Avatar

Copyright seems to be going into some sort of hyperdrive-meltdown: on the one hand, the internet increasingly seems like the free digital repository of anything you might need, while Australian band Men at Work is hobbled by a perverse and in many ways incomprehensible ruling in favour of the copyright equivalent of an ambulance chaser.

Unsurprisingly, Avatar (left) is coming in for a bit of similar treatment. There's already been a 'heated debate' about whether or not it rips off the Strugatskys' World of Noon books (1961-85).

In this post-, even anti-imperialist series,

set in the 22nd-century, the planet Pandora is filled with fantastical flora and fauna. In the fifth book, Disquiet (Беспокойство, 1965) humans set up a laboratory to study the mysterious biosphere but thereafter the book and the film only fit where they touch.

English translations (mostly from Macmillan) appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. But, despite some attempts to stir up a controversy (evil westerners ripping off a Russian icon), the surviving Strugatsky (Boris) seems sanguine, unsurprisingly since, after the death of brother Arkady, he approved of a collection of other writers' tales set in the Noon universe.

Anyway, bunking off from Paradjanov duties yesterday, I went to see Avatar. This isn't the place for an in-depth review. Briefly: it's a great experience but a pretty poor film that mixes up the Mayans, Yggdrasil and any other myths that came to hand. One (unintentional?) moment of hilarity came with the apparently serious use of the word "unobtainium" (hopefully Cameron cleared that trademarked name!)

But I was struck by the music.

As you might expect, it was by James Horner, who isn't entirely unfamiliar with accusations of - shall we say - being .... errrrrr .... 'overly-influenced' by other composers. Still, the usual 'victims' are Khachaturian, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and as they say, if you're going to steal (and who says he is stealing - certainly not me!) steal from the best.

Musically, it's a bit of a hodge-podge. With the percussion and ethnic chanting I occasionally thought it was going to break into something like Karl Jenkins' Adiemus.

But then - leaping lizards - there's a fantastic theme for the Na've tribe. Damn, it sounded familiar. So I upset Melissa by humming it a bit too loudly in the few quiet bits of the film to remind myself and - yes - it's definitely hovering around Kutuzov's theme from Prokofiev's War and Peace - 47 seconds into this:

Now, sometimes things like that are unconscious and sometimes they have a meaning. Hans Zimmer convincingly argued that his Gladiator 'borrowings' from temp-track standby, Holst's Mars, were a deliberate counterpart to Ridley Scott's ironic references to Triumph of the Will.

Actually in this case, I'm willing to give Horner, the benefit of the doubt (or a get-out-of-jail-free card). Sadly the Youtube clip of the end of the Bolshoi production of War and Peace can't be embedded but the chorus takes up Kutuzov's theme to sing:

We came to fight to the death. To fight to the death, the people came forward. With our blood we have defended Russia. We have defended our mighty land. Our Field Marshal led us onward, led us rightly into battle for our country.

Compare Kutuzov's theme to Avatar - hop to around 5'10" in this compilation (though you'll have to wait for it to buffer), where it begins to gel.


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Perhaps Horner is drawing a parallel between the Napoleonic attack on Moscow and the events in Avatar? Perhaps so - in both cases the victims strategically withdraw to come back with renewed vigour.

Then again, Horner also seems to have been rethinking his music for Glory (1989), but what Avatar's got to do with the American Civil War, I don't know.

Beyond that, it's not for Horner to explain why Prokofiev - himself an inveterate self-devourer - used Kutuzov's theme in Ivan the Terrible (1944) - he was working on War and Peace at around the same time - in a more downbeat version, as a lament for the Tartar steppes.

Obviously it works for Horner: Avatar has picked up his tenth Oscar nod. As far as the Academy is concerned the film itself is probably like Goldman-Sachs - too big to fail, so will pick up the statue. Might Horner join in the celebrations? Perhaps - he won for Cameron's last outing, Titanic.

But then again, given the film's story and its subsequent commercial success, perhaps Horner would have been better quoting this:

The manifest destiny of fair comment?

The news that composer Keith Burstein has been bankrupted by his libel action against the Evening Standard raises mixed feelings. On the one hand, a ‘little guy’ has been squashed by the corporate suits (and Associated Newspapers at that). On the other hand it seems like an attempt to rein in critical comment has failed. On the other(?!) hand, what are the limits of a critic's responsibilities?

The backstory: reviewing Burstein’s opera Manifest Destiny, Veronica Lee said it was ‘trite’, ‘horribly leaden’ and ‘unmusical’. And that was just Dic Edwards’ libretto: Burstein’s music was dismissed simply as ‘uninspiring’.

Hey-ho: we all get bad reviews and learn to conquer the urge to fire off an email, explaining just why the perceived ‘faults’ are actually our meisterwerk’s crowning glories, or saying that we agree but that some sheister producer/publisher/singer/fill-in-the-job-title completely shafted us and that only a critic who has no conception of what it is to be creative could fail to recognize the travails of being an artist.

Burstein began life as a conductor of modernist works but as his interest in composition grew, so he became a neo-tonalist, writing stuff like this. He co-formed The Hecklers to argue against the disproportionate public subsidy given to unpopular music, incidentally winning a libel suit against News International, which claimed he disrupted the Royal Opera's production of Gawain. He quickly left the Hecklers and has since come to see his association with the group as a bit of an albatross.

Unluckily, Manifest Destiny, which centres on a suicide bomber, premiered five weeks after 7/7, possibly setting up unintended parallels. Chris Cleave’s suicide-bomber novel Incendiary was ‘lucky’ enough to predate the attacks and, four years later, as the film adaptation is about to be released, it all seems a little distant.

For reference, here’s the Standard's review:

How horribly prescient; Keith Burstein’s opera about suicide bombers receives its world premiere a few weeks after 7/7. What a pity it’s such a trite affair. The heroine, Palestinian poet Leila (Bernadette Lord), leaves Daniel, a Jewish composer, to return to her homeland to become a suicide bomber. Her cell leader Mohammed falls in love with her, sees the error of his ways and, in order to save her, hands Leila over to the Americans. But it’s all too much for her so she tops herself anyway.

The libretto by Dic Edwards is horribly leaden and unmusical and the music uninspiring, save for the odd duet, and full marks to the talented cast of four for carrying it off. But I found the tone depressingly anti-American [there’s a synopsis here], and the idea that there is anything heroic about suicide bombers is, frankly, a grievous insult.

Burstein, who had previously written about the opera in The Guardian, took this to imply that he found suicide bombers heroic. The Evening Standard argued that it was ‘fair comment’.

Burstein felt there was nothing to do but go to law. He won the right to sue for defamation – to be heard before a jury – and was awarded £8,000. But the Court of Appeal overturned that, judging the original review to be fair comment. And ordered Burstein to return the 8k and stump up the rest of the Standard’s costs. Not having 67 grand to hand, (in the Alice in Wonderland world of law, that almost seems quite reasonable) he was bankrupted.

Burstein has vowed to fight on (with what, I don’t know), and will go to the European Court of Human Rights to argue that the denial of a trial before a jury and the fact that he had to pay the Standard’s costs before all legal options were exhausted was a travesty of justice.

The importance of trial by jury (preferably not by Gilbert and Sullivan) is a whole different topic, so let’s not go there. But it's worth returning to the review and the crucial last line. There's nothing wrong (or actionable) in saying a work of art is rubbish (and hopefully Burstein isn't complaining about that). The BBC review and a passing comment by the Telegraph probably didn't have crowds hammering down the door but artists inevitably expose themselves to that.

But Burstein is saying that if that creation is seen as a manifestation of the artist, then to say that the work supports suicide bombers is, to some degree to say that the man does. How is the critic to unhitch the two?

In a later twist, the new Terrorism Bill outlaws anything that the publisher might reasonably believe will be understood as a direct or indirect encouragement or inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts. Whether that makes Burstein's work unperformable is a moot (but interesting) point, relying on the producers' (or courts') assessment of whether there are any potential terrorists in the audience who may be fired up by the opera.

The rights to the bankrupt Burstein's works have been taken by the receiver and future royalties will be used to pay m’learned friends. Quite how long this will take I don’t know: there aren’t many composers charging three figures an hour.

In the meantime, Burstein’s website, which included soundclips of his work – and perhaps even of Manifest Destiny - has been taken down. If it’s a result of the judgment, then surely that's an unintended and unfortunate effect.

However, you can (for how long?) see extensive chunks on Youtube.

I’ll risk a critical comment: I’m glad he wrote it. I’m glad I’ve seen it. I’m glad I won’t be seeing it again. Please - don't sue me!

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