ARTS
Opera
Mystical experience
Rodney Milnes
The Mask of Orpheus (Coliseum) This is one of those occasions when one is grateful to be writing for a weekly rather than a daily paper. An overnight notice of Birtwistle's new piece — 'a lyric tragedy' according to the libretto, which implies a measure of traditional dramatic form to which it most certainly does not aspire, a mystico-religious celebration being a fairer description — would have been a very bad-tempered affair. But even a breathing space of 24 hours affords the opportunity to start sorting out what has been hurled so uncompromisingly at one.
First the bad temper shared, I suspect, by many in the first-night audience, who received the performance with that undeni- ably polite but grudging warmth so typical of the British when faced by something new, challenging and patently 'important'. The piece examines and meditates at some length upon every known version of the Orpheus myth, with episodes from the doings of Dionysus thrown in for good measure. Time is a movable feast — we go backwards and forwards and there is much repetition. This is what is sometimes known as `ritual' — so often a euphemism for 'jolly boring', which was not altogether the case on this occasion: my eyelids flickered not once.
`Not altogether' because impatience, in- deed frustration, sharpened the edge of potentially benumbed reactions. The ac- tion is extremely complex. There are three physical representations of each of the three main characters, Orpheus, Eurydice and Aristaeus, two singers and one mime. All are masked. Fine, but I swear that I sat for nearly four hours in the Coliseum hearing scarcely more than a couple of dozen words, and those not consecutive. There are three reasons for this: first, some of the words are in an invented language; second, it is one of those curious facts of operatic life that if singers are masked, it is doubly difficult to hear what they are singing; thirdly, amplification, which has a similarly muddying effect on diction.
All the singers are miked, and the sounds they make emerge (I think, though this may depend on where one is sitting) from the same sets of speakers: add the masks, and it is virtually impossible to tell which character, or which representation of which character, should be commanding one's attention, at least until one has sorted out the way each individual singer moves when singing (some shake about a bit, some don't). But since many of the voices come from off-stage, even this is not too helpful. And I should warn potential punters that Peter Zinovieff's libretto as published by Universal is no help what- soever: it is so full of maps and diagrams and drawings and appendices (20 pages of them) that it would take a good week's close study to work out what is actually being sung — and this monument to high-Sixties-pseudery costs £6. The synop- sis in the Coliseum programme, however, is excellent. Read it first, at least twice. Without that you will be hopelessly at sea.
But should one really have to read a synopsis before seeing an opera? Is not some immediacy of communication, at however basic a level (like verbal) desir- able if not essential? One could see Parsifal twice a week for a lifetime without absorb- ing everything that it contains, but one's first experience of it, synopsis or no, would yield — indeed did — something. The first experience of The Mask reveals, as they say, its beauties but reluctantly. In addi- tion, amplification of voices has dealt a death blow to the intelligent musical, and I should hate to see the same happening to opera: it removes one strand of the opera composer's traditional craft — balance. Somebody, in this case four persons stand- ing at the back of the stalls at their consoles, can just twiddle the knobs, even though this does not guarantee audibility. It seemed to me that if every bit of electronic equipment had been thrown out of the theatre, if the performance had been live rather than canned, if the singers had been communicating with the audience rather than with machines, then we might have been getting somewhere.
All of which will be thought trivial and irrelevant by the creators of The Mask, and rightly so. They are not in the business of purveying opera as she is known. This Orpheus is as much a reform opera, a challenge to existing priorities, as Gluck's. Gluck challenged singers' opera; Birtwistle is challenging 'literary' opera just as Buso- ni was in Doctor Faust, about which I went so spectacularly over the top three weeks ago (without regrets). Even more than Doctor Faust, The Mask is primarily a musical experience, and probably has little business to be in an opera-house anyway; its provenance in Ancient Greek drama betokens a mystical rather than a dramatic event, though it might be noted that Greek drama brought dramatic benefits as well. More than once the evening called to mind Birtwistle's contribution to the NT's Ores- teia, one of the most riveting theatrical events of the last decade, and made me regret the lack of the rigorous discipline imposed by Tony Harrison's text.
But the music itself is quite overwhelm- ing: Birtwistle is after all one of the most richly gifted and original composers work- ing today. The cast, led by Philip Lang- ridge and Jean Rigby, is beyond all praise. David Freeman's production is — er ritualistic in a not altogether unexpected way. It looks fabulous in Jocelyn Herbert's designs, marvellously lit by Andy Phillips. Whether or not Birtwistle's Orpheus is as crucial a reform opera as Gluck's I will come back and tell you in 100 years' time.
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