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Drama at the opera

Wednesday, 28th May 2008

Stephen Pettitt celebrates the new wave of masterful British productions

At around the same time English National Opera took to the stage of the Young Vic — an association that one hopes will prove permanent — with Daniel Kramer’s brilliant new production of Birtwistle’s first opera, the chilling Punch and Judy. Amazingly, the same opera was seen at Covent Garden’s Linbury Theatre at the beginning of March in Music Theatre Wales’s acclaimed production. Punch takes on a sinister, bizarre reality, his ritualistic killing spree rewarded not by justice and execution but by the hand of Pretty Polly, his lust-object. A disturbing thought to mull over at Bertorelli’s: evil does sometimes pay.

Birtwistle’s problem in gaining widespread recognition in the past has been that his language has been thought of as modernist, whatever that might mean today. But now, at last, complexity of manner no longer seems to be a barrier. Maybe the tyranny of the new simplicity has come to an end. In any case an effective, relevant opera should be independent of any -isms. The job of a composer is to find the language which suits what he or she has to say best.

Complexity, musical and otherwise, seems like second nature to the Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth, which was probably why she chose David Lynch’s surreal 1997 film Lost Highway as the model for her opera of that name, first seen in 2003 and staged by ENO at the Young Vic just before Punch and Judy. The reception accorded the opera was admittedly mixed, but it’s a healthy sign of our times that we should at least have had the chance to see such a work for ourselves. Meanwhile, back across the river at the Barbican there was a concert performance of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater, premièred in 2006, a work which addresses dark matters — war, rape — against the force of parental love. Saariaho’s alchemic mix of lyricism and colour and her instinctive responses to the dramatic situation make this a very powerful work indeed. And equally powerful by all accounts was the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, whose story revolves around Federico Garcia Lorca and his play about the 19th-century revolutionary Mariana Pineda — both political martyrs. Political engagement is part of the contemporary operatic landscape, and that’s no bad thing either.