November 19: Postmodern Opera
Posted by Charles T. Downey at 12:01 AM |
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Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), Saint François d’Assise (premiered at the Opéra de Paris in 1983).
This composer's only opera, subtitled "Scènes franciscaines en trois actes et huit tableaux," has a libretto by Messiaen, culled from his reading on the medieval vitae of Saint Francis.
Here are some short quotes from It's a Secret of Love, Jean-Christophe Marti's interview with Messiaen in January 1992, shortly before his death, about his reverence for this opera:
György Ligeti (b. 1923), Le Grand Macabre (Stockholm, April 12, 1978; revised in 1997)
Libretto by Michael Meschke and Ligeti, after the play La balade du grand macabre by Michel de Ghelderode. The story takes place in an imaginary country called Breughelland ("run down but nevertheless thriving and carefree"), in an "anytime century." The name of the country refers to the main character of Nekrotzar, the Grand Macabre, Death incarnate, depicted in Breughel’s The Triumph of Death (oil panel, c. 1562).
Michael Nyman (b. 1944), The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (premiered on October 27, 1986, at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London).
The libretto by Christopher Rawlence is based on a case study by Dr. Oliver Sacks, on one of his actual patients. This is a chamber opera, with an orchestra of strings, harp, and piano, and only three characters, Dr. P, the patient (bass); Mrs. P, his wife (soprano); and Dr. S (tenor), who is the neurologist, Oliver Sacks (author of Awakenings, the basis for the movie of the same name, with Robin Williams).
Nyman read the case study in November 1985, and it formed into an opera in his mind. Dr. P suffers from visual agnosia, that is, he has difficulty recognizing objects by sight, because of Alzheimer’s; he thinks parking meters are people, for example. On the patient's first visit with Dr. S, when leaving, he reaches for his hat but confuses his wife's head with the hatstand (thus the title). However, his singing voice is still intact: in real life, he was a singer and knew Peter Pears. He sings songs from Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe to communicate. There are musical references in the opera to the song "Ich grolle nicht," which Dr. P sings in the couple's apartment, joined by Dr. S for part of it, and Britten's setting of "The Sick Rose," which is the couple's favorite piece, sung by Mrs. P and hummed by Dr. P.
There are sly self-references in this opera, not unlike in Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles. During the first doctor-patient interview in the apartment, Mrs. P turns on the TV and sees Michael Nyman playing the piano on TV. Dr. P recognizes him, saying "That's Nyman. Can't mistake his body rhythm." The moves in the chess game the doctor plays with his patient are sung and could be used to reproduce the moves. Singing little songs is the only way Dr. P can find his way if he is jolted from his ritualized schedule. Music becomes Dr. S's prescription, and at the opera's conclusion we hear Dr. P humming to the final bars of the instrumental postlude, until it ends.
Nyman's most recent opera, Man and Boy: Dada was premiered this past summer at the Almeida Theatre in London, 2004. The libretto, by Michael Hastings, brings together, fictionally, the life of Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and the adolescent Michael Nyman (named only as Michael), who discover that they both collect bus tickets, for collage and collections, respectively. See this post at Ionarts, Opera and Collage, from August 9, for more information.
Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), Saint François d’Assise (premiered at the Opéra de Paris in 1983).
Olivier Messiaen, Saint François d’Assise (recorded in 1999) |
Here are some short quotes from It's a Secret of Love, Jean-Christophe Marti's interview with Messiaen in January 1992, shortly before his death, about his reverence for this opera:
I'd like audiences to be as dazzled by it as I am. It contains virtually all of the bird calls that I've noted down in the course of my life, all the colors of my chords, all my harmonic procedures, and even some surprising innovations such as the superimposition of different tempos, allowing total independence of the different instruments within a non-aleatory, organized chaos under the conductor’s control. [...]As for his approach to musical style, Messiaen had the following comments for 12-tone music:
It's true that I don't like neoclassicism: this approach strikes me as absurd, but I am not attacking anyone by saying this. . . . I simply do not understand [Stravinsky's] neoclassical works: but for me, Stravinsky—the composer of The Rite of Spring and The Firebird—remains one of the greatest geniuses. If I were to offer a serious reason for the attacks on my music, it would be that certain people are annoyed that I believe in God. [...]
In short, you have a very new language made up of discoveries and advances, but without any intentional break with the basic, general assumptions of music such as tonality?
Well, here I have to say that for me tonality and modality are no more than words in a dictionary. They are of practical use but by no means indispensable. If you look at history, you'll see that after birdsong, which imitated rain, the oceans and the noise of storms, people began to sing in octaves and fifths, according to the natural distribution of voices; then came modes—pentatonic modes from China, diatonic ones from Greece, and chromatic ones from India. This modal language was used for centuries, because tonality as such didn't emerge until Bach's day, when it was merged with a highly modal and chromatic language. Before him, Monteverdi and Gesualdo were highly chromatic, just as Mozart was later. If you like, tonality proper has existed for only two centuries, and Beethoven strikes me as the only composer who is frankly tonal. With Chopin and even more with Debussy, this famous tonality becomes veiled once again. Beyond these concepts, the only phenomenon inherent to the world of sound and which composers have to take into account is resonance.
Dodecaphony, serial music, atonal music, the result is the same: music without color, grey and black. Except to express a terrible feeling of fear and anxiety, I see no emotion in this language, which sought to abolish resonance. I'm afraid that a love of music is missing from such a world. For me, Debussy's lesson is irreplaceable. One could say that Ravel wrote more spicy harmonies, more colorful orchestrations, but he never achieved Debussy's absolute formal freedom. Debussy found an inspired way of blurring the edges of his structures. The term he used to describe it is untranslatable: un sens de flou—a sort of soft-focus effect. I still marvel at it and freely admit that I'd be incapable of imitating it. It was a work by Debussy that made me decide to become a composer, Pelléas et Mélisande. A humble teacher from Nantes, Jean de Gibon, had the inspired idea of giving me a copy of the score when I was not yet eleven years old. I have to say that for a long time I felt I was not sufficiently gifted to write an opera—in this, I'm no different from my contemporaries. I thought that there was no longer any way forward after Wozzeck.
- Messiaen's Opera at the Bastille (Ionarts, October 12, on this fall's production of the opera in Paris)
- Joshua Kosman, A heavenly premiere: S.F. Opera pulls off complex Messiaen masterpiece 'Saint Francois D'Assise' (San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 2002), a review of the opera's U.S. premiere (2002)
- Tim Page 'St. Francois,' Worthy of A Pilgrimage (Washington Post, September 30, 2002)
- Steven Winn, A strange and transfixing opera: Impact of Messiaen's 'Saint Francois d'Assise' depends on the staging (San Francisco Chronicle, October 13, 2002)
György Ligeti (b. 1923), Le Grand Macabre (Stockholm, April 12, 1978; revised in 1997)
György Ligeti, Le Grand Macabre (recorded in 1999) |
- Charles T. Downey, Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre in San Francisco (Ionarts post on the American premiere of this opera, right now, in San Francisco)
- Photos of the San Francisco Opera production
- Richard Felciano, A Demoniacal Romp, a Great Extravaganza (San Francisco Opera)
- Thomas May, Viewpoint (San Francisco Opera)
- Gyorgy Ligeti -- Illusions and Allusions, Herman Sabbe's interview with Ligeti (October 23, 1978), Interface 8 (1979), pp. 11–34, translated by Josh Ronsen
Michael Nyman (b. 1944), The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (premiered on October 27, 1986, at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London).
Michael Nyman, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (recorded in 1990) |
Nyman read the case study in November 1985, and it formed into an opera in his mind. Dr. P suffers from visual agnosia, that is, he has difficulty recognizing objects by sight, because of Alzheimer’s; he thinks parking meters are people, for example. On the patient's first visit with Dr. S, when leaving, he reaches for his hat but confuses his wife's head with the hatstand (thus the title). However, his singing voice is still intact: in real life, he was a singer and knew Peter Pears. He sings songs from Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe to communicate. There are musical references in the opera to the song "Ich grolle nicht," which Dr. P sings in the couple's apartment, joined by Dr. S for part of it, and Britten's setting of "The Sick Rose," which is the couple's favorite piece, sung by Mrs. P and hummed by Dr. P.
There are sly self-references in this opera, not unlike in Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles. During the first doctor-patient interview in the apartment, Mrs. P turns on the TV and sees Michael Nyman playing the piano on TV. Dr. P recognizes him, saying "That's Nyman. Can't mistake his body rhythm." The moves in the chess game the doctor plays with his patient are sung and could be used to reproduce the moves. Singing little songs is the only way Dr. P can find his way if he is jolted from his ritualized schedule. Music becomes Dr. S's prescription, and at the opera's conclusion we hear Dr. P humming to the final bars of the instrumental postlude, until it ends.
Nyman's most recent opera, Man and Boy: Dada was premiered this past summer at the Almeida Theatre in London, 2004. The libretto, by Michael Hastings, brings together, fictionally, the life of Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and the adolescent Michael Nyman (named only as Michael), who discover that they both collect bus tickets, for collage and collections, respectively. See this post at Ionarts, Opera and Collage, from August 9, for more information.
