Witches and Wonderland

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In Os´s spectacular fjord-side culture house, a witch with a long silver tail is dancing with a bloody saw and cackling horribly. Hansel is trapped on top of a hospital trolley and Gretel is hiding behind lurid pink boxes. Welcome to the opera!

Bergen National Opera is rehearsing Humperdinck´s wonderful work for all ages, a new production with a singular lack of sugar and gingerbread but with all kinds of spookery and gruesome effects guaranteed to delight fiendish young minds and thoroughly unnerve their parents.

Right now we´re watching video of skeletal hands flickering on the front of a particularly grimy oven, and working out how Gretel will stuff the witch, her tail and her massive bouffant wig into the cooker without dislocating a limb. As it is, one hand is dangling limply out of the door. “Don´t light the legs too much; it´s confusing” says director James Bonas to lighting designer Martin Pettersen, who sits behind a jittering computer screen and a battery of switches. In the gloom just before her demise, the witch has sharpened an unsavoury looking spike, Gretel has snatched the magic wand and is singing ‘hocus-pocus’. So the siblings will defeat evil, kill their horrid captor, find their hapless parents and live happily after…

The brief from BNO to Bonas, designer Tom Paris and music director Stephen Higgins was to create a ‘suitcase’ opera, to be taken on tour from north Hordaland down to the southern Rogaland town of Bryne, performing in eight venues and scooping up school class 7 as participants in the show. We have five wonderful young Norwegian singers in the principal roles (the witch doubles as Hansel and Gretel’s somewhat despairing mother). Then, a school class local to each of the venues will have a walk-on role and a glorious chorus to sing – all accompanied by a virtuosic piano version of the orchestra score. Along the way, we invited a couple of school classes in to evaluate the process as the opera grows through rehearsal – Bergen´s Montessori school had plenty to say on their visit last week: ”Can´t hear the words; why does she (the witch) do that? We want more scary bits!”

But by now, the suitcase has become a truck, the production has grown from a few flat-pack boxes into a set resplendent with huge, albeit gorgeously painted, boxes, and the props list bulges with oversized blood-bags, grotesque stripy candy sticks, brooms and glittery shoes. The painted floor – a critical part of the decoration – coming by van from Poland, is currently AWOL somewhere north on E16. It might arrive this evening, but … The driver´s voice is lost in a tunnel.

The video, created by Siren Halvorsen and Fredrik Rysjedal, is fantastic – as we watch, birds flock across walls, trees grow spindling branches, and beetles creep over sleeping bodies in the forest. Lit by flickering, trembling skeletons, the boxes transform into eerie nightscape as Hansel and Gretel shiver and whimper.

Tomorrow, Class 7, Os Barneskole is coming for their first rehearsal. They´ve had workshops with BNO´s Ann-Terese Aasen, but now they´ll put on their hoodies-with-wings and become angels. Next, they don orange boiler suits to emerge as the lost children who find freedom at the opera´s end – a moment as tear-jerking as any in music.

The magic of Humperdinck´s story is of course the astonishing score itself – rich with melody, beautiful, surprising and evocative. But no other opera story so utterly grips, bewitches and touches the specialist listener and the youthful beginner alike.

So, parents, grand-parents, aunts and uncles bring a child. Or just come. Come, and be one yourself.

Mary Miller

18 November, 2017
More info and tickets: www.bno.no

Photos: Monika Kolstad

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Händel and Humanity

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In Grieghallen´s basement rehearsal room, figures in tattered grey sing Händel as they shuffle towards a table where soup is ladled from a vast battered pot. The scene is bleak. We are in Ireland – or it could be Norway – in some kind of timeless misery with freezing weather and famine, where the country´s distant officials have long ceased to care, and where the church is struggling between old-school hell-fire authority and its need to offer succour.

So, here at Bergen National Opera we are creating a staged version of The Messiah for Festspillene i Bergen in a special edition by Malcolm Bruno, created from the original material which Händel took to Dublin for the oratorio´s premiere. The director, Netia Jones, acclaimed for her layering of stage direction, film and live video, is talking with passion and extraordinary clarity about the circumstances in which the oratorio was first performed: about the text – its writer, Charles Jennens was a devout Anglican and unflinching believer in scriptural authenticity – and about 18th century English snootiness towards a religious work being intended for the theatre. She talks about hypocrisy, about rural communities where a fundamentalist priest thunders about divine retribution as his congregation sickens and starves, about political representatives turning their backs and returning to warm well-fed firesides, about Godly but kind folk with a belief in hope tending the needy. She muses on Händel, newly settled in London, writing music of genius at furious speed as public opinion turned against showy Italian opera towards a near-craze for English-text oratorios.

But in creating the Messiah, Händel swerved from what had become his norm. For this new work, there were to be no highly dramatic roles for the singers; no individual narrator and no quoted speech. Though Jennens didn´t intend his text to be a dramatization of Jesus´s life and teachings, he did want to present (as opposed to explore) what he described as the “Mystery of Godliness” through extracts from the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible, and from the Psalms in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

For Netia Jones, the Messiah tells a deeply human story. The four soloists can hardly be said to have theatrical roles as such, but their characters are distinctly drawn. Soprano Kateryna Kasper is an angelic voice, a figure of innocence and purity. Mezzo Renata Pokupic is a mother – a shy, little known member of the community with a very sick child for whom she is seeking help; urgent help, as he is stricken with typhus. Our tenor is a curate – a young, naïve, idealistic priest in his first parish, struggling with the seeming brutality of his Lord and the flickering questions which torture the basis of his faith. Meanwhile, fire, brimstone, Godliness and prejudice define our bass, an old fundamentalist priest with the Old Testament emblazoned on his brow, and anger surging in his heart at the sin of his parishioners who have brought such devastation upon themselves. The chorus personifies the village, a mix of kindness, lost hope, burning zeal and raw survival. We see them in church, in icy limb-freezing weather, and, at the soup kitchen.

So the atmosphere, in rehearsal, is extraordinary. It seems that we hear Händel´s music unfold for the first time. Freed from the bulging choral extravaganza of the British concert hall, the music seems at once extremely intimate and frighteningly spacious. We are working with Bjarte Eike´s Barokksolistene and the gut-stringed mewing sound with chittering harpsichord is acutely human. The compact chorus – a mix of our own fine Edvard Grieg Kor and Washington Cathedra´s elite Cathedra vocal ensemble – produces fantastic sounds: blazing, glowing, gasping, and what seems, at times, like an end of life breath.

There are tough questions both to Bjarte – for the singers, it´s not straightforward to follow a skittering violin bow, as opposed to a conductor´s baton – and to Cathedra´s Michael McCarthy whose beat leads the most complex, contrapuntal material. For this is chamber music on the move – hard lines to sing in ensemble while navigating all kinds of instructions on stage.

In the weeks to come, we move to Den Nationale Scene as the work takes shape for performance; from the Great Music Hall in Dublin 1742 premiere for charitable causes – prisoner debt and aid to hospitals – where because of over-crowding, the audience were requested to wear neither swords or hooped skirts – to London´s Covent Garden Theatre, where the reception was chilly (such exalted outpourings should surely be heard in a church) to a small, beautiful Norwegian theatre.

There, after weeks in a grey airless room, Handel will take the stage. And why his masterpiece has endured, through theological questioning, public adulation and disenchantment, multiple editions and orchestrations, overcharged performance and countless Christmas bawlings, will become gleamingly, movingly clear.

To Jennens´ words, Händel will spell out his own glory. In some way, we shall all be changed – by great music shown to us as humans, and by a staging of consummate humanity.

Mary Miller

5th May 2017

Il turco in Norwegia

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“Wow” says Pietro Spagnoli, great Rossinian buffo baritone “we´re talking Rossini to Broadway!”

At Bergen National Opera, everyone is breathless from high kicks, razzle-dazzle, fancy moves and footwork. The dancers are sweating lightly, stretching their lycra-clad legs and fiddling with their feet. The chorus is gasping quietly and practising jerky movements as though searching for a wasp lost in their clothing – dance director Sean Curran´s routines are not, for sure, in their usual repertoire. The soloists are beaming and chattering in Italian by the coffee machine.

Welcome to Il Turco in Italia directed by American opera supremo Mark Lamos – a riotous combination of highly sophisticated ensemble, fabulous arias, touching moments and carefully choreographed mayhem.

Mark, along with designer George Souglides, last illuminated BNO in 2014 with Rimsky-Korsakov´s The Golden Cockerel – a Norwegian premiere which put Russian opera firmly on the Bergen map – and which created pictures never to be erased from memory: a golden cage shimmering above the stage with a jittering boy/bird as the eponymous cockerel; a wicked Eastern queen in a dazzling scarlet feather coat singing seductive lines to bewitch a foolish, doddering Tsar; a blasted landscape under a blood-red moon with ruined trees and a scattered, broken army. Unforgettable.

But Turco! It couldn´t be more different. Now, listen carefully – like most Italian opera, the plot is tortuous. We are at the seaside – maybe even in Pesaro, Rossini´s eccentric, enchanting home town. A poet, Prosdocimo, is looking for a story for his next libretto and in front of him, an interesting tale begins to unfold. Old Geronio (Spagnoli´s role) has a tiresomely flirtatious young wife Fiorilla, a girl troubled by a voracious need for male attention, preferably not from her husband. A Turkish ship sails in captained by the glamorous Selim – do not look to this opera for political correctness – and Fiorilla wastes no time. Meanwhile, Selim´s old girlfriend and a pack of gypsies are in hot pursuit. In the end, after a domestic ruction, a masked ball, a critical letter, it all resolves… How? You will just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, upstairs on Grieghallen´s third floor, a mix of Hungarian, Norwegian and German costume makers are draping bling onto delighted extra cast members. The clothes are outrageous, all froth, silk turbans, shocking pink trousers and bosomy dresses. There are harlequins in primary colours and pom-poms, crazy hats, and skirts the size of Victorian overmantels.

Along the corridor, Øystein is working with his puppets, little gesturing, weaving miniatures of the principal characters, clad in matching extravagant silks. Little Fiorilla is learning to stretch her wooden hand to slap mini Geronio. He is organising his dangling feet to swerve smartly away.

But right now, we have a half hour break. Spagnoli has taken his dog for a walk – he never travels without her – and our office has adopted her with somewhat soppy adoration. The dancers are outside smoking, and Fiorilla, Spanish soprano Sylvia Schwartz is on the phone to Rome, to her children´s nanny.

Mark is composing an email to the Metropolitan Opera, New York – they´ll revive one of his Verdi productions next year – and we are trying to catch our breath. We´ve just had cake for Mark´s birthday, and the sugar high compounds the atmosphere of overall exhilaration. In ten minutes, Rossini will swirl gloriously back on stage, the music will bewitch us and our toes will start to tap.

Broadway, Pesaro, Italy, Bergen – here we come, with the Norwegian premiere of an opera like no other. Bring your dancing shoes – isn´t that what the aisles are for? – and settle in for a night on the town, at the seaside, in the company of our cast of sparkling stars.

Mary Miller

11/03/2017

Burns in Bergen

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The Immortal Memory

“Then, all unknown,
I´ll lay me with the inglorious dead
Forgot and gone…”

So wrote Robert Burns, far from forgotten this January 2016, close to 260 years from his birth.

How might he have reacted to us celebrating his life at a Burns Supper? – he´d be – I suspect – bewildered, but just a little intrigued.

As a child I went to many Burns suppers – my grandfather, who was an academic but also a Church of Scotland minister, had a very beautiful singing voice, and he was always asked to sing. I was about nine or ten and a violinist, and he had very lovely arrangements of Burns songs with violin obligato. So I would be dragged along scowling (I was not a willing performer, although I loved it once my Grandfather started to sing) and we would weave the tunes between us. Wonderful tunes – the tough calls to arms and the dreamy ones that Burns´s mother had taught him. She couldn´t read or write, but she had a treasury of words and music in her head. That – the music – is part of our Immortal Memory too – that we sing Burns perhaps even more than we speak him. Beyond all the sepia tinted pictures, the shortbread tins and the bagpipes and haggis, it’s hard to think of another poet who commands the love and respect of generations: his poetry just has so much to say to us, that we cannot contain it without celebration.

As we lurch home tonight, our mouths still powdery with haggis, our knees sore from reels, our heads still nodding with Auld Lang Syne and maybe a wisp of Ae Fond Kiss, in some far country, another speech will be beginning. Another knife will plunge into the haggis “Oh what a glorious sight! Warm-reeking, rich!” (those from the West, forgive my Scots; I come from Edinburgh). In Australia, the ex-pats are done with this year´s feasting and singing, in America they haven´t yet begun (in a whole number of senses….)

Burns started life in a rough cottage. He always knew that his life held possibilities. He wrote to his mentor Dr John Moore “My social disposition was without bounds or limits”. It´s dismal business, tonight, to consider inauguration speeches – in fact I´ll fine anyone 100 krone if they mention a certain T-word this evening – but think, say, what Burns would have made of OBAMA´s inauguration speech – remember what he said about social needs, about greed and about political irresponsibility?

“Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune. 

(We Americans) have never relinquished our scepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.”

Burns always was always responding to society. His poetry even now always responds to today´s world. He even wrote about banks:

“Had I to guid advice but harkit
I might, by this, hae led a market
Or struttit in a bank and clarkit
my cash account.
While here, half-mad, half-fed, half-sarket
Is a’ th’ amount.”

He thought – and reflected – on politics, about how his people were represented, about the origins and limits of political authority. At the opening of the Scottish Parliament on 1st July 1999, Sheena Wellington sang:

“For a’ that an’ al’ that
It´s coming yet for a’ that
That man to man the world oe’r
Shall brothers be for a’ that”

Back to Obama – we could have easily have sung that on 20th January 2009 or 2013.

I was just reading a copy of The Spectator magazine from around that time, where I guess we were all a little more light-hearted. There was a story about a poetry competition – about entering heaven. The Almighty heard the most appalling racket going on at the Pearly Gates. Wouldn´t you guess: English and Scottish football fans. “Right” he said “I´m not putting up with this for the rest of time. I gather that you are as usual quarrelling about which Nation is top dog. Well you´ll resolve that dispute now and for eternity. So, both groups, nominate a poet.” The Scots chose Burns, and the English, Wordsworth. And God said “You have 20 minutes to to produce a four line poem including the word Timbuktu – rhyming.”

It took the Wordsworth gang no time at all. The Scots were thoroughly depressed, because it sounded awfully poetic:

I went unto a foreign land
I came across a silver strand
A sailing ship hove into view
Her destination: Timbuktu

BUT suddenly, from the back of the Scots corner came Rabbie Burns – and he saved the day:

Tim and I a’walking went
We spied three lassies in a tent
Since they were three and we were two
I bucked one and Tim buck’d two!

But perhaps it´s the extraordinary range of Burns´s songs and poetry that gives us his immortality. He was just as brilliant and fluent writing about the church´s hypocrisy – think of Holy Willie´s Prayer – as he was in beautiful, tender love poetry. In John Anderson, my Jo, he captures a whole marriage in two delicate, heart-rending stanzas. Remember:

John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither;

He makes us laugh, and he makes us weep.

He´s the poet who can make us look at ourselves again, who is always reinventing himself, because we are constantly remaking him, rethinking him. He was fascinated by how complex we are – all of us. “Oh wad some pow-’er giftie gie us, tae see oursel’s as others see us.”

So, we have a poet of the head and the heart. He shared his head – his thoughts on justice and faith – and he opened his heart to share his vulnerability and a capacity for love which he wanted us all to share. He never sought celebrity. He was a poet and musician of the mouth – his bequest is his language: sweet, passionate, funny and pragmatic.

His Scot´s language has legs, wearing a kilt in Scotland, or a sari in Sri Lanka or a bush hat in Sydney. His poems travel, surf, fly. And mostly, the haggis travels with them.

Mary Miller

25th January 2016

Prison opera – Trollet på Fantøya

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Like many companies, Bergen National Opera has been engaged in “write an opera” projects for a number of years – scores of children have benefited and have produced intriguing, surprising and joyful results.

But earlier this year, BNO decided to push things further: what about write-an-opera for adults? So we chose a fairy story – one with all the right Norwegian ingredients: a troll, a princess, a lonely boy, a greedy “bad man”. We summoned the great bass-baritone Sir Thomas Allen, chose two young Norwegian singers and invited 17 somewhat startled amateur singers from Førde to join. And we made an opera which astounded its audience in the packed tiny barn at Åmot Gaard, as part of BNO´s Mimi Goes Glamping Festival in August.

Island prison opera

The idea of took hold. Hanne Frosta, Food Director for Mimi and supervisor at the island prison at Ulvsnesøy, a remarkable facility where the inmates play a major role in building and sustaining their own community, asked us to visit the prison to see if we could find a mutual project. Now, a new opera has been born:Trollet på Fantøya, which premieres on Saturday December 10th.

BNO believes profoundly in the power of opera, that most open-minded and flexible of art forms, to bring people together. Stories told by music combine our two heartfelt instincts – the need to share our words and feelings, and to express our voices in song.

Yes, BNO as a company stages major operas in custom-built venues and employs some of the world´s greatest artists. But to work with a prison, with people totally new to opera, and to build something from scratch together is a new, unpredictable and inspiring experience. Together, this random team is coming together: we all want quality and every single one of us wants to be as proud as can be, come the premiere.

Finding a voice

We started the process with meetings. Some were shy, some were wildly ambitious, some were bored, some were excited. We talked and talked, shared food, sang a bit, discovered surprising skills and stories, and settled on staging the show in a big tent, serving food, running a Christmas Market, and involving everyone on the island. Solveig, the supplies manager will play the Troll (after much persuasion); we chose a princess (very shy) and a prince (even more shy) and as they told their own personal stories, director Tom Guthrie began to shape the show.

Now we´re on a roll. Inmates and staff are memorising lines and tuning strings, building the set, making props – great birds on sticks – and cutting branches to make an indoor forest. Others a cooking up a feast from the local lamb. We´re all singing with a bit more confidence and a fair amount of giggling. Some of BNO´s young chorus singers have joined us, we´ve formed a basic orchestra from drum and guitar playing inmates along with Hardanger fiddle. Everyone is furiously knitting warm seat covers for the tent – our drummer Tor Ivar, with his massive ear-piercings and whole arm tattoos is becoming expert – and as we all get to know each other better, there are a lot of “wouldn´t it be great if….” conversations.

And, the press are taking note: TV and print journalists are paying attention, and a magazine journalist is coming from the UK. A paper for prisoners and staff – called, unbelievably, Insider Times – has asked for pictures. One of the writers, curious about the mix of opera and inmates, said “OK, so this is something completely different from art?”. No, no – we said. This is what art does. It changes peoples´ lives, in institutions, in draughty tents, on islands, in the rehearsal room. If we´re lucky, after Saturday, we´ll never be quite the same again.

Mary Miller

Photo: Monika Kolstad

Fabulous Fabio

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In the thick of rehearsals for Bellini´s I Capuleti e i Montecchi – a notoriously difficult opera to stage – with complex chorus choreography, exhausted soloists and the alarming possibility of Tebaldo accidently stabbing a stagehand (yes, we have real swords) – a small figure remains serene. Fabio Biondi, conductor, Bellini specialist, baroque and classical violinist supremo is smiling calmly and discussing rubato with his Spanish assistant, José Ramón Martín Díaz. José is fiddling with the piano and playing snatches of The Way you look Tonight. Fabio is singing quietly ’…. La tremenda ultrice spada…’

Talking to him is like experiencing a gentle blood transfusion – inspiration flows from him in an extraordinary way, as though he himself is discovering new wonders as he speaks. He´s telling me about how bel canto, in present times, should really be described as bella musica – ’bel canto was really about writing music for the stars, about celebrating the spectacular voices. Now we try to show how deep this music is, how interesting, how much detail is in the chorus, the orchestra, the dramaturgy. So maybe we take a little focus away from the singers’. Hence bella musica for the 21st century.

He talks about ’the smell’ of Shakespeare´s tragedy and looking at Nicola Raab´s production here for us in Bergen, I know exactly what he means. As the curtain opens onto pale gloom, prone figures and a set where white walls drip with ink-black paint there is the sense that, inevitably, no good will come of this story. Biondi calls the opera ’a celebration, but in a terrible way’. The stars, for sure, are not aligned.

’So we hear at once’ he says ’that the music is not superficial. We have the first very important cabaletto from Tebaldo and Romeo; fabulous melody – Bellini, for me is the prince of that – and all the fantastically different elements in this intense and strong story’.

For Biondi, Capuleti is Bellini´s greatest opera. ’No, not Norma; yes, but it has a kind of monumental quality. But it´s much less human. Capuleti is like, well, it´s a multi-media opera!’ Many of course, will disagree. Capuleti, again and again, is dismissed with a shrug. ’Not my favourite’ said one critic (he´s coming to our premiere – I am trusting Biondi and Raab to change his mind….) The demands on the singers are frightening – Giulietta and Romeo both sing across a vast range – and the long, eloquent arias which cannot realistically be interrupted by any stage action must generate their own drama and hold their audience in emotional thrall. So the actual theatre of the piece is entirely in the music – a fact which thrills Biondi: ’You know, this is so good – it’s such a strong argument for showing the audience that this music is not in any way a simple accompagnata for the voice.’

’Bellini believed so much in the relationship between the sound and the dramaturgy. Romeo´s instrument is the clarinet, Guiletta´s, the horn. It runs so deep – right at the end of the opera, when Romeo is alone and distraught at Guiletta´s death – when he´s singing ’Come, come, I cannot live without you’, there in the orchestra her ’horn’ voice is calling.’

Listening to the first orchestral rehearsals, it´s clear that Fabio also loves the ’human’ sound of the middle stings. As the wind and violins strut rhythms which will support the chorus, he is leaning, gesturing and beaming at the violas, drawing rich, warm lines. (’No wonder we love him… how many conductors actually encourage us to play more’ says one happy violist at the interval). ’These long lines are so beautiful’ says equally happy Biondi; ’we must use all these elements to show the emotion in the music’.

The ’trouser’ role for Romeo is one of the last in 19th century musical development, something which bemused if not irritated his contemporaries who by then were busy glorifying the new hero tenors. ’Berlioz’ mused Biondi ’was actually a very nice man’ but he really hated this score because of the two women. But I think Bellini really understood the story´s trauma. These lovers have only just passed childhood – Romeo must have a sweet, fierce boyish voice. He is not an adult romantic hero.

’Actually, I once attended auditions in Dubai – they wanted a tenor for Romeo because of course to have two women there was out of the question. And it sounded horrible. No slight on the poor singers, but the poetry is lost.’

So, to Bergen, where Kristina Mkhitaryan and Nino Surguladze are our star-struck lovers, their voices blending in heavenly union.  Biondi is excited – the opera is a Norwegian premiere. ’Wonderful! We know that Capuleti e Montechi was a fantastic success at its debut performances in 1830. Now we have the chance to show Norway why!’

Mary Miller

1st November 2016

Integration, immigration and inter-cultural sensitivity

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The European Cultural Parliament met in Batumi, Georgia at the start of the month to discuss European values, Brexit´s effect on culture and intercultural sensitivities. So, tough debates ensued, fierce with passionate statements, raised voices and, in some cases, delivered with heavy hearts.
I was asked to talk about the intercultural sensitivity question – so the topic turned to opera, of course……

Here´s what I said:

I’d like to speak today about cultural integration and sensitivity as it applies to the performing arts – my specific area of work. Performing arts may perhaps seem a small arena given the appalingness of the current horror around the refugee crisis and the massive difficulties encountered by those trying to find a settled and safe home and a life with some kind of value. But I am concerned by how the arts and those of us who lead culture organisations are responding to this in the way we programme. I lead an opera company, and it´s there I would like to start.

In the last three months I have seen a large number of operas in various European cities. Of these, five have have attempted to reflect diversity and current affairs in the way that the director has interpreted the work. Well-meaning, I suppose, sensationalist maybe, but in my view a bit misguided.

All of them – all the five operas – centred on scenes of white European men (from various centuries) raping or torturing, or generally abusing Muslim women. Oddly enough, four of these five productions were Mozart. So we have the extreme beauty of the music in our ears, alongside the ultimate ugliness on stage.

We all know that without significant growth in understanding between the Islamic and the western/Christian world, without us reaching out or responding as humans whether or not we are politicians, aid workers, bureaucrats or indeed artists, we potentially allow the world community to end in disaster.

So how, in the arts world, do we behave respectfully and acknowledge that a mish-mash showing of global cultural differences does nothing to illuminate the true depth of local culture? We, as I say, – we in general, I suppose, are the kind of people who attend opera, theatre, whatever – and also know that awful violence proliferates. We read about it, talk about it, agonise over it. So why do the arts choose to portray diverse cultures this way. And why are opera directors perhaps the worst offenders?

I ask because if we are going to use art as something which has the capacity to truly bring people together across boundaries – and which surely can be a vital tool in how we approach living together across cultures – in our performing arts there must be more sensitivity and intelligence in how cultures are portrayed. An endless debate rumbles about diverse cultures and their artistic expression in general. Should artists keep their national or local distinctiveness, diversity and distance, or should they follow the lead of so-called global cookery and aim to combine flavours in search of what might be a richer or more tasteful emulsion?

How do we find a clarity of expression which respects diverse roots, holds onto originality and integrity while finding some sort of language which still speaks to an international audience. A national or regional culture is surely how it presents itself in its own particular environment. Once that special individual expression adapts to the outsiders view of what that culture should be, it becomes homogenised into something which is merely bland and pleasantly acceptable. That emulsion, then, has little to offer as a basis for a meaningful engagement with other cultures.

To return to the issue of Islam – and Mozart – there is the question of Islam´s political and social beliefs and behaviours and how those extend to arts and culture. Are those traditional roots so deep that they prohibit any adventure which might lead to a unique modernism in artistic expression? Is Islam´s own sense of its artistic culture strong enough to allow it to develop its own ’Islamic’ style of contemporary performing art, rather than being universalised.

It is hard to see a nation or culture or region retaining a genuine identity without it hanging on fiercely to its own artistic definitions – while also feeling able to innovate and experiment within those distinct traditions. Surely being ’modern’ shouldn´t lead to the surrendering of local knowledge and expression to a kind of global commercial sense of entertainment.

So to return to what this panel has as its title: Integration, immigration and inter-cultural sensitivity, I´d make a plea for equality – for individual cultures to express their art as they wish, to evolve as they wish and to chose their own path with whom they wish. The world needs – God willing peacefully – to keep diversity of thought and expression and culture as a rich mix. Culture and ideas, sensibilities and aesthetics need to keep their variety without the pressure to become diluted and globally digestible.

The wonderful Sir John Tusa, head of the BBC World Service, then inspirational leader of London´s Barbican Centre – a place where every day a diversity of culture jostles, flourishes and confronts – said ”We never know which lessons from which culture may be the lesson we need to assist human survival”.

I’d urge not just opera directors but all of us who have the privilege of working with artists to listen to his words carefully.

Thank you.

Photo: Yaniv Cohen