The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
Spitalfields Festival
Lurching from disaster to triumph, embarrassment to success, English National Opera's season has not been vintage. Yet when it delivers a production as musically and theatrically satisfying as its new Rape of Lucretia, you can forgive almost anything.
Having opened the Aldeburgh Festival (from where it was broadcast on BBC2), this cool, abstract staging by David McVicar has now transferred to the Coliseum.
A composer with a flair for gloom in his operas, Britten nevertheless surpassed himself in this classical tale (to a strained libretto by Ronald Duncan) of the Roman Lucretia and her violation by the Etruscan Tarquinius. Despite the awkward, proto-Christian epilogue which obligingly casts matters in a brighter light, this opera is short on levity. The black music of Lucretia's despair and shame chills the soul.
McVicar and his designer Yannis Thavoris have placed the piece in a modern no-man's land. Colours of earth, slate, stone and wood dominate, making the shock of the defiled Lucretia's entrance in a bold purple gown even more disturbing. A narrow, horizontal rectangle of light forms a backdrop against which the characters appear, at times in silhouette, at others in dazzling light. Indeed, Paule Constable's precise and sensitive lighting takes on a character of its own. At times, a guillotine-like screen slowly descends, shutting out the light. In the rape scene, shocking in its restraint, a glinting mirror enables us to witness the monstrous deed from front and rear.
The cast consisted of some of the best British singers. John Mark Ainsley as Male Chorus has a lightness and refinement perfectly suited to Britten, though at times he was almost drowned out by the chamber ensemble. Christopher Maltman, a memorable Billy Budd for the Welsh National Opera, had ideal cat-like virility in voice and physique as Tarquinius, with Sarah Connolly an impassioned, robust Lucretia. This was her debut in the role, and she sings as if it were made for her. (Kathleen Ferrier sang the part in the 1946 premiere, suggesting Britten always intended a sturdy, ardent singer rather than a waif.) Paul Daniel, conducting, and the excellent 13-strong chamber ensemble savoured every nuance and texture of the score, from sour, nervy harp refrain to plangent cor anglais and alto flute lament
Why, though, should a solo cor anglais or simple repeated scale, as heard at the end of Britten's opera, stir us so profoundly? What makes one combination or pitch, tempo, melody and rhythm suggest universal joy, another sorrow? Our response, we now know, depends not merely on irrational emotion or mood but on precise neurological processes. Dementia or other forms of brain damage can alter our reaction to music. The neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote his bestselling book of case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat, in 1985. It was a revelation. Much work has since been done on music and the brain, especially in relation to Alzheimer's, the disease from which The Man was eventually found to suffer (having first been diagnosed with profound visual agnosia).
Sacks's story nevertheless remains potent. It has music at its heart, making it a natural, if unexpected choice for operatic treatment. Michael Nyman's short chamber piece, to a libretto by Christopher Rawlence, remains as fresh as when it was first performed in 1986. Dr P, a musician, makes frequent visual mistakes and can no longer read music, though he can play chess. He retains perfect pitch and responds to Schumann's music but cannot recognise his students. The opera shows the disturbing cognitive unravelling suffered by the patient, watched by his wife and his doctor.
Opera Vest Norway, directed by Michael McCarthy, bravely opened a five-night run by performing to an audience of neurologists (plus a few press), gathered in London for the World Conference on Neurology. They would know which part of their brain - or perhaps merely their ears - might have been affected by the deafening amplification, which, at times,made silence an unfairly attractive option.
The men (Julian Pike as Sacks and Ketil Hugaas as Dr P) were good but Mrs P (Itziar Martinez Galdos) was difficult to hear. Nyman's score, in which piano and solo violin are prominent (played with agility by members of Bit 20 Ensemble, conducted by Ingar Bergby), is one of his most effective. He mirrors the story with different styles of music, from romantic eloquence to jerky, rhythmically monotonous incoherence. On occasion this imitation is almost literal, as when Dr P is asked to identify geometrical solids, each new shape provoking Nyman to another layer of polyhedral musical complexity.
The Spitalfields Festival celebrates its silver jubilee this year. A decade ago it introduced a new commissioning policy which now makes it, with Cheltenham, one of the most stimulating and varied of all the summer festivals. With nearly 40 premieres from which to choose this season, I was particularly sorry to miss Go on - Rip your Tights! by David Charles Martin, though, after reading the cryptic pro gramme note - 'Battling with these officially inanimate objects can be fun and tacky' - I rather felt I had heard it. Spitalfields traditionally gives a showcase to students from Trinity College of Music. Whether out of shyness or sheepishness, neither Fenia Anastasopoulou (b.1975) or Edwin Sykes (b. 1979) were present to hear their premieres played by the Elysian Quartet and the Paddington Brass Quintet.
Perhaps they guessed they might be outshone by the two masters between whom they were programmed. Stravinsky's tiny but concentrated Three Pieces for String Quartet remain as trenchant a snub to tradition as when there were written in 1914. In Stockhausen's Der Kleine Harlekin, a solo clarinettist tap dances his way round the stage, sometimes precariously on one foot, while emitting fiendish, Pan-like squeals, sighs and shrieks. Benjamin del Rosario, dressed in skin-tight Harlequin suit, gave a playful and virtuosic account. His next challenge is to keep a straight face.
