Londoners using the tube recently might have noticed an unusual poster featuring a woman holding a mannequin, with the slogan "Sexual desire, dominance, submission". It was the advert for ENO’s first opera of the season, the world premiere of Gerald Barry’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. ENO has traditionally attempted to sex up opera, as shown by the cheeky advert for their run of Bernstein On theTown last year; but in the case of a new work, I think this raises some questions on the set of values now adopted on the contemporary operatic stage.
Based on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s drama of the same name, better known in its 1972 movie version, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is a tale of the decline of a bisexual fashion designer who falls in love with a young model, taking us through an epic descent into a narcissistic hell before the final catharsis. It is an exploration of the dynamics of personal power in sexual relationships, very much of its time in terms of aesthetics, but touching universal themes with its content. Nonetheless, the work was quickly labelled by the BBC "the first lesbian opera". It would seem that nowadays opera can only be sold to the wide public through sensationalism, whether of content or of production values – see the "popularity" of nihilistic producers like Calixto Bieito.
Gerald Barry had stated that he was attracted to the piece for its emotional range, which he thought ideal for an opera. He kept the original text in its entirety, and this accounts for the good dramatic structure of the piece, not necessarily a given on today’s operatic stage; but for some curious reason he then decided to set it at unnatural speed, and mostly syllabically, with a repetitive monotonous accent on the end of each sentence. The way the voices were used in the score, often at the extremes of the range, and generally drowned by a brass heavy orchestral sound, seems to make little sense. As a result, notwithstanding the committed performance of everybody involved, in particular Stephanie Friede in the main role, Petra’s bitter tears left me curiously unmoved.
Of course, this last sentence betrays the agenda underlying my perspective: I go to the opera to be moved, or at least entertained in a meaningful way. I go to opera, whether it’s a traditional repertoire or new works, to be moved or entertained by people singing. There is an interesting distinction between opera and music (not musical) theatre, a term which became popular in the 1960s and that has been used in various ways. To me, the difference between opera and music theatre resides essentially in one element, the way the voice is used. Independent from the musical style or language, successful operas are those in which the final emotional power is carried through the voice, this extraordinary instrument we all possess, use and often misuse. Composers who can write for the voice are able to unlock with their writing the overwhelming emotional power of this instrument, which is after all the human body in its holistic entity. This is not done with hysterical screeching at the top of the register, or with disconnected acrobatics, but with a more intimate understanding of human psycho-biology. After all, when listening to someone singing, whether we are aware of it or not, our bodies, and our own vocal apparatuses, react in sympathy with those of the performer.
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What makes opera opera, what gives it its incredible power is not so much the music, the spectacle, the drama, but the fact that emotions are expressed through this most intimate of instruments, the human voice: through colour, nuances, rhythm, range, but mostly through a sound that is produced directly from the core of the human body, resonating in every listener’s physical and emotional being. In the same way as art in general is not something people do if they have the time and the resources on a Saturday afternoon, but rather an everyday part of human experience, whether recognized as such or not, opera is not an extravagant intellectual entertainment for posh or high-brow audiences, but rather a precious cathartic instrument.
The list of new operatic work premiered in London in the last 75 years boasts an impressive 109 titles, mostly of which are now forgotten. It is in the nature of the art form: operatic markets have always been oversubscribed. On the other hand, it is true that opera is a very difficult art, and only few are granted the talent to master it. It has pointed out endlessly that there appears to be a substantial incompatibility between pure musical thinking and operatic thinking, with few composers being able to bridge the two: Mozart, Shostakovich, Britten, for example. This has also been ascribed to the fact that while ‘pure’ musical thinking is apollonian in its nature, thriving on rationality, harmony and form. Opera is in essence a dionysian art, dealing with the irrational and often violent recesses of the human psyche. But it is exactly here that its healing power resides, that same healing power that was attributed to the theatre by the Greeks.
So, I believe that you can have a great story, a fabulous production and a terrific score, but if the singers are not put in the position of doing what they can do best, and their vocal weapon is not used in the most effective way, then the whole machine will not work: you may have an entertaining piece of music theatre, but it will fail in what opera by its nature aims to do. There is a way to sex up opera, and it’s by respecting its true nature, rather than having naked singers romping on stage, or with gratuitous innuendos; it is a much subtler art than that, and it has always had a tradition of underlying eroticism, because it deals with life’s driving forces, and life’s energy and sexual energy are but the same thing.
It is quite sad that opera today seems misunderstood on that same contemporary stage that pretends to encourage it, and even more sad that contemporary composers are so wrapped up in the narcissistic pursuit of originality, whether of language or expression, that very few people are able to produce a contemporary opera for a contemporary audience which does not betray the essence of the art form.
ENO has announced that it is their intention, and a bold intention it is, to open every season with a new opera (for this reason the world premiere of Gaddafi has been postponed to the beginning of next season). It is a commendable choice, and continues the noble tradition inaugurated by the original company, Sadler’s Wells, which after all commissioned Peter Grimes. Let’s just hope that in the future their priorities are of a less cosmetic nature, and that discarding the Apollonian constructions of post-modernism they can manage to find a work which engages with the timeless Dionysian essence of the art form.
Petra Torre
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