Rituals and red herrings
Rodney Milnes
Therese (Covent Garden and Radio 3) An Actor's Revenge (Old Vic) Patience (Coliseum) You have to admire John Tavener's refusal to compromise. Covent Garden was right to commission, an opera from him; his pre-1973 work suggested a powerful theatrical imagination, albeit of a ritualistic nature. What he has come up with is a barely stageable spiritual meditation on the subject of Ste Therese of Lisieux lasting over one and a half hours without interval.
One can imagine circumstances in which the piece could make a strong impression — in Westminster Cathedral, say, which presupposes that those hearing it would a) be in search of spiritual regeneration and Is) not paying Opera House prices for the privilege. You also have to admire the Royal Opera for refusing to compromise: they gave Tavener his head and have ended up with a pretty unrevivable work — as they did with Henze's We Come to the River. . Amidst all this admiration one must question their commissioning policy; are any guide-lines of a practical nature suggested? The ritualistic content of Therese is evident in the way everything happens three times and in slow motion. Given the running time (shorter than that suggested in the score by about a quarter of an hour, partly due to Edward Downes's tactful pruning of the pauses for silence), this may suggest that not a great deal happens physically, and it doesn't. Rimbaud accuses Therese of spiritual arrogance rather more than three times; the Sicilian gigolo Pranzini murders three women, but slowly; Christ Conducts the dying Therese on three mystical journeys. This involves much musical repetition — no more so than in the average 19thcentury opera you may say, though there are questions of proportion. Tavener's repeated music is by no means 'difficult' to listen to, and both the formal organisation of the score and his control of the slow pace command the utmost respect.
But two things do worry me. One is the lack, in an opera-house context, of anything so vulgar as dramatic cause and effect. perard MeLarnon's short libretto pinpoints various ideas: the contrast between Therese's initial withdrawal from the world and her final commitment to spend eternity doing God's work on earth; the notion of Rimbaud as devil's advocate and his exit line 'Saints are the strong ones, artists are no longer needed'; Therese embracing the mass murderer as her child. But there is nothing to connect these random images verbally, nor are those of first. world war Flanders and second world war Belsen drawn into a dramatic context and there is a danger of their appearing merely modish. If it was to be the music's job to weld these unconnected ideas into a coherent dramatic entity, then it has failed, despite many exciting but similarly incoherent gestures. No, a meditative, not a dramatic work.
The second worry is the extreme technical difficulty. Again, perhaps the lack of compromise is admirable but as written Therese must be impossible to perform accurately. A scat-like duet for Therese and Rimbaud has had to be turned into a solo for the latter. Despite drastic editing of the published score, with many transpositions up and down to avoid innumerable top Cs and unlikely excursions into the bass clef for the soprano, the demands made on the singers are Herculean and must militate against frequent revivals. But they do increase admiration for all those taking part — Vivien Townley coping heroically with what is still a role of Elektra-1 ike strenuousness, Keith Lewis wonderfully mellifluous in the high tenor role of Christ, Joseph Rouleau (Pranzini) growling his thricerepeated single line impressively, and Robert Tear making light of the difficulties of Rimbaud's role. The contribution of the small, hand-picked chorus is beyond all praise as is Edward Downes's cool-headed 'control from the pit.
It cannot be easy to stage spiritual ecstacy, and David William's production seemed practical rather than inspired. Alan Barlow's set has been described as the interior of a skull; its pieces suggested hipbones rather more powerfully, with the main exit and entrance between them, but that may well be a blind alley up which it would be unwise to pursue red herrings. Or it may be the solution to the whole piece, in which case I am not sure I Want to know.
Minoru Miki's new opera, commissioned by the English Music Theatre (EMT) and premiered at the Old Vic last week, opens like Therese with slow gong strokes, but there all similarities cease. This is a narrative opera almost to a fault; the unfolding 01 the story — the same as that used for Ichikawa's film of the same title — leaves almost too little time for lyrical expansion. The protagonist is a Kabuki Onnegata (up-market term for drag) actor who ritualistically wreaks revenge on the, yes, three vill ainswho caused his parents' deaths. The action is framed by scenes in the Buddhist monastery to which he has retired, his mission completed, and where he relives his exploits — structural shades of Britten's Church Parables. Although the score leaves the matter of casting open, in Cohn Graham's' impressive production Kenneth Bowen sings the role throughout (brilliantly) and his younger self is mimed by the Royal Ballet's Stephen Jefferies without the slightest suggestion of archness. Miki's attractive and dramatic score bridges the gap between East and West. wholly Eastern in the Kabuki scenes, at times almost like Delius in Hassan-mood elsewhere. His word-setting in free. Britten-esque arioso is ideally fluent (the interconnections between this opera and Curlew River are most intriguing) and the work moves well. The big set-pieces when they come— soprano scent 1, love duet, death scene etc —are very luscious. If there are any problems they arise from James Kirkup's too wordy, repetitive and at times bathetic libretto: lines tend to say things that the music could and should say better. But this is an eminently revivable new opera; whether or not EMT will survive to revive it is quite another and highly investigable matter. It certainly deserves to. Steuart Bedford draws a wide variety of sounds from a small chamber orchestra including three Japanese continuo instruments, and Mr Graham and his loyal band of EMT survivors (strengthened by Marie Slorach as the unwitting instrument of her beloved aCtor's revenge) • unfold the tale of blood and thunder with whole-hearted conviction. All that was wanting was Mrs Whitehouse effecting a citizen's arrest of Mr Kirkup at the final curtain, hut I suppose you can't have everything. John Cox's ten-year-old production of Patience remains almost total joy; I write 'almost' because in so large a house sonie of Gilbert's lines have inevitably to be overpointed. In 1969 Mr Cox toyed with the idea of turning the aesthetes into flower children; how wise he was to resist the temptation — fads fade fast and full circle is soon turned. Now words like 'perception . 'transcendental' and 'mystic' are back with us and Patience lives. Sandra Dugdale's sharp little Milkmaid, Derek HammonStroud's slyly hypocritical Bunthorne and Anne Collins's lovable Lady Jane (her 'cello solo is still one of the funniest things to be seen on the London stage) have been joined by Alan Opie as a wonderfully fawous Grosvenor. How timeless Gilbert 's satire on frauds, poseurs and trendies is; Spectator readers should not miss this shamelessly, nay healthily, philistine enter
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