Hiroshima - the scarier scenario we face today

Seventy three years ago today, a bomb fell on Hiroshima.  Many official reasons why, such as ending the war and saving the lives of POWS. Whatever, the war did end and Japan is not militarily aggressive.  But consider the Bomb in wider geo-political terms. Who was the enemy who needed to be stopped.  Soviet troops occupied Eastern Europe, including Germany and Austria.  What was to stop them pouring into North China and Japan ? Tensions between Russia and Japan went back long before the first Russo-Japanese war in 1904-5 when the Japanese decisively crushed the Russian Navy at Port Arthur and at sea.  Amazing,considering that Japan had been feudal and rural barely 50 years before, and that the Russian fleet was state of the art, as powerful as the British Navy. 

Territories like Sakhalin are still disputed today. So what was to stop a Russian surge against defeated Japan, thus threatening the US, Britain and the whole balance of power in the Pacific ?  Not for nothing did the US send thousands of elite Marines to North China after 1945.  Ostensibly, they were there to supervise the withdrawal of Japanese troops and support the Goumindang Government. But North China was a stronghold of the Chinese Communist Party who were dependent on the Soviet Union.   At least the CCP had the sense to split with Russia as soon as they could (1957)

Wars are not waged by direct means alone. Another lesson we can learn from Hiroshima, and one scarily relevant today.  With Putin, we see an upsurge in aggression not just through coventional means, as in Syria, but by technology and its ability to reshape the way we think. Destroying democractic societies from within, spreading fear and ignorance, controlling key stooges to overthrow their own heritage, the masses easily persuaded.  Why bother with bombs when you can use "the people"against themselves?

 

Bubbling brew : Turnage Hibiki, Prom Ravel Debussy Kazushi Ono

Mark-Anthony Turnage Hibiki (2014) at the BBC Proms, with Kazushi Ono and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sally Matthews, Mihoko Fujimura, the New London Children's Choir and the Finchley Children's Music Group, preceded by Debussy and Ravel Piano Concerto in G major with Inon Barnatan, so beautifully played that even someone like me, more into voice and orchestra, could throroughly enjoy.

Ono conducted the premiere of Turnage's Hibiki in Tokyo in December 2016 with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra of which he is Music Director.  Hibiki is a substantial work for large orchestra, two soloists and childrens' choir. According to the publishers Boosey & Hawkes, it "offers consolation after loss – whether from war, earthquake or tsunami". That's a tall order, almost impossible to fulfil.  Consolation is trivial band aid in the face of such extreme horror.   It's meaningless unless we reflect on the causes of catastrophe and resolve that such things should never, as far as possible, happen again.

Numerous Japanese writers, composers, film makers and artists have reflected on and examined the issues arising from war and nuclear annihilation.  Indeed, you probably can't be an East Asian  intellectual and not ponder 150 years of war and traumatic social change, not only in Japan but in China and the rest of Asia.  Masao Ohki's Hiroshima Symphony, written only 7 years after the bombs fell, is graphically descriptive (read more here) . Ikuma Dan's Hiroshima Symphony (1985) is even more sophisticated.  It's an important piece of world significance. Please read more here)

There's no reason why western composers shouldn't engage with these subjects. We're all part of humanity.  But it's difficult to approach specifically Japanese aspects without an understanding of the cultural, social and historical background.  Mark-Anthony Turnage is good on music with social conscience. Once I got over the shock value of Anna Nicole, I grew to love its insights into consumer-obsessed society and the degradation of those who buy into the scam. Read more HERE  But Anna Nicole is a western icon, and Turnage likes Americana. That doesn't necessarily mean he can't write about other cultures, but I'm not sure how to take Hibiki. Does it penetrate much beneath the surface? Is it enough to address the many long-term implications of Fukushima simply by repeating the name over and over? I'm no composer but I'd rather that the music itself spoke, not the words.  No disrespect to Turnage. Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem had so little to do with Japan that he really should not have compromised himself by taking the money.  It would probably take a Beethoven or Bach to write something truly transcendant. "Consolation" isn't enough.

Kazushi Ono did Turnage's Hibiki more than justice. From the BBC SO he drew some very committed playing. They don't do as much Turnage as they should and this is a bit more than typical Turnage, so all honours to them.  Hibiki unfolds over seven sections, like a postcard book..  But Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't actually lead to Tohoku or the Tsunami or to Fukushima.  Natural disasters aren't man made or specific to any one country.  Nuclear power on its own isn't evil, it's misused and abused. As anyone who's ever watched Japanese movies should know.  See my piece on Godzilla and the Tsunami,  The seven parts together don't cohere. This weakens the impact of the whole and undercuts the claim that it's an act of consolation.  Wisely, Ono marked the breaks with long silences, so each section can be heard alone, without a thread.  Unfortunately, substantial parts of this year's Proms audiences are obsessed with clapping any chance they get. They don't care enough about music to pay attention and listen.

The first two sections are named after Iwate and Miyaga, two of the areas hit by the 2011 Tsunami.  Blocks of sound bubble in the first movement, in jerky ostinato with nice jazzy trumpet calls, high pitched winds and swathes of strings. Oddly cheerful! A long ominous wail marks the start of the second section, suggesting perhaps the flow of the waves rolling onto land. No-one will ever forget the footage caught on film or the frightening silence, broken only by crushing debris.  The timpani pound, brasses wail and the orchestra plays a long line of multiple fragments and layers.  Fearsome growls and the sound of a bell.   There certainly is scope for a piece in which music could translate the idea of multiple fragments and layers of density, flowing and churning in different sequence, but Turnage can't develop the concept in the space of a few minutes.

The third section "Running" represents a poem "Mother Burning" by Sou Sakon which describes the poet running from flames. But the mother, following behind, is engulfed.  Rapid fragments of words and sound, the two soloists singing lines that intersect rather than connect.  Turnage's thing for percussion and screaming brass is used to good effect, the vocal lines more choppily employed: but that's what happens when you're running for your life and can't take long breaths.  The childrens choirs sing an adaptation of a Japanese children's song similar to "Twinkle, twinkle Little Star" The English accents of the young singers, singing in Japanese, add a surreal touch, more poignant than if they were singing in a language they'd normally speak.  The melody is taken up by the mezzo, Mihoku Fujimura, a much welcome regular visitor to the UK.

Suntory Dance , the central movement, makes a striking diversion from the threnodies before and after.  It's also the best section, so good that it could act as a stand-alone concert piece.  Here, Turnage's facility for strong brass and percussion comes to the fore: quirky, wayward rhythms, angular blocks and more busy, bubbling figures from which the idea of "dance" might come.  I don't know why "Suntory", which is the name of the concert hall and of the company that financed it.  They manufacture alcoholic drinks, and one of their big brands is named Hibiki, "Japanese Harmony". The piece is so lively that it could be an  anthem for the company, used in encores and social occasions. So much for the BBC translation that Hibiki just means  "beautiful sound".

After this interlude, darkness returns. Brooding timpani and moaning brass, string lines shining with metallic edge. Lovely woodwind passages: Fujimura sings lines from texts from Monzaemon Chikamatsu’s The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, a  Bunraku drama from 1703. It's such a classic that it's been adapted for cinema, its tale of doomed love a recurrent meme, though what connection this has to Hiroshima or to the Tsunami, I don't know.  Much has been made in the publicity material for Turnage's Hibiki about the Mahler connection, but frankly I cannot hear any resemblance to Das Lied von der Erde,.  But the real subject of Das Lied von der Erde is Mahler himself, and his metaphysics  The orientalism in that piece reflects the original poems Mahler used and adapted for his own purposes. And in any case, they weren't Japanese but Chinese.  No doubt much will be made of this in the media by those who don't really know Das Lied von der Erde.  Double-dose cultural appropriation.

The final section, for orchestra and children's voices, is swirling abstraction, the word "Fukushima" repeated, almost mechanically.  Turnage's Hibiki is good listening but it  doesn't really hold together. The parts are greater than the sum, aside from the vivacious Suntory Dance.   That's excellent, and parts 1, 2 and 4 work well together musically, but parts 3, 4 and6 are weak : No fault of the performers, though.  It's not nearly near the level of Turnage's Remembering : in memoriam Evan Scofield, a work of heartfelt sincerity. (Read more about that HERE)

Ikuma Dan Hiroshima Symphony - the finest Hiroshima music of all

Ikura Dan's Symphony no 6 "Hiroshima" (1985). The photo above isn't Hiroshima, or Nagasaki, but a still from the movie The Last War (世界大戦争) (Toho, 1961) about an apocalypse in a Cold War future.  Frighteningly prescient now when trolls play power games with nuclear weapons for toys.  Ikura Dan (1924-2001) was an aristocrat from a wealthy samurai family.   His forebears were part of the Zaibatsu, who created the modern Japanese economy and banking system. His grandfather was Baron Takuma Dan, boss of the Mitsui Corporation, and Prime Minister of Japan.  Born into privilege, Ikuma Dan had all the advantages that his position offered him. He had a good education, both in Japanese and international culture. Yet he lived in times of unprecedented social change. When he was six, his grandfather was assassinated by right-wing extremists.  He lived through the wars against China, though he was not a combatant.  Like many Japanese intellectuals he had an affinity for Chinese culture. He died in Suzhou.

The western media thinks almost exclusively in English-language terms, blanking out the experience of other cultures and peoples.  It's not easy to learn about non-western cultures, but try we must, for the distorted imbalance of western media blinds us, trapping us in ignorance, bigotry and war.  Ikuma Dan is a good point from which to start. Many composers -- west as well as east -- wrote music for film, in order to make a living.  In any case, in Japan, cinema was an art form almost from the beginning, creating masterpieces of poetic power.   Even Godzilla is more than schlock! (read my Godzilla and the Tsunami HERE).  Being independently wealthy, Dan didn't write much for fiml, concentrating on orchestral music -- even symphonies -- opera, ballet and chamber music.

Shrill whirring marks the start of Dan's Hiroshima Symphony. Suddenly a blast, then silence and the eerie cry of a lone woodwind instrument. Swirling, turbulent figures ascend upwards. Tense, angular figures. Fierce ostinato, interspersed with themes where staccato notes  fly in flurries.  Long, sweeping lines in the strings, reaching out as if searching, yet also smothering the other layers in the music. Yet other textures emerge. The searching lines clear to reveal the high-pitched solo woodwind, calling into space. It's intriguing. A nohkan is a flute with a high tessitura that can range over two octaves and carry across a large performing space.   Dominant chords for strings, brass and winds in more or less unison return, but the lone woodwind struggles against them. Trumpets scream strident lines, marked by the thud of timpani. The strings soar ever upwards gradually breaking from the relentless ostinato.  A harp sounds, introducing a new motif, also soaring but more subtle.  Delicate hints of lyrical melody peak out from the gloom, and the woodwind reappears, now more confident, singing its strange melody. It's much more interesting than the orchestral lines with their very western timbre, which dominates for many measures.  Significantly, the nohkan was invented in the fifteenth century, long before the modern concert orchestra.   The nohkan will not be beaten. It screams, holding legato at a very high pitch, Very dramatic and highly original.  Not concertante in the least but a battle of wits between large forces and a wayward, elusive solo instrument  played with such intensity that it holds the orchestra at bay.  A descent into ominous semi-silence.

Zingy zig-zag figures fly fiercely as the second movement, an Allegro ritmico, begins. The pace is fleet, dizzying lines giving way to oddly dance-like snippets, broken by violent staccato. Pastiche "Japonisme" stepping rhythms and crashing cymbals alternate with trumpets and heavier plodding figures, possibly meant to sound borderline vulgar.  Tempi grow faster, almost to whirlwind. Suddenly, the  nohkan breaks through, the music now properly Japanese.   Imagine  a bird singing in a wilderness, or a stream trickling in the forest around a temple.  Frenzied figures return, hurtling on in new directions.  The orchestra  swells up again, highlighted with drums, trumpets, bells and crashing percussion. Something is changing, somehow.

The Andante, marked sostenuto e funebre, is an elegy. and particularly sophisticated. From a steady opening,  the woodwind returns, but now is joined by another even more "Japanese" woodwind, a hollow-toned instrument called a shinobue, used in ttraditional folk and ritual music.  At first this sings fitfully, in broken phrases, overwhelmed by the swirling forces in the orchestra.  Soon, though, it gathers force, as if inspired by the more dominant woodwind. Together they dialogue, pushing back the "shadows" in the orchestra. The hollow-voiced woodwind now sings more than brief snatches. Its melody is like an ancient Japanese folk tune, fragile, yet strong enough to assert itself against the orchestra around it.   It seems timeless.  Now the "voice" becomes human. A soprano replicates the lines of the woodwinds.  She sings long, searching lines like the lines of the strings earlier in the symphony.  the writing for brass is interesting, too - smokey and mysterious, no longer strident.  It's as if all the elements that had gone before were being combined and renewed . A crescendo builds up, and the orchestra swells up, singing   I don't know what this means, but the effect is inspiring. Hence the photo here of doves being released before the bombed building that is the memorial at Hiroshima.  Fluttering wings symbolize the triumph of hope over hate.  Perhaps, a new, more positive dawn is emerging, and it's beautiful.

Frankly, I don't know why Penderecki's Threnody gets so much publicity.  It's fame lies in its title, but that  title is bogus and exploitative.  It wasn't written "for the victims of Hiroshima", but was dreamed up for a premiere   As music, it's also not nearly as well written as Ohki and Dan's Hiroshima symphonies, which are sincere.  (Read more sbout Ohki HERE and HERE.)  Ikuma Dan';s Hiroshima is the real thing,  written by a composer who knew from personal experience what Hiroshima meant and how it connects to Japanese history and to world humanity. So let's give Ikuma Dan the honour he deserves.

If you like this, please read about Toru Takemitsu's Requiem HERE  and about Japanese art movies about war, like The Burmese Harp  HERE and  Kobayashi's three part saga The Human Condition HERE

Martyrs of Nagasaki

Seventy years ago today, on August 9th 1945, an atom bomb fell on Nagasaki.Why Nagasaki ? The most westernized city in Japan, the centre of Christianity and of foreign trade, which for centuries had been Japan's window on the world?  Perhaps the man in the photo, staring at the ruins of the Catholic Cathedral, might have pondered the irony. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't combatants, but they've fought a greater battle by reminding the world that nuclear war is not a good thing. Nuclear weapons may have proliferated, but - thank God - no nation has been crazy enough to use them.

Thus we should think of the selflessness of the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki, crucified , like Jesus Christ himself,  in February 1597. Christianity had reached Japan barely 50 years before, when Francis Xavier "Apostle to the Indies" arrived at Kagoshima in 1549. Within a very short time, the Jesuits had made hundreds of thousands of converts, helped in no small part by long-standing  inter-daimyo rivalries.  But the very growth of Christianity posed a threat to stability, so it was suppressed. Thousands escaped to Macau. Japanese craftsmen built Macau's Church of St Paul's (read more here). Quite probably Japanese DNA features in the Macanese community since officially the Chinese government didn't allow Chinese people to remain in Macau overnight.  After the Japanese invasion of China, millions of refugees poured into Macau, a tiny enclave with hardly any resources. The Bishop said God would provide, no-one should be turned away.  Some of the 16th century cannons in the Monte Fort were supposedly sold. Weapons turned, not to plough shares, but to rice.

The Martyrs of Nagasaki were killed to send a political message. Huge crowds were forced to watch their sufferings. Yet they weren't silenced. From their crosses, they sang psalms. Three of the martyrs were Japanese. One was Paul Miki, scion of a samurai family, fearless in the face of death. He's quoted as calling out to the crowd "“I am a Japanese and a brother of the Society of Jesus. I have committed no crime. The only reason I am condemned to die is that I have taught the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am happy to die for that and accept death as a great gift from my Lord.”  He asked the crowd if they saw fear on the faces of his companions. He said they didn't fear because they believed in a higher level of existence.

True Christians, like Buddhists, and indeed any people with a moral base, don't hate. They break the vicious cycle. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by campaigning against nuclear weapons, serve a higher cause.  On 29th October 1943, in Hong Kong, 32 men and one extraordinarily brave woman were beheaded. Reverend Wong Shui Poon was among them. He was 65, a Cambridge graduate and head of the Chinese Christian community. He prayed with all the prisoners, Anglican or not, and stood by them as they were executed. He was the last to die, by which time the swords were blunt. The first cuts didn't sever his head, and he continued to pray.
 

Hiroshima 70 years on, in art and music

Seventy years ago today, Hiroshima was destroyed. Never must we ever forget. Today, we are in danger of taking  Hiroshima for granted but in 1950,  Japan was still under military occupation and Japanese people weren't allowed official news of the bombing. News leaked out as small horrible hints : people who knew people who knew first hand. And the Japanese were still reeling from the shock of defeat, total carpet bombing, firestorms in cities of wooden houses. Hard news was hard to come by, but information spread by word of mouth, and by art. Novels were written, films were made, music was written. 

Above, Ghosts,  the first of the  fifteen "Hiroshima Panels " Genbaku no zu, made over the course of 32 years by Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi. Read more about them HERE. .The artists wrote "It was a procession of ghosts . In an instant, all clothing burned off of hands, faces. breasts swelled. The purple blisters on the victims soon burst and peeled off, hanging down like pieces of rags. With hands lifted half up, the victims appeared as ghosts in procession, dragging their ragged skin behind them  exhausted , rthey fell down moaning in heaps and died, one after another". Click on photo to enlarge.

In 1953, Masao Ohki (1901-1971) composed his fifth symphony, the Hiroshima Symphony, based on the first six of the panels, which were completed between 1950 and 1952. The symphony is a  carefully constructed meditation on the images, which reflects the idea of self contained panels, as if "boxes within boxes" can make sense of the chaos, the totality too hard to absorb at once. .The Prelude starts with unsettling calm, tense cello and bass pizzicatos gradually adding a sense of time ticking away urgently. Ohki is too subtle to "depict" the actual impact. Instead, the second part is a meditation in the lowest registers of winds and strings, a solo trumpet adding a sort of cry of anguished disbelief. He titles it Ghosts – it was a procession of ghosts, referring to the Maruki panel above. 

The third section of the symphony refers to the second Maruki panel, Fire, (pictured above) of which the Marukis wrote "In an instant, everything burst into flames. Even the ruins were ablaze. The dead silence of a vast desert broke. Some fell senseless under fallen debris, others  desperately tried digging out.  Everything was consumed by a crimson light. People fell and were taken by the fire".  Ohki expresses this with rapid chromatic runs and trills, tremolos and glissandi. This is the imagery of wind, and transformation for in those moments, the world  was changed forever. Another darkly meditative section Water,  develops the themes in Ghosts, before the strange and disturbing fifth section, Rainbow. Ohki quotes the description "All of a sudden black rain poured over them and then appeared a beautiful rainbow". A plaintive solo violin, then a solo clarinet evoke the unworldly half light. Ohki isn’t depicting an ordinary rainbow as such, but perhaps a surreal, inchoate response to the idea of beauty in the midst of horror. The sixth section, Boys and Girls is even more poignant.

The seventh section is Atomic desert: boundless desert with skulls. Against a background of "flat-lining" strings, keening and wailing, the disembodied sounds of flute, piccolo and clarinet rise tentatively. It’s a bizarrely abstract piece, strikingly modern, particularly when considering how Ohki had been cut off from western mainstream music for a good fifteen years since the Japanese regime, allied to the Nazis, suppressed "modern" music. The final movement, Elegy, draws in themes from the earlier sections, yet also develops them with deeper emphasis. As Morihide Katayama writes in the booklet of the CD (Takuo Yuasa, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra): "the conflict is unresolved, and whether the terror is broken down or not depends on subsequent human conscience".

Below an excellent blend of music and illustrations:  

Hiroshima - never forget. Follow the label "Hiroshima" to see all the other pieces I've written about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, related films, history and music about war.Later I'll write about Ikura Dan.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki - NEVER FORGET

Two days and thirty-one years separate the anniversary of Britain's declaration of war on Germany and the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima . But has the world learned?  Elaborate commemorations are all very well but they don't mean a thing unless they recognize that war per se is no solution to the problems of the world. In 1914 men rushed to fight the "war that would end all wars" which ended up generating an even more savage war. From cheering in London and Berlin to the mass murder of millions all round the world. Indeed, the present conflicts all over the Middle East are themselves a snip off from WWII.  As I've often said 1914 marks the beginning of the Thirty Years War of the 20th century. Maybe it even marks The Second Hundred Years War.

 No , I will not be wearing a poppy this year, either (read this extremely important link), not because I don't care, but because I care too much.

Every year since I started this website I've commemorated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with links to history, personal accounts, music and film. Look them up by following the link "Hiroshima". This year the juxtaposition of WWI, of Hiroshima and of the conflicts now raging across the world: all too much to bear thinking about. No, I cannot stand any more polite, pious folk pontificating for public display. In 2045 will we commemorate Hiroshima with mushroom-shaped party favours ? Even if it's "all for charity", as Jimmy Savile and his ilk used to say, there is no way to pretty up the fact that war is wrong. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, NEVER FORGET.

ENO Madam Butterfly - preview, analysis

It's almost exactly seven years since the Anthony Minghella production of Puccini Madam Butterfly premiered at the Coliseum, London for the ENO. Minghella himself has passed on, but this time round the principals are the same. Mary Plazas sings Cio Cio San, Gwyn Hughes Jones sings Pinkerton and thge Puppets of the Blind Summit Theatre will be doing their thing. I caught the production first time round, the first night of the first run.

Madam Butterfly is perhaps even more relevant in our Global Village where cultures and races mix more fluidly than ever before. Minghella’s vision pits Puccini's gloriously Italianate score with the stylization of Japanese theatre. A woman dances with the black clothed figures of the men who manipulate Bunraku puppets. Gradually they tear her obi and it unravels like a river of blood. It’s a great image: woman as puppet, controlled by men. Its violence also hints at the tragedy to come. Bunraku may have a history of love suicide dramas but that’s lost on the average western audience. Fundamentally, Madam Butterfly isn't about Japan at all.

So the "neon Shanghai Tang" colours (as I called them then) of the production are there to entertain. They impart an exotic glow, so the real meaning of the plot is disguised.  Beneath the sentimental cherry blossoms and images of women as dolls, Madam Butterfly is a shockingly brutal story. Pinkerton's a sex tourist, exploiting the power he has to screw a little girl (in every sense of the word). Absolutely to Puccini's credit that he saw through the colonialist values of his time. He had no illusions about the superiority of western culture or Christianity.  Pinkerton is a weak man, supported by gunboats and consuls.  Indeed, it's an anomaly that Madam Butterfly was set in Japan at all, since Japan and Thailand were the only countries in Asia to remain independent and not become colonies. All over Asia and Africa, local populations became second-class citizens in their own countries. As Puccini implies, imperialism does not equate with civilization.

Until westerners stop seeing Madam Butterfly as a portrait of Japan, they're not going to deal with the real issues, which are only too relevant today. While it's no longer acceptable to sneer at blacks, Jews, women or gays, Asians (yellow, brown or olive) are fair game. Unconscious racism exists, and sadly among people who should know better. Perhaps it's ignorance, or fear, but it won't be eliminated until people stop making assumptions, and allow that just maybe, Asians know what they're doing, and western mores don't always apply.

Nagasaki, where Madam Butterfly is set, was an "international" port from the 16th century, where western influences reached Japan and from which Japanese esxports reached Europe. It's interesting that Puccini shows that Cio Cio San isn't merely a passive plaything. Long before Pinkerton arrives, she's already aware of the west and swallows the myth of western superiority since she thinks that through Pinkerton she'll get a new life. When she realizes her dreams were delusion, she kills herself. Anyone who has seen Japanese horror movies Takashi Miike’s Audition or Hideo Nakata’s Ring will be familiar with the idea of traumatized young women who are quite capable of hiding ferocity under a demure mask. Cio Cio San fights back, though she ends up hurting herself. You could read 20th century Asian history as a response to colonialism. Certiainly, Japanese modernization inspired other countries in Asia, many Asian leaders studying the Japanese model. Ironically, the Japanese succeeded in ridding Asia of colonialism, though not quite in the way they intended. (the photo show Tamaki Miura, a Jaoanese singer in a Japanese production of Madam Butterfly in 1922)

What troubles me about this production is the portrayal of the child Sorrow. He's shown as a puppet with a skull for a head. These days child protection laws work against having real children in  roles like this, late at night. Hence puppet. But is Minghella telling us that the child is just another puppet in a wider game? In the opera, his role is to be the innocent, loving being who inspires love from everyone, even in Mrs Pinkerton. So why should he be portrayed as an ugly miscreant? Are mixed race people somehow not human? (click on photo to enlarge).

Conversely, Minghella confirms how important this non-speaking part is to the whole story. What is to happen to this boy, taken from his environment and raised in a monocultural society where he'll always be an outsider? Given US racism towards Asians well into our generation, there would not have been a happy ending. All over Asia and Africa, there were huge mixed race communities, bridging cultures. Thousands of real life Madam Butterflys and certainly not all products of prostitution. Ironically, Japan was one of the few places where there weren't big mixed race communities. Nowadays there are lots of first generation mixed marriages, and also lots of Asians growing up in non-Asian environments. It may be fashionable to think that heritage doesn't matter, but I'm not so sure. So enjoy Madam Butterfly at the ENO and think about the wider context.
LOTS on this site about Nagasaki, Japanese and Chinese culture, Chinese stereotypes, modern Asia, cross culture, Puccini and Madam Butterfly. Please use search labels.

Hiroshima Nagasaki and the Burmese Harp

Sixty six years ago today, a bomb fell on Hiroshima, and another soon after on Nagasaki. The world changed then, whether some realize it or not. Even now, there are many who don't comprehend what this mass destruction meant, and what we might learn from it. Tsutomo Yamaguchi, who survived both bombs, dedicated his life to helping people understand. "I believe in love, in human beings,” he said. “The reason that I hate the atomic bomb is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings....... When you forget the dignity of individual human beings, that it is when you are heading towards the destruction of the Earth.” (For more please read HERE)

Yamaguchi would have understood The Burmese Harp (ビルマの竪琴 Biruma no tategoto) only too well. This film isn't about war so much as the way simple humanity can overcome horrific trauma. So perhaps it's something we should meditate upon.

A Japanese unit is in Burma. One young soldier, Private Mizushima (Shoji Yasui), has built himself a Burmese harp. He plays it so beautifully that his fellow soldiers are lifted out of their situation. Captain Inōye (Rentaro Mikuni) is young, but the kind of leader who cares deeply for his men. He's also a musician, who keeps up their morale by getting them to sing. The men hear of Hiroshima and the end of the war. Inōye sends Mizushima to tell a unit holed up in a mountain to surrender. The news is so shocking to them that they can't  take it in, but before they can reconsider, they're massacred. Mizushima survives, covered by bodies. His wounds are treated by a Buddhist monk and he dons a monk's robes.

Everywhere he sees the bodies of the dead. Mizushima starts to bury them, but there are too many. He's haunted. He realizes he can't go back to normal life. Meanwhile, the war has ended and the unit is in a POW camp. The soldiers are desperate to know if Mizushima is OK. Captain Inōye has trained a parrot to say "Mizushima, come back to Japan" because the men think Mizushima has deserted.

In his wanderings as a monk, in the Burmese villages, Mizushima  taught a Burmese village boy to play the harp. When the soldiers hear the boy play, they know Mizushima has survived. One day, they're crossing a bridge and pass a monk who turns away. Inōye realizes too late it's Mizushima. A Burmese monk delivers a box with the ashes of the dead.  Who sent it ? Eventually it's time for repatriation. The men release the talking parrot. They sense Mizushima is around. He's hiding inside a giant Burmese Buddha. On board the ship home, Captain Inōye reads the men a letter Mizushima has sent. He's decided to be a monk and wander, penniless, over rivers and mountains, in expiation of something he can't express. Being a monk helps, but sometimes the heartbreak is so great he has to break his vows and play his harp to cope.

"Why must this world have such misery ?" he writes,  "Why must there be such inexplicable pain? ....the answers are not for us humans to know. Our work is simply to have the courage to face suffering and irrationality without fear, to have the strength to create peace by one's own example. "

Simple is often the hardest thing to do. This film (directed by Kon Ichikawa, 1956) means a lot to me. Once in the archives I found a transcript of a testimony by Colonel Doi. He had served in China since 1937 and fought in Malaya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Guadalcanal and Okinawa. Could a man survive all that unscathed, even if he was an officer, not frontline fodder? After the war he became a monk in Japan, praying for the souls of thousands who didn't survive, and for those his actions had killed.  When my father went to Japan he saw a disabled veteran begging outside a temple and instinctively bowed. Why, when his brother and friends were killed in a war crime , possibly connected to Col. Doi's men, though not at his command ?"I don't know" said my Dad, "but the soldier suffered too".

For my piece on Ikuma Dan's Symphony no 6 "Hiroshima" please read HERE. 

Please explore this site, lots of posts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chinese and Japanese culture, films, music and history the Holocaust, anti-war, non-violence and Aung San Suu Kyi. (use labels and search box). Here is a link to Kuroi Ame (Black rain) the film about Hiroshima with music based on Toru Takemitsu and here is a link to Kobayashi's The Human Condition.

Takemitsu Requiem Black Rain (Kuroi Ame)

Toru Takemitsu's Requiem for Strings (1957) was performed twice this month. On 4th March, Kazuki Yamada conducted it in his debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. On 11th March, the earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima disaster struck. Then a week later, the New York Philharmonic. Perhaps now Takemitsu's Requiem will get to take its place as core repertoire. It was written after the death of Fumio Hayasaka, the composer whose music is heard in the films of Mizoguchi and Kurosawa. In Japan, movies were seen as an art form almost from the beginning. Takemitsu himself was a keen film fan and wrote numerous movie scores. In the west, there's more division between genres, and more snobbery, but for men like Takemitsu, if a movie had artistic merit, it was an appropriate use of serious music. So it's fitting that Takemitsu's Requiem underpins Shohei Imamura's Black Rain (Kuroi Ame, 1989), made two years after Takemitsu's death. Full symmetry.

The film Black Rain is based on a 1955 novel by Masuji Ibuse (1898-1993), who grew up in the countryside around Hiroshima. Ibuse was with the Japanese Army in South East Asia. When the Bomb fell on Hiroshima, he was in a neighbouring village and witnessed the after effects at first hand.

It's 6th August 1945, Yasuko Shizuma is at her uncle's house near Hiroshima, where she's been evacuated to escape the fire bombing of Tokyo. Uncle Shigematsu's at work in the city. Suddenly a blinding flash, then darkness. Horrific scenes in the city. A short grotesque creature goes up to a man and cried "Brother! It's me" but the man can't recognize who it is under the burns. Only when he sees the child's school belt buckle burned into his skin does he realize the monstrosity is his little brother, covered in scars. There are real life photos of wounds like that. Be glad this is only a movie.

As Yasuko and her aunt escape in a boat, black rain falls on them. No-one knows what's happening.  Yasuko and her aunt don't seem injured.  Five year later, Yasuko has grown up in the idyllic farming village by the coast, where they still grow rice in the fields and catch carp in the river. But something's wrong. People are dying gruesome deaths, from cancer and from radiation poisoning. Because Yasuko's so pretty, she gets many marriage proposals but they fall through when people discover where she was when the Black Rain fell.

Jilted time after time, Yasuko makes friends with Yuichi, an ex-soldier with PTSD who attacks cars and bikes because he think's they're enemy tanks. He spends his time carving stone jizu (Buddhas) which Yasuko loves. One day Yuichi's mother comes and asks if Yuichi can marry Yasuko. Uncle Shigematsu's shocked as there's a huge social gulf between them and Yuichi's clearly insane. But Yasuko walks in and says that it's what she wants because with Yuichi she doesn't feel alien.

Uncle and aunt are falling ill. Somene's been eating aloe leaves in the garden (reputed to cure radiation sickness). Uncle thinks it's his wife. She, however, worries about Yasuko who seems perfectly healthy. One day she spots Yasuko undressing. There are weals on her skin and her hair is falling out. Shigematsu takes Yasuko to the river to catch carp. They spot the "King of the Carp" more than a metre long, leaping out of the water, strong and healthy. "I've never seen him before, in all these years!" gasps Shigematsu, hoping it's an omen. Soon Yasuko's so sick, she's taken away to hospital. Shigematsu says "If there is a mutli coloured rainbow, she'll come back." But you can see from his eyes he knows it won't happen.

There isn't a real soundtrack in Black Rain. Mostly it's just conversation, sound effects and silence, without distraction. This ma the movie feel intimate, enclosed, enhancing the sense of tense secrecy. Takemitsu's Requiem pops up in small snatches at key moments, such as when the aunt realizes Yasuko isn't well. At the end, when Uncle Shigematsu's eyes follow the ambulance down the valley and survey the hills and fields around him, the Requiem wells up, austere and moving, yet at one with the scene around him.The movie itself is beautifully shot - long, loving panoramas of rice fields, traditional farm houses and close-ups of leaves seen through sunlight. Excellent, sensitive acting and direction. I think I read the book when I was an undergraduate, because I remember how poetic the author's descriptions were.

Takemitsu's Requiem wasn't written about Hiroshima or the Bomb, but the war experience scarred the Japanese people as well as the countries they occupied.
Sometimes art helps people to cope with trauma - Yukio and his bizarre granite Buddhas, for example. It's also important to remember that Japan was itself occupied by the Americans until 1952 and hard news about the Bomb was suppressed. Please read about Masako Ohki's Hiroshima Symphony, written at a time just like that pictured in the film. There's a whole raft of creative responses to the period, which will be worth studying. For western people, it's almsot a blank page, but perrhaps Japanese musicians and writers can fill us in.

Godzilla and the Sendai Tsunami

The Sendai earthquake and tsunami have obliterated  most of the coast of northern Japan. Photos of the disaster liook like Hiroshima and Nagasaki sixty-five years ago.  Ground Zero, all over again. So I felt guilty that I was thinking of Godzilla (Gojira)at a time like this. But one survivor did say, "It's like a horror movie" so maybe I'm not alone. Godzilla films are much deeper than plain schlock.

Godzilla rises from the oceans, part dinosaur, part sea god, leaving a trail of radioactive footprints.  He appears first in an idyllic fishing village - a lot like the Sendai coast -- then marches on to Tokyo which he rips apart with his fiery breath. All the might of the military are tuned on him. Here, he's tearing apart electricity towers. But guns and bombs don't work. Finally, he's killed by a good scientist who sacrifices himself, not to stop Godzilla, but to destroy the dangerous weapon he has invented.The scientist had wanted to save Godzilla to studyhi, but was overruled.

Godzilla is a post-nuclear King Kong, but with far more troubling connotations. The original Godzilla movie (1954) was made less than 10 years after Hiroshima so the implications are obvious. "I don't want it to be like Nagasaki again" says the pretty cub reporter. But it also connects to deep-seated anxieties about military/industrial power. Japan is vulnerable because it has few natural resources other than the drive of its people. By watching these films, audiences could exorcise their fears, rationalizing them in the way nightmares defuse terror. Community spirit is a way in which people can support each other when havoc reigns all round. But the underlying message is clear: don't mess with nature. "I don't think he was the only Gojira" observes the prfessor at the end."As long a man keeps experimenting with weapons, another Gojira will arise, somewhere in the world".

Most people n Japan may live in cramped apartus filled with kitsch, and use metro systems so crammed they have to be pushed on board but the fundamental, ideal aesthetic is harmony. And war is the most obscene distortion of nature. With Fukushima in our minds we should take heed of what Godzilla stands for. He's not a villain. No simple answers. In the film, when Tokyo is destroyed, school girls sing a Hymn of Peace. It's dignified, elegant, an extremely moving expression of hope. At the end, the theme returns as the people salute the scientist who gave his life to protect the community. It's not armies that bring peace, but the altruism of ordinary human beings.

As I was reading up to write this I came across an article in the NY Times on the exact same theme. Read Japan's Long Nuclear Disaster Film by Peter Wynn Kirby who actually lives not far away in Oxford. 

Japan earthquake Sendai tsunami

The scale of disaster in Japan is on such a scale that no-one can help but be moved. Or maybe not. No food, water or blankets in Sendai but the British Ambassador and retinue use precious resources to go there to gladly confirm "No British casualties". As if nationality matters in a horror like this? It was arrogant imperialist attitudes that contributed to the Second World War. And I'm speakng as someone who knows. My uncle and family friends knew Sendai well - as wartime forced labour - but they'd be the first to care about the people caught up in this disaster.

So think of the people of Kandahar in Afghanistan who raised £30,000 in three days "It's not much" said their local mayor, "we are poor, but we want to help". It's the thought that counts. No goverrnment or country can cope with a situation like this way beyond wildest nightmares..At the end of the day it's ordinary individuals who bear the brunt of things. One of the videos showed a pile of hundreds of cars. "A used car yard" said the voice over. Actually, the cars were in the dockyards carpark. That morning their owners left them and went to work. How many are still alive?

What really is amazing is those people. A man goes from room to room begging for news of his wife. He bows in gratitude even though no-one knows. An elderly woman gets pulled out of rubble,  her leg broken, and apologizes for being "work". Another man had a message from his elderly father.  "I'm fine" the old man texted. "It's snowing". But when you're 80 and out in the open, that's no fun. A hundred aftershocks a day, some massive. Is the old man still OK?

There's probably lots of suppressed hysteria, but outward panic only makes things worse in the short term. In some societies, there'd be people running around with guns, looting, stomping on others. In New Zealand, while the family of a woman killed in the rubble wept on primetime TV, someone went and burgled their home. And there are rougher places than NZ.

At last, stories are reaching the media from ordinary people. For me the  most important of all:
Survivors are weary but resolute, and Families bound by hope and despair.

Great Atomic Power - existential angst in Country music

Listen to the words of this amazing song from the "age of anxiety" in the Cold War, when both sides were paranoid about imminent attack, either from each other or by alien forces, like Men from Mars. This song is a good example of how popular culture absorbed the Zeitgeist. Being devout Southern Baptists, the Louvin Brothers thought in the context of Armageddon, so their answer to the predicament could come straight from a pulpit,  enhanced by hillbilly harmony and the twang of guitars. Interesting how they equate Christianity with an "army". Not all so far from the Knights of the Grail in Wagner's Parsifal. Maybe it's a universal response to threat, but Jesus didn't teach violence. Interesting too, how singers like Ira Louvin thought in strict religious terms but lived wildly irreligious lives. Ira died a wreck in 1965. Charlie, the less demon driven brother, (the babyface) died aged 83 last month, singing tributes to Ira to the end. That's genuine love.
 
"Do you fear Man's Great Invention that they call Atomic Power, Are we all in great confusion, do we know the time or hour? When a terrible explosion may rain down upon our land, leaving horrible destruction, blotting out the Works of Man?

"Are you ready, to meet that Great Atomic Power, will you rise and meet your Saviour in the air ? Will you shuddeer, will you cry, when the fire rains down from high, are you ready for that Great Atomic Power?

"There is one way to escape it, be prepared to meet The Lord, put your faith and heart in Jesus,. he will be your shield and sword. He will stand beside and you'll never feel the test, for your soul will fly to safety and eternal peace and rest.

"There's an army that can conquer all the regiments of man, ....when the Mushroom of Destruction falls in all its might, God will surely save his children from that awful, awful fate."

Nagasaki Christians Macau War

This picture looks like desert scrub. In fact it's Nagasaki, after the atomic bomb hit on 9th August 1945. In Hiroshima, a torii in a shrine was partly spared the devastation all round it. In Nagasaki, the Catholic Cathedral was the only structure left standing. (that's it on the hillside) Most of its parishioners didn't survive.

"Why Nagasaki?" some asked, for this was a most westernized, liberal city. Nagasaki was where St Francis Xavier preached to the Japanese, converting hundreds of thousands. Nagasaki began trading with the Portuguese in 1543.   Huge vessels sailed from Lisbon carrying silver and weapons in exchange for silk and porcelain. "The Black Ships" inspired Nanban art. From Nagasaki, many Japanese travelled west, to Macau, to Goa and to Europe.

Japanese Christians built Macau's St Paul's Cathedral, Japanese baroque, mixing Asian and western imagery. Read about it here (photos are mine)  Macanese genes are probably more Japanese than anything else. What an irony! When the Japanese invaded South China,  thousands of Macanese, who'd emigrated to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Canton, were forced back to Macau as refugees. So the circle turns.

Japanese Catholics went underground after their religion was banned early in the 17th century, and re-emerged nearly 300 years later, their faith intact. Because Nagasaki was a Christian centre, many Japanese Christians joined the Navy. There is a story that, weeks after the fall of Hong Kong, the Macanese community were worshipping in Rosary Church. In marched a Japanese naval contingent. Everyone panicked. But it turned out that these Japanese were Catholic, and had just come to hear Mass like everyone else. So much for stereotypes and divisions between people.

 Please take time to explore this blog as there is a lot on Nagasaki. Macau, Japanese and Chinese culture, non violence, war, Hiroshima,  multi cultural things like mixed race communities (beyond Puccini!) .Things on this site you will not find elsewhere. Like THIS, a study of a Buddhist response to the madness of violence, in the film Burmese Harp.

Masaki Kobayashi The Human Condition

Clocks stopped at Hiroshima at 0815 on Monday 6th August 1945. Immediately, the justifications began. But can mass murder ever be condond? Who decides who's "good" and who's "bad" ?  So I want to commemorate this day with Masaki Kobayashi, The Human Condition. It is a monumental epic, a trilogy that lasts nearly ten hours, without breaks. Like Wagner's Ring, it's extremely demanding emotionally, but the effort is worthwhile. These films will change you, if you  engage with them, and let them work on your soul.

Based on a six-volume novel by Junpei Gomikawa, The Human Condition is set in wartime Japan. Japan doesn't have mineral resources, so it occupied Manchuria in 1931. Effectively, the province was turned into a gigantic slave camp, Manchurian and Chinese workers drafted in to work under horrific conditions.

At head office in Japan, a young idealist called Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) thinks treating workers well increases production. So he's sent to Manchuria where he come up against reality. The dread secret police, the Kempetai, use the mines to dispose of political prisoners. Kaji gets set up by corrupt officials, but not before witnessing the defiance of some Chinese prisoners. As one is about to be beheaded, he shouts against tyranny. When the Kempetai try to kill Kaji, the Chinese prisoners march on the Japanese with nothing but moral force, and the  Kempetai back down.

For his pains, Kaji is sent to a danger unit in the Army, but proves his moral worth. He avoids killing but one day kills a Russian hand to hand. He feels guilt, even though he will be the sole survivor of his unit, which gets massacred. Kaji ends up in a Siberian POW camp much like the one he used to run. Again he's set up by venal bullies, but decides to escape, against all odds. Of course he ends up dead, but he's liberated.

Notice that the book was written very soon after the war and filmed by Kobayashi from 1959 when memories were still fresh and painful. Kobayashi was himself a soldier in Manchuria, and a leftist. There were a lot of Japanese socialists, although it was a criminal offence. Masao Ohki, who wrote the Hiroshima Symphony, was another one. The Japanese were certainly not all western movie caricatures.

The film is shocking because it deals with things like death camps and comfort women and the massacres that followed the Russian advance.  Yet what's really striking is the way people are portrayed with dignity, even to some extent the villains. Despite unrelenting degradation, Kaji learns what it is to be truly human. He doesn't betray his principles, and in the end he defies the system, just as the Chinese he watched being beheaded stood up to their oppressors.

These films mean a lot to me. In China, no-one wasn't affected by the Japanese invasion. Obviously, millions traumatized. Because I used to do so much about the war in China, I came across many remarkable stories, where people didn't react with hate. Even stories like Kaji's, men caught up in situations not of their choosing and having to take a stand.  In one incident in Hong Kong, 35 people were beheaded in one day, to intimidate the population. One man, an elderly Christian pastor, who'd studied at Cambridge, comforted each victim. He was the last to die, but after cutting 35 heads, the sword gets blunt, it's gruesome. Yet Reverend Wong continued praying to the end, forgiving his killers.  The Human Condition is a movie, but many stories like it in real life.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Exhibition, London

Sixty-five years ago on Friday, atomic bombs landed on Hiroshima, then on Nagasaki.  These towns were not military targets. Most of those killed were children, women and the elderly.  "The world's worst terrorist attack".

An exhibition commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki opens this week in London. See some of the objects HERE. Simple objects, like a blouse a girl sewed herself from her mum's old kimono. Her mother had to rip it off because the girl, no more than a child,  was covered in burns.  A survivor will be speaking, too,  There aren't many left after 65 years, though many have been born since with birth defects and cancers.. 

What has been learned? When Tony bLiar can hoodwink a nation into war on flimsy evidence yet come out shining with glory, any morality?  On 9/11, those who were trapped sent out messages of love, not hate. It was intensely beautiful: hope rising from the ruins. Instead, Iraq, the Vietnam quagmire again, on a bigger scale. Maybe our worst enemies are not outsiders at all.

In 1918, revenge against Germany set the scenario in which Hitler came to power. In 1945, some lessons were learned. Madness muliplies easily. Breaking the cycle of hate is more difficult. Read more about the exhibition HERE on the Society of Friends website.

Survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Please read a remarkable interview he gave a few years ago HERE.

"Having been granted this miracle, it is my responsibility to pass on the truth to the people of the world. For the past 60 years, atomic bomb survivors have declared the horror of the atomic bomb, but I can see hardly any improvement in the situation.” Mr Yamaguchi has just passed away, aged 93, but what he represents must never be forgotten.

"I believe in love, in human beings,” he said. “The reason that I hate the atomic bomb is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings. Look at the photographs of the aftermath of the atomic bombing, those dead bodies in the photographs. When you forget the dignity of individual human beings, that it is when you are heading towards the destruction of the Earth.”

And so I dedicate a silence to Mr Yamaguchi, his son and those who shall not be forgotten. And to those still being killed because politicians play silly games.

Please see other posts on this site for more on Hiroshima and war. This photo shows a postman, innocently delivering his letters when the bomb at Nagasaki turned him into ash. See how he's clutching his throat - he didn't know what was happening, except it was agony. And his letters fell to the ground. I did find another, where some bigwig generals cheerfully celebrate with a cake in the shape of the mushroom bomb. "Piece of cake", they may have laughed, oblivious. But for obvious reasons, I can't post that. It's obscene.

Hiroshima Day - Survivors' Tale

Even after 64 years, it's hard to comprehend Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It wasn't just the impact and firebombs, but decades of suffering, birth defects, cancer. And still the world will not learn.


Here is an unusually moving article by Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor of the Times. There were lots of superficial news items earlier this year but Parry's article is completely different. Parry, who knows Japanese, spent time getting to know the men who survived the blasts, if "survivor" is the word. If you wonder why the message of Hiroshima still needs repeating again and again, read one of the comments under the article. No, the world will not learn. Please take the trouble to read this article in full, click on the link below and pass it on. It's the least we can do.

The Luckiest or Unluckiest Man in the World? Tsutomu Yamaguchi, double A-bomb victim
Please also read the other posts on this blog about Hiroshima and Music about War. Read the story about Yosuke Yamahata, the photographer who took pictures on the spot, which were banned by the occupying army because they were too raw. Yamahata literally gave his life for these photos, dying of radiation poisoning a few years later. Every year I do a Hiroshima/Nagasaki commemoration and lots of related features.  Please see my posts on Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) the film about Hiroshima based on a novel by a Hirshima mand with music based on Toru Takemitsu's Requiem for Strings  and also Masako Kobayashi The Human Condition and now, The Burmese Harp, perhaps the most spiritual of all.

Dr Atomic ENO London (2)

To say that Dr Atomic landed in London with a bang is shocking, but the subject it deals with is meant to be disturbing. Unlike the scientists at Los Alamos, we can't live in denial of the wider implications of their work. This isn't history. It's a universal dilemma, as relevant now as it was in 1945.

On the surface, there’s little overt action. Oppenheimer and his colleagues stand about talking, but therein lies the drama. Remember “Waiting for Godot”. The angst is existential, directed inwards. There is no overt commentary in the libretto, either. Instead, texts are taken from documents and letters of the time, presenting evidence without explicit judgement, for there are no easy answers. The words hang in limbo, like the photograph of the wall in Hiroshima standing amid the rubble, a mute witness to horror.

If the action drags at first, it recreates the suffocating atmosphere at Los Alamos, which is central to the drama. It's hard to express tedium without being tedious, but Adams takes the risk because it contrasts the banality of the scientists musings with the savagery of what they are about to unleash. Someone said (Hannah Arendt?), that evil grows from the mundane. This frustration the scientists feel is supposed to spur us to question. Perhaps it isn't theatre as we're used to but Adams is making an interesting conceptual leap forward.

How do scientists, men of reason, get caught up in barbarity ? Oppenheimer himself was an educated, civilized man who was later persecuted for his political beliefs. The scientists on the Manhattan project didn’t know the full consequences of what they were doing and were in denial. Audiences at Dr Atomic have images of Hiroshima and the Cold War seared into their memories and cannot escape.

The lyrical episodes Adams builds into the opera are essential to the whole meaning of the opera. Oppenheimer quotes Donne, Baudelaire and other poetry. It’s an escape to a more ideal world, but he’s deeply conflicted. The song “Batter my heart” is Ground Zero in this opera, utterly pivotal and beautifully written. Gerald Finley sings it with conviction, and doesn’t flinch from its irony. “Reason….me should defend, but is captived, and proves weak or untrue”. It’s so powerful that it would obliterate anything that followed. We leave the first act stunned, to ponder it in the interval.

Perhaps the secret to this opera is not to expect action from the words, but from the music. Orchestrally, this is surprising rich and beautiful, the choruses in particular well supported. The ENO chorus and orchestra have performed Adams before, most recently Nixon in China but this isn't traditional repertoire, so they deserve credit for achieving such good results. Lawrence Renes conducted the European premiere of the original staging at Der Nederlandse Opera in 2007. Experience shows.

This production, by Penny Woolcock, who directed the Death of Klinghoffer film, makes much of the Teva Pueblo. Just as the scientists do the bidding of politicians, the Pueblo serve the scientists. But they observe, they are the conscience of nature. The production starts with a wall of photographs showing the scientists formally posing, as if for mug shots. Later, they are replaced by Pueblo, standing in the cavities of the wall, as if in a massive canyon. They sing from the Bhagavad-gita, prophesying doom. “Your shape stupendous”, they repeat, to booming percussion, “All the worlds are fear struck”.

Special mention should be made of Meredith Arwady’s dark contralto, seething suppressed passion. Pasqualita is a small part, but essential. Kitty is too distressed to mother her baby, but Pasqualita nurtures.

The final scene is overwhelming, as it should be. The orchestra builds up to a harrowing climax, rolling thunder as it the skies were rent asunder. As the cast stare upward, transfixed, the bomb explodes. The whole auditorium is bathed in unearthly yellow light. This is what “awesome” really means – it is magnificent as theatre. But lest we be too impressed, the voice of a Japanese woman cries out for water. All that power, all that knowledge, was to be channelled for destruction.

Superb singing from Gerald Finley who has made Oppenheimer his speciality, and also from Brindley Sherratt who was impressive recently as Pimen in Boris Gudonov. Sasha Cooke characterizes the brittle Kitty well. The whole cast is strong but chorus and orchestra ground the production with firm purpose. The ENO has long had a reputation for choosing innovative and challenging work : this Dr Atomic epitomises what the ENO stands for.

More to come soon, and production pictures, too.
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/02/at_covent_garde.php

Dr Atomic ENO London (1)

My father had lived in a busy city (not Hiroshima). After the surrender, he returned to find the whole city bombed flat, nothing but rubble, no way to find your bearings except by following the line of hills. This really hit him as the view of the hills had formerly been obscured by what were then high rise buildings. Suddenly, all the building were gone. He hitched a ride on someone's bicycle and the two of them ventured into the eerie landscape. Every now and then there would be a dull thud – the sound of buried bodies exploding from the gas emitted by decay.

So I really didn't know how I was going to cope with John Adams' Dr Atomic. Would I stand up and cry "murderers "? Adams is concerned with the dilemmas faced by the scientists at Los Alamos who worked on the bomb, denying even to themselves where their research might lead. They live in a vacuum far removed from reality. True, they didn't make political decisions, but what they did gave politicians power. Recent studies indicate that the real purpose of the bomb was to scare Stalin. Japanese civilians were "collateral damage".
FOR MY REVIEW PLEASE SEE HERE
But Dr Atomic the opera is compelling. The scientists theorize, imagining the dangers to themselves. It's angst, even if it's more existential than actually being in the blast and living with the aftermath. Indeed, if images of the devastation are inescapably seared into your memory, it's even more haunting because you "know" what they're trying to avoid. This is a seriously good opera. Go, especially as there are £20 offers on tickets at the moment.

Edward Seckerson has written one of the most perceptive reviews so far. Read it and listen to the podcast where he interviews those involved with the production. Look up other posts on this blog under Hiroshima. It's not a subject "from the past", but utterly relevant to now.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/reviews/adams-doctor-atomic-english-national-opera-london-coliseum-1632716.html

Dr Atomic at the Met

Bruce Hodges on John Adams Dr Atomic at the Met which will be seen in London at the ENO next year:

"Somewhere in this well-intentioned study of the nail-biting hours leading to the test of the first atomic bomb, there is a transcendent experience that this production did not quite reveal. And as a fan of John Adams, I was curious enough that I saw it not once, but twice"........" "The basic premise is meritorious and worth exploring: getting inside the head of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues in Los Alamos, New Mexico in June of 1945, during those uncomfortable final hours before the bomb test. ...."

"But the libretto, flickering with possibilities, ultimately kept me at a safe distance. At least as seen here, the opera seems largely about "the banality of waiting around." I empathize, but as a listener I don't feel the need to travel the same journey. And some scenes seemed hungry for a director's ability to clarify and amplify—to help focus our attention on what in this story is important. Often large groups of people are milling about, working on something related to the impending test, but it is never clear why, or why we should care."

"Given the number of times Doctor Atomic has been produced already, goodwill is clearly on the creators' side. Much of the set, by Julian Crouch (whose work was also seen in last season's Satyagraha) is enticing to look at, such as two massive blocks of cubicles—three rows of seven on each side—in which singers can pose, sometimes in gripping images: in the second half, a row of bodies appear flung to the walls, stuck upside down or at strange angles. White shades, when drawn, allow animation to be projected: maps of Japan, equations on a blackboard, and the endless, relentless rain."

For the whole piece and production pix see:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2008/Jul-Dec08/atomic2110.htm