ENO Sunken Garden Michel van der Aa

Michel van der Aa's Sunken Garden had its world premiere at the Barbican Theatre, under the auspices of the ENO.  Van der Aa is a well-respected artist, closely associated with the Nederlandse Opera.  His Up Close, presented together with Pierre Audi's Liebestod in 2011, won a Gravemeyer award. Sunken Garden is a huge leap ahead from Up Close, and also from the earlier After Life (reviewed here), also presented at the Barbican and in Amsterdam. Sunken Garden is altogether more ambitious, and successfully achieves van der Aa's dreams of linking different art forms to create a Gesammstkunstwerk for the age of technology.  It will divide opinion, however, as anything truly experimental usually does.

Much will be made of its technological inventiveness, but don't be distracted. At heart, Sunken Garden is a true opera in the deepest sense.  It's about people and how they communicate, or don't communicate. As human beings we don't communicate in any one way, but on multiple levels, consciously or unconsciously. We absorb data from all sources.  What matters is how we process that information.  Thus van der Aa, his librettist David Mitchell and his visual effects team create a multi-level, multi-dimensional whole from which we take as much as we can. 

We could remain on the surface, like Portia Jacquemain (what a name!). She runs an art gallery but is not an artist. She spouts babble because she can't cope with real communication. We can stop there and snigger. But van der Aa is making a wry joke. Jacquemain ( played by Caroline Jay) is shallow. She's estranged from her daughter Amber who seems to make a mess of her life but engages with the world around her, and with the artist Toby Kramer, admirably played by Roderick Williams. Kramer composes with video, in much the way that a composer assembles notes to make music. Like Amber, he cares about people, and wants to find out what's happened to his subject Simon Vines (Jonathan McGovern).  Significantly, Zenna Briggs (Katherine Manley) morphs from persona to persona. She starts off as a wealthy patron of the arts, but drops Kramer when he starts getting too close to the truth. It turns out that she's not a patron of the arts at all but a sinister figure who, vampire-like, lives off the psyches of people who think and feel for themselves.

Don't be distracted by the complex plot. Think of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Nothing seems to make sense, yet there's a crazy sense of momentum, such as one finds in dreams. Like Alice, Kramer descends into a sunken garden hidden below the flyover. Suddenly everything glows in surreal, unnatural colour. The 3D effects aren't a gimmick but an intelligent theatrical commentary. We're in a psychedelic dream where everything is more real and more false. You can escape by taking off the 3D glasses, but how flat things seem in comparison. Even if you can't follow the narrative, seeing the water from the "vertical pond" implode and explode is great theatre. Some of the most effective scenes are fairly straightforward, such as the shots of Roderick Williams against a flat background with diagonal beams.

The technological special effects are themselves a comment on the way we communicate. Kramer films. Amber texts. Jaquemain chatters. In After Life, van der Aa used clips of real people talking and spliced them with scripted film.  In Sunken Garden, he uses actors whose speech is peppered with inconsequentials. But that's exactly how "real" people speak. The ums and ahs of conversation are part of the process of communication, and of formulating ideas. If we look more closely to these "people" we begin to notice that they, too, are as unnatural as the 3D scenery in the garden. Toby Kramer clearly isn't American, despite his talk of Omaha. Sadaqat Dastani (Stephen Henry) is also a caricature. Mental hospitals aren't that luxurious.  And since when did landladies like Rita Wales (Alwyne Taylor) dress in cashmere and pearls and live in National Trust gardens? Sadaqat is supposed to be insane but he identifies Amber's drawings of the sunken garden and points Kramer to Iris Marinus, the "doctor". It's a gorgeous role for Claron McFadden, who, like Roderick Williams, helped create After Life. She's good at being over the top. He's good at being matter of fact.

Zenna Briggs morphs from persona to persona, til her true malevolent nature is exposed. Katherine Manley sings the difficult part well. Amber (Kate Miller-Heidke) is in real life an indie star who can sing though not with Manley's range. She's not what she seems either. Her hair, make-up and clothes are so unnatural that they're playing roles as well.

Van  der Aa's music is very expressive, much more direct and visceral than, say, George Benjamin's Written on Skin (reviewed here). He worked with Louis Andriessen, for whom communication was paramount. Andriessen, for example, was involved with political music theatre where he tried to challenge the normal hierarchy of performance. The sung and spoken text is often unclear. There are no subtitles. You have to struggle to -ollow what's happening in Sunken Garden, but  that's the whole point. As in real life, nothing is clear cut. You have to listen to the music, and assemble all the information in this opera in your own mind. It helps a lot that the conductor  was André de Ridder, one of the best new music specialists in Europe, who understands the multi dimensional levels in this tightly constructed score.  

Van der Aa's Sunken Garden is so different that it would be a miracle if everyone could respond to it in the same way. But perhaps the secret is to enter its strange world on its own terms.In the real world, we communicate in many different ways other than through words alone. We listen to all kinds of verbal and non-verbal signals, and we use visual and subconscious images. Sunken Garden is good opera because it transports us into an artist's vision and makes us engage with our feelings. Or not, if we prefer. 

Full review in Opera Today.

Michael Van der Aa Barbican

New ENO production at the Barbican of Michael Van der Aa's Sunken Garden on Friday. Sunken Garden tells a "multi-layered story of a missing person and those who are searching for him. What connects the disappearance of a software engineer, a neurotic film-maker and a gullible patroness of the arts? This new film-opera explores hoax and dark truth, with a libretto from Cloud Atlas novelist David Mitchell."  If opera is a fusing of music, acting, text and visuals, then why not add film to the mix ? Film opens up dimensions that can't otherwise be easily expressed.

In Van der Aa's Up Close (at the Barbican in 2011) a cellist played live, interacting with a film of an actress. At first actress and cellist look alike, but when the actress turns round, close ups show  her face is haggard and etched. It feels like she's carrying the "madness" of ages.  Van de Aa's music murmurs and wails, like the forest the actress is seen wandering through. A modern day Ewartung? The actress acts out mechanical, compulsive routines, like copying out what looks like a periodic table in chemistry, and operates a strange machine whose purpose is unclear. A symbol not so much of mad science but the kind of emotional alchemy which some people need to do to give order to their lives. 

Much more ambitious and conceptual was Van der Aa's After Life in 2010. Several people meet in a waiting room. They’ve just died, but they must examine their lives, and pick one memory to take with them before they can journey on. One memory to summarize a whole lifetime? It’s not easy. Effectively, they’re pondering what their lives might have meant. It’s a powerful psychological concept, strikingly adapted as theatre. van der Aa mixes live orchestra with electronica, live performers with ordinary people captured on film. That’s not specially innovative in itself, but van der Aa takes the concept further, blending art and reality.

Singers and musicians perform a score, while ordinary people speak spontaneously. Van der Aa abandoned the idea of script altogether: people simply turned up at his studio, and talked spontaneously. Ordinary people, but extraordinary lives. Perhaps that’s part of After Life’s message too. More emotionally articulate people have more insight into what makes them what they are, but even the most mundane life has meaning. READ MORE HERE.

Fantastic ENO season 2012-2013 TOP PICKS

Fantastic new ENO season for 2012/13! The most adventurous in years, totally justifying the Outstanding Achievement Olivier the ENO received for "breadth and diversity" of its programme. This is such an amazing season. Full schedule on the ENO site here. Not all the goodies are obvious! So, my top picks below, with explanations why.

Walt Disney changed the world.  One of the many highlights of the ENO's fantastic new season 2012-2013 will be Philip Glass's The Perfect American, a surreal exploration of Disney's imagination.  Opera is fantasy, so Disney's a great subject. Since there was a lot more to Disney than cartoons, the story could be good. The production is by Phelim McDermott whose brilliant puppets and set made Satyagraha genius theatre. (Read more about that here and here). Walt Disney the opera won't come round til next June, but book as soon as you can. Tickets will be gold dust.

The new ENO season starts with fantasy, too. Bohuslav Martinů's Julietta, based on the Paris Opéra production which Edward Gardner fell in love with. If it can inspire him like that, it sounds good. It's a gorgeous opera, last heard in London with Magdalena Kožená, conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek. (more about it here) Listen to the recordings, and catch the magic. This production's directed by Richard Jones, who won the Olivier Award for best director.

Even more daring - the ENO takes on Ralph Vaughan Williams The Pilgrim's Progress (from 5/11) staged for the first time since its premiere in 1951. It's not an "easy" opera,  and needs a director who understands stylized allegory. The reason that this will be important is the choice of director, Yoshi Oida. Oida is astoundingly sensitive. His Britten Death in Venice was exceptional. (read more here). It ran within a month of the ENO Deborah Warner Death in Venice. Two drastically opposite approaches.Warner's was high on glossy fashion shoot glamour, Aschenbach relegated to the sidelines in every way. Oida's approach was psychological, with Aschenbach foremost, action happening around him and in his mind. Although Aschenbach thinks he's a disinterested observer, in fact, he's caught up in his own fantasies. Oida shows Venice as a mirror of Aschenbach's mind. Claustrophic walls, dank, dangerous waters, a place where everything's nebulous.  Deep in every sense. Exactly the spirit of the music.
 
Oida was chosen to stage Britten in Aldeburgh because his Britten track record is exemplary. Back in 1989 he stunned Aix-en-Provence with his Britten Curlew River. It's preserved on DVD, watch it if you can. He's an inspired choice for The Pilgrim's Progress, which needs a director who understands stylized allegory. Kill for tickets to this, though it will be nothing like the ENO Riders to the Sea which was so literal the music wasn't able to speak. Oida is spiritually as well as musical astute. If anyone can make The Pilgrim's Progress work as theatre, it's Oida. Martyn Brabbins conducts, another reason why this will be a must.

Calixto Bieito? -- the tabloids might scream. Get past the shock value, for Bieito is a very serious director. In his Carmen (from 21/11) he shows the gypsies as marginalized underclass, utterly relevant to modern Europe. In Barcelona (read what I wrote here), it dealt with migrant workers and the "colonization" of Catalunya by foreigners. In London, the focus will shift to more British concerns. Maybe the tabloids will be right. Incendiary stuff ! But these are issues we can't blank out.  Bizet was right on the mark. What's more, Ruxandra Donose is singing Carmen - she's magnificent.

Even more shocking, Peter Konwitschny comes to London! This will have the tabloid mind set foaming at the mouth, especially as he's directing Verdi La Traviata. "My Traviata", he says in the promo video, "is short". And to the point. Ten years ago he did a Meistersinger that confronted the German audience with the implications of the final act. To this day I remember what Tim Ashley wrote then (find it here). Violetta is a strong personality, as she has to be in her profession, but she also trumps Papa Germont at his own game. There are levels and levels in this opera that are rarely touched. Read what Tim Ashley said of Konwitschny's La Traviata in Graz last year here,

The ENO's always been good with baroque. Christopher Curnyn, who conducted an excellent Rameau Castor and Pollux (review here) last year is conducting Charpentier's Medea ifor the ENO in  February, in a new production by David McVicar. Lots of Charpentier around these days, it seems,  and David et Jonathas (William Christie) features in Edinburgh and in Paris later this year. 

More baroque too - Handel's Julius Caesar (from 1/10) in a "fresh, theatrical" new staging by Michael Keegan-Dolan, who brought us the ENO Rite of Spring. He's a choreographer (hence the ballet) so it will be interesting how he makes a Handel opera move. Strong cast - Lawrence Zazzo, Anna Christy and Christian Cumyns, specialist conductor.

Another adventurous new production, Michel van der Aa's The Sunken Garden, in the Barbican Theatre (not the Coliseum) in April.  It's a joint venture between the Holland Festival , the ENO, the Barbican, Toronto and Lyon. Van der Aa's works have been heard in London several times before, so he's not unknown so much as misunderstood as he mixes music and singing with theatre and film. Pierre Audi respects him highly. Together they did a fascinating concert called Liebestod which creatively re-imagined Alban  Berg's relationship with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin (review here). That was conceptual but not too difficult, definitely worth hearing again. If we ever get the chance! The Sunken Garden is an "occult mystery film opera" with Roderick Williams, who also sang in van der Aa's Before Life at the Barbican (see review here) and will be singing in The Sunken Garden.  Roddy, as he's affectionately known, is grossly undervalued. he's easily the first choice English baritone in modern repertoire (and in other repertoire too - remember his Pollux?

Many revivals like the Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, and a new production of Wozzeck in May, conducted by Edward Gardner (no singer details yet). Lots more interesting things to emerge as time goes by.

photos courtesy Getty Images and ENO
photo of Yoshi Oida copyright  Victor Pascal
A more formal version of this will appear soon in Opera Today

Berg Lyric Suite decrypted - Audi, Amsterdam Sinfonietta Barbican

This wasn't just another concert. It was Liebestod, a truly unique exploration of Berg's Lyric Suite. Berg's piece is a compelling work, whose mysteries were only revealed about twenty years ago when the composer's letters to his lover Hanna Fuchs-Robettin were released. Both were married, and the relationship was fraught with secrecy. Berg's letters are so expressive that they lend themselves well to staging. Hence Liebestod, created as a Gesammstkunstwerk in its own right by Pierre Audi and Janine Brogt for the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and ECHO, the European Concert Hall Organization.

Berg was obsessed by cryptic messages, numerology and ritual patterns. Cross-references are planted everywhere as clues, both musical and literary. Audi's Liebestod is a surprisingly effective navigation aid through Berg's psyche. It looks backward to Berg's formative influences, and forwards, towards a new synthesis betwen music and abstract film in Michael Van de Aa's Up-close (2010)

Berg saw parallels between his love for Hanna and Wagner's relationship with Mathilde Wesendonck and Wagner's creative sublimation through Tristan und Isolde. Doomed love, redeemed only through death or art. Berg is so specific that he uses the Tristan chord in the Lyric Suite as a deliberate hint at its deepest meaning. Audi doesn't simply preface the Prelude from Tristan und Isolde but uses an arrangement for an all-strings chamber orchestra (Adrian Williams). The music's familiar, but heard in a new way. Textures are starker than in full orchestration but this sharpens the sense of strangeness. The ensemble churns, adrift of its orchestral bearings, but that expresses the sense of psychic dislocation which connects to Berg's other music, like Wozzeck and Lulu.Now you can really hear the first violin (Candida Thompson) calling out to the first viola. When the Tristan chord appears, it seems distorted as if heard in a dream. Yet the relationship in the notes is the same, it's the instrument that's changed. We're in Berg territory as much as in Wagner.

The actor Jeroen Willems emerges on stage as the last notes of the Prelude fade into the beginning of the Lyric Suite. He hums the music, making the connection seamless. He holds a wine glass, a reference perhaps to Berg's song cycle Der Wein and also the "Wine of the Solitary" Berg reads of in Baudelaire. He quotes Berg directly. "Have you noticed that our initials intertwined are also the first and last notes of the Tristan theme? Hanna Fuchs and Alban Berg, HFAB...B-F-A-B flat." Then you hear the viola play it and the meaning is painfully clear.

Again, it's the Lyric Suite but not quite as we're used to. This time, instead of four instruments, it's arranged for larger forces (partly by Berg himself in 1928, the rest by Theo Verbey in 2005). This balances the intensity of the spoken passages and emphasizes the extreme "madness" Berg speaks of. Words and music intertwine, too, though the music isn't as abstract as might seem. "Darling Dodo is there in the pulsating C-C of the viola, Munzo in a motif with a Slav tinge...". You could read Berg's letters and listen to an ordinary performance, but in Audi's Liebestod the effect is dramatically vivid.

The extracts are also extremely well chosen and presented with musical insight. It covers Berg's fascination with numbers and secret portents, the course of the affair, and the significance of the quotation from Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony. Publicly, Berg dedicated the Lyric Suite to Zemlinsky, but privately he made it clear that the real dedicatee was his "Distant Beloved" (yet another cross-reference). Then, when you hear the quotation in the Adagio appassionato in movement 4, it's strikingly poignant. "Du bist mein Eigen", unspoken and unstated.

"But you must understand that this music is in a ceaseless process of becoming, never 'is'", writes Berg. Just as Berg absorbs Wagner and creates something of his own, so his music inspires others. Michael van der Aa's Up-close experiments with images of mirrors, distorted and converse. The soloist, Sol Gabetta, plays her cello yet also interacts with the actress in the film. The actress, Vakil Eelman, looks like Gabetta from behind, but when she turns round, her face is haggard and etched. It feels like she's carrying the "madness" of ages, which Berg spoke of. Van de Aa's music murmurs and wails, like the forest Eelman is seen wandering through. A modern day Ewartung? Eelman copies what looks like a periodic table, and operates a strange machine whose purpose is unclear. A symbol not so much of mad science but the kind of emotional alchemy obsessives like Berg adopt to order their lives.

As stand alone music Up-close would work quite well. It's more coherent than After Life last year at the Barbican, But hearing it outside the context of Audi's Liebestod has a purpose. What Van der Aa is doing is integrating music and visual images in a deliberately provocative way. Music is supposedly "abstract", but as Berg has made clear, worlds of allusion and meaning can be embedded within. Film is usually more explict, but Van der Aa's film is non-explicit, in the way dreams are. Clues eveywhere as to meaning, but deliberately no answers. You're thrown back, once again, to the Lyric Suite and to Berg's mysterious conundrums. You're disoriented, because you've lost your bearings. And you're back to the beginning of Liebestod too, adrift on an ocean of strange emotions, and back to the spirit of Berg's music.

PLEASE go to Bachtrack for a formal version of this review. Bachtrack is a wonderfully useful interactive source of performances live and in the cinema, in the the UK, in Europe and the US.

Coming up this week

Coming up soon on this site : György Kurtág Kafka Fragements, a preview of Alexander Raskatov's A Dog's Heart, Franz Schreker Irrelohe and at last the second CD of Ma Sicong Music for Violin and Piano. which has been top of my listening list for months. So beautiful that I haven't been able to write well enough to do it justice. Strange, how the more you love something the harder it is to fully express.

Which is why I've been slower than usual about writing up Kurtág Kafka Fragements, at the Barbican Hall with Dawn Upshaw. This is a piece I care about passionately. It's radical because it presents a different listening experience, where the music "happens" when ideas connect on a deep level in the listener's psyche. Maybe that's what happens with all music, but more so with Kurtág's extreme concision. Ideas distilled into homeopathic intensity that expand in your soul. Peter Sellars' staging, on the other hand, ignores Kurtág's whole concept. Thanks to Sellars, now Kurtág undergoes the equivalent of what would happen to European and Japanese art cinema if it were remade for daytime TV soaps. Full review coming up in Opera Today.

This is particularly tragic because the Barbican has been doing wonderful things for contemporary music and opera. Last year they did Eötvös's Angels in America, and Michael van der Aa's After Life. This is courageous programming, for which the Barbican deserves praise, particularly as the South Bank has lost its vision. In the past they've done the Saariaho operas, which Peter Sellars' semi staging did wonders for, even if his Kurtág was a self-indulgent misreading. Starting soon, the Barbican's continuing its acclaimed series of baroque opera, with Handel's Alcina. This is important because Barbican baroque choices are very good indeed. Definitely one of the hippest venues in London.

At the ENO, Simon McBurney's Raskatov A Dog's Heart looks extremely interesting. Anything premiered at The Holland Festival is likely to be challenging, so we're lucky that the ENO has brought this over. Fascinating concept, executed by Complicite, one of the finest modern drama ensembles around. This is serious drama, real music theatre people, as opposed to directors moonlighting from elsewhere. I've seen clips and read up on it - this should be exciting. Please come back to this site as I'll be writing lots. And get to the show, which starts 20th.

And of course Francesco Cilea Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera House Thursday. When this was done at another venue two years ago some of my friends adored it (others said it was toffee).  I missed it then, but heard it on BBC Radio 3. So I can't miss it now with a megastar cast. Angela Gheorghiu, Alessandro Corbelli, and Jonas Kaufmann in a role that should suit him well.

After Life at the Barbican : Michel van der Aa

"If you could take any one memory with you to eternity, which one would you choose?" In Michel van der Aa's After Life several people meet in a waiting room. They've just died, but they must examine their lives, and pick one memory to take with them before they can journey on. One memory to summarize a whole lifetime ? It's not easy. Effectively, they're pondering what their lives might have meant. It's a powerful psychological concept, strikingly adapted as theatre.

At the premiere in 2006, Shirley Apthorp in the Financial Times described the opera as "The Gesammstkunstwerk of the Future". Michel van der Aa mixes live orchestra with electronica, live performers with ordinary people, film with live action. That's not specially innovative in itself, but van der Aa takes the concept further, blending art and reality. Singers and musicians perform a score, while ordinary people speak spontaneously. Van der Aa abandoned the idea of script altogether : people simply turned up at his studio, and talked spontaneously. Ordinary people, but extraordinary lives.

Perhaps that's part of After Life's message too. Emotionally articulate people are more able to intuit what makes them what they are, but even the most mundane life has meaning. What of those who are blocked in some way ? Mr Walter( Richard Suart) looks back on a "so-so job, a so-so marriage", where nothing seems to have mattered either way. Ilana (Margreit van Reisen) has had such a horrible life she doesn't want to remember anything. But in the Afterlife, you can't move on unless you can deal with your past.

That's why the staff in the "waiting room" help people reconstruct their lives and memories. Sometimes it isn't the grand gestures that create the best memories, but simple things. like hugging a loved pet, or sitting on a park bench and feeling you belong. Aiden (Roderick Williams) reveals that the staff themselves are people who are blocked and can't proceed until they, too, learn the meaning of their lives. Aiden helps Walter, but by helping Walter, he finds his own release. In this strange Limbo, the authority figure, The Chief (Claron McFadden) may in fact be the person most trapped. Maybe the secret to passage isn't what memory you carry with you, but how much excess baggage you're prepared to leave behind.

Michel van der Aa's music may be avant garde, and extended by electronic effects, but it communicates well. Van der Aa wrote one of the study pieces for After Life for the famous Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, hence the harpsichord-led purity of line. As he says, the music "has two layers, a direct, physically dramatic layer and another with more depth, that is more conceptual". The opera deals with very unusual ideas, so this interplay between clarity and mystery, humble and heroic, is fundamental.

The vocal lines sweep up and down the scale, even within phrases, but don't sound unnatural. McFadden, who has few equals in modern music, and has created the wildest Harpies, sounds soft and lyrical, actually quite sweet. Williams proves why he's one of the most sought after character baritones in his generation. He's a wonderful, expressive actor who moves as well as he sings. Yvette Bonner as Sarah, the other member of staff, has good potential.

Michel van der Aa worked with Louis Andriessen (Writing to Vermeer) who promoted the idea of anti-orchestra back in the 1960's. The idea of multi-media, conceptual theatre is fairly well established in Europe. The Queen of the Netherlands attended After Life at the highly prestigious Holland Festival. Holland's famous for its liberal, open-minded attitudes, but After Life is so good that it can export, even to more buttoned down.British pysche. After all, every one of us will one day make that journey, whatever may be on the other side.

Congratulations to the Barbican for bringing it to London, just months after the recent revival (with revisions) . I was impressed by the way the Barbican marketed this opera, which might have been a hard sell, given that it's so modern. They set up a [mini website inviting readers to send in their own ideas of what memory they'd take into the unknown. After Life is about ordinary people, so it's a good idea that "ordinary people" participate. While it emphasizes "ordinary" life, this opera poses questions about life, identity and emotional dexterity that make it a challenge..What you get from it reflects what you put in. A bit like life itself.
Please see the full review with production photos in Opera Today.

Michel van der Aa - Barbican

Big, big buzz about Michel van der Aa After Life at the Barbican on Saturday 15th May. For the full review  of this and also the new Up-Close please follow label "Van der Aa" on right. This is cutting edge, a major critical success when it opened in the Netherlands in June 2006.  The Holland Festival produces seriously interesting things. Van der Aa is multimedia king, combining music, electronics, film, drama etc to create Total Theatre. He's been closely involved with Louis Andriessen, about whom there's a lot on this site (follow the labels) Andriessen in his youth pioneered the idea of anti-orchestra, and of music theatre beyond conventional bounds.

"Six characters are about to trade their earthly existence for a place in heaven. They are allowed to choose one moment from their lives to relive in the form of a film to take them to eternity."  Intriguing concept, based (no surprise) on a Japanese art film.

Congratulations to the Barbican for having the courage to bring this to London, but even more congratulations for marketing it in an intelligent, down-to-earth way.  New music isn't necessarily scary. The opera may be state of the art, but that doesn't mean ordinary people can't relate to it.  Indeed, for Van der Aa, what counts is communication, with as many people as possible, not just trendies. . The Barbican's created a special mini-website for After Life where people can speculate on the ideas for themselves. It's a great idea because it makes people think about the basic premise of the opera, and relate it to their lives. The drama isn't just what's on stage, but what happens in the minds and souls of those taking part.  Definitely an experience on many different levels.

I tracked down the Financial Times article from 2006 HERE. "After Life succeeds not so much because of its plot but because of the ingenious way its component parts are assembled."...."This is the Gesammstkunstwerk of the future". Well, I dunno, since many composers and directors aim for the same extension of theatrical experience, but this should be well worth participating in. The Queen of the Netherlands was at the premiere, showing what an open-minded person she may be. I can't imagine Prince Charles letting down his inhibitions in the same way, for the sake of art.

Musically this will be top notch, as most of the team were involved in the Dutch productions. Michel van der Aa brings together The ASKO/Schoenberg Ensemble (wonderful), Claron McFadden, Roderick Williams and others.

Henze launches Barbican new operas season

PLEASE NOTE there are 15 Posts on Henze on this site and more coming, including reviews of Phaedra, both in Berlin and in the Barbican. Please use search facility at right Hans Werner Henze's Phaedra at last comes to London in January, keynote of special immersion weekend in Henze's wonderful, far-ranging music. Devotees booked their tickets a year ago, but you can still get them now from the Barbican. Henze is the greatest living German composer, by miles. He's not given nearly enough recognition in the English-speaking world because in 1968 he put his principle before profit. He supported the revolutionary ideals of the time, went to Cuba and protested against the Vietnam war. End of lucrative deals: DG had just issued a mega retrospective of his symphonies, so they lost out badly. But they stood by him and are now reissuing the recordings to new audiences who now realize that maybe Henze had a point.

Henze is an institution. If anything in old age and infirmity he's even more creative. Phaedra is a crucial point in his life and music. It's a passionate statement about love, and the power of love to triumph over all obstacles, including death. Personally it had huge emotional resonance for Henze because his lover of 40 years died suddenly while it was being written. This lover had just nursed Henze himself through a traumatic near death illness which left him incapacitated for months. So there's no separating the personal from the musical in this powerful work. When the work premiered in Berlin in 2007 one writer sneered that it wasn't funny enough and that Henze shouldn't end his career like that. Another moaned it was in German! Well, Henze didn't end his career and has gone on to write yet another opera, to be premiered in Rome in May 2010.

Henze's previous opera L'Upupa was cheerful and whimsical but the composer has written so much else. Indeed, his work is notable for its extreme range. Phaedra is a very tightly crafted, intense chamber opera, austere and yet other-worldly. In London, we'll be getting Ensemble Modern, who've made it a key part of their repertoire, and John Mark Ainsley.

Read more about it HERE on What's on Stage. Simon Thomas has interviewed Angela Dixon about the Barbican's special season of new European operas. The special season will include Peter Eötvös's Angels in America and Michael van der Aa's After Life. Read about them in the link.