Mickey Mask

I see that Verdi’s A Masked Ball is being traduced again.

In ENO’s infamous 1990s' ‘flying pizza’ production, Gustavus III of Sweden’s impending death was subtly underlined by the appearance of a skeletal grim reaper on horseback and a giant clock whizzing across the stage. Not content with that, their 2002 production opened with a line of men reading newspapers, whilst… errr… relaxing.

Actually neither of these productions was as bad as the press would have you believe, but never mind.

However, as German producer Johann Kresnik, whose production will be seen in Erfurt, points out: “One has to introduce new elements – otherwise it is difficult to attract new theatregoers.”

Before considering the ‘new elements’ he has introduced, it might be helpful to remind ourselves that this is an opera about King Gustavus III of Sweden and how he was assassinated at the titular celebration in 1792.

Given that, it’s entirely understandable that Kresnik has chosen to see the opera as a Marxist attack on post-911 capitalist America. He makes this abundantly clear by having a chorus of naked pensioners sporting Mickey Mouse masks (“a very beautiful, poetic scene”, according to the theatre’s general manager), a woman sporting a Hitler moustache consorting with Uncle Sam and giving a Nazi salute, and – beloved in America, but a tedious symbol of vapidity elsewhere else - an Elvis impersonator.

If we hadn’t already spotted it, the theatre manager helpfully points out that the production is “a little critical of America”.

But let’s not be too harsh: Verdi hit lots of political problems with this and other works and he himself was a symbol of Italian unification. The slogan ‘Viva Verdi’ wasn’t just an acclamation of the greatest Italian composer (ever?) but a coded political rallying call: Vittorio Emmanuele, re d’Italia.

Written in 1859 just 67 years after the assassination, Un ballo in maschera was incendiary stuff and it was clear that the censor in Austrian-dominated Naples would have something to say about it. But Verdi wasn’t a documentarist and his story is no closer to the truth than Scribe and Auber’s 1833 operatic version. However, Verdi and his librettist balked at the censor’s suggestions and took the opera to Rome, where they had to acquiesce to moving the action from Sweden to Boston and demoting the hero from king to governor.

So, should a modern producer try to draw parallels between events (set it in Dallas in 1963?) or try to find some sort of objective correlative that will stir in us the same emotions that the original audience had?



Whichever path is taken, reducing it to a bit bourgeoisie épater-ing does it no favours.

In fact, both paths are equally bogus: history doesn’t repeat itself (either as comedy or tragedy) and in any case what's bang up to date now is out of date all too quickly - it'll be interesting to see how ENO's Candide, transferring from Milan and Paris, deals with the fact that four-fifths of the kings (Blair, Chirac, Putin and Berlusconi) are no longer in power. Bush will still be there (just) and Putin obviously retains power in some way. Ironically it's possible that the production may be saved one change - by the return of Silvio Berlusconi. Jonathan Miller's 1988 production is a good example of the benefits and disadvantages of updating: a brilliant satire on (Panglossian) Thatcherite laissez-faire economics, it would mean less today. Wouldn't it?

Meanwhile shocking the audience entails out-jumping all the shocks between the original and the present: The Rite of Spring, Look Back in Anger – whatever else you want to add to the list – leading inevitably to our current worship at the church of latterday producers.

Why not just trust the audience to know that this is a fictionalised portrayal of historical events that, as far as modern parallels are concerned, fits where it touches? This may of course lead to productions where the hero of A Masked Ball is an 18th-century Swedish monarch who is assassinated, or Henry V has a sword rather than a submachine-gun that he, for some reason, fails to employ against his enemies, but if that’s the case, we’ll just have to put up with it.

Audiences and critics of that persuasion will be accused of hopeless conservatism, but that’s not the point: the best production of Rigoletto that I’ve ever seen is still Jonathan Miller’s 1950s New York Mafiosa one (the words occasionally subtly altered to accommodate the conception) and Peter Sellars’ Middle-East Giulio Cesare had some interesting things to say. Sadly, updating is in danger of being a first base for producers who fear that otherwise their work will be seen as stale or irrelevant or, even worse, ignorable.

Essentially Kresnik is peddling ‘Ostalgia’ – East Germans’ affection for the days when the Stasi had files on a good proportion of the population but the trains ran on time – in the form of an anti-Capitalist rant. Ostalgia was mocked with touching ambiguity in Goodbye Lenin! But if Kresnik thinks he's being serious, he's a long was short of Patrice Chéreau’s then-controversial-but-now-classic centenary Ring at Bayreuth.

Verdi’s original had the neat irony of being set in the opera-house, but in some kind of ironic meta-comment, rounding up 35 pensioners willing to spend five evenings in Kresnik’s dystopia proved alarmingly simple: Germany’s famous tradition of nude sunbathing proved the means; the opera was the opportunity, and post-unification poverty the motive. In such circumstances, persuading them to dance around the ruins of the World Trade Center was akin to getting seals to jump through hoops for herring.

Lost Highway

"I like to remember things my own way. How I remember them. Not necessarily the way they happened"

If you’re going to try to sum up David Lynch’s films with a single line, then that one, from Lost Highway, pretty much does it. Conventional narrative and realistic acting have never really had a place in Lynch’s dreamworld, where surfaces only serve to conceal the truth. Civilisation is a thin façade and animal violence and sex could break through at any moment.

The plot of Lost Highway is simple enough but what it means is another matter. After hearing that “Dick Laurent is dead”, Fred and Renée find that an intruder has filmed them during their sleep. Renée is murdered but Fred remembers nothing. He’s arrested and condemned to the chair, but while in his prison cell he transforms into another person - Pete. Released, Pete gets involved with psychotic porn-gangster Mr Eddy’s girlfriend, Alice - a blond version of Renée (keeping up?), leading to sex on a motorbike, robbery, more murders and, in a loop back to the start, a discovery of what it means that “Dick Laurent is dead”. In between times we meet the Mystery Man who has the power to be in two places at the same time.

As Lynch says: [co-screenwriter] "Barry Gifford may have his idea of what the film means and I may have my own idea and they may be two different things. And yet we worked on the same film. The beauty of a film that is more abstract is everybody has a different take."

So far, so Lynchian, with the director’s habitual forays into weirdness, archetypical characters, pop culture, scarily random violence and bathetic comedy.

But then Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth comes along and decides to make it into a piece of music theatre. Unsurprisingly, it’s not your usual night at the opera, and ENO has moved to The Young Vic for the UK premiere.

In some ways it's an odd choice for a musical setting. Lynch's soundscapes (created with Alan Splet, until his death in 1995) have always been crucial to his films, whether through the murky industrial noises of Eraserhead and The Elephant Man or the pop quotations of Blue Velvet. They seem so integral to the mood that to replace them with something else risks destroying their very essence. But Neuwirth has managed to find a kind of parallel soundworld, sometimes using the same materials, sometimes equal but different.

Impressive as it is have the libretto co-written by Nobel Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek (a regular collaborator with Neuwirth), in fact it sticks closely to the screenplay. There are couple of changes: rather than being a saxophonist, Fred plays the trumpet - Neuwirth's own instrument until she was in a car crash; and Mr Eddy's moment of madness is, in a black anti-political-correctness joke, a reaction not to bad driving but irresponsible smoking.



Modern operas have a problem getting over Berg's Wozzeck, probably the greatest fusion of classical form and modernist language and, as far as any modern opera can be so described, a hit. Many later operas sound like semi-retreads filled with expressionist screaming and twisted memories of popular culture.

But in this case Neuwirth's collage is true to the original's style, lurching from the highest expressionism to echoes of everything from Monteverdi to Kurt Weill, by way of chunks of pure Nat King Cole and Lou Reed. There might be fewer than 30 people in the band but with everyone, including the cast, amplified, plus tape and electronic effects there’s no lack of power and the sudden shifts of mood and sonic explosions create a sense that anything could happen – and probably will.

A lot of Lost Highway's mobius-strip narrative seems to happen inside Fred/Pete's head, and director Diane Paulus stages it in the round, a corridor bisecting the audience and a perspex box surrounded by four video screens high above. Meanwhile, the sound is sent through speakers all around the hall, leaving the audience suspended in a torus between sound and action, bounced around by a level of intensity you’ll seldom experience in the theatre.

Between fast-moving action (12 scenes in 90 minutes), shifting personas, complex – though always engaging - music and multi-level staging, there’s a sense of overload and edginess (as there should be) and everyone performs miracles. But if there’s something beyond a miracle, David Moss – Neuwirth’s preferred Mr Eddy – manages it, covering everything from crooning falsetto to straight-out shouting, sometimes in the space of a single line. If you can’t get to the Old Vic, you can catch his performance on Kairos’ commercial recording. Here's an interview with him.

Olga Neuwirth. Lost Highway. At the Young Vic, six performances from 4 to 11 April.

Information and video clips
http://www.youngvic.org/whats-on?action=details&id=1750

Lost Highway (CD) Kairos 0012542KAI.
Soundclip at http://www.kairos-music.com/startFR.html