Operadagen Rotterdam: drie opera’s die je niet wilt missen

Vrijdag 12 mei begint de twaalfde editie van Operadagen Rotterdam. Het tiendaagse festival staat onder de titel Lost & Found in het teken van de actuele vluchtelingenproblematiek. Ik selecteerde drie opera’s van Calliope Tsoupaki, Annelies van Parys en Claron McFadden, sterke vrouwen die hierop reflecteren en wier werk het verdient gehoord (en gezien) te worden.

Vluchtelingenproblematiek

De vrees voor het onbekende is zo oud als de mens – verworvenheden worden gekoesterd, vreemdelingen met argusogen bezien. In hun zoektocht naar een ‘nieuw thuis’ verlaten velen hun vertrouwde wereld en steken letterlijke en symbolische grenzen over om elders een nieuw – en hopelijk beter – bestaan op te bouwen.

Durven we ons te begeven op onontdekt terrein? Komen we aan op de plaats van bestemming of raken we juist verdwaald? Zonderen we ons af van de rest van de wereld, of herkennen we onszelf terug in de vreemde ander? Dat zijn de vragen die de componisten Tsoupaki en Van Parys en de sopraan Claron McFadden stellen. Alle drie kozen een bijzondere invalshoek.

Calliope Tsoupaki: Fortress Europe

De oudere dame Europa wil koste wat kost verhinderen dat ook maar één asielzoeker haar comfortabele wereldje binnendringt. – Hoewel ze als jonge vrouw op de rug van oppergod Zeus vanuit Syrië naar Europa kwam, waar ze als vreemdeling een nieuw bestaan moest opbouwen. Haar zoon is een politicus die de poort tot Europa stevig gesloten houdt. Oog in oog met de bootvluchteling Amar gaat hij echter twijfelen.

Tsoupaki componeerde er hartverscheurend mooie muziek bij, met kruidige, Arabisch getinte koorpassages en klaaglijke melodieën van een hobo. Zij maakt de gevoelens van weemoed om het verlies van huis en haard indringend invoelbaar. Jammer van het gortdroge en eenduidige libretto, dat niets aan onze verbeelding overlaat. Maar dankzij de wonderschone muziek en de treffende enscenering is Fortress Europe toch een voorstelling om een traantje bij weg te pinken.

Annelies van Parys: Het Kanaal

In Het Kanaal van de Vlaamse Annelies van Parys wil een vluchteling het Kanaal overzwemmen, een nieuwe toekomst tegemoet. Op de krijtrotsen aan de overkant stuit hij op een transseksuele vrouw die haar leven wil beëindigen. Tussen de twee ontstaat een verrassende dialoog: hun lot blijkt sterker verbonden dan gedacht.

Hun gesproken conversatie vindt zijn spiegel in de muziek van Annelies van Parys. Zij zette liederen op een recent teruggevonden theatertekst van William Shakespeare. Die beschrijft hoe een sheriff wil verhinderen dat zijn burgers een groep vluchtelingen lynchen. Een zangeres plaatst als ‘commentator’ de monologen in een breder, universeler kader. Zij wordt afwisselend begeleid door gitaar of luit, tokkelinstrumenten die populair waren in Shakespeare’s tijd.

Claron McFadden: Nachtschade: aubergine

Uitgesproken origineel is de insteek van de Amerikaans-Nederlandse sopraan Claron McFadden. In Nachtschade: aubergine gaat zij op zoek naar de gemeenschappelijke wortels van onze diverse culturen. Hiertoe volgt zij de route die de populaire paarse groente aflegde vanuit het Midden-Oosten naar onze keukentafel.

Zij bezocht vijf landen rond de Middellandse Zee. Samen met de lokale bevolking maakte ze een plaatselijk auberginegerecht en studeerde ze een traditioneel lied in. McFadden presenteert haar ervaringen in de vorm van een theatraal en culinair concert. Zo maakt zij ons verlangen naar identiteit in een steeds veranderende wereld invoelbaar.

Achter de musici worden filmbeelden geprojecteerd van Lisa Tahon, die McFadden volgde op haar reis. Gaandeweg wordt duidelijk dat van één oorsprong geen sprake is, slechts van een oneindig aantal vertakkingen en knooppunten. We blijken bovendien meer met elkaar gemeen te hebben dan we denken.

Bij het concert worden auberginehapjes geserveerd. – Een voorstelling om van te watertanden

Operadagen Rotterdam, van 12 t/m 21 mei

#AnneliesVanParys #CalliopeTsoupaki #ClaronMcFadden #FortressEurope #HetKanaal #NachtschadeAubergine #OperadagenRotterdam

Michel van der Aa: 3D-opera Sunken Garden in NTRZaterdagMatinee

In 2013, the ‘first 3D opera’ in the world was launched in the Holland Festival with a lot of fanfare. This fourth opera by Michel van der Aa (1970) got mixed reviews. Two years later the Dutch composer made a revised version for the Opéra de Lyon. Based on this, he wrought a semi-scenic performance that will be premièred in NTRZaterdagMatinee in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw on Saturday 21 October.

At the time I was impressed by the technology, less by the libretto and the music of Sunken Garden. Also I considered it somewhat too long. Hopefully the new version will be more convincing.

Here’s a translation of the review I wrote in 2013.

Crime & Punishment before, after and in Death

Amsterdam, 5 June 2013 – It’s hard to find a production that created such a stir as Sunken Garden by Michel van der Aa. After its première at the London Barbican Theater last April this ‘first 3D-opera’ was both called ‘soporific’, and dubbed ‘the future of opera’.

Therefore I curiously entered the Rabozaal of the Amsterdam City Theater, where I was given 3D-glasses and a note with instructions when to put them on. The string orchestra Amsterdam Sinfonietta was complemented with winds, percussionists and a keyboardist; the young André de Ridder conducting.

As in his previous opera After Life, Van der Aa takes us to the antechamber of death. Where in After Life the characters relive their dearest memory before finally passing into afterlife, in Sunken Garden they can escape their responsibilities. Amber Jacquemain caused the death of her rival in love, Simon Vines was asleep when his daughter died in the cradle, Toby Kramer committed euthanasia on his mother.

The three protagonists make different choices: Amber finally leaves for the empire of the dead, Simon decides to live on with his guilt and Toby is reincarnated in the shape of his benefactor/tormenter Zenna Briggs. She built the sunken garden to become immortal, but was counteracted by Doctor Marinus, who lost his life over this. In passing the Orpheus theme is addressed: Toby falls in love with Amber, whom he tries – unsuccessfully – to free from the underworld. This is visualized by a 3D explosion of brightly colored plants.

Also musically, Van der Aa expands on former compositions. He supports the story with functional sounds, whether or not combined with electronics. Long-drawn chords are interspersed with frantic sound eruptions, yet at times there’s more lyricism. His favored broken branches aren’t missing either. Striking is the use of a consciously nerdy sounding synthesizer, which evokes associations with the seventies. Amsterdam Sinfonietta and conductor André de Ridder were in excellent shape, but the music was too uniform to engage our attention for two hours.

The vocal lines are slightly less angular than in After Life, yet still mainly move back and forth between the high and low registers. Thanks to the recitative style and the great performance of the singers, the texts were understandable. With his warm baritone, Roderick Williams convinces as the tentatively searching artist Toby Kramer, the soprano Katherine Manley is great as the venomous, lightly hysterical Zenna Briggs and Claron McFadden shines as the desperate Marinus.

In the filmed parts the baritone Jonathan McGovern (Simon Vines) also holds our attention, though you unconsciously squeeze your ears shut during his larmoyant “aria” about his daughter’s death. The pop singer Kate Miller-Heidke moves us as the naïve-devious Amber Jacquemain, especially when her sultry vocal lines surface above the stampeding dance-beats that threatened to drown her earlier.

Unfortunately all music is amplified, sometimes resulting in distorted vocals. Moreover it creates distance, because you see an orchestra in the pit and singers on the scene, yet hearthem through speakers to the left and right of the stage. Identification with the characters is problematic anyway, because David Mitchell’s storylines are so complicated and far-fetched that after one and a half hours boredom creeps in. – But then it continues for another thirty minutes.

Sunken Garden is a brave attempt to search for new ways, but it seems unlikely this opera ‘will change history’, as Van der Aa’s alter ego Toby Kramer postulates.

The revised, semi-staged version of Sunken Garden will be performed in Concertgebouw on 21 October in the series NTRZaterdagMatinee and broadcast live on Radio 4. 

#AmsterdamSinfonietta #ClaronMcFadden #DavidMitchell #MichelVanDerAa #NTRZaterdagmatinee #RoderickWilliams #SunkenGarden

Gavin Bryars: ‘I look upon Billy the Kid with some compassion’

Claron McFadden & Bertrand Belin (c) Bruno Ansellem

In Calamity/Billy the French Théâtre de la Croix-Rousse & the Belgian Muziektheater Transparant combine two mythical heroes of the Wild West. Starting point of this double bill was Ben Johnston’s song cycle Calamity Jane to her Daughter, to which Gavin Bryars composed a companion piece, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. The production was premiered in March in Lyon, then toured through Switzerland and Belgium; it will be performed at Operadagen Rotterdam on May 25th. I visited the Belgian premiere in Concertgebouw Bruges on 28 April.

The semi-dark stage exudes the atmosphere of a Western Saloon. The soprano Claron McFadden superbly sings the sometimes stark vocal lines Johnston based upon the letters Calamity Jane allegedly wrote to her daughter. With much bravura she brings across the passages in which Jane boasts about her exploits as a gunwoman, switching to a tone of subdued sorrow when she bewails her daughter’s absence. The just intonation of keyboard, organ, violin and percussion makes for a quirky and somewhat archaic sound world that wonderfully suits the subject matter.

In Bryars’ The Collected Works of Billy the Kid McFadden sings all the female roles, clad now in sturdy trousers, then in a matronly apron, depending on who she is impersonating. The French blues star Bertrand Belin is her partner Billy the Kid. He sings with a gritty voice, clutching an inseparable microphone in his left hand. The musicians of Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon at times join in the action. A highpoint is the wild dance violinist Lyonel Schmit performs centre stage, meanwhile playing a fiddle tune at breakneck speed. Hereafter the atmosphere becomes more grim, and when Billy the Kid is finally killed the music assumes a wistful, elegiac tone.

The audience warmly applauds the performers. Bryars himself is not present in Bruges, but we speak on the telephone a week after the concert.

Did you know Johnston’s ‘Calamity Jane to her Daughter’ when you were asked to write a companion piece?

Yes I did, I even have a copy of the letters Calamity Jane wrote to her daughter. Another coincidence is that Ben Johnson and I have been friends for ages. I met him in Illinois in 1968 when I was working on a few dance projects at the university. He was one of the teachers there. I like his song cycle very much, especially so within the range of his work.

Ben has worked with microtonality from the early fifties onward, when he was studying with Harry Partch. He wrote a beautiful string quartet, but can also relate to more popular music. Like in the jazz based Ci-Git Satie, a sort of homage to Satie which he wrote for the Swingle Sisters. In Calamity Jane he also successfully integrates his microtonality into a more popular idiom. Take the piano: because of its just tuning it sounds very much like a bar room honky-tonk piano.

You based your opera on ‘The Collected works of Billy the Kid’ by Michael Ondaatje. What attracts you in this book?

Michael is a very intelligent writer, who wrote a standard book about the jazz scene in New Orleans, Coming Through Slaughter. We happen to be friends as well, and whenever I play in Toronto he comes to hear my concerts. I love his unconventional approach to literature, as in The Collected works of Billy the Kid.

It is not a straightforward novel – though some parts of it are – but rather a combination of narrative, research and poetry. Poetry written by Michael himself, but in the guise of Billy the Kid. His book is based on the story of Billy’s life and the imagined poetry from Billy himself, but it also incorporates newspaper clippings. It is very intricate, yet very cleverly done, in an original way. Jean Lacornerie, director of Théâtre de la Croix-Rousse made the libretto from the book.

In the programme book I read that Ondaatje’s language ‘screams’ to be set to music.

(Laughing out loud.) Well, it was definitely not screaming at me! It’s an interesting thought though, but screaming, no. I’d rather say the opposite: I know lots of texts that scream not to be set to music. But to be serious. This is my fifth opera, and the search for the right text often takes even longer than writing the notes themselves.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the text, reading it through and through, then I go ahead and write my score very quickly. It’s like a Zen calligrapher, who contemplates for hours on end, then sits down and writes what he has to write. I am not the type to make endless revisions, I have a strategy for the whole thing in my mind. As for Billy the Kid: I had already figured out the peaks and troughs, and knew where my music is going.

You did not use quite the same instrumentation as Ben Johnston’s. Was this your own choice?

Yes, I first worked with Gérard Lecointe in 1984, on my opera Medea at the Opera of Lyon. I threw out the entire violin section, replacing them by tuned percussion. Actually that is when Les Percussions Clavier de Lyon was founded by Gérard, so their base was a dramatic work. I have written a lot of music for their ensemble.

In Calamity Jane there’s one singer, piano/organ, violin and drums. The five members of Les Percussions Clavier de Lyon sometimes include the piano, so it was easy to fit that in. And the violin gave me even more possibilities melodically. So you have the one voice in the first part, Calamity Jane, and then in the second part, Billy the Kid, there are two voices, a male and a female one. Since the instrumentation is comparable, it feels like one big family. – Though I don’t use microtonality.

Was it your idea to compose for a blues singer and a lyrical soprano, Bertrand Belin and Claron McFadden?

We came up with that idea along the way. We decided to have a soprano who can sing both in a classical, and in a freer, nonclassical way. Jean suggested Claron McFadden, who is a remarkable singer. We worked on a preliminary sketch together, a piece of some ten minutes to make people interested in our project Billy the Kid.

You mean the fragment about Billy never using his left hand, only for shooting?

Indeed. I worked on this directly with Claron, she is extraordinary. She can sing impossibly difficult modern music, but also early music, with a very pure voice. Then again she can also sing like Sarah Vaughan, and moreover she is a great actress. So I wrote the part with her in mind. I knew what I could do, since I had been able to get acquainted with her voice in the flesh.

https://vimeo.com/207087185

In December 2017 we rehearsed the first 7 out of 11 scenes in Lyon, where I got to work with Bertrand Belin as well. I had been to a concert of him and his rock band in the summer and we’d had drinks afterwards. He is a very intelligent, very funny, and very intuitive performer.

There was only one problem: he doesn’t read music. So he had to learn everything by heart, repeating his part over and over again, working with tapes, teachers and with Claron. Up to that rehearsal period I had only written solo parts for them, but in December I wrote a first duet. Their voices beautifully mingle together, so I wrote another duet. Turns out they enjoy them so much they have asked me to write a new piece for them.

What do you appreciate in Belin’s voice?

He is totally accurate, and has a quality in his voice that reminds me somewhat of Frank Sinatra. Because he doesn’t have to refer to the score he has his own phrasing, and he can’t go wrong. I love his timing, he’s completely internalized it in his physique. He also knows how to move on a stage, and understands what he is singing.

It struck me that he uses a handheld microphone, whereas McFadden is wearing a headset. Is this a direction in your score?

No, it is just a stage direction. However I do think he’s more comfortable with a handheld, because he’s used to singing rock music. And perhaps he also had an ear microphone, I’m not sure about that. The handheld microphone becomes a theatrical device as well. He always carries it with him, as if it were his pistol. At the very end, when he’s dead, Claron gently lays the microphone beside his body.

Calamity Jane/Billy is presented as a ‘Paradise Lost’. Yet it is full of killings, betrayal, it is full of blood.

Well, that may seem strange, but people often do think of the Wild West as a strangely ideal environment. I myself love Westerns such as High Noon and Rio Bravo, I think they are real masterpieces. They have a strong moral sense about them. There’s a powerful awareness of right and wrong, like in a morality play.

But your music is not at all violent.

Indeed, my portrait is partly affectionate, I look on Billy the Kid with some compassion. My score has a feeling of melancholy, the violence is rather more in the background. The violin has a continuous kind of counterpoint to all the other voices and the general, rather more meditative atmosphere.

The violin gives me the opportunity to create melodies that are not possible on the mallet instruments. There’s also this moment when the violin comes on stage, when in the libretto it says ‘Billy the Kid starts dancing’. This is based on one of the poems in the book. Claron sings:

Up with the curtain
down with your pants
William Bonney
is going to dance…

The violinist jumps on stage and plays a frenzied solo, savagely turning about and stomping his feet. Quite a challenge for the performer, for he must not only act but also play his virtuoso pyrotechnics from memory. The music I wrote for this scene is entirely my own, but relates to fiddle tunes from the Wild West.

This wild solo breaks up the action and creates new energy. It’s a pivotal scene in the opera. Hereafter Billy the Kid is taken prisoner and, after his escape, finally killed by Pat Garret. Then the sadness sets in, the ‘Paradise Lost’ so to speak.

Calamity/Billy, Operadagen Rotterdam, 25 May

#BertrandBelin #BillyTheKid #CalamityJane #CalamityBilly #ClaronMcFadden #GavinBryars #GérardLecointe #JeanLacornerie #LesPercussionsClavierDeLyon #MuziektheaterTransparant #OperadagenRotterdam #ThéâtreDeLaCroixRousse

Hilda Paredes immortalises Afro-American freedom fighter in her opera ‘Harriet’.

Zojuist verschenen: Een os op het dak: moderne muziek na 1900 in vogelvlucht

On Friday 9 November Harriet by Hilda Paredes will be performed in November Music, in a production by Muziektheater Transparant. The opera is dedicated to the legendary Afro-American freedom fighter Harriet Tubman (c. 1822-1913), who escaped from slavery in the middle of the 19th century. Hereafter she liberated many fellow slaves through the so-called Underground Railroad, at the risk of her own life. After years of tug-of-war the American Treasury decided to place the portrait of Tubman on a 20-dollar note in September 2018.

Harriet was composed on a commission from the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico, the Belgian Muziektheater Transparant and the Dutch Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, where it was premiered in October 2018. The charismatic soprano Claron McFadden initiated the opera and sings the leading part, the Flemish singer Naomi Beeldens is her conversational partner Alice. Harriet is directed by French Jean Lacornerie, and the Belgian Hermes Ensemble is conducted by Manoj Kamps.

Before the premiere on 3 October I talked with Hilda Paredes and Claron McFadden, who gave a moving insight in her own background in the United States. The soprano grew up in Rochester, New York, where Tubman had once had one of her safe-houses. Her great-grandmother told her about this famous abolutionist, yet she was too young to fully grasp her importance. – Her relative died when Claron was six years old.

Mexican roots

In the Netherlands, the Mexican-British Hilda Paredes (1957) is little known. Although she has lived in England since 1979, she still has strong ties with South America. In 2001 she received the prestigious J.S. Guggenheim Fellowship for her opera El Palacio Imaginado. This is based on a story by the Chilean author Isabel Allende. For the libretto she drew from modern Mexican poetry, among other things.

I met Paredes for the first time in 2010, during a concert of the Arditti Quartet. I was impressed by her second string quartet Cuerdas del destino, in which the string instruments whisper like human voices. But who is Hilda Paredes? A short portrait in three questions I asked the composer at the request of Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ.

What typifies you as a composer?

I find much inspiration in the rich cultural life of my native Mexico. I often work together with Mexican poets and artists, but I also follow other musical traditions. In terms of rhythm and structure, I am inspired by the music of North India. However, I avoid quoting or imitating traditional music. – Except when the subject asks for it, as in the case of Harriet. I like to put poetry to music and address psychological, political, gender and humanitarian issues in my operas.

Moreover, over the past fifteen years I have worked a lot with electronics. This has not only drastically changed my way of listening but also my way of composing. I often make instruments sound different than we are used to, using alternative playing techniques that I develop myself. Fortunately, most musicians today are familiar with such ‘extended techniques’.

Hilda Paredes, foto Graciela Iturbide

What can we expect from your opera ‘Harriet’?

It is a portrait of the African-American freedom fighter and former slave Harriet Tubman. Harriet tells her life story to her young protégé Alice. In the first act we hear about her youth as a slave and about a violent injury to her head. This gave her religious visions that eventually showed her the way to escape.

She became known as the Moses of her people, a leader who freed many slaves. To this end she used the Underground Railroad, a network of anti-slavery activists. Via smuggling routes slaves could flee from the southern to the northern states of America, and later to Canada. Like most of her peers, Tubman was illiterate, so she used music to guide runaways. Encrypted messages were packaged in simple tunes, some of which you hear in the second act.

Once she had acquired a property as a free woman, Tubman took in an eight-year-old, light-coloured girl, Margaret. The third act is about the unanswered question of whether Margaret was her daughter, because the two had an unusually strong bond. In her old age Harriet often told stories to Margaret’s youngest daughter Alice.

The fourth act describes the battles Harriet led during the Civil War. She also reminisces about Nelson Davies, a young soldier who became her second husband. We get to know her thoughts as recorded by various sources. Finally she states her message to President Lincoln. The epilogue is a message of hope and continuity in her struggle against slavery and racism.

How did you set up your composition?

Harriet is a chamber opera for two voices, percussion, violin, guitar and electronics. The original idea was for a monodrama, to be told by Harriet. But during our research we came across her strong bond with Alice, Margaret’s youngest daughter. In the new set-up Harriet tells her story to Alice, who also acts as a third-party narrator. That’s why in the final version there are two singers.

Mayra Santos-Febres has written beautiful and well documented poems, based on Harriet’s life. Lex Bohlmeijer wrote most of the dialogues and made a storyline. Because I had only limited means at my disposal, I also use electronics. The electronics create an extra, but very subtle extra layer to the performance. Thus I was able to unfold a wide sound spectrum that does justice to the dramatic development of Harriet’s life.

9 November, Theater aan de Parade, Den Bosch, 9 pm: Harriet by Muziektheater Transparant.

#ClaronMcFadden #HarrietTubman #HildaParedes #MuziekgebouwAanTIJ #MuziektheaterTransparant #NovemberMusic