Anyone who thinks that a night at the opera is like stepping into a warm bath needs to think again after Carrie Cracknell’s new production of Wozzeck.
Comfortable it certainly isn’t, being neither easy on the eye nor the ear. Although as Cracknell herself said at the pre-performance talk you could possibly hear something that might be considered redemptive in the heart-bending orchestral interlude with which Alban Berg links the two final scenes of his first opera: Marie and Wozzeck dead in the penultimate scene and then after the musical interlude their son alone amongst a gang of taunting children at the edge of the rock bottom estate where this bleak ex-soldier’s tale has been played out. But hardly had the word ‘redemptive’ escaped then Cracknell was keen to recapture it.
Wozzeck, played by Leigh Melrose (c) ENO/Tristram Kenton
How can a mistress who has her throat cut by her soldier lover who then takes his own life leaving an abandoned child, offer any of us solace? Cracknell and her designer Tom Scutt tell their story in a world where better feelings and personal ambition have been squeezed out by economic necessity. In the grimy pub, the tawdry living room and on a concrete staircase that belongs to the meanest public housing, survival is the only imperative. And, for Wozzeck, surviving is also surviving what happened to him in uniform as a soldier, post-traumatic stress disorder to give his emotional dislocation a name.
This is a community haunted by dead comrades returning in flag draped coffins, a place where the principal currency is small plastic bags filled with white powder. So the persecuting Captain deals in cocaine, while his fellow officer the doctor performs terrible dietary experiments on Wozzeck in return for cash. Social control and the oppression of ordinary people; the themes you’ll find in Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck from the beginning of the nineteenth century and in the opera that Berg made from that play.
However, at the heart of Cracknell’s Wozzeck is a loving relationship that is also in a state of shellshock. If Wozzeck the dislocated ex-soldier wanders the town often not returning home, then should we wonder that Marie strays with the Drum Major?
Marie, played by Sara Jakubiak and Drum Major, played by Bryan Regiater (c) ENO/Tristram Kenton
If art can take us to places that we’ve never been, Carrie Cracknell leads us to corners of Britain that are for most of us no more than flickering images on a television news programme. Home once to another child who’s disappeared; another father who’s killed his partner; another housing estate struggling under the weight of its ASBOs. This Wozzeck looks at a terrible place where men and women are constrained to be less than they could and should and ought to be and it never blinks.
And nor should we. Music theatre - opera if you will - like this Wozzeck can wound. And if it has the power to hurt, then hopefully we’re wiser when we leave the Coliseum. That quotation from John Donne came to mind as I walked home. No, not ‘Death be not proud … but ‘No man is an island,/Entire of itself./Each is a piece of the continent,/A part of the main.’
What do you think about Carrie Cracknell’s production of Wozzeck? Let us know either by commenting below, or tweet us using the #ENOBlog hashtag!
There are 2 further performances of Wozzeck remaining (until 25 May). Tickets are available here: bit.ly/ENOWozzeck
Christopher Cook gives pre-performance talks at English National Opera, for information about upcoming events vist: http://www.eno.org/see-whats-on/productions/production-page.php?&itemid=1356
La bohème 90 years on from 1840s? Can that be right? When Henri Murger published his stories about Bohemian Paris, Scènes de la vie de bohème, they were set in a Latin Quarter that was riding on the flood tide of French Romanticism when to be an artist was the only real choice for a young man who knew that deep personal feelings were the thing that mattered.
So why transport this most perfect of operas to the 1930s, to a Paris whose oddest corners were being mapped by photographers like Pierre Brassaï and which was suffused with melancholy for a film-maker like Marcel Carné. Leave well alone, the purists will say. This is a Romantic and a romantic story of boys and girls falling in and out of love, of ‘golden lads and girls [who] all must…come to dust.’ So bustles and bonnets please, not Marcel waves and brilliantine.
Richard Burkhard, Gwyn Hughes Jones, Kate Valentine, Duncan Rock, Andrew Craig Brown (L-R) in La bohème
But wait …. The opera was written in the middle 1890s, so Puccini and his librettists Giacosa and Illica, who naturally were all Italian, were imagining a Paris that they had never experienced at first hand. In this sense the La bohème is doubly nostalgic. It looks back to a time that has passed and as it does so it indulges perhaps incipient middle age dreams of the agonies and ecstasies of young love from the men who created it. And we, the audience? We live over a century after the first performance of La bohème in Turin and almost two centuries after Murger’s poet first kissed a neighbouring seamstress. The time period in which you set a production of an opera is not as straightforward as it seems. And if the work is as popular as La bohème it’s all too easy for a producer to encourage his audience to wallow in a warm bath of nineteenth century sentiment rather than ask themselves about the questions about class and gender, and what Bohemia is and why we need it and where it is. Matters that are at the heart of Puccini’s masterpiece. This is more than the story of a pretty working-class girl who falls for a handsome poet and then dies absurdly young from TB.
So what are the rules about updating a production? Jonathan Miller, who’s a master of moving a opera to a new time and a new place, will tell you that the most important thing is that the world in which you relocate the work must be the equivalent of that in which it was originally set and in every respect. It has to make complete sense. So his Tosca was relocated to a Rome in the closing days of the brutal German occupation of Italy, just as Sardou’s original play and Puccini’s opera had the Neapolitan Bourbons attempting to destroy those aspirations to political liberty associated first with the French Revolution and then the invading armies of Bonaparte. The famous mafioso Rigoletto and The Elixir of Love à la James Dean in the American South West. They are all perfect fits.
Kate Valentine and Gwyn Hughes Jones in La bohème (c) Donald Cooper
So in this La bohème the bohemians are rich boys slumming it, pretending to be poets and painters and musicians. In time they’ll settle down to ‘real’ jobs as lawyers, bankers or in the family business; and they’ll remember sowing their wild oats when they lunch at the Club or meet for annual reunions. They will look at the photographs of the time when they were young, Brassaï’s bars, Doisneau’s street scenes and Cartier Bresson’s reimagined Paris as souvenirs of their salad days. And that sense of relentless fate that haunts Mimi and Rodolfo – that’s surely the same fatalism you find in Marcel Carné’s work with Jacques Prévert, films like Le jour se lève and Le Quai des brumes. Ninety years on from Murger and almost another ninety years on from the 1930s this updated La bohème makes perfect sense.
What do you think about updating performances? Let us know either by commenting below, or tweet us using the #ENOBlog hashtag!
There are 10 further performances of La bohème remaining (until 29 June). Tickets are available here: bit.ly/ENOBoheme
Christopher Cook gives pre-performance talks at English National Opera, for information about upcoming events vist: http://www.eno.org/see-whats-on/productions/production-page.php?&itemid=1356
We’re delighted to announce our 2013/14 season at English National Opera. Our forthcoming season features 12 international directors from the worlds of opera, theatre, film and visual arts, 10 new productions, 4 hit revivals and 4 works by living composers.
Highlights of the 2013/14 season include:
John Berry, ENO’s Artistic Director said, ‘This season shows the power of loyal artists - singers, conductors, directors, composers and designers - who are prepared to put themselves on the line in a remarkably diverse and exciting range of work. Our international partners are also an important creative and supportive influence and it is wonderful that so many opera houses and festivals from around the world want to collaborate so closely with us.’
Let us know what you think of the 2013/14 season, and what you’re most looking forward to! Simply comment below, or tweet us using the #ENO1314 hashtag.
Public booking opens for all productions from Fidelio to Rodelinda on 10th June.
Friends of ENO can book from 13th May.
2013/14 Season in full:
Ludwig van Beethoven
Directed by Calixto Bieito
Conducted by Edward Gardner
Opens: 25 September 2013 (7 performances)
A co-production with Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich
Cast includes: Emma Bell (Leonore), Stuart Skelton (Florestan) excluding selected performances, Philip Horst (Don Pizarro), James Creswell (Rocco), Sarah Tynan (Marzelline), Adrian Dwyer (Jaquino), Roland Wood (Don Fernando)
Johann Strauss II
Directed by Christopher Alden
Conducted by Eun Sun Kim
Opens: 30 September 2013 (11 performances)
A co-production with Canadian Opera Company
New production supported by Lord and Lady Laidlaw
Cast includes: Tom Randle (Gabriel von Eisenstein), Julia Sporsén (Rosalinde), Jennifer Holloway (Prince Orlofsky, Rhian Lois (Adele), Richard Burkhard (Dr Falke), Edgaras Montvidas (Alfred), Simon Butteriss (Dr Blind), Andrew Shore (Frank), Jon Pohl (Frosch)
Giacomo Puccini
Originally directed by Anthony Minghella, Revival Director Sarah Tipple
Conducted by Gianluca Marciano / Martin Fitzpatrick
Opens: 14 October 2013 (14 performances)
A co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, New York and the Lithuanian National Opera
Original production supported by Lord and Lady Laidlaw
Cast includes: Dina Kuznetsova/Mary Plazas (Cio-Cio San), Timothy Richards/Gwyn Hughes Jones (F.B. Pinkerton), George von Bergen (Sharpless), Pamela Helen Stephen (Suzuki), Alun Rhys-Jenkins (Goro), Mark Richardson (The Bonze), Alexander Robin Baker (Prince Yamadori), Catherine Young (Kate Pinkerton)
Wolfgang Mozart
Directed by Simon McBurney
Conducted by Gergely Madaras
Opens: 7 November 2013 (12 performances)
A co-production with De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam and International Festival of Lyric Art, Aix-en-Provence, and in collaboration with Complicite
Cast Includes: Ben Johnson (Tamino), Devon Guthrie (Pamina), Roland Wood (Papageno), Mary Bevan (Papagena), TBA (Queen of the Night), James Creswell (Sarastro), Brian Galliford (Monostatos), Eleanor Dennis (First Lady), Clare Presland (Second Lady), Rosie Aldridge (Third Lady), Anthony Gregory (First Priest/First Armed Man), Stephen Holloway (Second Priest/Second Armed Man)
Philip Glass
Directed by Phelim McDermott
Conducted by TBA
Opens: 20 November 2013 (6 performances)
A co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and in collaboration with Improbable
Original production supported by ENO’s Contemporary Opera Group
Cast Includes: Alan Oke (M. K. Gandhi), Janis Kelly (Mrs Naidoo)
Benjamin Britten
Directed by David Alden
Conducted by Edward Gardner
Opens: 29 January 2014 (8 performances)
A co-production with De Vlaamse Opera, Opera de Oviedo and Deutsche Oper Berlin
Original production supported by ENO’s English Opera Group
Cast Includes: Stuart Skelton (Peter Grimes), Elza van den Heever (Ellen Orford), Iain Paterson (Balstrode), Rebecca De Pont Davies (Auntie), Matthew Best (Swallow), Leigh Melrose (Ned Keene), Michael Colvin (Bob Boles), Felicity Palmer (Mrs Sedley), Rhian Lois (1st Niece), Mary Bevan (2nd Neice), Matthew Treviño (Hobson), Tim Robinson (Reverend Horace Adams)
Giuseppe Verdi
Directed by Christopher Alden
Conducted by Graeme Jenkins
Opens: 13 February 2014 (11 performances)
A co-production with Canadian Opera Company
New production supported by a syndicate of individual donors
Cast Includes: Quinn Kelsey (Rigoletto), Barry Banks (Duke of Mantua), Anna Christy (Gilda), Peter Rose/Matthew Treviño (Sparafucile), Justina Gringyte (Maddalena), David Stout (Monterone), George Humphreys (Marullo), Anthony Gregory (Borsa), Barnaby Rea (Ceprano), Diana Montague (Giovanna)
George Frideric Handel
Directed by Richard Jones
Conducted by Christian Curnyn
Opens: 28 February 2014 (8 performances)
A co-production with the Bolshoi Opera, Russia
New production supported by Colwinston Charitable Trust and a syndicate of individual donors
Cast Includes: Rebecca Evans (Rodelinda), Iestyn Davies (Bertarido), John Mark Ainsley (Grimoaldo), Susan Bickley (Eduige), Christopher Ainslie (Unulfo), Richard Burkhard (Garibaldo)
Booking for these shows opens later this year…
Powder Her Face
Thomas Adès
Directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins
Conducted by TBA
Opens: 2 April 2014 (9 site-specific performances at Ambika P3)
Thebans
Julian Anderson
Librettist: Frank McGuinness
Directed by Pierre Audi
Conducted by Edward Gardner
Opens: 3 May 2014 (8 performances)
A co-production with Bonn Oper
New production supported by The Boltini Trust, PRS for Music Foundation and ENO’s Contemporary Opera Group
Cast Includes: Roland Wood (Oedipus), Peter Hoare (Creon), Julia Sporsén (Antigone), Matthew Best (Tiresias), Susan Bickley (Jocasta), Christopher Ainslie (Messenger), Anthony Gregory (Haemon), Jonathan McGovern (Polynices)
Cosí Fan Tutte
Wolfgang Mozart
Directed by Katie Mitchell
Conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth
Opens: 16 May 2014 (12 performances)
A co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, New York
Cast Includes: Kate Valentine (Fiordiligi), Christine Rice (Dorabella), Norman Reinhardt (Ferrando), Marcus Farnsworth (Guglielmo), Roderick Williams (Don Alfonso), Mary Bevan (Despina)
Benvenuto Cellini
Hector Berlioz
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Conducted by Edward Gardner
Opens: 5 June 2014 (8 performances)
A co-production with De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam
New production supported by the Peter Moores Foundation’s Swansong Project 2013–2015 and a syndicate of individual donors
Cast Includes: Michael Spyres (Benvenuto Cellini), Corrine Winters (Teresa), Pavlo Hunka (Balcucci), Nicky Spence (Francesco), Paula Murrihy (Ascanio), Willard White (Pope Clement VII), Richard Burkhard (Fieramosca)
The Pearl Fishers
Georges Bizet
Directed by Penny Woolcock
Conductor: TBA
Opens: 16 June 2014 (9 performances)
Cast Includes: Sophie Bevan (Leila), John Tessier (Nadir), George von Bergen (Zurga)
River of Fundament
Composed by Jonathan Belper
Directed by Matthew Barney
Opens 29 June 2014 (3 viewings)
River of Fundament is presented worldwide on behalf of the artist by Manchester International Festival
Soprano Kate Valentine (Mimi in La Bohème), also goes by the name of ‘Furtive Figaro’ due to her habit of filming rehearsals. Over the last couple of weeks, our Furtive Figaro has been working on The Daily Miller, capturing her favourite moments from the La Bohème rehearsals to give us an exclusive look behind the scenes.
First up, director Jonathan Miller offers some pearls of wisdom from W.H.Auden to the Chorus:
The men have a very funny dance rehearsal:
Jonathan Miller gives direction on dying…:
… and entrances and exits:
Jonathan talks about who we feel when faced with another’s death:
Some more dancing lightens the mood:
Jonathan talks about the importance of hand gestures:
Kate takes us on a tour of the set:
Gwyn Hughes Jones talks about mascots:
La bohème is at ENO from 29 April – 29 June 2013.
#ENOBoheme
Broadcaster Christopher Cook writes about how different people can have totally different experiences of the same work.
It’s a strange thing. Two people sit in the theatre and watch the same performance and then fight like cats and dogs about how much they liked it and how much they hated it. (Friendships have foundered on such differences of opinion.) How can it happen? Certainly, Sunken Garden has sorted out … I’ve said it, the sheep from the goats, but that’s because I’m a sheep and think that Michel van der Aa’s opera does wonderful things; and literally so when we put on our special 3D glasses.
Sunken Garden, Zenna Briggs (Katherine Manley) and the vertical pond (c) ENO/Mike Hoban
However, back to that difference of opinion, Of course no one person sees the same performance as another person. We’re all the sum of our own particular beliefs and prejudices and as we sit in the dark watching and listening we often wear them on our sleeves and to a great extent they frame the performance we’re attending (I’ve been struggling to ‘like’ Schumann’s orchestral music for years and I’m going to give up the fight soon.) So it’s not much use telling us that we should leave our opinions in the cloakroom with the hats and coats. As someone once said ‘an open mind is often an empty mind’!
To go back to Sunken Garden, I wonder if the often violent differences of opinion about this kind of music theatre have something to do with the idea that opera on stage has to be ‘opera’, that it ought to respect some agreed set of historical conventions and traditions. (Who exactly agreed them is never clear.) So if Strauss and Hofmannsthal set The Rosenkavalier in the reign of the Empress Maria Theresa, if Puccini wanted Cio-Cio San to wear a kimono and Norma and her tribe of ancient Gauls to have been conquered by the Romans, that’s how it has to be. The right sets and the proper frocks. We have to hold faith with the composer’s intentions and the way the work is always performed. So Tosca has to jump from the battlements of Castel Sant’Angelo and Gilda dies in a sack by the river in Mantua.
Are there people, then, who think modern opera is an oxymoron, for whom contemporary music drama is a kind of blasphemy. Of course opera has always been contemporary. and usually political – that’s a topic for another time. But perhaps one man or woman’s ‘contemporary’ is another’s source of deep anxiety as we are launched into a world that we don’t really understand. Michel van der Aa is a very contemporary artist, a filmmaker and a composer and a theatre director. And once we’ve arrived with Toby in the sunken garden, not just the score – a mix of live music and pre-recorded on a laptop – but the place itself are anchored in a contemporary digital world. Indeed one way of reading the climax of the work in front of the pool in the secret garden that can only be reached in our dreams is to see it as a video game of the kind that flouts the laws of physics and pits power against morality. But how many opera goers play video games? Most of us are what Marc Prensky has called Digital Immigrants. Is this the explanation for why a work like Sunken Garden polarises opinion?
Sunken Garden is at the Barbican Centre until Saturday 20 April. Additional £16 tickets have just been released for the final two performances. Tickets available here: bit.ly/ENOGarden
To find out what our twitter followers thought of Sunken Garden, check out this Storify post: http://storify.com/E_N_O/sunken-garden-eno-at-the-barbican
Christopher Cook gives pre-performance talks at English National Opera, for information about upcoming events vist: http://www.eno.org/see-whats-on/productions/production-page.php?&itemid=1356
It is with great sadness that ENO acknowledges the death of Sir Colin Davis. A former Music Director of ENO’s precursor, The Sadler’s Wells Opera, Sir Colin was a conductor who enhanced and strengthened the reputation of the company, both in terms of the musical standards he achieved and the repertoire he introduced. During his time at Sadler’s Wells he introduced Weill’s Mahagonny and Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen to the repertoire and revived the then relatively unknown Mozart opera Idomeneo. His wide range of influences is still reflected in ENO’s breadth of repertoire today.
ENO Music Director, Edward Gardner OBE said, “Sir Colin played an indelible part in the life of Sadler’s Wells. He maintained a close link with the company through the transition into English National Opera, and many colleagues hold fond memories of a close working relationship with him. Sir Colin brought Berlioz’s music to life in a way few others could, convincing the musical world of the dramatic depth and range of his music. We have Sir Colin to thank that Berlioz is heard as part of the repertoire of all the major opera houses. As a young conductor at the Royal Academy of Music, he was an invaluable support, whose knowledge and enthusiasm was of great importance during the formative years of my career.”
Messages of condolence can be posted on the LSO’s website by clicking here: http://lso.co.uk/in-memory-of-sir-colin-davis
Experienced UK business entrepreneur, philanthropist and arts supporter to chair Board
Martyn Rose, one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs and business figures, has today been appointed as the chairman of English National Opera, a role he will take up on 1 May 2013.
Martyn Rose (c) Scott Collier
Commenting on the appointment, Sir Vernon Ellis, President of ENO said, “Martyn Rose has brought his entrepreneurial flair not only to the successful companies he has built but also to the major charities and arts organisations he has chaired. A common theme has been the creation of a shared vision for the organisation and the drive and inspiration to deliver it. I am confident that he will provide the Board with the leadership to work alongside the ENO Executive to ensure that ENO will grow, develop and flourish.”
Rose brings to ENO his boardroom leadership skills and management experience drawn from more than 30 years of working in business and the arts. He has been Chairman of a range of companies, both public and privately owned. Rose is currently chairman of DanceEast, the Arts Council England-funded world-class performing arts complex based in Ipswich. He also chairs the Big Society Network, which supports and develops talent, innovation and social enterprise and rewards those who have made a positive contribution to society through the Big Society Awards.
Rose said, “I am honoured to take on the Chairmanship of one of the country’s leading arts institutions and look forward to ensuring that ENO continues to maintain its world-class reputation for distinctive, contemporary and highly theatrical opera. ENO is rightly proud of its commitment to developing both new audiences and the very best British talent and I want to help maintain that tradition so that this renowned institution can continue as a standard-bearer for excellence within the arts world and more broadly for the UK’s creative industries. ENO produces exciting, original and innovative work and is the largest employer of British opera talent. I hope my enthusiasm and commercial experience within the business and arts world will complement the outstanding artistic achievements of this committed, hard-working and passionate organisation and help further enhance its outstanding reputation and success in the UK and internationally.”
Rose comes to Chair the Board of ENO as the Company continues to deliver award-winning productions and international collaborative partnerships. In 2012, ENO won every available award for opera, including the Olivier Award for ‘the breadth and diversity of the artistic programme’. This year, ENO has been nominated in five Olivier Opera Award categories. Internationally, ENO works with a huge range of co-producers, including the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Netherlands Opera, and New York’s Metropolitan Opera, whose new season will feature two co-productions already premiered at ENO; Two Boys and Eugene Onegin. Rose will take up the post of Chair on 1 May, when ENO announces its 2013-14 season of new work.
CEO of ENO, Loretta Tomasi, said “We are delighted that Martyn is joining us as our Chairman. His passion for ENO’s work, its creativity and international artistic standing, combined with his impressive leadership record and commercial success, will bring the skills, enthusiasm and drive required to this important role.”
Artistic Director of ENO, John Berry, said, “During these exciting and challenging times Martyn’s arrival at ENO is a coup for the Company. ENO’s artistic identity is stronger than ever and we look forward to benefiting from his wealth of business experience to strengthen and grow the Company.”
Ffion Hague and Glyn Barker, current ENO Deputy Chairs, will continue to act as Interim Chairs until Rose takes up his position.
About Martyn Rose:
Martyn Rose was called to the Bar in his early 20s, but subsequently decided to pursue a career in business. He acquired his first company at the age of 29 and over the next three decades he created, built and developed a wide range of businesses from manufacturing to software, financial services and property. At the age of 34 he became Chairman of his first publicly listed company and has, since that time, been Chairman of over twenty five public and private companies. In the 1990s he co-founded and was the Chair of Macaw, a start-up soft drinks business, which became one of the leading manufacturers within the sector, as well as co-founding and chairing a portfolio of commercial radio stations.
Among the companies he chairs today are Dentons Pension Management, one of the UK’s leading pension administrators, and AIM-listed software group Publishing Technology plc, a world leading content solutions provider focused on the publishing industry.
Since becoming more focused on his charitable and philanthropic work, he has reduced the range of his commercial activities, and the remaining businesses with which he is involved are all companies that he established and continues to chair.
As Chairman of DanceEast, he was actively involved in the organisation’s capital fundraising campaign for its new premises. He is a long-standing Trustee of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a school governor, and co-chaired the National Citizen Service with Michael Gove prior to the general election. This has now developed into a Government policy, running a programme for 16 year olds. He also co-chaired the Get Britain Working campaign with Theresa May, and co-founded and was appointed Chair of the Big Society Network, which encourages, develops and showcases social enterprise.
We’re delighted to announce that English National Opera has been nominated for 5 of the 8 available awards for opera at the Olivier Awards 2013.
The nominations in full are:
Best New Opera Production
Billy Budd, English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Caligula, English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Einstein On The Beach at the Barbican theatre
La Traviata, English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Outstanding Achievement in Opera
Edward Gardner for his conducting of The Flying Dutchman and Billy Budd at the English National Opera, London Coliseum
Bryan Hymel for his performances in Les Troyens, Robert Le Diable and Rusalka at the Royal Opera House
Music Theatre Wales for In the Locked Room/Ghost Patrol at the Linbury Theatre, the Royal Opera House
The Stage Management teams at English National Opera, London Coliseum and the Royal Opera House
The Olivier Awards will be presented at the Royal Opera House on 28 April. You can listen LIVE on BBC Radio 2, or watch the highlights on ITV.
English National Opera would like to congratulate Dutch composer, film-maker and director Michel van der Aa on winning the Maurico Kagel Music Prize. The North Rhine-Westphalia Arts Foundation has announced that the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize for 2013 will be awarded, by unanimous vote, to Michel van der Aa. The award will be presented on 28 April during the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik.
The Mauricio Kagel Music Prize is given to internationally renowned musicians whose work, like Kagel’s own, experiments with interdisciplinary concepts and techniques. It was established in 2011 and is awarded every two years; its first recipient was the French-Greek composer Georges Aperghis.
The prize is worth a total of €50,000, of which €20,000 is to be used to fund a new project for the North Rhine-Westphalia region. It is the second major international prize to have been won by Van der Aa in just a few months, following his receipt of the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer Award for Up-Close in November.
Van der Aa’s own combination of visuals, theatre and music may be seen and heard in his forthcoming opera Sunken Garden, which will have its premiere at English National Opera on 12 April.
Watch a teaser of the opera below:
First teaser of Sunken Garden from English National Opera on Vimeo.
This April, English National Opera and the Barbican present the World Premiere of Sunken Garden. We speak to composer, director and film-maker Michel van der Aa about his latest work…
How would you describe Sunken Garden?
That’s maybe the most difficult question to start with! It’s a multi-layered mystery opera which deals with disappearances. There’s a young film maker named Toby making a documentary about a missing person and he gradually gets pulled deeper and deeper into the mystery. I don’t want to give too much away but first and foremost, I think it’s a wonderful libretto and concept, and hopefully interesting music to go along with that. Also the use of 3D film within the production presents wonderful theatrical possibilities. What we’re trying to do with this is something that hasn’t been done before and I think we’ve managed to do it in a very tasteful way.
You’re a composer, a director and a film maker – do you work on all of these elements at once?
Composing the music takes most of the time, but while composing I’m already thinking of the film and the staging. It’s a tricky thing because normally when you collaborate with people you can bounce ideas off each other. I guess the advantage of doing it this way is that I don’t have to compromise. The danger is that I have to make sure that there are enough creative people in the team to ask me difficult questions and put a mirror in front of my face.
How would you describe the music for Sunken Garden?
I think it’s definitely my most colourful score to date. It’s quite direct and melodic at times, then there are also more abstract moments and there are also pop influences in there. And then everything in between! So I guess you could describe it as a kaleidoscopic score.
Bestselling author David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) has written the libretto for Sunken Garden – how did the collaboration come about?
I think it was around three years ago that we decided to work together on the project. I’m a big fan of his books and very much like the multi-layered structure of the narrative, with stories stopping and new ones starting. I thought he would be the perfect person for a new libretto. He has a great sense for theatre and more so, since part of the opera is spoken word by actors in the film, he really writes such natural dialogue. It was a lovely collaboration - creatively, we really sparked the right energy in each other. We found we had a lot of the same thoughts about what opera today should be, and what we could do to on stage to make this happen.
Audiences at the Barbican may have seen After Life which premiered here in 2010 – is there a connection between the two productions?
There’s a conceptual connection. Both deal with a space between heaven and earth, where time stops. In After Life, it’s a happy place where people can look back and choose their defining moment, whereas in Sunken Garden it’s a darker place where people are trapped against their will. In terms of visual language and musical vocabulary, Sunken Garden is quite different. And the use of 3D film in Sunken Garden enables me to do things I couldn’t do with After Life.
Is this the first time you’ve worked in 3D and what challenges does this present?
Yes, it’s the first time and in terms of the challenges, that’s a book in itself! We did a lot of tests and had a huge preparation period because no one has attempted this way of integrating film and theatre before. We had to start from scratch and find it out ourselves, so it was a real learning curve. We wanted to be sure that the 3D aspect didn’t become too gimmicky and were very careful to use it as functionally as possible. We decided it would work very well for creating the sunken garden itself, so when we go into the garden and meet the people that have disappeared, we literally extend the stage in the film and vice versa. The film interacts with the people on stage so the world within the film and the world on stage are really one in the same.
You’ve recently won the Grawemeyer Award , one of the most prestigious awards for a living composer. Has this changed things for you?
Around the announcement of the award it was a little crazy, with lots of interviews and publicity. I’m hugely honoured to win and amazed by the reach of the prize across the world – it definitely helps to bring attention to my work, and hopefully means that more people will have the opportunity to dive in!