Opera... Shot!

Michael Betteridge

Two short new chamber operas by experienced composers both of whom are relatively new to the form.  Sounds like an experiment with a lot of potential right?  Potential it had, but successful it was not.  Regardless of the critical response, The Royal Opera House struck gold with Anna Nicole.  It has made its impact and will be firmly placed within the canon of 21^st century opera.  Opera Shots provided us two more new pieces The Tell-Tale Heart by Stewart Copeland – drummer and founder of The Police – and The Doctor’s Tale by Anne Dudley with libretto by esteemed Monty Python performer Terry Jones.  Potential they both had: musically, dramatically and lyrically, but for me they both fell flat.

The evening began with Copeland’s adaptation of Poe’s wonderful text.  I am often wary of ‘popular’ composers tackling opera.  Not because of any snobbery on my part or perceived notion of what a musical education should consist of: many of our great ‘popular’ artists were, and continue to be, highly skilled musicians and composers regardless of their background, and many have gone on to shatter the classical world’s illusions.  I am wary because of the main challenge opera poses to even the greatest ‘classical’ composer: a firm understanding of drama.  Popular music, on the whole, is rarely steeped in drama; storytelling yes, but rarely drama.  From what I know of The Police they are hardly the commercial equivalent of Wagner (maybe Kate Bush comes closer?).  And unfortunately my initial prejudices were indeed confirmed when the whole work lacked a sense of dramatic development.

What Copeland did do though, he did very well: he did not manipulate Poe’s text to the extent of destroying the meaning of the words.  A very clever approach to word setting in which Edgar – our protagonist – rhythmically spoke his way (not unlike Schoenberg’s Sprechgesang/Sprechstimme) through the text whilst our chorus of five sang the same libretto simultaneously.  Yet although the text was not lost, the drama was.  The second half of the piece should have built to the climatic discovery of the heart after the continual heightening of the guilt Edgar feels.  But this was not seen in any aspect of the music or text – just denoted by a wriggling and writhing from Edgar on stage.  Hats off to director Jonathan Moore who brought out the madness within the work succinctly and simply throughout, despite the failings of the composer.  Also Richard Suart, as Edgar, was fantastic – a perfect interpretation which could have so easily been mannered.

I expected the second piece to redeem the evening, but unfortunately it too missed the mark.  The concept could have been just wonderful: a local GP who, oddly, is in fact a dog, is forced to stand down by the GMC and then persecuted by those he tries to stand up to.  There could have been a subtext about prejudice, but without it the work would have had a wonderful lightness to it.  The first five minutes of the work showed fantastic promise: beautiful musical lines, the setting up of a great story, etc, but moments of musical and dramatic clunkiness began to impede the work.  For example Dudley threw in random jovial and trivial musical pastiche moments which did not quite work and only made the audience cringe rather than laugh.  Also a misunderstanding of writing for voice meant that a lot of the lines for lower voices just did not project: substantial parts of the score for mezzo Harriet Williams sat below middle C.  My main gripe though was the misunderstanding from both composer and librettist of pace and how episodic moments, with fussy scene changes, really slow down the pace of any theatrical work and can break the fourth wall.  The best moments were when Dudley and Jones were let loose and allowed to wallow in a moment, rather than having to forward the story along.  Jones’ libretto, like Dudley’s music, had flashes of brilliance, but also too many easy rhymes and inelegant and clumsy phrases.

The aspect of the evening that infuriated me the most was not these two substandard operas, but the under rehearsed and frankly student feel of the performances.  Movements were, unintentionally, rarely in sync or accurate; singers often had intonation problems; many set changes were clumsy and not fully considered.  I recently saw Vanesssa by Samuel Barber at the RNCM and although similar issue arose in this production, they were nowhere near as drastic as at the Opera House.  Stylistically the student production was much more slick and well crafted than the effort at Covent Garden.  Writing new opera takes time, money and a lot of effort from many parties.  This hard work was extremely evident in Anna Nicole.  It was nowhere to be seen for these Opera Shots.  I hope this was a blip, or maybe even a bad night (regarding intonation/movement), but I would be horrified to think that the Opera House would take smaller projects less seriously.  Yes Anna Nicole was a huge gamble in so many ways, especially financially, and considering the current situation I do not blame them for thinking with their money heads, but artistic integrity must be 100% regardless of the size or scope of a project. 

Opera Shots is a wonderful concept and I hope the Royal Opera House continues to push it and develop it, but only when and if they have the time, money and resources for what is still an extremely ambitious task: creating new and exciting opera.

The Cuts, the Public and British Contemporary Classical Music

 Emma Shires

With the announcement that the UK’s Arts Council funding was being cut by 29.6% over the next four years the future of British classical music looked bleak. Groups supporting contemporary music and young British composers were hit particularly hard. For example, BCMG (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group), one of the country’s major supporters of up and coming British composers, had its funding from Birmingham city council completely axed. Ironically this announcement came just as the group’s contribution was recognised as it received the Leslie Boosey award honouring an outstanding contribution to British contemporary music. The group has kept the country’s musical tradition alive by commissioning works by the likes of Thomas Adès, Mark Anthony Turnage, Howard Skempton and Judith Weir: now the face of modern British music. Without funding from institutions like BCMG these composers would be unable to produce the works which have fuelled the recent birth of an exciting new voice in British composition. Furthermore, by completely cutting funding to the UK’s conservatoires, diminishing the funds that provide music lessons in states schools and scrapping the ten million pound lottery fund which was previously used to provide schools with musical instruments, the message that the government is sending out is that contemporary classical music has no place in today’s society. Sadly there are many people who would agree, believing classical music to be old fashioned, elitist and out of place. Oddly these are just the qualities that emphasised the age old association between classical music, wealth and the right. The Conservatives have traditionally shown immense financial support for classical music and consequently their sudden move to severe their links with classical music and seemingly label the art form as irrelevant is baffling. Contemporary classical music, which is often treated wearily even by musicologists and professional musicians, has been given the thumbs down from modern audiences and the government has followed.

Since the infamous death of tonality at the turn of the twentieth century audiences have been moving away from the classical music composed by their generation in favour of light, popular music. The philosopher Theodor Adorno described this shift as the regression of listening and aligned it with the changing political climate. The popularity of light music was the result of a desire for escapism, awakened in society by the loneliness that capitalism engendered. For Adorno the new dissonant classical music, characterised by the expressionist school, perfectly expressed the anxiety and social alienation created by mass production. Popular music, and other mass produced art forms such as film, began to act as an opiate, just as Karl Marx had characterised religion’s function for the century before. It allowed the masses to ignore the true state of modern society and proceed with the weary, trivial occupations and endless circle of materialistic desires on which capitalism rests. Perhaps Adorno’s argument still remains true for the twenty-first century, explaining why contemporary classical music is still largely a niche interest.  The clashing chords and extremes of register in James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross (1993), for example, certainly resonate with the ‘bodily convulsions’ that Adorno saw as expressing the anxiety of modern life in Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung (1909). According to Adorno the purpose of the composer’s work was to reveal social truth, aligning composers to social theorists like himself and demonstrating the political importance of musical composition. If he was still alive today Adorno may argue that without the funding to the groups and establishments which support the growth of modern composition in this country the government is erasing a whole generation’s freedom to express discontent with the society in which they find themselves.

Obviously times have changed since Adorno wrote his pessimistic view of modern culture at the dawn of the twentieth century and many musicologists and social theorists are uncomfortable with his writings as they appear to give composers permission to assume their audience’s ignorance and thus ignore their tastes. His interpretations, and those of other more recent high art aestheticians such as Roger Scruton, have allowed contemporary classical music to develop into a fetishised science which requires intense levels of training to listen to and understand, let alone compose. The attitude has allowed composers like Milton Babbitt and John Cage to retreat into the ivory towers of a modernist  ‘art for art’s sake’ attitude, arrogantly proclaiming to the world, as the title of Babbitt’s 1967 article makes explicit, ‘who cares if you listen?’. If this is truly the way contemporary music has progressed it is no wonder that British society has turned its back on today’s composers.

However, in recent years modern British composition has turned away from this introspective attitude, proclaiming a keen interest in a wider audience’s enjoyment.  Through an interest in orchestral colour, rich harmonies, addictive rhythms and illusions to more popular genres such as jazz and musical theatre composers have created music that is fun to listen to, without being facile. Their music has the same levels of complexity as that of their more dissonant contemporaries whilst allowing access points for those less familiar with classical music. Adès’ chamber opera Powder her Face (1995), for example, mixes sensual chords, dissonance and comical musical effects to reflect the plot’s roots in the contemporary issues of star culture and sexual promiscuity. The result of this combination is a powerfully mesmerising work which would appeal to a wider audience than society’s current dismissal of classical music would have us believe. Turnage’s Anna Nicole (2010), recently premiered at the Royal Opera House, also deals with current issues of sex and fame in an attempt to reengage with the general public’s concerns. Like Powder her Face, Anna Nicole has captured the public’s interest not only through its modern story line but in the music’s warmth, colour and witty but intelligent pastiche. The new direction in contemporary music aesthetics can not only be seen in opera where admittedly pulling in new audiences is somewhat easier due to the programmatic nature of the genre. British composers like Skempton, John McCabe, Weir and Emily Howard are also using unusual textures, exciting rhythms and warm colours in their instrumental music, creating works which allows us to revel in sensual experience on one level and delve into new layers of meaning on another.

The new voice in British composition demonstrates that classical music is not divorced from modern concerns, as the cuts would have us believe. Recent works by these composers are fiercely political in their revival of the importance of the audience, showing that Adorno was right to see music as a powerful tool in understanding society but wrong to assume that this social meaning is only present in highly dissonant, alienating music. The recent emphasis on accessibility reflects the left wing interest in breaking down the elitist image of classical music, demonstrating its relevance to modern life and proving it can be enjoyed by all. That this new direction in composition has appeared at the same time as the government proclaims its lack of concern in artists and their institutions is ironic and frustrating.

However there is hope as composers, musicologists and music lovers across the country are fighting back, not only by writing music that proves music’s relevance but by taking to the streets. After protests in Birmingham against the cut to BCMG’s funding Birmingham City Council reversed their decision giving the group back the funding that will allow them to continue to be such an important voice in British contemporary music. Similarly the huge media interest created by Anna Nicole demonstrates that music is too powerful to be forgotten, no matter what the Conservatives do. It is therefore of vital importance that music lovers across the country show their support for this new voice in contemporary music or we are in danger of being left with the introverted modernist musical aesthetic which has been draining contemporary music of its life force throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Perhaps, considering the right’s history of keeping classical music as a luxury of the rich, this is what the cuts are all about. Under the guise of reducing the deficit the Conservatives are ensuring that classical music retains its Kantian ‘purposeful purposeless’ aesthetic. As a result the art form would return to the domain of the very rich, as cuts in funding cause ticket prices to soar and less financially stable young composers, with potentially left wing ideals, to retreat to more secure occupations. On the other hand, it seems more likely that the government has simply not realised the damage they may do to our country’s musical institutions and the repercussions this will have on cultural production for years to come.  

Article originally published in the Oxford Left Review, Issue 4, March 2011

http://oxfordleftreview.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/olr4-online-1.pdf