MELBOURNE FESTIVAL: Lagrime di San Pietro

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL 2018
Lagrime di San Pietro
Los Angeles Master Chorale
6 October 2018 
Melbourne Festival
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall , Melbourne Recital Centre
to 7 October
www.festival.melbourne

 

One of my favourite sounds in a theatre is silence. The silence of anticipation that calms the ever-constant brain chatter. The silence that meditation promises. The silence of the full audience between the 21 madrigals in Lagrime di San Pietro was almost as exquisite as the work itself.

The Los Angeles Master Chorale are 21 voices singing 21 seven-part Renaissance madrigals a capella (no instruments). The music was written in 1594 by Orlando di Lasso (1530–1594). He died weeks after finishing the piece and it’s filled with every unfulfilled emotion that he needed to express before his death.

Set to the poetry of Luigi Tansillo (1510–1568), it’s about Saint Peter’s grief when he pretended not to know Jesus on the day of his crucifixion. That’s a lot of complex shame, self-hatred and hope for forgiveness. Would we deny the person we loved most to save ourselves? Could we forgive ourselves or let them forgive us?

Led by conductor Jenny Wong, the singers almost casually wander onto the stage. Their costumes look like they were asked to choose something casual from their home wardrobe.

Then they sing. It’s as close to perfect as imperfect human voices can be. They sing as one. No voice stands out. It’s like each singer sings only to support the 20 others. No part dominates, and the remarkably consistent tone is helped by there always being a male voice singing with the women and a female voice singing with the men.

That alone would have been glorious, but it’s only the beginning.

Director Peter Sellars and artistic director Grant Gershon find the human in what’s so often presented as serious and reverent choral music.

When Sellars directs opera and music, I don’t think he sees a finished product that needs to sound magnificent. He seems to start where the composer started – with an empty page, doubt and a need to find a way to express what they were feeling. Music and art come from same emotions that every one of us has and his work finds the “just like me” in the complexity of music. Find the human connection and the emotion and the music follows.

This chorus of singers move. The movement isn’t dance; it’s relatively simple and often obviously demonstrative, and it doesn’t take long to realise that Danielle Domingue Sumi’s designs are made for each performer and have as many shades of emotional gray as the content being sung.

None are dancers, but they move like they sing; no one stands out, no one seems awkward or out of place. They move with each other while bringing themselves into every moment.

While they are always performing as a group, every note, movement and expression feels personal and that could be why the audience found the clear and soul-calming silence.

Lagrime di San Pietro is extraordinary. There’s one more performance tonight.

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL: Desdemona

Desdemona
Melbourne Festival & UnionPay International
17 October 2015
Sumner Theatre
to 19 October
www.festival.melbourne

Sydney season: 23, 24 & 25 October. Details: sydneyfestival.org.au.

Desdemona. Melbourne Festival. Photo by Mark Allan

The Melbourne Festival production of Peter Sellars Desdemona sold out. With reactions ranging from  "tedious" – there were walk outs and some impressive snoring – to genius, it's been talked about a lot. I'm in the genius camp. I was engrossed, fascinated and enchanted by a work that's equally as meditative and relaxing as it's demanding and forceful.

American Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison and Malian musician Rokia Traoré wrote their reflection on Shakespeare's Othello via email.

Set in an afterlife where people become their true selves, the now-adult Desdemona meets the woman who brought her up, her mother's slave Barbary – referenced once in the text. Traoré sings as Barbary, with two female backing vocalists and two male musicians, and Tina Benko speaks Morrison's text as Desdemona.

The contrast is far more than the obvious black and white. Traoré sings like there's nothing guarding her emotions. It's music that is felt more than heard and the projected translations of her songs are barely necessary. Benko relies on the meanings of her words. Her Desdemona is trying to break free of what she wanted to see as true love and hides behind a wall of anger and confusion that is torn down even when she doesn't want it to be.  Both remarkable performances feed the other without diluting each other's power or story.

In this place they are able to see their relationship through the eyes of the other. Barbary – which wasn't her real name; it was what the English called Africa – saw herself as a slave, with no rank and no choice, who did whatever child The Desdemona wanted. Desdemona saw Barbary as her real mother, her best friend, and the only person who loved and comforted her. She also saw her position as young woman "on the cusp of unmarriageability" as one where her choices were as limited as Barbary's. However, she wanted to love like Barbary and chose a man worthy of her. She married Othello, the only black man she'd met.

Desdemona also meets and shares her meetings with the other dead, including her servant Emilia, her mother, Othello's mother and Othello. Knowing the story helps, but this work is about the relationships between characters so it's not necessary

I haven't read Othello well, but this production let me see it from perspectives that I had never have thought of. And this is the heart of how Sellars creates theatre.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

And here's an extra reflection on its director Peter Sellars.

In the middle of an amazing Melbourne Festival program – one that has taken me by surprise – my favourite hour, so far,  has been Peter Sellars's artist talk on a Friday afternoon.

I've been a fan of Sellars since I saw his production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, set in New York's Trump Towers, on the tv in the 1990s. (Who'd have thought then what Trump'd be trying to do now). Even on a tiny screen with subtitles, I was totally engaged in a story that felt like it was written for the world I lived in. It made me look at opera differently.

Then I discovered his work with composer John Adams (I want every opera – every theatre – experience to leave me feeling like Nixon in China does) and was beyond excited when he was apointed director of the 2002 Adelaide Festival. That appointment didn't have a happy ending, but when I asked Sellars about it, he said that surely being rejected by a dull conservative government for programming community and Indigenous work was a good thing.

At his talk, he told us how Desdemona started many years ago as at a long lunch with Morrison and him mentioning Othello's inherent racism and it being a text past its "use-by date". Toni had some things to say about that. Sellars went on to create an Othello set in Washington, just after Obama was elected, and Morrison responded with Desdemona.

Sellars – who has a mohawk perfect for a receding hairline, wears bright print shirts and beads, and hugs every person he meets like they are a long-lost friend –  talks about art as using collaboration, skill, craft and sophistication to create a space that preciously didn't exist.

This space, in his case a stage, is where people come to meet and discuss. It's a space that defines what it means to be human and lets us see the world from another person's perspective. It's all about perspective. He says how one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist, so theatre is about finding ways to share other perspectives and find the common and inclusive place where we are all human.

Or, "It's like telling your father something they don't want to hear."

I have days where I am sick of the abuse and eyerolling I get when I talk about missing voices on stage, discuss the politics and assumptions undermining a production, or despair that I want theatre to be something that questions rather than distracts us for an hour or so. I have plenty of distractions in my life, I want to see theatre that shows me something I haven't seen or thought about before; I want to see the world though someone else's eyes.

As his perspective of Othello changed when he saw it through Toni's eyes, Sellars invites us to see Desdemona through the eyes we may never have thought of seeing it through.

Nixon in China opens tonight.

Victorian Opera's production of Nixon in China opens tonight.

One of my biggest theatre regrets was not seeing the original version (1987) at the Adelaide Festival in 1992. Maybe because I couldn't afford it, but more likely that I had yet to discover John Adams's music and Peter Sellars's direction; after all, who wants to see an opera about a politician getting out of a plane.

Then in 2011, the New York Metropolitan Opera got the 1987 gang back and filmed it for their HD series. Josephine Giles and I sat in the Nova cinema for four hours on a February morning  and watched production filmed in January.

It was as close as we could be to being there and it was unforgettable in a way that still tarnishes most opera that I've seen recently. Here's Josephine's review.

And here's a 2011 interview with Sellars and Adams.




1992 was also the year I didn't miss Einstein on the Beach and I'll be seeing it in the same theatre in July this year. If you're planning to go (details), you should see Nixon as well (details). Adams music is often dumped in the same minimalist category as Glass; they don't sound anything like each other, but if you like Glass, you may love Adams.

And even if Vic Opera don't reach the heights of the Met, this is still an incredible chance to see this work performed.

Guest Review: Nixon in China

Nixon in China
New York Metropolitan Opera
22 February 2011
Nova Cinema
to 3 March

Review by Josephine Giles

Cinema Nova has been showing the Met Opera in HD series since its launch a few years ago. The seasons always contain many well known and popular operas, showcasing singers, orchestras and directors that are unarguably the best of the best. But, for me, the real value of the program lies in the opportunity to experience operas that are rarely, if ever, presented in Australia.

Nixon in China is one such piece, and is a must see for anyone interested in opera, or even theatre for that matter. My disappointment at the mediocrity of much contemporary opera leads me sometimes to the point of giving up hope for the survival of the art form, but Nixon is an antidote to such despair. Long term collaborators Peter Sellars and John Adams, through their intelligent and superlatively creative treatment of a world changing event, successfully answer the perennial question “why opera?” with “this could only be an opera”.

First produced in Houston in1987, Nixon in China has taken 24 years to reach the Met stage, and this production, recorded just two weeks ago, marks 39 years to the month since the historic event of the title. Director Peter Sellars (yes, the one who was simply too big for the Adelaide Festival) suggested the subject matter to Adams and produced the premiere season. Since then the production has not been significantly altered, but progressively tinkered with to take into account changes in the cast plus the varying requirements of opera theatres around the world. This simulcast essentially recreates a 2006 English National Opera production, with adjustments made for the massive stage, expanded chorus, and the extra resources available at the cashed-up Met.

Sellars also directs the simulcast. Its seamless mix of full-stage shots and close-ups left me wondering just how many cameras it took to film this stage production in such detail – and where the hell did they hide them all? More lingering though is admiration for the absolute focus of the performers, keeping in mind that a simulcast leaves no chance for retakes if one is to blink or cough at an inopportune moment.

Running at almost 4 hours (with 2 intervals), this opera would appear to be not for the faint hearted. However my exhaustion at the end owed more to do with the emotional power of the opera than its length. Composer and conductor John Adams, with librettist Alice Goodman, has created an opera that communicates a profound humanism – not easy when you’re dealing with polarising political leaders like Richard (Tricky Dicky) Nixon, Kissinger, Chairman and Madame Mao, and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai.

As with Adams’s other masterpiece, the opera Doctor Atomic (about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project), Nixon in China starts with, then moves  beyond the well documented facts of the historical into a poetic imagining of the inner lives of the protagonists. It begins with comparatively theatrical naturalism, accompanied by the now familiar harmonic and rhythmic patterns of Glass inspired minimalism: the staging progressively becomes more surreal, as the music – sometimes surprisingly lyrical – takes on different flavours, including wistful references to the music of the 40s. This all culminates in a moving meditation on the nature, responsibility, and cost of power. The final scene, exploring the doubts and frailty of the leaders, all of whom were on the brink of their political or physical demise, is devastating. I would never have imagined I could be moved to tears of sympathy for such a bunch – but I admit – I wept.

Heading the cast is baritone James Maddalena, who created the title role in 1987. Now in his mid-fifties, Maddelena at times struggles with the prolonged vocal demands of the music, but he embodies the character of Nixon so perfectly it is impossible to imagine any other singer in the role. The other principals unfailingly match Maddelena’s high standards, with spectacular singing and detailed, nuanced acting.

The only criticism I have of the simulcast is the now ubiquitous interviews with the singers as they exit the stage at interval. Akin to thrusting a microphone in to the face of someone who has just swum a 1500m Olympic Final and asking how they feel, these interviews are embarrassing and cringe-making.  I just wish they would leave the poor singers alone so they can get back to their dressing rooms for a pee, or even a stiff drink, if that is what they need. I can see the Met is trying to humanise opera singers in the minds of the public, and it can be interesting to hear these singers talking in accents far removed from their stage personas. Fascinating too are the shots of backstage at the Met between acts. However, in a piece as profound as Nixon in China the interviews are a regrettable interruption of the magic created on stage.

  

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Nixon in China at the Nova

A screen will never capture the experience of live theatre, but I didn't get to New York for the Met's recent revival production of Nixon in China and I was too poor to see it when the original came to the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1992. Given I saw Einstein on the Beach in the same year in Melbourne, I've regretted missing Nixon ever since.

But the Met have been filming their operas and Nixon is on at the Nova for the next week or so. I'm excited.

The exceptionally wonderful Peter Sellars is the director and John Adam's score is a minimal masterpiece.

If you loved Tomorrow in a year at last year's MIAF and Philip Glass's operas, Nixon in China is a must.

I saw it this morning (Jo Giles is writing a review). BEST four hours I've spent in a long time. Even on a screen, it's an experience that left me not wanting to breathe in case I missed something. This is what opera is meant to be. And you get to see what the Met is like backstage. I'd see it again.

Here's some info about it.

Here's how to book.

This is the kind of production that might change your expectations of what theatre, music and opera can be.