the musical performance from its sadly
inadequate scenic realisation, on which more shortly.
Moreover, if that conflict
between the demands of reason and those of emotion lies at the work’s dramatic
heart, so too does the variety of ways in which its participants, us included,
might look at, experience, reflect upon that conflict, not least through time,
ours and the characters’ (broadly speaking, as human, myth, and hero, though
never in linear fashion, and just as much musically – lyrically and formally –
as verbally and scenically). In a sense, this is true of all opera; ‘all opera
is Orpheus’. But it is perhaps more so here, more overtly so, more strenuously.
Martyn Brabbins and James Henshaw, assisted by Adam Hickox, did a superlative
job of enabling the excellent orchestra, chorus, and cast to express what they
could of this, Peter Hoare a fascinatingly flawed, multifariously tragic
Orpheus the Man, Marta Fontanals-Simmons an alluring, inscrutable, even
alluringly inscrutable Eurydice the Woman, ably supported by penetrating,
intelligently contrasted performances from Daniel Norman and Claire-Barnett
Jones as their mythical counterparts. James Cleverton as Aristaeus and Claron
McFadden as the extraordinary Oracle of the Dead also stood out dramatically,
but there was nothing approaching a weak link to the cast. Barry Anderson’s
electronic realisation, with sound design by Ian Dearden, proved as liminally
dramatic in its way as Stockhausen, as pregnant with dramatic purpose as an ‘interlude’
in Wagner.
If only Daniel Kramer’s bizarre,
ultimately vacuous production had been remotely equal to its task. Where the
work speaks of and with starkness and complexity, Kramer seemingly mistook the
latter for a gaudy variety show, validated by inclusion of more and more
unconnected – with each other, let alone with the work – acts. This was not the
idea of the circus, nor indeed the idea of anything else; it was a hideous and,
doubtless, highly expensive mess. Occasionally, the possibility of
recollection, of memory, even of dream sequence, asserted itself, more by
default than anything else. For the most part, we suffered an absurd – never,
alas, absurdist – display of exaggerated, ‘saucy’, latex-clad nurses and
medical equipment; of supposedly shocking, yet actually deeply tedious, sexual
acts; of people – often entirely unclear who they were, and to what end – emerging
and sinking into bathtubs; of highly skilled acrobats (for the opera’s mime
action) removing and replacing their clothes, before resuming their distracting
activity; of general hyperactivity that not once seemed to enquire what it,
let alone of anything else, might be for, let alone of whether its seemingly hapless orientalism might prove a tad problematical to some. It was unclear that the ‘concept’, if
one may call it that, was anything more than an ageing rock musician – we see
the platinum discs on the wall – Orpheus, holed up in his extravagantly
equipped hotel room, having a bad trip. And even that was perhaps to dignify it.
Was this, perhaps, opera for a
world with its eyes – and possibly ears – on several screens at once, craving
instant diversion rather than satisfaction? Was there even something of the
postdramatic to it? I can see that the argument might be made, but frankly, in
this particular case, I think not; or if it is, then there really ought to be
more to it than this. Constant changing of the emperor’s still newer, still
more sparkly, clothes – ‘by artist, campaigner and designer Daniel Lismore,
described by Vogue as “England’s most
outrageous dresser”’ – was not enough, never nearly enough. Nor was there any
sign of irony, of critique, of anything more than camp excess really – which is
not to deny the excellent artistry of those on stage, doing what they could. Carry on Birtwistle, then? It just about
qualifies as a point of view, I suppose; or, better, as the slender basis for
one. I cannot help but think that it would have been better left on the shelf,
along with the rest of this wasteful production: a non-ironic cross between
Robert Lepage and Liberace.
The absurdity might have
worked; all manner of things might have worked; however, in the absence of a
connecting pair of ears, let alone anything between them, this was doomed to
remain an endless parade
– in a decidedly non-Birtwistle sense – of effortful vulgarity on- and offstage,
as idiotic as it was wasteful. Wherever one looked, one was assailed with advertisements
for a crystal company to which I shall refrain from granting further publicity.
Nothing could have lain further from the essence of Birtwistle’s score, nor indeed
from Peter Zinovieff’s libretto. Yet such contradiction was not fruitful; nor
even, so it seemed, intentional. If anything, it simply suggested a director
out of his depth – and not even in the opera’s shallows. The true tragedy, of
course, lies in the damage this may do to prospects for a third production,
even for a further concert performance. Not for the first time, alas, ENO has
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
